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Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology
Owning the Masters provides the first in-depth history of sound
recording copyright. It is this form of intellectual property that
underpins the workings of the recording industry. Rather than being
focused on the manufacture of goods, this industry is centred on
the creation, exploitation and protection of rights. The
development and control of these rights has not been
straightforward. This book explores the lobbying activities of
record companies: the principal creators, owners and defenders of
sound recording copyright. It addresses the counter-activity of
recording artists, in particular those who have fought against the
legislative and contractual practices of record companies to claim
these master rights for themselves. In addition, this book looks at
the activities of the listening public, large numbers of whom have
been labelled 'pirates' for trespassing on these rights. The public
has played its own part in shaping copyright legislation. This is
an essential subject for an understanding of the economic, artistic
and political value of recorded sound.
Irish-born and Irish-descended soldiers and sailors were involved
in every major engagement of the American Civil War. Throughout the
conflict, they shared their wartime experiences through songs and
song lyrics, leaving behind a vast trove of ballads in songbooks,
letters, newspaper publications, wartime diaries, and other
accounts. Taken together, these songs and lyrics offer an
underappreciated source of contemporary feelings and opinions about
the war. Catherine V. Bateson's Irish American Civil War Songs
provides the first in-depth exploration of Irish Americans' use of
balladry to portray and comment on virtually every aspect of the
war as witnessed by the Irish on the front line and home front.
Bateson considers the lyrics, themes, and sentiments of wartime
songs produced in America but often originating with those born
across the Atlantic in Ireland and Britain. Her analysis gives new
insight into views held by the Irish migrant diaspora about the
conflict and the ways those of Irish descent identified with and
fought to defend their adopted homeland. Bateson's investigation of
Irish American song lyrics within the context of broader wartime
experiences enhances our understanding of the Irish contribution to
the American Civil War. At the same time, it demonstrates how Irish
songs shaped many American balladry traditions as they laid the
foundation of the Civil War's musical soundscape.
In this new edition of their groundbreaking Kodaly Today, Micheal
Houlahan and Philip Tacka offer an expertly-researched, thorough,
and - most importantly - practical approach to transforming
curriculum goals into tangible, achievable musical objectives and
effective lesson plans. Their model - grounded in the latest
research in music perception and cognition - outlines the concrete
practices behind constructing effective teaching portfolios,
selecting engaging music repertoire for the classroom, and teaching
musicianship skills successfully to elementary students of all
degrees of proficiency. Addressing the most important questions in
creating and teaching Kodaly-based programs, Houlahan and Tacka
write through a practical lens, presenting a clear picture of how
the teaching and learning processes go hand-in-hand. Their
innovative approach was designed through a close, six-year
collaboration between music instructors and researchers, and offers
teachers an easily-followed, step-by-step roadmap for developing
students' musical understanding and metacognition skills. A
comprehensive resource in the realm of elementary music education,
this book is a valuable reference for all in-service music
educators, music supervisors, and students and instructors in music
education.
Punk rock and hip-hop. Disco and salsa. The loft jazz scene and the
downtown composers known as Minimalists. In the mid-1970s, New York
City was a laboratory where all the major styles of modern music
were reinvented--block by block, by musicians who knew, admired,
and borrowed from one another. Crime was everywhere, the government
was broke, and the infrastructure was collapsing. But rent was
cheap, and the possibilities for musical exploration were
limitless."Love Goes to Buildings on Fire "is the first book to
tell the full story of the era's music scenes and the phenomenal
and surprising ways they intersected. From New Year's Day 1973 to
New Year's Eve 1977, the book moves panoramically from post-Dylan
Greenwich Village, to the arson-scarred South Bronx barrios where
salsa and hip-hop were created, to the lower Manhattan lofts where
jazz and classical music were reimagined, to ramshackle clubs like
CBGB and the Gallery, where rock and dance music were hot-wired for
a new generation.
The sounds of spectators at football (soccer) are often highlighted
- by spectators, tourists, commentators, journalists, scholars,
media producers, etc. - as crucial for the experience of football.
These sounds are often said to contribute significantly to the
production (at the stadium) and conveyance (in televised broadcast)
of 'atmosphere.' This book addresses why and how spectator sounds
contribute to the experience of watching in these environments and
what characterizes spectator sounds in terms of their structure,
distribution and significance. Based on an examination of empirical
materials - including the sounds of football matches from the
English Premier League as they emerge both at the stadium and in
the televised broadcast - this book systematically dissects the
sounds of football watching.
One of "Rolling Stone"'s 20 Best Music Books of 2013
When memoirist and head writer for "The A.V. Club" Nathan Rabin
first set out to write about obsessed music fans, he had no idea
the journey would take him to the deepest recesses of both the pop
culture universe and his own mind. For two very curious years,
Rabin, who Mindy Kaling called "smart and funny" in "The New
Yorker," hit the road with two of music's most well-established
fanbases: Phish's hippie fans and Insane Clown Posse's notorious
"Juggalos." Musically or style-wise, these two groups could not be
more different from each other, and Rabin, admittedly, was a cynic
about both bands. But once he gets deep below the surface, past the
caricatures and into the essence of their collective cultures, he
discovers that both groups have tapped into the human need for
community. Rabin also grapples with his own mental well-being--he
discovers that he is bipolar--and his journey is both a prism for
cultural analysis and a deeply personal exploration, equal parts
humor and heart.
Today, teachers and performers of Turkish classical music
intentionally cultivate melancholies, despite these affects being
typically dismissed as remnants of the Ottoman Empire. Melancholic
Modalities is the first in-depth historical and ethnographic study
of the practices socialized by musicians who enthusiastically teach
and perform a present-day genre substantially rooted in the musics
of the Ottoman court and elite Mevlevi Sufi lodges. Author Denise
Gill analyzes how melancholic music-making emerges as pleasurable,
spiritually redeeming, and healing for both the listener and
performer. Focusing on the diverse practices of musicians who
deploy and circulate melancholy in sound, Gill interrogates the
constitutive elements of these musicians' modalities in the context
of emergent neoliberalism, secularism, political Islamism, Sufi
devotionals, and the politics of psychological health in Turkey
today. In an essential contribution to the study of ethnomusicology
and psychology, Gill develops rhizomatic analyses to allow for
musicians' multiple interpretations to be heard. Melancholic
Modalities uncovers how emotion and musical meaning are connected,
and how melancholy is articulated in the world of Turkish classical
musicians. With her innovative concept of "bi-aurality," Gill's
book forges new possibilities for the historical and ethnographic
analyses of musics and ideologies of listening for music scholars.
Becoming Noise Music tells the story of noise music in its first 50
years, using a focus on the music's sound and aesthetics to do so.
Part One focuses on the emergence and stabilization of noise music
across the 1980s and 1990s, whilst Part Two explores noise in the
twenty-first century. Each chapter contextualizes - tells the story
- of the music under discussion before describing and interpreting
its sound and aesthetic. Stephen Graham uses the idea of 'becoming'
to capture the unresolved 'dialectical' tension between 'noise'
disorder and 'musical' order in the music itself; the experiences
listeners often have in response; and the overarching 'story' or
'becoming' of the genre that has taken place in this first fifty or
so years. The book therefore doubles up on becoming: it is about
both the becoming it identifies in, and the larger, genre-making
process of the becoming of, noise music. On the latter count, it is
the first scholarly book to focus in such depth and breadth on the
sound and story of noise music, as opposed to contextual questions
of politics, history or sociology. Relevant to both musicology and
noise audiences, Becoming Noise Music investigates a vital but
analytically underexplored area of avant-garde musical practice.
Bella Ciao is the album that kick-started the Italian folk revival
in the mid-1960s, made by Il Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano, a group of
researchers, musicians, and radical intellectuals. Based on a
contested music show that debuted in 1964, Bella Ciao also featured
a double version of the popular song of the same title, an
anti-Fascist anthem from World War II, which was destined to become
one of the most sung political songs in the world and translated
into more than 40 languages. The book reconstructs the history and
the reception of the Bella Ciao project in 1960s' Italy and, more
broadly, explores the origins and the distinctive development of
the Italian folk revival movement through the lens of this pivotal
album.
The revised edition of Sync or Swarm promotes an ecological view of
musicking, moving us from a subject-centered to a system-centered
view of improvisation. It explores cycles of organismic
self-regulation, cycles of sensorimotor coupling between organism
and environment, and cycles of intersubjective interaction mediated
via socio-technological networks. Chapters funnel outward, from the
solo improviser (Evan Parker), to nonlinear group dynamics (Sam
Rivers trio), to networks that comprise improvisational
communities, to pedagogical dynamics that affect how individuals
learn, completing the hermeneutic circle. Winner of the Society for
Ethnomusicology's Alan Merriam prize in its first edition, the
revised edition features new sections that highlight
electro-acoustic and transcultural improvisation, and concomitant
issues of human-machine interaction and postcolonial studies.
Bob Dylan's ways with words are a wonder, matched as they are with
his music and verified by those voices of his. In response to the
whole range of Dylan early and late (his songs of social
conscience, of earthly love, of divine love, and of contemplation),
this critical appreciation listens to Dylan's attentive genius,
alive in the very words and their rewards.
"Fools they made a mock of sin." Dylan's is an art in which sins
are laid bare (and resisted), virtues are valued (and manifested),
and the graces brought home. The seven deadly sins, the four
cardinal virtues (harder to remember?), and the three heavenly
graces: these make up everybody's world -- but Dylan's in
particular. Or rather, his worlds, since human dealings of every
kind are his for the artistic seizing. Pride is anatomized in "Like
a Rolling Stone," Envy in "Positively 4th Street," Anger in "Only a
Pawn in Their Game" ... But, hearteningly, Justice reclaims "Hattie
Carroll," Fortitude "Blowin' in the Wind," Faith "Precious Angel,"
Hope "Forever Young," and Charity "Watered-Down Love."
In The "New Yorker, Alex Ross wrote that "Ricks's writing on
Dylan is the best there is. Unlike most rock critics --
'forty-year-olds talking to ten-year-olds, ' Dylan has called them
-- he writes for adults." In the "Times (London), Bryan Appleyard
maintained that "Ricks, one of the most distinguished literary
critics of our time, is almost the only writer to have applied
serious literary intelligence to Dylan ..."
Dylan's countless listeners (and even the artist himself, who
knows?) may agree with W.H. Auden that Ricks "is exactly the kind
of critic every poet dreams of finding."
The original edition of Beyond and Before extends an understanding
of “progressive rock” by providing a fuller definition of what
progressive rock is, was and can be. Called by Record Collector
“the most accomplished critical overview yet” of progressive
rock and one of their 2011 books of the year, Beyond and Before
moves away from the limited consensus that prog rock is exclusively
English in origin and that it was destroyed by the advent of punk
in 1976. Instead, by tracing its multiple origins and complex
transitions, it argues for the integration of jazz and folk into
progressive rock and the extension of prog in Kate Bush, Radiohead,
Porcupine Tree and many more. This 10-year anniversary revised
edition continues to further unpack definitions of progressive rock
and includes a brand new chapter focusing on post-conceptual trends
in the 2010s through to the contemporary moment. The new edition
discusses the complex creativity of progressive metal and folk in
greater depth, as well as new fusions of genre that move across
global cultures and that rework the extended form and mission of
progressive rock, including in recent pop concept albums. All
chapters are revised to keep the process of rethinking progressive
rock alive and vibrant as a hybrid, open form.
From one of the United Kingdom's most prominent music critics, a
page-turning and wonderfully researched history of 33 songs that
have transformed the world through the twentieth century and
beyond.
When pop music meets politics, the results are often thrilling,
sometimes life-changing, and never simple. The protest songs of
such great artists as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, U2,
Public Enemy, Fela Kuti, R.E.M., Rage Against the Machine, and the
Clash represent pop music at its most charged and relevant,
providing the soundtrack and informing social change since the
1930s. They capture the attention and passions of listeners, force
their way into the news, and make their presence felt from the
streets to the corridors of power.
33 Revolutions Per Minute is a history of protest music embodied
in 33 songs that span seven decades and four continents, from
Billie Holiday crooning "Strange Fruit" before a shocked audience
to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young paying tribute to the Vietnam
protesters killed at Kent State in "Ohio," to Green Day railing
against President Bush and twenty-first-century media in "American
Idiot." With the aid of exclusive new interviews, Dorian Lynskey
explores the individuals, ideas, and events behind each song. This
expansive survey examines how music has engaged with racial unrest,
nuclear paranoia, apartheid, war, poverty, and oppression, offering
hope, stirring anger, inciting action, and producing songs that
continue to resonate years down the line, sometimes at great cost
to the musicians involved.
For the audience who embraced Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise, Bob
Dylan's Chronicles, or Simon Reynolds's Rip It Up and Start Again,
33 Revolutions Per Minute is an absorbing and moving account of 33
songs that made history.
Antonin Dvorak was a clever and highly communicative humorist and
musical dramatist. His masterful compositional strategies
underscore, heighten, and construct sonic humor in his six (!!)
comic operas. He crafts musical slapstick, satire, parody, and
merriment using sudden breaks in rhythmic patterns, explosive
harmonic shifts, excessive repetition, and startling pauses, as
well as incongruous tempi, dynamics, range, and instrumentation.
Dvorak also gives the orchestra its own "voice," breaking the
metaphorical "fourth wall" to reveal humor outside of the
characters' awareness. Narrative description and comprehensive
music examples guide the reader through all six of Dvorak's works
in this genre, revealing a significantly under-appreciated side of
the composer's immense creative skills.
Marvelous Rise of Superheroes in Cinema: Evolution of the Genre
from Sequels to Universes addresses the superhero movie genre's
transformation between 1978 and 2019. To emphasize and illustrate
the conceptual and thematic transformation, the main conventions of
the genre are scanned through several periods, focusing on the
developmental age of the genre, including the dominant period of DC
Comics-based superhero movies (1978-1997) and the Marvel "boom"
(2000-2007), and the contemporary age. For this purpose, the book
traces the fundamentals of superheroes from the first appearance of
Superman in Action Comics #1 (1938) to the final installment of the
MCU's Phase 3, Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). The transformation
has two significant points. First, the genre's main conventions
have been in a change. Second, the genre's focus has changed from
sequel filmmaking to the universe concept. The study investigates
the Marvel Cinematic Universe's dominant, leading, and major role
in the genre's evolutionary process. Besides, the future of the
superhero movie genre is questioned through the multiverse concept
to broaden an understanding of the genre's following directions.
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