Popular music is a cultural form much rooted in space and place. This book interprets the meaning of music from a spatial perspective and, in doing so it furthers our understanding of broader social relations and trends, including identity, attachment to place, cultural economies, social activism and politics. The book's editors have brought together a team of scholars to discuss the latest innovative thinking on music and its geographies, illustrated with a fascinating range of case studies from the USA, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia and Great Britain.

This book explores the trend of retro and nostalgia within contemporary popular music culture. Using empirical evidence obtained from a case study of fans' engagement with older music, the book argues that retro culture is the result of an inseparable mix of cultural and technological changes, namely, the rise of a new generation and cultural mood along with the encouragement of new technologies. Retro culture has become a hot topic in recent years but this is the first time the subject has been explored from an academic perspective and from the fans' perspective. As such, this book promises to provide concrete answers about why retro culture dominates in contemporary society. For the first time ever, this book provides an empirically grounded theory of popular music, retro culture and its intergenerational audience in the twenty-first century. It will appeal to advanced students of popular music studies, cultural studies, media studies, sociology and music.

It is common to hear heavy metal music fans and musicians talk about the "metal community". This concept, which is widely used when referencing this musical genre, encompasses multiple complex aspects that are seldom addressed in traditional academic endeavors including shared aesthetics, musical practices, geographies, and narratives. The idea of a "metal community" recognizes that fans and musicians frequently identify as part of a collective group, larger than any particular individual. Still, when examined in detail, the idea raises more questions than answers. What criteria are used to define groups of people as part of the community? How are metal communities formed and maintained through time? How do metal communities interact with local cultures throughout the world? How will metal communities change over the lifespan of their members? Are metal communities even possible in light of the importance placed on individualism in this musical genre? These are just some of the questions that arise when the concept of "community" is used in relation to heavy metal music. And yet in the face of all these complexities, heavy metal fans continue to think of themselves as a unified collective entity. This book addresses this notion of "metal community" via the experiences of authors and fans through theoretical reflections and empirical research. Their contributions focus on how metal communities are conceptualized, created, shaped, maintained, interact with their context, and address internal tensions. The book provides scholars, and other interested in the field of metal music studies, with a state of the art reflection on how metal communities are constituted, while also addressing their limits and future challenges.

For many people step dancing is associated mainly with the Irish step-dance stage shows, Riverdance and Lord of the Dance, which assisted both in promoting the dance form and in placing Ireland globally. But, in this book, Catherine Foley illustrates that the practice and contexts of step dancing are much more complicated and fluid. Tracing the trajectory of step dancing in Ireland, she tells its story from roots in eighteenth-century Ireland to its diverse cultural manifestations today. She examines the interrelationships between step dancing and the changing historical and cultural contexts of colonialism, nationalism, postcolonialism and globalization, and shows that step dancing is a powerful tool of embodiment and meaning that can provoke important questions relating to culture and identity through the bodies of those who perform it. Focusing on the rural European region of North Kerry in the south-west of Ireland, Catherine Foley examines three step-dance practices: one, the rural Molyneaux step-dance practice, representing the end of a relatively long-lived system of teaching by itinerant dancing masters in the region; two, RinceoirA na RA ochta, a dance school representative of the urbanized staged, competition orientated practice, cultivated by the cultural nationalist movement, the Gaelic League, established at the end of the nineteenth century, and practised today both in Ireland and abroad; and three, the stylized, commoditized, folk-theatrical practice of Siamsa TA re, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, established in North Kerry in the 1970s. Written from an ethnochoreological perspective, Catherine Foley provides a rich historical and ethnographic account of step dancing, step dancers and cultural institutions in Ireland.

Joanna Newsom, Will Oldham (a.k.a. 'Bonnie Prince Billy'), and Devendra Banhart are perhaps the best known of a generation of independent artists who use elements of folk music in contexts that are far from traditional. These (and other) so called 'new folk' artists challenge our notions of 'finished product' through their recordings, intrinsically guided by practices and rhetoric inherited from punk. This book traces a fractured trajectory that includes Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Bob Dylan, psych-folk of the sixties (from Vashti Bunyan to John Fahey), lo-fi and outsider recordings (from Captain Beefheart and The Residents to Jandek, Daniel Johnston and Smog), and recent experimental folk (Animal Collective, Six Organs of Admittance, Charalambides) to contextualise the first substantial consideration of new folk. In the process, Encarnacao reviews the literature on folk and punk to argue that tropes of authenticity, though constructions, carry considerable power in the creation and reception of recorded works. New approaches to music require new analytical tools, and through the analysis of some 50 albums, Encarnacao introduces the categories of labyrinth, immersive and montage forms. This book makes a compelling argument for a reconsideration of popular music history that highlights the eternal compulsion for spontaneous, imperfect and performative recorded artefacts.

From the ragtime one-step of the early twentieth century to the contemporary practices of youth club cultures, popular dance and music are inextricably linked. This collection reveals the intimate connections between the corporeal and the sonic in the creation, transmission and reception of popular dance and music, which is imagined here as 'bodies of sound'. The volume provokes a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary conversation that includes scholarship from Asia, Europe and the United States, which explores topics from the nineteenth century through to the present day and engages with practices at local, national and transnational levels. In Part I: Constructing the Popular, the authors explore how categories of popular music and dance are constructed and de-stabilized, and their proclivity to appropriate and re-imagine cultural forms and meanings. In Part II: Authenticity, Revival and Reinvention, the authors examine how popular forms produce and manipulate identities and meanings through their attraction to and departure from cultural traditions. In Part III: (Re)Framing Value, the authors interrogate how values are inscribed, silenced, rearticulated and capitalized through popular music and dance. And in Part IV: Politics of the Popular, the authors read the popular as a site of political negotiation and transformation.

Despite the musical and social roles they play in many parts of the world, wind bands have not attracted much interest from sociologists. The Sociology of Wind Bands seeks to fill this gap in research by providing a sociological account of this musical universe as it stands now. Based on a qualitative and quantitative survey conducted in northeastern France, the authors present a vivid description of the orchestras, the backgrounds and practices of their musicians, and the repertoires they play. Their multi-level analysis, ranging from the cultural field to the wind music subfield and to everyday life relationships within bands and local communities, sheds new light on the social organisation, meanings and functions of a type of music that is all too often taken for granted. Yet they go further than merely portraying a musical genre. As wind music is routinely neglected and socially defined in terms of its poor musical quality or even bad taste, the book addresses the thorny issue of the effects of cultural hierarchy and domination. It proposes an imaginative and balanced framework which, beyond the specific case of wind music, is an innovative contribution to the sociology of lowbrow culture.

'A boy sings...a beautiful thing' (www.boychoirs.org), but is it? What kinds of boy, singing what kinds of music and to whom? Martin Ashley presents a unique consideration of boys' singing that shows the high voice to be historically, culturally and physiologically more problematic even than is commonly assumed. Through Ashley's extensive conversations with young performers and analysis of their reception by 'peer audiences', the research reveals that the common supposition that 'boys don't want to sound like girls' is far from adequate in explaining the 'missing males' syndrome that can perplex choir directors. The book intertwines the study of singing with the study of identity to create a rich resource for musicians, scholars, teachers and all those concerned with young male involvement in music through singing. The conclusions of the book will challenge many attitudes and unconsidered positions through its argument that many boys actually want to sing but are discouraged by a failure of the adult world to understand the boy mind. Ashley intends the book to stand as an indictment of much complacency and myopia with regard to the young male voice. A substantial grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council has enabled the production of a multi-media resource for schools, choirs and youth organizations called Boys Keep Singing. Based on the contents of this book, the resource shows how, once the interest of boys is captured in primary schools, their singing can be sustained and developed through the difficult but vital early secondary years of ages 11 - 14, about which this book says so much. The resource is lavishly illustrated by short films of boys singing, supported by interviews with boys and their teachers, and a wealth of of animated diagrams and cartoons. It is available to schools and organizations involved in musical education through registration at www.boys-keep-singing.com.

Nick Cave is now widely recognized as a songwriter, musician, novelist, screenwriter, curator, critic, actor and performer. From the band, The Boys Next Door (1976-1980), to the spoken-word recording, The Secret Life of the Love Song (1998), to the recently acclaimed screenplay of The Proposition (2005) and the Grinderman project (2008), Cave's career spans thirty years and has produced a comprehensive (and sometimes controversial) body of work that has shaped contemporary alternative culture. Despite intense media interest in Cave, there have been remarkably few comprehensive appraisals of his work, its significance and its impact on understandings of popular culture. In addressing this absence, the present volume is both timely and necessary. Cultural Seeds brings together an international range of scholars and practitioners, each of whom is uniquely placed to comment on an aspect of Cave's career. The essays collected here not only generate new ways of seeing and understanding Cave's contributions to contemporary culture, but set up a dialogue between fields all-too-often separated in the academy and in the media. Topics include Cave and the Presley myth; the aberrant masculinity projected by The Birthday Party; the postcolonial Australian-ness of his humour; his interventions in film and his erotics of the sacred. These essays offer compelling insights and provocative arguments about the fluidity of contemporary artistic practice.

Brazilian Popular Music, or MAsica Popular Brasileira (MPB), developed in the mid 1960s as a response to the re-thinking of Brazilian national identity following the establishment of the post-1964 military regime. A leading figure in MPB at this time was Caetano Veloso, and it is his music and its reception that form the focus of this book. A leader of the Tropicalist movement, Veloso sought to initiate a critical debate on Brazilian Popular Music and the political and ideological foundations which underpinned its aesthetic. Lorraine Leu examines Veloso's musical and vocal styles, revealing the ways in which they play with traditional expectations between the performer and listener, and argues that they represent an important response to the severe censorship and repression of the military regime.

The musical genre of taarab is played for entertainment at weddings and other festive occasions all along the Swahili Coast in East Africa. Taarab contains all the features of a typical 'Indian Ocean' music, combining influences from Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, India and the West with local musical practices. In Taarab, Music in Zanzibar, Janet Topp Fargion traces the development of the genre in Zanzibar, from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. Of special interest is the role of women. Although men play the main role in the composition and performance of the genre, Topp Fargion argues that the modernization of the genre owes a debt to the participation of women - as audiences and primary consumers, but also as poets and innovators of musical concepts. The book weaves together the historical, social, economic, religious and political dynamics involved in the development of the genre, and investigates how these are played out in the performance of taarab music on Zanzibar.

Despite their central role in many forms of music-making, drummers have been largely neglected in the scholarly literature on music and education. But kit drummers are increasingly difficult to ignore. While exponents of the drum kit are frequently mocked in popular culture, they are also widely acknowledged to be central to the musical success and aesthetic appeal of any musical ensemble in which they are found. Drummers are also making their presence felt in music education, with increasing opportunities to learn their craft in formal contexts. Drawing on data collected from in-depth interviews and questionnaires, Gareth Dylan Smith explores the identities, practices and learning of teenage and adult kit drummers in and around London. As a London-based drummer and teacher of drummers, Smith uses his own identity as participant-researcher to inform and interpret other drummers' accounts of their experiences. Drummers learn in multi-modal ways, usually with a keen awareness of exemplars of their art and craft. The world of kit drumming is highly masculine, which presents opportunities and challenges to drummers of both sexes. Smith proposes a new model of the 'Snowball Self', which incorporates the constructs of identity realization, learning realization, meta-identities and contextual identities. Kit drummers' identities, practices and learning are found to be intertwined, as drummers exist in a web of interdependence. Drummers drum; therefore they are, they do, and they learn - in a rich tapestry of means and contexts.

The term 'Popular Music' has traditionally denoted different things in France and Britain. In France, the very concept of 'popular' music has been fiercely debated and contested, whereas in Britain and more largely throughout what the French describe as the 'Anglo-saxon' world 'popular music' has been more readily accepted as a description of what people do as leisure or consume as part of the music industry, and as something that academics are legitimately entitled to study. French researchers have for some decades been keenly interested in reading British and American studies of popular culture and popular music and have often imported key concepts and methodologies into their own work on French music, but apart from the widespread use of elements of 'French theory' in British and American research, the 'Anglo-saxon' world has remained largely ignorant of particular traditions of the study of popular music in France and specific theoretical debates or organizational principles of the making and consuming of French musics. French, British and American research into popular music has thus coexisted - with considerable cross-fertilization - for many years, but the barriers of language and different academic traditions have made it hard for French and anglophone researchers to fully appreciate the ways in which popular music has developed in their respective countries and the perspectives on its study adopted by their colleagues. This volume provides a comparative and contrastive perspective on popular music and its study in France and the UK.

The first in-depth biography of Bon Iver mainman Justin Vernon, Bon Iver will tell his story via extensive and exclusive original interviews with those around him throughout his rise from his failed Wisconsin bands to the illness and isolation that forged his breakthrough album For Emma, Forever Ago, and his subsequent critical and commercial success as the latest US alternative icon. Also features an overview of the US alternative scene that Bon Iver sprung from.

Since her late-1990s debut as a member of the R&B trio Destiny's Child, Beyonce Knowles has garnered both praise and criticism. While some consider her an icon of female empowerment, others see her as detrimental to feminism and representing a negative image of women of color. Her music has a decidedly pop aesthetic, yet her power-house vocals and lyrics focused on issues like feminine independence, healthy sexuality and post partum depression give her songs dimension and substance beyond typical pop fare. This collection of new essays presents a detailed study of the music and persona of Beyonce-arguably the world's biggest pop star. Topics include: the body politics of respectability; feminism, empowerment and gender in Beyonce's lyrics; black female pleasure; and the changing face of celebrity motherhood.

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys-Best Comedy Series and Best Director. Capitalizing on the show's success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. Twenty years later, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary. This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers. Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers' move into films such as Head, Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces.

The Who were one of the most memorable and influential of the 1960s British Invasion bands-memorable because of their loudness and because they destroyed instruments during performances, and influential because of their success in crafting "Power Pop" singles like "My Generation" and "I Can See for Miles," long-playing albums Live at Leeds and Who's Next, and the "rock operas" Tommy and Quadrophenia. The themes that principal songwriter Pete Townshend imparted into The Who's music drew upon the group's mostly working-class London upbringings and early Mod audiences: frustration, angst, irony, and a youthful inclination to lash out. Like some of his rock and roll contemporaries, Townshend was also affected by religious ideas coming from India and the existential dread he felt about the possibility of nuclear war. During a career that spanned three decades, The Who gave their fans and rock critics a lot to think about. The remarkable depth and breadth of The Who's music and their story as one of the most exciting and provocative rock bands over the last half-century are the subjects of the philosophical explorations in this collection.

This interdisciplinary volume explores the girl's voice and the construction of girlhood in contemporary popular music, visiting girls as musicians, activists, and performers through topics that range from female vocal development during adolescence to girls' online media culture. While girls' voices are more prominent than ever in popular music culture, the specific sonic character of the young female voice is routinely denied authority. Decades old cliches of girls as frivolous, silly, and deserving of contempt prevail in mainstream popular image and sound. Nevertheless, girls find ways to raise their voices and make themselves heard. This volume explores the contemporary girl's voice to illuminate the way ideals of girlhood are historically specific, and the way adults frame and construct girlhood to both valorize and vilify girls and women. Interrogating popular music, childhood, and gender, it analyzes the history of the all-girl band from the Runaways to the present; the changing anatomy of a girl's voice throughout adolescence; girl's participatory culture via youtube and rock camps, and representations of the girl's voice in other media like audiobooks, film, and television. Essays consider girl performers like Jackie Evancho and Lorde, and all-girl bands like Sleater Kinney, The Slits and Warpaint, as well as performative 'girlishness' in the voices of female vocalists like Joni Mitchell, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Kathleen Hanna, and Rebecca Black. Participating in girl studies within and beyond the field of music, this book unites scholarly perspectives from disciplines such as musicology, ethnomusicology, comparative literature, women's and gender studies, media studies, and education to investigate the importance of girls' voices in popular music, and to help unravel the complexities bound up in music and girlhood in the contemporary contexts of North America and the United Kingdom.

In this first English-language history of the origins and impact of the Japanese pop music industry, Hiromu Nagahara connects the rise of mass entertainment, epitomized by ryukoka ("popular songs"), with Japan's transformation into a middle-class society in the years after World War II. With the arrival of major international recording companies like Columbia and Victor in the 1920s, Japan's pop music scene soon grew into a full-fledged culture industry that reached out to an avid consumer base through radio, cinema, and other media. The stream of songs that poured forth over the next four decades represented something new in the nation's cultural landscape. Emerging during some of the most volatile decades in Japan's history, popular songs struck a deep chord in Japanese society, gaining a devoted following but also galvanizing a vociferous band of opponents. A range of critics-intellectuals, journalists, government officials, self-appointed arbiters of taste-engaged in contentious debates on the merits of pop music. Many regarded it as a scandal, evidence of an increasingly debased and Americanized culture. For others, popular songs represented liberation from the oppressive political climate of the war years. Tokyo Boogie-Woogie is a tale of competing cultural dynamics coming to a head just as Japan's traditionally hierarchical society was shifting toward middle-class democracy. The pop soundscape of these years became the audible symbol of changing times.

Metal music has long nurtured an obsession with visions of the Middle Ages, with countless album covers and lyric sheets populated by Vikings, knights, wizards, and castles. Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing down the Gauntlet addresses this fascination with all things medieval, exploring how metal musicians and fans find inspiration both in authentically medieval materials and neomedievalist depictions of the period in literature, cinema, and other media. Within metal music, the medieval takes on multiple, and even contradictory meanings, becoming at once a cipher of difference and grotesque alterity while simultaneously being imagined as a simpler, more authentic time, as opposed to the complexities and stresses of modernity. In this fashion, the medieval period becomes both a source for artistic creativity and a vector for countercultural social and political critique. The contributors in this book hail from a wide range of fields including medieval history, music performance, musicology, media studies, and literature, and computer linguistics, bringing a variety of critical perspectives to bear on the topic. Engaging in analyses of cover art, liner notes, lyrics, and musical style, the contributors investigate issues of research methodologies, crucial concerns over identity and nationalism, and the recontextualisation of historical materials, all aimed at critically examining how and why medievalism has permeated heavy metal music and culture. Hearken to our tales!

Warren Zevon was one of the most original songwriters to emerge from the prolific 1970s Los Angeles music scene. Beyond his most familiar song-the rollicking 1978 hit "Werewolves of London"-Zevon's smart, often satirical songbook is rich with cinematic, literary, and comic qualities; dark narratives; complex characters; popular culture references; and tender, romantic ballads of parting and longing. Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles is the first book-length, critical exploration of one of popular music's most talented and tormented antiheroes. George Plasketes provides a comprehensive chronicle of Zevon's 40-year, 20-record career and his enduring cultural significance. Beginning with Zevon's classical training and encounters as a youth with composers Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Plasketes surveys Zevon's initiation into the 1960s through the Everly Brothers, the Turtles, and the film Midnight Cowboy. Plasketes then follows Zevon from his debut album with Asylum Records in 1976, produced by mentor Jackson Browne, through his successes and struggles from a Top Ten album to record label limbo during the 1980s, through a variety of music projects in the 1990s, including soundtracks and scores, culminating with a striking trio of albums in the early 2000s. Despite his reckless lifestyle and personal demons, Zevon made friends and alliances with talk show host David Letterman and such literary figures as Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen. It was only after his death in 2003 that Zevon received Grammy recognition for his work. Throughout this book, Plasketes explores the musical, cinematic, and literary influences that shaped Zevon's distinctive style and songwriting themes and continue to make Zevon's work a telling portrait of Los Angeles and American culture.

Wilcopedia is a comprehensive guide to the music of the preeminent American rock band of the twenty-first century. It offers a thorough appraisal of the entire Wilco canon, with detailed insights into every album and song the band have released, as well as side projects, collaborations, covers, and more. Since their formation in 1994, Wilco have become one of the most acclaimed and influential bands of modern times. While previous books have told their story in a biographical sense, Wilcopedia zeroes in on the music, tracing the evolution of the band s material from the studio to the concert stage, from the formative Uncle Tupelo recordings through the mould-breaking Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to latter-day gems Star Wars and Schmilco and beyond. Throughout their twenty-five year career, Wilco s founder and primary songwriter, Jeff Tweedy, has led his band through various shifts in line-up and genre that have kept fans on their toes and made their music difficult to categorize. While they are largely considered an Americana act, their music has touched on hard rock, electronica, pop, soul, punk, folk, and more. If you re looking for a thorough appraisal of the band s first quarter-century, one thing s for sure: Wilcopedia will love you, baby.

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.

Thriving within a narrow niche in rock music is the recording on which one artist composes, plays, sings and often produces each track. As a showcase of individual effort and talent, the single-artist rock album has been adopted by artists such as Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, and Prince to produce unique additions to their discographies. To this type of album, Steve Hamelman has affixed the label AlphaSoloism. In All by Myself: Essays on the Single-Artist Rock Album, eleven scholars explore eleven different albums, both well-known and obscure, released between 1970 and 2011. Their essays illuminate aesthetic, technical, and theoretical elements that distinguish AlphaSolo recordings from conventional ones. In addition to providing historical background on studio, live, original, and cover recordings released between the 1970 to the present, the essays explore questions of intention, craft, performance, and reception. All by Myself marks the AlphaSolo subgenre's moment of origin as a musical category and academic field. To date, no study exists on this unique genre of music-making, and All by Myself serves as a call for future investigations into this present and growing phenomenon in rock culture.

The role of motion pictures in the popularity of rock music became increasingly significant in the latter twentieth century. Rock music and its interaction with film is the subject of this significant book that re-examines and extends Serge Denisoff's pioneering observations of this relationship. Prior to Saturday Night Fever rock music had a limited role in the motion picture business. That movie's success, and the success of its soundtrack, began to change the silver screen. In 1983, with Flashdance, the situation drastically evolved and by 1984, ten soundtracks, many in the pop/rock genre, were certified platinum. Choosing which rock scores to discuss in this book was a challenging task. The authors made selections from seminal films such as The Graduate, Easy Rider, American Graffiti, Saturday Night Fever, Help!, and Dirty Dancing. However, many productions of the period are significant not because of their success, but because of their box office and record store failures. Risky Business chronicles the interaction of two major mediums of mass culture in the latter twentieth century. This book is essential for those interested in communications, popular culture, and social change.