Fela Anikulapo Kuti was the Afrobeat music maestro whose life and time provide the lens through which we can outline the postcolonial trajectory of the Nigerian state as well as the dynamics of most other African states. Through the Afrobeat music, Fela did not only challenge consecutive governments in Nigeria, but his rebellious Afrobeat lyrics facilitate a philosophical subtext that enriches the more intellectual Afrocentric discourses. Afrobeat and the philosophy of blackism that Fela enunciated place him right beside Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, and all the others who champion a black and African mode of being in the world. This book traces the emergence of Fela on the music scene, the cultural and political backgrounds that made Afrobeat possible, and the philosophical elements that not only contributed to the formation of Fela's blackism, but what constitutes Fela's philosophical sensibility too.

Why is gender inseparable from pop songs? What can gender representations in musical performances mean? Why are there strong links between gender, sexuality and popular music? The sound of the voice, the mix, the arrangement, the lyrics and images, all link our impressions of gender to music. Numerous scholars writing about gender in popular music to date are concerned with the music industry's impact on fans, and how tastes and preferences become associated with gender. This is the first collection of its kind to develop and present new theories and methods in the analysis of popular music and gender. The contributors are drawn from a range of disciplines including musicology, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, and media studies, providing new reference points for studies in this interdisciplinary field. Stan Hawkins's introduction sets out to situate a variety of debates that prompts ways of thinking and working, where the focus falls primarily on gender roles. Amongst the innovative approaches taken up in this collection are: queer performativity, gender theory, gay and lesbian agency, the female pop celebrity, masculinities, transculturalism, queering, transgenderism and androgyny. This Research Companion is required reading for scholars and teachers of popular music, whatever their disciplinary background.

This book explores an album of popular music with a remarkable significance to a violent wave of postcolonial tensions in the Netherlands in the 1970s. Several "actions" were claimed by a small number of first-generation descendants of ca. 12,500 reluctant migrants from the young independent state of Indonesia (former Dutch East Indies). Transferred in 1951, this culturally coherent group consisted of ex-Royal Dutch Colonial Army personnel and their families. Their ancient roots in the Moluccan archipelago and their protestant-christian faith defined their minority image. Their sojourn should have been temporary, but frustratingly turned out to be permanent. At the height of strained relations, Massada rose to the occasion. Astaganaga (1978) is a telling example of the will to negotiate a different diasporic Moluccan identity through uplifting contemporary sounds.

Alastair Riddell's band Space Waltz was a short-lived one-album New Zealand rock act who hit gold with a #1 hit single in October 1974 with the song 'Out On The Street' but thereafter failed to achieve anything even close to that feat. While relegated to one-hit-wonder status in the eyes of many, to this day Riddell and Space Waltz epitomize the mid-1970s heyday of glam rock in New Zealand. But in truth their impact went far beyond this. Their generationally divisive nation-wide debut on the hugely popular MOR television talent quest Studio One/New Faces demonstrated the power of mass media exposure - they were instantly signed to a record deal with industry giant EMI - while Riddell's controversial gender-bending image provided a cultural crossroads that greatly impacted the wider youth culture of Aotearoa New Zealand. In addition, while the album's most famous track, 'Out On The Street,' is rightly regarded as New Zealand's glam rock anthem, the wider album demonstrates a compositional and musical depth that goes far beyond glam rock and into the realm of sophisticated progressive rock, ultimately providing an unlikely and highly unique musical amalgam.

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches widens the scope of analytical approaches for popular music by incorporating methods developed for analyzing contemporary art music. This study endeavors to create a new analytical paradigm for examining popular music from the perspective of developments in contemporary art music. "Expanded approaches" for popular music analysis is broadly defined as as exploring the pitch-class structures, form, timbre, rhythm, or aesthetics of various forms of popular music in a conceptual space not limited to the domain of common practice tonality but broadened to include any applicable compositional, analytical, or theoretical concept that illuminates the music. The essays in this collection investigate a variety of analytical, theoretical, historical, and aesthetic commonalities popular music shares with 20th and 21st century art music. From rock and pop to hip hop and rap, dance and electronica, from the 1930s to present day, this companion explores these connections in five parts: Establishing and Expanding Analytical Frameworks Technology and Timbre Rhythm, Pitch, and Harmony Form and Structure Critical Frameworks: Analytical, Formal, Structural, and Political With contributions by established scholars and promising emerging scholars in music theory and historical musicology from North America, Europe, and Australia, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches offers nuanced and detailed perspectives that address the relationships between concert and popular music.

Best day of my life is the matching artist approved songbook to Tom Odell's fifth studio album, released 28th October 2022. The album is intentionally minimalistic, with just Tom's voice and piano. He says: "One year ago, almost exactly to the day, I set myself the challenge to write and record an entire album using only my voice and my piano with absolutely nothing else. I found myself digging deeper than I ever have before both with my words and piano playing. I am so proud of the way this record has turned out and I really cannot wait for you all to hear it." Featuring an introduction from Tom himself, these songs are transcribed for piano and voice, with guitar chords and match the original recordings.

I Just Can't Stop It is the honest and compelling autobiography from British Music Legend, Ranking Roger. As the enigmatic frontman of the multicultural band The Beat, Ranking Roger represented the youthful and joyous sound of the post-punk 2 Tone movement. As well as his illustrious career with The Beat and its subsequent iterations, this absorbing book explores Roger's upbringing as a child of the Windrush generation, touring America and his outstanding collaborations with artists such as The Clash, The Police and The Specials.

Iannis Xenakis' Persepolis stood as witness to one of the most important events in modern human history, the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Its existence is owed to an invitation to participate in the 1971 Shiraz Arts Festival, which was overseen by Empress Farah Pahlavi. Like the Festival, and the extravagant celebratory party held the same year, Xenakis' symbolic paean to Persian history was polarizing. Many loved it, others detested it. Overwhelming but also subtle and precise in its non-harmonic shifts in texture and density, listeners and critics simply did not know what to make of it. This book tells the story of Xenakis' early history and involvement in the Resistance against the Axis occupation of Greece during the Second World War, escape and re-settlement in Paris, work as an architect with Le Corbusier, and distinct views on world history and politics that all led to his 1972 electro-acoustic album Persepolis.

This book is about Senegalese Pop star Youssou Ndour, also known as the king of mbalax music. The word mbalax was the name given to a specific drumming beat. Today, it is used to name a musical genre played by Wolof and Serer percussionists to entertain people at almost every family event such as naming and wedding ceremonies, storytelling, dances, and others, generally held by Senegalese women. Almost all social and family events are, or can be, musicalized in Senegal: there is music for every social gathering and mbalax is the music genre that most often accompanies such events. Mbalax music groups mix sabar instruments, which include the cool, lamb, ndend, mben-mben, ndeer, tunune, and tama, also known as "talking drum," with modern elements such as electric and bass guitars, trumpets and keyboards. Ndour has substantially contributed to the popularity of mbalax music throughout the world. The book retraces the artist's early career and life-changing events and encounters, song repertoire themes and hits, conquest of the international scene and years of glory and international recognition, interests in media and television businesses, activism and political engagement of one among the one hundred most influential personalities of the world, according to Time magazine in 2007. The author analyzes Ndour's philosophical stance, religious beliefs, and wisdom through analysis of his rich song repertoire.

In this, the first book to take a big-picture view of the entire post punk period, acclaimed author and music journalist Simon Reynolds recreates a time of tremendous urgency and idealism in pop music. Full of anecdote and insight, and featuring the likes of Joy Division, The Fall, Pere Ubu, PiL and Talking Heads, Rip It Up And Start Again stands as one of the most inspired and inspiring books on popular music ever written.

A monumental oral biography filled with raucous joy, aching loss and terrible poignancy, Elvis & the Memphis Mafia is the first book to capture the King - the man and the phenomenon - in his full complexity. Through revealing interviews with three of Elvis' s closest friends, who were also his protectors and rescuers, Nash achieves the first true mapping of Elvis' s psyche. Billy Smith - Elvis' s first cousin and the person he reputedly loved most after his own mother - Marty Lacker - best man at his wedding and foreman of the ' Memphis Mafia' , the King' s handpicked group of gatekeepers and confidants - and Lamar Fike - the touring crew member who accompanied him into the Army - were with Elvis from his teens to his final days and provide unique access to the greatest of all rock and roll legends. The revelations cut through every aspect of Elvis' s life, from the childhood seeds of his drug dependency, through his fear for his mother' s life and his plan to change his identity, to his bizarre self-mutilation. No one who reads this symphonic blending of three proud, ribald, sad and ultimately wistful voices can fail to be profoundly moved.

Flea, the iconic bassist and co-founder, alongside Anthony Kiedis, of the immortal Red Hot Chili Peppers finally tells his fascinating origin story, complete with all the dizzying highs and the gutter lows you'd expect from an LA street rat turned world-famous rock star. Michael Peter Balzary was born in Melbourne, Australia, on October 16, 1962. His more famous stage name, Flea, and his wild ride as the renowned bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers was in a far and distant future. Little Michael from Oz moved with his very conservative, very normal family to Westchester, New York, where life as he knew it was soon turned upside down. His parents split up and he and his sister moved into the home of his mother's free-wheeling, jazz musician boyfriend - trading in rules, stability, and barbecues for bohemian values, wildness, and Sunday afternoon jazz parties where booze, weed, and music flowed in equal measure. There began Michael's life-long journey to channel all the frustration, loneliness, love, and joy he felt into incredible rhythm. When Michael's family moved to Los Angeles in 1972, his home situation was rockier than ever. He sought out a sense of belonging elsewhere, spending most of his days partying, playing basketball, and committing petty crimes. At Fairfax High School, he met another social outcast, Anthony Kiedis, who quickly became his soul brother, the yin to his yang, his partner in mischief. Michael joined some bands, fell in love with performing, and honed his skills. But it wasn't until the night when Anthony, excited after catching a Grandmaster Flash concert, suggested they start their own band that he is handed the magic key to the cosmic kingdom. Acid for the Children is as raw, entertaining and wildly unpredictable as its author. It's both a tenderly evocative coming of age story and a raucous love letter to the power of music and creativity

The Beatles and Duke Ellington's Orchestra stand as the two greatest examples of collaboration in music history. Thomas Brothers delivers a portrait of the creative process at work, demonstrating that the cooperative method at the foundation of these two artist-groups was the primary reason for their unmatched musical success. While clarifying the historical record of who wrote what, with whom and how, Brothers brings the past to life with photos, anecdotes and more than thirty years of musical knowledge, and analysis of songs from "Strawberry Fields Forever" to "Chelsea Bridge". Help! describes in rich detail the music and mastery of two cultural leaders whose popularity has never dimmed, and the process of collaboration that allowed them to achieve an artistic vision greater than the sum of their parts.

An Open Access edition of this book will be available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. At the turn of the 21st century, the Brazilian punk and hardcore music scene joined forces with political militants to foster a new social movement that demanded the universal right to free public transportation. These groups collaborated in numerous venues and media: music shows, protests, festivals, conferences, radio stations, posters, albums, slogans, and digital and printed publications. Throughout this time, the single demand for free public transportation reconceptualized notions of urban space in Brazil and led masses of people across the country to protest. This book shows how the anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeoisie stance present in the discourse of a number of Brazilian bands that performed from the late 1990s to the beginning of the 21st century in the underground music scenes of Florianopolis and Sao Paulo encountered a reverberation in the rhetoric emanating from the Campaign for the Free Fare, subsequently known as the Free Fare Movement (Movimento Passe Livre, or MPL). This allowed the engaged bands and the movement for free public transportation to contribute to each other's development. The book also includes reflections on the Bus Revolt that occurred in the northeastern city of Salvador, unveiling traces of the punk and anarcho-punk movements, and the Revolution Carnivals that occurred in the city of Belo Horizonte, an event that mixed lectures, vegetarianism, protests, soccer, and punk rock music.

In Portraying Performer Image in Record Album Cover Art, Ken Bielen explains how album cover art authenticates recording artists by using elements that authenticate the performer in the particular genre. He considers albums issued from the 1950s to the 1980s, the golden era of record album cover art. The whole album package is studied including the front and back covers, the inside cover, the inner sleeve, and the text (liner notes) on the album jacket. Performers in rock and roll, folk and folk rock, soul and disco, psychedelic, Americana nostalgia, and singer-songwriter genres are included in this study of hundreds of record album covers.

This volume explores the ways in which music scenes are not merely physical spaces for the practice of collective musical life but are also inscribed with and enacted through the articulation of cultural memory and emotional geography. The book draws on empirical data collected in cites throughout Australia. In terms of understanding the relationship between music scenes and participants, much of the existing popular music literature tends to avoid one key aspect of scene: its predominant past-tense and memory-based nature. Nascent music scenes may be emergent and on-going but their articulation in the present is often based on past events, ideas and histories. There is a noticeable gap between the literature concerning popular music ethnography and the growing body of work on cultural memory and emotional geography. This book is a study of the conceptual formation and use of music scenes by participants. It is also an investigation of the structures underpinning music scenes more generally.

This book argues for the importance of popular music in negotiations of national identity, and Germanness in particular. By discussing diverse musical genres and commercially and critically successful songs at the heights of their cultural relevance throughout seventy years of post-war German history, Soundtracking Germany describes how popular music can function as a language for "writing" national narratives. Running chronologically, all chapters historically contextualize and critically discuss the cultural relevance of the respective genre before moving into a close reading of one particularly relevant and appellative case study that reveals specific interrelations between popular music and constructions of Germanness. Close readings of these sonic national narratives in different moments of national transformations reveal changes in the narrative rhetoric as this book explores how Germanness is performatively constructed, challenged, and reaffirmed throughout the course of seventy years.

Chronicles the work of Norberto Tavares, a Cabo Verdean musician and humanitarian who served as the conscience of his island nation during the transition from Portuguese colony to democratic republic. Based on twenty years of collaborative fieldwork, Songs for Cabo Verde: Norberto Tavares's Musical Visions for a New Republic focuses on the musician Norberto Tavares but also tells a larger story about postcolonial nation building, musical activism, and diaspora life within the Lusophone sphere. It follows the parallel trajectories of Cabo Verdean independence and Tavares's musical career over four decades (1975-2010). Tavares lived and worked in Cabo Verde, Portugal, and the United States, where he died in New Bedford, Massachusetts at age fifty-four. Tavares's music serves as a lens through which we can view Cabo Verde's transition from a Portuguese colony to an independent, democratic nation, one that was shaped in part through the musician's persistent humanitarian messages.

Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright (b. 1973) is famous around the world for his multi-faceted musical style, shown through both his recorded output and his engaging live performances. In this book, Katherine Williams combines his aspects of his life story with scholarly readings drawn from several methodologies. Popular music studies, opera, queer studies, music and geography, the sound-box: all combine to give a rich biographical and interpretative overview of Wainwright's life and music. Williams brings together close musical analysis with such varied disciplinary perspectives with a tone that is both in-depth and scholarly, and accessible. The book is a must-read for fans, students and scholars alike.

Why do rap MCs present their studio recorded lyrics as "live and direct"? Why do they so insistently define abilities or actions, theirs or someone else's, against a pre-existing signifier? This book examines the compositional practice of rap lyricists and offers compelling answers to these questions. Through a 40 year-span analysis of the music, it argues that whether through the privileging of chanted call-and-response phrases or through rhetorical strategies meant to assist in getting one's listening audience open, the focus of the first rap MCs on community building and successful performer-audience cooperation has remained prevalent on rap records with lyrics and production techniques encouraging the listener to become physically and emotionally involved in recorded performances. Relating rap's rhetorical strategy of posing inferences through intertextuality to early call-and-response routines and crowd-controlling techniques, this study emphasizes how the dynamic and collective elements from the stage performances and battles of the formative years of rap have remained relevant in the creative process behind this music. It contends that the customary use of identifiable references and similes by rap lyricists works as a fluid interchange designed to keep the listener involved in the performance. Like call-and-response in live performances, it involves a dynamic form of communication and places MCs in a position where they activate the shared knowledge of their audience, making sure that they "know what they mean," thus transforming their mediated lyrics into a collective and engaging performance.

The Organic Globalizer is a collection of critical essays which takes the position that hip-hop holds political significance through an understanding of its ability to at once raise cultural awareness, expand civil society's focus on social and economic justice through institution building, and engage in political activism and participation. Collectively, the essays assert hip hop's importance as an "organic globalizer:" no matter its pervasiveness or reach around the world, hip-hop ultimately remains a grassroots phenomenon that is born of the community from which it permeates. Hip hop, then, holds promise through three separate but related avenues: (1) through cultural awareness and identification/recognition of voices of marginalized communities through music and art; (2) through social creation and the institutionalization of independent alternative institutions and non-profit organizations in civil society geared toward social and economic justice; and (3) through political activism and participation in which demands are articulated and made on the state. With editorial bridges between chapters and an emphasis on interdisciplinary and diverse perspectives, The Organic Globalizer is the natural scholarly evolution in the conversation about hip-hop and politics.