Popular musicians acquire some or all of their skills and knowledge informally, outside school or university, and with little help from trained instrumental teachers. How do they go about this process? Despite the fact that popular music has recently entered formal music education, we have as yet a limited understanding of the learning practices adopted by its musicians. Nor do we know why so many popular musicians in the past turned away from music education, or how young popular musicians today are responding to it. Drawing on a series of interviews with musicians aged between fifteen and fifty, Lucy Green explores the nature of pop musicians' informal learning practices, attitudes and values, the extent to which these altered over the last forty years, and the experiences of the musicians in formal music education. Through a comparison of the characteristics of informal pop music learning with those of more formal music education, the book offers insights into how we might re-invigorate the musical involvement of the population. Could the creation of a teaching culture that recognizes and rewards aural imitation, improvisation and experimentation, as well as commitment and passion, encourage more people to make music? Since the hardback publication of this book in 2001, the author has explored many of its themes through practical work in school classrooms. Her follow-up book, Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy (2008) appears in the same Ashgate series.

Heitor Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras demonstrates how the composer achieved his own Brazilian neoclassical style in a group of works, nine suites in total, that is arguably one of the best examples of homage to J.S. Bach's music in the twentieth century. In this book, the corpus of Bachianas Brasileiras is contextualised and critically examined according to its structure and intertextual aspects, as well as its relationship to Bach's music, Brazilian popular music, and other works by contemporaries of Villa Lobos. A range of musical examples illustrate instances of the selected topics in the works, encompassing urban Brazilian popular music such as the choro, Brazilian northeast and afro rhythms, and citation of folkloric melodies. Dudeque's comprehensive examination of the Bachianas Brasileiras will be invaluable for scholars and researchers of music theory and analysis.

Patrice Larroque hypothesizes that early blues singers may have been influenced by the trochaic rhythm of English. English is stressed and timed, which means that there is a regular beat to the language, just like there is a beat in a blues song. This regular beat falls on important words in the sentence and unimportant ones do not get stressed. They are "squeezed" between the salient words to keep the rhythm. The apparent contradiction between the fundamentally trochaic rhythm of spoken English and the syncopated ternary rhythm of blues may be resolved as the stressed syllables of the trochee (a stressed-unstressed sequence) is naturally lengthened and assumes the role of one strongly and one weakly stressed syllable in a ternary rhythm. The book suggests investigating the rhythm of English and the rhythm of blues in order to show how the linguistic rhythm of a culture can be reflected in the rhythm of its music.

"...the holy grail of information on Big Star and the late Chris Bell. An oral history spanning 400 pages, There Was A Light is exhaustive in its detail and entrancing in its storytelling." -Under the Radar Available for the first time as a traditional paperback, this revised and updated edition contains new and archival interviews with those closest to Chris Bell and the Big Star circle: their friends, family, former bandmates-even fans, exes, classmates, and coworkers. "Bell's and Big Star's existence was short, but the wealth of stories and quotes here provides a healthy sustenance for the truth seekers. A top-notch biography." -San Francisco Book Review The varied cast of voices-many from the band's hometown of Memphis-comprises all the members of Big Star, including Chris Bell, the iconic Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel, and Jody Stephens. In the following decades after its 1975 breakup, the obscure group somehow reached and inspired some of rock's most important bands, including R.E.M., the Replacements, Yo La Tengo, Teenage Fanclub, Beck, and Wilco. With Chris Bell at the center of the Big Star universe, this book carefully reveals the production of the band's masterful 1972 debut LP, #1 Record, for Ardent/Stax Records. Despite stellar reviews, the record suffered abysmal sales. Soon after, toxic personality conflicts and turmoil tore the band apart while Bell battled drug abuse and depression. There Was A Light then delves into Big Star's second and third albums, while recounting Bell's second act as a struggling solo musician and born-again Christian. During several trips to Europe, he produced ambitious recordings and pitched himself to record labels-even crossing paths with Paul McCartney. From this fertile era arose Bell's lone solo album, the posthumously released I Am the Cosmos-his swan song and masterpiece. There Was A Light details the pop culture phenomenon that made Big Star legendary and divulges how its staunch fanbase saved the band from obscurity. "... an encyclopedic compendium...illuminating Bell's life from a thousand angles." -Memphis Flyer

A practical but scholarly guide to Japanese instruments by one of the country's leading composers. The unique sounds of the biwa, shamisen, and other traditional instruments from Japan are heard more and more often in works for the concert hall and opera house. Composing for Japanese Instruments is a practical orchestration and instrumentation manual with contextual and relevant historical information for composers who wish to learn how to compose for traditional Japanese instruments. Widely regarded as the authoritative text on the subject in Japan and China, it contains hundreds of musical examples, diagrams, photographs, and fingering charts. Many of the musical examples can be heard on a companion website. The book also contains valuable appendices, one of works author Minoru Miki composed using Japanese traditional instruments, and one of works by other composers -- including Toru Takemitsu and Henry Cowell -- using these instruments. Minoru Miki was a composer of international renown, recognized in Japan as a pioneer in writing for Japanese traditional instruments. Marty Regan is associate professor of music at Texas A&M University. Philip Flavin is associate professor at the Osaka University of Economicsand Law and adjunct senior research associate of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Experiencing Alice Cooper: A Listener's Companion takes a long overdue look at the music and stage act of rock music's self-styled arch-villain. A provocateur from the very start of his career in the mid-1960s, Alice Cooper, aka Vince Furnier, son of a lay preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ, carved a unique path through five decades of rock'n'roll. Despite a longevity that only a handful of other artists and acts can match, Alice Cooper remains a difficult act and artist to pin down and categorize. During the last years of the 1960s and the heydays of commercial success in the 1970s, Cooper's groundbreaking theatricality, calculated offensiveness, and evident disregard for the conventions of rock protocols sowed confusion among his critics and evoked outrage from the public. Society's watchdogs demanded his head, and Cooper willingly obliged at the end of each performance with his on-stage self-guillotining. But as youth anthem after youth anthem - "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out," "Elected," "Department of Youth"-rang out in his arena concerts the world over and across airwaves, fans flocked to experience Cooper's unique brand of rock. Critics searched for proper descriptions: "pantomime," "vaudeville," "retch-rock," "Grand Guignol." In 1973 Cooper headlined in Time magazine as "Schlock Rock's Godzilla." In Experiencing Alice Cooper: A Listener's Companion, Ian Chapman surveys Cooper's career through his twenty-seven studio albums (1969-2017). While those who have written about Cooper have traditionally kept their focus on the stage spectacle, too little attention has been paid to Cooper's recordings. Throughout, Chapman argues that while Cooper may have been rock's most accomplished showman, he is first and foremost a musician, with his share of gold and platinum albums to vouch for his qualifications as a musical artist.

Nicknamed the "Godmother of Punk," Patti Smith rose to fame during the 1970s New York counterculture movement where she welcomed a new breed of rock and roll. Smith sanctioned the presence of a strong-willed woman in the mainstream rock community by breaking not only the fragile glass ceiling, but also the "rules" about women on the rock stage. Smith pushed right up to the front of the punk scene, stripping down sexual, religious, and emotional barriers to create a raw, viscerally personal message. In Patti Smith: America's Punk Rock Rhapsodist, musician and historian Eric Wendell delves into the volatile mix of religious upbringing and musical and literary influences that gave shape to Smith's lyrics, music, and artistic output. Wendell explores how Smith's androgynous stage presence pulled the various societal triggers, adding a new layer of meaning to popular music performance. Songwriter and singer, performance artist and poet, Smith created work that drew together biography, history, and music into a powerful collage of an artist who shaped a generation of musicians. For poets and performers, as well as fans of Patti Smith and punk rock history, Patti Smith: America's Punk Rock Rhapsodist is the perfect introduction to Smith's achievements and the politics and art of a generation that is still felt.

- Global scope and focus on transnational encounters provide a new way of looking at the history of sound recording and the music industry - Inclusion of interdisciplinary perspectives makes this book relevant to music, sound studies, media studies, and the history of technology

The Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet is one of the seminal albums in rock history. Arguably it not only marks the advent of the 'mature' sound of the Rolling Stones but lays out a new blueprint for an approach to blues-based rock music that would endure for several decades. From its title to the dark themes that pervade some of its songs, Beggars Banquet reflected and helped define a moment marked by violence, decay, and upheaval. It marked a move away from the artistic sonic flourishes of psychedelic rock towards an embrace of foundational streams of American music - blues, country - that had always underpinned the music of the Stones but assumed new primacy in their music after 1968. This move coincided with, and anticipated, the 'roots' moves that many leading popular music artists made as the 1960s turned toward a new decade; but unlike many of their peers whose music grew more 'soft' and subdued as they embraced traditional styles, the music and attitude of the Stones only grew harder and more menacing, and their status as representatives of the dark underside of the 60s rock counterculture assumed new solidity. For the Rolling Stones, the 1960s ended and the 1970s began with the release of this album in 1968.

This book examines social change in Africa through the lens of hip hop music and culture. Artists engage their African communities in a variety of ways that confront established social structures, using coded language and symbols to inform, question, and challenge. Through lyrical expression, dance, and graffiti, hip hop is used to challenge social inequality and to push for social change. The study looks across Africa and explores how hip hop is being used in different places, spaces, and moments to foster change. In this edited work, authors from a wide range of fields, including history, sociology, African and African American studies, and political science explore the transformative impact that hip hop has had on African youth, who have in turn emerged to push for social change on the continent. The powerful moment in which those that want change decide to consciously and collectively take a stand is rooted in an awareness that has much to do with time. Therefore, the book centers on African hip hop around the context of "it's time" for change, Ni Wakati.

Rufus Thomas may not be a household name, but he is widely regarded as the patriarch of Memphis R&B, and his music influenced three generations. His first singles in the early 1950s were recorded as blues transitioned into R&B, and he was arguably one of the founding fathers of early rock ’n’ roll. In the early 1960s, his songs "The Dog" and "Walking the Dog" made a huge impact on the emerging British "mod" scene, influencing the likes of the Georgie Fame, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. And in the early 1970s, Thomas rebranded himself as the "funkiest man alive" and recorded funk classics that were later sampled by the likes of Public Enemy, Missy Elliot, and the Wu-Tang Clan. In Funkiest Man Alive: Rufus Thomas and Memphis Soul, Matthew Ruddick reveals the amazing life and career of Thomas, who started as a dancer in the minstrel shows that toured the South before becoming one of the nation’s early African American disc jockeys, and then going on to record the first hit singles for both Chess Records and Stax Records. Ruddick also examines the social fabric of the city of Memphis, analyzing the factors behind the vast array of talent that appeared in the late 1950s, with singers like Isaac Hayes, William Bell, Maurice White (Earth, Wind & Fire), and Thomas’s older daughter, Carla Thomas, all emerging from the tightly knit African American community. He also tells the story of Memphis-based Stax Records, one of the nation’s leading R&B record labels. From the earliest blues, the segregated minstrel shows, and the birth of rock ’n’ roll through to the emergence of R&B and funk, Rufus Thomas saw it all.

This book examines the birth of punk in the UK and its transformation, within a short period of time, into post-punk. Deploying innovative concepts of 'critical mass', 'social networks' and 'music worlds', and using sophisticated techniques of 'social network analysis', it teases out the events and mechanisms involved in punk's 'micro-mobilisation', its diffusion across the UK and its transformation in certain city-based strongholds into a variety of interlocking post-punk forms. Nick Crossley offers a detailed review of prior work in this area, a rich exploration of new empirical data and a highly innovative and robust approach to the study of 'music worlds'. Written in an accessible style, this book is essential reading for anybody with an interest in either UK punk and post-punk or the impact of social networks on cultural life and the potential of social network analysis to explore this impact. -- .

(FAQ). Prog Rock FAQ traces the controversial, but much misunderstood musical genre through its five-decade history, highlighting the rise, eventual decline, and recent resurgence of one of the most inventive and storied popular musical forms of the latter half of the 21st century. Prog Rock FAQ digs deep to deliver a view of progressive rock as you've never known it: Technical wizards, cosmic messengers, visionary producers, groundbreaking album-cover illustrators, and even innovative musical instrument vendors separate memory from myth, fact from fiction, to recount prog rock's most historically significant milestones and little-known tales. This interview-rich, unapologetic volume addresses topics taboo and burning alike, while welcoming the reader on an enthralling journey replete with rapturous visions, wondrous stories, and endless enigmas.

For the Beatles, 1967 marks a signal crossroads that would both transform the group's career and place them on a trajectory towards their eventual disbandment. It was a year in which they exploded prevailing rock music demographics through the global onslaught and international success of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band beginning in June 1967. Yet it was also a period that saw them in a precarious state of flux throughout the summer and fall months, as the band attempted to recapture their artistic direction in the wake of Sgt. Pepper and the untimely death of manager Brian Epstein. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper, and the Summer of Love draws readers into that pivotal year in the life of the band. For the Fab Four, 1967 would see the band members part ways with psychedelia and the avant-garde through the trials and tribulations of the Magical Mystery Tour, a project that resulted in a series of classic recordings, while at the same time revealing the bandmates' aesthetic vulnerabilities and failings as would-be filmmakers and auteurs.

This is the first book to bring together the imagination and energy of rock music with its sources in mythology and science fiction. The mythological roots of classic rock music artists from David Bowie, the Jefferson Airplane, and Pink Floyd, to Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, and Iron Maiden are explored, along with the stories they tell and the critiques of contemporary society that their songs carry. Discover science fiction imagery, music that suggests the reaches of space, lyrics that draw upon mythic archetypes, and the mythical hero's journey. Hear from mythologists and psychologists like Joseph Campbell, J.G. Frazier, Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade and others in an exploration of musical creativity. Memories of the progressive rock era of Yes, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and Hawkwind meet with the mythological explorations of the precursors of heavy metal, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and the exuberance of pop/ rock bands like ELO and the Alan Parsons Project. Rock listeners are invited to search new horizons with this unusual blend of musicology, literature, science fiction, and inquiry into the creative process.

Christians and Christianity have been central to Hip Hop since its inception. This book explores the intersection of Christians and Hip Hop and the multiple outcomes of this intersection. It lays out the ways in which Christians and Hip Hop overlap and diverge. The intersection of Christians and Hip Hop brings together African diasporic cultures, lives, memories and worldviews. Moving beyond the focus on rappers and so-called "Christian Hip Hop," each chapter explores three major themes of the book: identifying Hip Hop, irreconcilable Christianity, and boundaries.There is a self-identified Christian Hip Hop (CHH) community that has received some scholarly attention. At the same time, scholars have analyzed Christianity and Hip Hop without focusing on the self-identified community. This book brings these various conversations together and show, through these three themes, the complexities of the intersection of Christians and Hip Hop. Hip Hop is more than rap music, it is an African diasporic phenomenon. These three themes elucidate the many characteristics of the intersection between Christians and Hip Hop and our reasoning for going beyond "Christian Hip Hop." This collection is a multi-faceted view of how religious belief plays a role in Hip Hoppas' lives and community. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of Religion and Hip Hop, Hip Hop, African Diasporas, Religion and the Arts, Religion and Race and Black Theology as well as Religious Studies more generally.

Underground rap is largely a subversive, grassroots, and revolutionary movement in underground hip-hop, tending to privilege creative freedom as well as progressive and liberating thoughts and actions. This book contends that many practitioners of underground rap have absorbed religious traditions and ideas, and implement, critique, or abandon them in their writings. This in turn creates processural mutations of God that coincide with and speak to the particular context from which they originate. Utilising the work of scholars like Monica Miller and Alfred North Whitehead, Gill uses a secular religious methodology to put forward an aesthetic philosophy of religion for the rap portion of underground hip-hop. Drawing from Whiteheadian process thought, a theopoetic argument is made. Namely, that it is not simply the case that is God the "poet of the world", but rather rap can, in fact, be the poet (creator) of its own form of quasi-religion. This is a unique look at the religious workings and implications of underground rap and hip hop. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Hip-Hop Studies and Process Philosophy and Theology.

Radiohead and the Journey Beyond Genre traces the uses and transgressions of genre in the music of Radiohead and studies the band's varied reception in online and offline media. Radiohead's work combines traditional rock sounds with a unique and experimental approach towards genre that sets the band apart from the contemporary mainstream. A play with diverse styles and audience expectations has shaped Radiohead's musical output and opened up debates about genre amongst critics, fans, and academics alike. Interpretations speak of a music that is referential of the past but also alludes to the future. Applying both music- and discourse-analytical methods, the book discusses how genre manifests in Radiohead's work and how it is interpreted amongst different audience groups. It explores how genre and generic flexibility affect the listeners' search for musical meaning and ways of discussion. This results in the development of a theoretical framework for the study of genre in individual popular music oeuvres that explores the equal validity of widely differing forms of reception as a multidimensional network of meaning. While Radiohead's music is the product of an eclectic mixture of musical influences and styles, the book also shows how the band's experimental stance has increasingly fostered debates about Radiohead's generic novelty and independence. It asks what remains of genre in light of its past or imminent transgression. Offering new perspectives on popular music genre, transgression, and the music and reception of Radiohead, the book will appeal to academics, students, and those interested in Radiohead and matters of genre. It contributes to scholarship in musicology, popular music, media, and cultural studies.

Blending the insights of musicians and psychologists from D.W. Winnicott to Gregory Bateson to Ornette Coleman, Jazz and Psychotherapy is a groundbreaking exploration of improvisation that reveals its potential to transform our experience of ourselves and the challenges we face as a species. What we all share with the professional improvisers known as "psychotherapists" and "jazz musicians" is the reality of not knowing what those around us-or even we ourselves-are going to do next. Rather than avoiding it, however, these practitioners have learned to revere our inherent unpredictability as precisely the feature of human living that makes transformative change possible, fully incorporating it into the theories and practices that constitute their disciplines. Jazz and Psychotherapy provides a sophisticated but accessible overview of the revolutionary approaches to human development and creative expression embodied in these two seemingly disparate twentieth-century cultural traditions. Readers interested in music, psychotherapy, social psychology and contemporary theories of complexity will find Jazz and Psychotherapy engaging and useful. Its colorful synthesis of perspectives and multidimensional scope make it an essential contribution to our understanding of improvisation in music and in life.

Ageing and Contemporary Female Musicians focuses on ageing within contemporary popular music. It argues that context, genres, memoirs, racial politics and place all contribute to how women are 'aged' in popular music. Framing contemporary female musicians as canonical grandmothers, Rude Girls, neo-Afrofuturist and memoirists settling accounts, the book gives us some respite from a decline or denial narrative and introduces a dynamism into ageing. Female rock memoirs are age-appropriate survival stories that reframe the histories of punk and independent rock music. Old age has a functional and canonical 'place' in the work of Shirley Collins and Calypso Rose. Janelle Monae, Christine and the Queens and Anohni perform 'queer' age, specifically a kind of 'going beyond' both corporeal and temporal borders. Genres age, and the book introduces the idea of the time-crunch; an encounter between an embodied, represented age and a genre-age, which is, itself, produced through historicity and aesthetics. Lastly the book goes behind the scenes to draw on interviews and questionnaires with 19 women involved in the contemporary British and American popular music industry; DIY and ex-musicians, producers, music publishers, music journalists and audio engineers. Ageing and Contemporary Female Musicians is a vital intergenerational feminist viewpoint for researchers and students in gender studies, popular music, popular culture, media studies, cultural studies and ageing studies.

Florence + the Machine is the recording name of English musician Florence Welch and a collaboration of other artists who provide music for her voice. Florence + the Machine's sound has been described as a combination of various genres, including rock and soul. The Sunday Times described Welch as "the most peculiar and most highly acclaimed female singer of the moment" Tells the story of her upbringing in South London to her thrilling rise to international fame as a singer and also a highly individual fashion icon. Her collaborations and working relationships with Chanel Creative Director Karl Lagerfeld, her manager Mairead Nash and her friend Isabella Summers who to this day forms part of 'the machine'. How her sense of style has captured the imaginations of fans and fashion editors the world over. The stories behind the glittering award ceremonies, TV appearances and international tours.

(FAQ). Jimi Hendrix left the world too soon at the age of twenty-seven, but, despite the brevity of his career, his body of work is as vital to 20th-century music as that of Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, and Miles Davis. Hundreds of hours of unreleased studio sessions and concert performances were his salvation. A modest man but highly competitive musician, Hendrix set the stage for many of the most significant musical movements to emerge between 1970 and 1999, including heavy metal, fusion, glam rock, and rap. Voodoo bluesman, sonic producer, the lyricist that out-Dylaned Dylan: these are what snatch our attention 40 years after his death, as do his "aw, shucks" smile in photos and the raw sexuality of his concert performances. It's hard to find the man under all the falsehoods told by friends, business associates, and even Jimi himself. Jimi Hendrix FAQ attempts to present the facts in a fast-moving, fan-friendly read.

First conceived in 1966 but only completed in 2004, Brian Wilson Presents Smile has been called "the best-known unreleased album in pop music history" and "an American Sergeant Pepper." Reading Smile offers a close analysis of the recording in its social, cultural and historical contexts. It focuses in particular on the finished work's subject matter as embodied in Van Dyke Parks' contentious yet little understood lyrics, with their low-resolution, highly allusive portrayals of western expansion's archetypes, from Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts to Diamond Head, Hawaii. Documenting their multiple references and connotations, it argues that their invocations of national self-definition are part of a carefully crafted vision of American identity, society and culture both in tune and at odds with the times. Critical of the republic's past practices but convinced that its ideals, values and myths still provided resources to redeem it, the recording is interpreted as a creative musical milestone, an enduring product of its volatile, radical, countercultural times, and an American pop art classic. Of particular relevance to American Studies and popular culture scholars, Reading Smile will also appeal to those interested in 1960s popular music, not least to fans of Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and the Beach Boys.

This volume brings together the work of social scientists and music scholars examining the role of migrant and migrant descended communities in the production and consumption of popular music in Europe and North America. The contributions to the collection include studies of language and local identity in hip hop in Liege and Montreal; the politics of Mexican folk music in Los Angeles; the remaking of ethnic boundaries in Naples; the changing meanings of Tango in the Argentine diaspora and of Alevi music among Turks in Germany; the history of Soca in Brooklyn; and the recreation of 'American' culture by the children of immigrants on the Broadway stage. Taken together, these works demonstrate how music affords us a window onto local culture, social relations and community politics in the diverse cities of immigrant receiving societies. Music is often one of the first arenas in which populations encounter newcomers, a place where ideas about identity can be reformulated and reimagined, and a field in which innovation and hybridity are often highly valued. This book highlights why it is a subject worthy of more attention from students of racial and ethnic relations in diverse societies. It was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This volume brings together philosophical and interdisciplinary perspectives on improvisation. The contributions connect the theoretical dimensions of improvisation with different viewpoints on its practice in the arts and the classroom. The chapters address the phenomenon of improvisation in two related ways. On the one hand, they attend to the lived practices of improvisation both within and without the arts in order to explain the phenomenon. They also extend the scope of improvisational practices to include the role of improvisation in habit and in planned action, at both individual and collective levels. Drawing on recent work done in the philosophy of mind, they address questions such as whether improvisation is a single unified phenomenon or whether it entails different senses that can be discerned theoretically and practically. Finally, they ask after the special kind of improvisational expertise which characterizes musicians, dancers, and other practitioners, an expertise marked by the artist's ability to participate competently in complex situations while deliberately relinquishing control. Philosophy of Improvisation will appeal to anyone with a strong interest in improvisation, to researchers working in philosophy, aesthetics, and pedagogy as well as practitioners involved in different kinds of music, dance, and theater performances.