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Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology

Do You Remember House? - Chicago's Queer of Color Undergrounds (Hardcover): Micah Salkind Do You Remember House? - Chicago's Queer of Color Undergrounds (Hardcover)
Micah Salkind
R2,705 Discovery Miles 27 050 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Today, no matter where you are in the world, you can turn on a radio and hear the echoes and influences of Chicago house music. Do You Remember House? tells a comprehensive story of the emergence, and contemporary memorialization of house in Chicago, tracing the development of Chicago house music culture from its beginnings in the late '70s to the present. Based on expansive research in archives and his extensive conversations with the makers of house in Chicago's parks, clubs, museums, and dance studios, author Micah Salkind argues that the remediation and adaptation of house music by crossover communities in its first decade shaped the ways that Chicago producers, DJs, dancers, and promoters today re-remember and mobilize the genre as an archive of collectivity and congregation. The book's engagement with musical, kinesthetic, and visual aspects of house music culture builds from a tradition of queer of color critique. As such, Do You Remember House? considers house music's liberatory potential in terms of its genre-defiant repertoire in motion. Ultimately, the book argues that even as house music culture has been appropriated and exploited, the music's porosity and flexibility have allowed it to remain what pioneering Chicago DJ Craig Cannon calls a 'musical Stonewall' for queers and people of color in the Windy City and around the world.

Terry Riley's in C (Hardcover): Robert Carl Terry Riley's in C (Hardcover)
Robert Carl
R2,168 Discovery Miles 21 680 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Unquestionably the founding work of minimalism in musical composition, Terry Riley's In C (1964) challenges the standards of imagination, intellect, and musical ingenuity to which "classical" music is held. Only one page of score in length, it contains neither specified instrumentation nor parts. Its fifty-three motives are compact, presented without any counterpoint or evident form. The composer gave only spare instructions and no tempo. And he assigned the work a title that's laconic in the extreme. At the same moment of its composition, Elliott Carter was working on his Concerto for Piano, a work Stravinsky was to hail as a masterpiece. Having almost completed Laborinthus II, Luciano Berio would soon start the Sinfonia. Karlheinz Stockhausen had just finished Momente. In context of these other works, and of the myriad of compositional styles and trends which preceded them, In C stands the whole idea of musical "progress" on its head.
Forty years later, In C continues to receive regular performances every year by professionals, students, and amateurs, and has had numerous recordings since its 1968 LP premiere. Welcoming performers from a vast range of practices and traditions, from classical to rock to jazz to non-Western, these recordings range from the Chinese Film Orchestra of Shanghai -- on traditional Chinese instruments -- to the Hungarian 'European Music Project' group, joined by two electronica DJs manipulating the Pulse. In C rouses audiences while all the while projecting an inner serenity that suggests Cage's definition of music's purpose -- "to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influence."
Setting the stage for a most intriguing journey into the world of minimalism, Robert Carl's Terry Riley's In C argues that the work holds its place in the canon because of the very challenges it presents to "classical" music. He examines In C in the context of its era, its grounding in aesthetic practices and assumptions, its process of composition, presentation, recording, and dissemination. By examining the work's significance through discussion with performers, composers, theorists, and critics, Robert Carl explores how the work's emerging performance practice has influenced our very ideas of what constitutes art music in the 21st century.

Beethoven Symphonies Revisited - Performance, Expression and Impact (Hardcover): David Young Beethoven Symphonies Revisited - Performance, Expression and Impact (Hardcover)
David Young
R3,505 Discovery Miles 35 050 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Beethoven Symphonies Revisited guides the reader -- music student, concert goer, or general music lover -- through the movements in a way that renews the novelty and excitement that listeners must have felt at the first performances. Stylistic discussion concentrates on the unusual features of each symphony, placing each individual work in the context of Beethovens musical advancement and circumstances. His musical innovations are explored, and his contribution to the genre assessed. Thirty author-annotated musical pages elaborate and exemplify. The essential building blocks of key, tonality, metre, rhythm and instrumentation are discussed in detail. The authors purpose is twofold: to bring together major research findings and at the same time offer detailed descriptive analyses of all nine symphonies. The approach is singular in its emphasis on the symphonies in the context of performance practice of the time, especially musical direction; the importance of the wind instruments (especially horns) and kettle drums; how counterpoint features in various passages in all the symphonies except the Sixth and Eighth, and how this was influenced by Beethovens strict training in species counterpoint. New evaluations are offered, especially for the Second, Eighth and Ninth symphonies. The books multi-faceted approach will be invaluable not only for conductors and music students at all levels, but for all concert goers and music lovers who wish to gain insight into the musical intricacies developed and enhanced by Beethovens symphonic journey. Illustrations: 30 annotated musical score pages comprising 99 examples linked to text explanations; autographed manuscripts; performance venues; and instruments of the period.

Here for the Hearing - Analyzing the Music in Musical Theater (Paperback): Michael Buchler, Gregory John Decker Here for the Hearing - Analyzing the Music in Musical Theater (Paperback)
Michael Buchler, Gregory John Decker
R930 Discovery Miles 9 300 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book offers a series of essays that show the integrated role that musical structure (including harmony, melody, rhythm, meter, form, and musical association) plays in making sense of what transpires onstage in musicals. Written by a group of music analysts who care deeply about musical theater, this collection provides new understanding of how musicals are put together, how composers and lyricists structure words and music to complement one another, and how music helps us understand the human relationships and historical and social contexts. Using a wide range of musical examples, representing the history of musical theater from the 1920s to the present day, the book explores how music interacts with dramatic elements within individual shows and other pieces within and outside of the genre. These essays invite readers to consider issues that are fundamental both to our understanding of musical theater and to the multiple ways we engage with music.

Celtic Music and Dance in Cornwall - Cornu-Copia (Paperback): Lea Hagmann Celtic Music and Dance in Cornwall - Cornu-Copia (Paperback)
Lea Hagmann
R1,234 Discovery Miles 12 340 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

1) First published book on the revival of Cornish music and dance and the first extended history of music and dance in Cornwall. 2) Based on a combination of qualitative fieldwork and expert interviews, and a meticulous study of the historical and revival material

The Power of Pastiche - Musical Miscellany and  Cultural Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Hardcover): Alison... The Power of Pastiche - Musical Miscellany and Cultural Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Hardcover)
Alison Desimone
R3,823 Discovery Miles 38 230 Ships in 10 - 15 working days
The Science of Musical Sound - Volume 1: Stringed Instruments, Pipe Organs, and the Human Voice (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2018):... The Science of Musical Sound - Volume 1: Stringed Instruments, Pipe Organs, and the Human Voice (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2018)
William Ralph Bennett Jr; Edited by Andrew C. H. Morrison; Foreword by Christy K. Holland
R2,079 Discovery Miles 20 790 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This textbook is a product of William Bennett's work in developing and teaching a course on the physics of music at Yale University to a diverse audience of musicians and science students in the same class. The book is a culmination of over a decade of teaching the course and weaves together historical descriptions of the physical phenomena with the author's clear interpretations of the most important aspects of the science of music and musical instruments. Many of the historical examples are not found in any other textbook available on the market. As the co-inventor of the Helium-Neon laser, Prof. Bennett's knowledge of physics was world-class. As a professor at one of the most prestigious liberal-arts universities in the world, his appreciation for culture and humanities shines through. The book covers the basics of oscillations, waves and the analysis techniques necessary for understanding how musical instruments work. All types of stringed instruments, pipe organs, and the human voice are covered in this volume. A second volume covers the remaining families of musical instruments as well as selected other topics. Readers without a background in acoustics will enjoy learning the physics of the Science of Musical Sound from a preeminent scientist of the 20th century. Those well versed in acoustics will discover wonderful illustrations and photographs depicting familiar concepts in new and enlightening ways.

Music and the Irish Literary Imagination (Hardcover, New): Harry White Music and the Irish Literary Imagination (Hardcover, New)
Harry White
R4,137 Discovery Miles 41 370 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Harry White examines the influence of music in the development of the Irish literary imagination from 1800 to the present day. He identifies music as a preoccupation which originated in the poetry of Thomas Moore early in the nineteenth century. He argues that this preoccupation decisively influenced Moore's attempt to translate the 'meaning' of Irish music into verse, and that it also informed Moore's considerable impact on the development of European musical romanticism, as in the music of Berlioz and Schumann. White then examines how this preoccupation was later recovered by W.B. Yeats, whose poetry is imbued with music as a rival presence to language. In its readings of Yeats, Synge, Shaw and Joyce, the book argues that this striking musical awareness had a profound influence on the Irish literary imagination, to the extent that poetry, fiction and drama could function as correlatives of musical genres. Although Yeats insisted on the synonymous condition of speech and song in his poetry, Synge, Shaw and Joyce explicitly identified opera in particular as a generic prototype for their own work. Synge's formal musical training and early inclinations as a composer, Shaw's perception of himself as the natural successor to Wagner, and Joyce's no less striking absorption of a host of musical techniques in his fiction are advanced in this study as formative (rather than incidental) elements in the development of modern Irish writing.
Music and the Irish Literary Imagination also considers Beckett's emancipation from the oppressive condition of words in general (and Joyce in particular) through the agency of music, and argues that the strong presence of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Janacek in the works of Brian Friel is correspondingly essential to Friel's dramatization of Irish experience in the aftermath of Beckett. The book closes with a reading of Seamus Heaney, in which the poet's own preoccupation with the currency of established literary forms is enlisted to illuminate Heaney's abiding sense of poetry as music."

Musical Topics and Musical Performance (Hardcover): Julian Hellaby Musical Topics and Musical Performance (Hardcover)
Julian Hellaby
R3,656 Discovery Miles 36 560 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The principal purpose of topics in musicology has been to identify meaning-bearing units within a musical composition that would have been understood by contemporary audiences and therefore also by later receivers, albeit in a different context and with a need for historically aware listening. Since Leonard Ratner (1980) introduced the idea of topics, his relatively simple ideas have been expanded and developed by a number of distinguished authors. Topic theory has now become a well-established branch of musicology, often embracing semiotics, but its relationship to performance has received less attention. Musical Topics and Musical Performance thus focuses on the interface of theory and practice, and investigates how an appreciation of topical presence in a work may prompt interpretative thoughts for a potential performer as well as how performers have responded to such a presence in practice. The chapters focus on music from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries with case studies drawn from composers as diverse as Beethoven, Scriabin and Peter Eoetvoes. Using both scores and recordings, the book presents a variety of original and innovative perspectives on the subject from a range of distinguished authors, and addresses a neglected area of musicology and musical performance.

Sacred Passions - The Life and Music of Manual de Falla (Paperback): Carol Hess Sacred Passions - The Life and Music of Manual de Falla (Paperback)
Carol Hess
R1,111 Discovery Miles 11 110 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The work of composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) ranges from late-romantic salon pieces to evocations of flamenco to stark neoclassicism. Yet his work has met with a variety of reactions, depending on the audience. In his native Spain, he is considered a leader in the avant-garde and the greatest composer in the Spanish cultural renaissance that extended from the latter part of the nineteenth century until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. In the United States his music was imported as part of the "Latin" music craze of the 1930s and 40s and arranged by pop artists and used in MGM musicals. Similarly enigmatic are the details of Falla's life. He never sustained a lasting, intimate relationship with a woman, yet he created compelling female roles for the lyric stage. Although he became incensed when publishers altered his music, he more than once tinkered with Chopin and Debussy. Despite insisting that he was apolitical, he ultimately took sides in the Spanish Civil War. All his life, his rigorous brand of Roman Catholicism brought him both solace and agony in his quest for spiritual and artistic perfection.
In Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla, Carol Hess explores these contradictions and offers a fresh understanding of the life and work of Manuel de Falla. Building on over a decade of research on Spanish music, Hess examines his work in terms of musical style and explores the cultural milieu in which he worked. Biographical, historiographical, and cultural threads are explored against the compelling backdrop of early twentieth-century Spain, where Falla was a pivotal figure in a group that included not only his Spanish contemporary Enrique Granados, but also composers Dukas, Stravinsky, Ravel, and the group known as les Apaches, and many other artists and writers. During this remarkable cultural renaissance known as the "Silver Age," Lorca, Bunuel, Dali, Unamuno--and de Falla--created some of their greatest works.
Hess explores a number of myths in earlier biographies, including his life as an ascetic saint, his supposed misogynistic tendencies, and the accusations of homosexuality. She also offers a balanced view of his behavior during the Spanish Civil War, a wrenching event for a Spaniard of his generation and which Falla biographers have left largely unexamined. Hess also examines the notion of de Falla as merely a high-class pop composer, the quintessentially Spanish composer of colorful and exotic dances from The Three-Cornered Hat and El amor brujo. She incorporates recent research on de Falla, draws upon untapped sources in the Falla archives, and reevaluates de Falla's work in terms of current issues in musicology.
Ultimately, Hess places de Falla's appealing music, which straddles popular and serious idioms, securely among the best of his better-known European contemporaries. What emerges is a portrait of a man whose lofty spiritual values inspired singular musical utterances but were often at odds with the decidedly imperfect wrold he inhabited."

Debating English Music in the Long Nineteenth Century (Hardcover): John Ling Debating English Music in the Long Nineteenth Century (Hardcover)
John Ling
R2,607 Discovery Miles 26 070 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Situates the controversial narrative of 'The English Musical Renaissance' within its wider historical context. Throughout the nineteenth century a fierce debate about the future of English music was raging in Britain. Just as English music was appearing to advance in quality, the impact of Richard Wagner altered the course of the debate. Alarmed at the Wagnerian influence on English composers, critics expressed relief when that influence appeared to abate, and then presented English music as the antidote to Wagnerian decadence. However, the optimism that England was in a position to lead the musical world was short-lived and a new generation of critics found English composition - with the exception of Elgar - severely lacking. The book identifies themes such as materialism and nationalism that emerged during the debate. It also places the narrative of 'The English Musical Renaissance' within its rightful wider historical context.

The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, Vol 3 (Hardcover, Annotated edition): Bertrand Harris Bronson The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, Vol 3 (Hardcover, Annotated edition)
Bertrand Harris Bronson
R1,008 Discovery Miles 10 080 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads begins where Francis Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads leaves off. Bronson has collected all available tunes for each of Child's ballads, annotated and organized them, with notes describing the history and development of each tune and tune family. This is an indispensable text for ballad scholars, performers, and students of the ballad tradition.

Musical Sound - An Introduction to the Physics of Music (Hardcover, 2002 ed.): Michael J. Moravcsik Musical Sound - An Introduction to the Physics of Music (Hardcover, 2002 ed.)
Michael J. Moravcsik
R2,842 Discovery Miles 28 420 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This text has been out of print since 1990; it was originally published by Solomon Press in 1987. Several experts in the field have verified that the information in the book remains constant; nothing has, or will, change in the basic science of musical sound. It explains the science of musical sound without the encumbrance of detailed mathematics. It will appeal to music lovers as well as students of music and students of physics. It can easily be promoted with our physics program.

Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History - Shaping Modern Musical Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna (Hardcover):... Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History - Shaping Modern Musical Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna (Hardcover)
Kevin Karnes
R2,260 Discovery Miles 22 600 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

More than a century after Guido Adler's appointment to the first chair in musicology at the University of Vienna, Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History provides a first look at the discipline in this earliest period, and at the ideological dilemmas and methodological anxieties that characterized it upon its institutionalization. Author Kevin Karnes contends that some of the most vital questions surrounding musicology's disciplinary identities today-the relationship between musicology and criticism, the role of the subject in analysis and the narration of history, and the responsibilities of the scholar to the listening public-originate in these conflicted and largely forgotten beginnings.
Karnes lays bare the nature of music study in the late nineteenth century through insightful readings of long-overlooked contributions by three of musicology's foremost pioneers-Adler, Eduard Hanslick, and Heinrich Schenker. Shaped as much by the skeptical pronouncements of the likes of Nietzsche and Wagner as it was by progressivist ideologies of scientific positivism, the new discipline comprised an array of oft-contested and intensely personal visions of music study, its value, and its future. Karnes introduces readers to a Hanslick who rejected the call of positivist scholarship and dedicated himself to penning an avowedly subjective history of Viennese musical life. He argues that Schenker's analytical experiments had roots in a Wagner-inspired search for a critical alternative to Adler's style-obsessed scholarship. And he illuminates Adler's determined response to Nietzsche's warnings about the vitality of artistic and cultural life in an increasingly scientific age. Throughsophisticated and meticulous presentation, Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History demonstrates that the new discipline of musicology was inextricably tied in with the cultural discourse of its time.

Studies in Music with Text (Hardcover): David Lewin Studies in Music with Text (Hardcover)
David Lewin
R2,384 Discovery Miles 23 840 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Hailed by the New Grove Dictionary of Music (2nd edition) as "the most original and far-ranging theorist of his generation," David Lewin (1933-2003) explored for over four decades how composers in the German tradition set poetry and drama to music. He conceived Studies in Music with Text as a unified collection, reproducing papers on music by Mozart, Schubert, Wagner, Schoenberg, and Babbitt, many of which have become classics in the fields of music theory and historical musicology. He also included new analytical essays on Mozart, Wagner, and Schubert, and provided fresh readings of selected songs by Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms.
The analyses collected here focus on how the music, from its small details to its large formal schemes, engages the poetic and dramatic dynamics of the works at hand, and how music and text enact each other reciprocally. A recurrent topic is the theatricality of texted music for the concert as well as operatic stage, and Lewin's perspectives offer many interpretive insights and conceptual perspectives for the musical performer. A methodological eclectic, Lewin cultivated a magisterial command of historical theories and thought deeply about how those theories could inform contemporary understanding. Analytical models by Zarlino, Schenker, Riemann, Rameau, and Babbitt are brought into play, and the range of poetic and dramatic questions that emerge are explored, concerning inter alia psychological and social identity, the relation of psychological inner worlds to phenomenal reality, and the narrowly biographical and broadly historical conditions of artistic creation. As it illuminates the richness and profundity of the language/musicpartnership, Studies in Music with Text offers incisive thinking about the scope--and limitations--of descriptive and analytical discourse about music.

Pop Music and Hip Ennui - A Sonic Fiction of Capitalist Realism (Hardcover): Macon Holt Pop Music and Hip Ennui - A Sonic Fiction of Capitalist Realism (Hardcover)
Macon Holt
R4,308 Discovery Miles 43 080 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In Pop Music and Hip Ennui: A Sonic Fiction of Capitalist Realism, Macon Holt provides the imaginative and analytical resources to think with contemporary pop music to investigate the ambivalences of contemporary culture and the potentials in it for change. Drawing on Kodwo Eshun's practice of Sonic Fiction and Mark Fisher's analytical framework of capitalist realism, Holt explores the multiplicities contained in contemporary pop from sensation to abstraction and from the personal to the political. Pop Music and Hip Ennui unravels the assumptions embedded in the cultural and critical analysis of popular music. In doing so, it provides new ways to understand the experience of listening to pop music and living in the sonic atmosphere it produces. This book neither excuses pop's oppressive tendencies nor dismisses the pleasures of its sensations.

In the Borderland Between Song and Speech - Vocal Expressions in Oral Cultures (Hardcover): Hakan Lundstroem, Jan-Olof... In the Borderland Between Song and Speech - Vocal Expressions in Oral Cultures (Hardcover)
Hakan Lundstroem, Jan-Olof Svantesson; As told to Anastasia Karlsson, Siri Tuttle, Arthur Holmer, …
R826 R775 Discovery Miles 7 750 Save R51 (6%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is a study of vocal expressions in the borderland between speech and song, based on performances from cultural contexts where oral transmission dominates. Approaches drawn from perspectives belonging to both ethnomusicology and linguistics are integrated in the analysis. As the idea of the performance template is employed as an analytical tool, the focus is on those techniques that make performance possible. The result is an increased understanding of what performers actually do when they employ variation or improvisation, and sometimes composition as well. The transmission of these culture-specific techniques is essential for the continuation of this form of human communication and interaction with the spirit world. By comparative study of other research, the result of the analysis is viewed in relation to ongoing processes in society. -- .

Marvelous Images - On Values and the Arts (Hardcover, Revised): Kendall Walton Marvelous Images - On Values and the Arts (Hardcover, Revised)
Kendall Walton
R4,210 Discovery Miles 42 100 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The twelve essays by Kendall Walton in this volume address a broad range of theoretical issues concerning the arts. Many of them apply to the arts generally-to literature, theater, film, music, and the visual arts-but several focus primarily on pictorial representation or photography. In "'How Marvelous!': Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value" Walton introduces an innovative account of aesthetic value, and in this and other essays he explores relations between aesthetic value and values of other kinds, especially moral values. Two of the essays take on what has come to be called imaginative resistance-a cluster of puzzles that arise when works of fiction ask us to imagine or to accept as true in a fiction moral propositions that we find reprehensible in real life. "Transparent Pictures," Walton's classic and controversial account of what is special about photographic pictures, is included, along with a new essay on a curious but rarely noticed feature of photographs and other still pictures-the fact that a depiction of a momentary state of an object in motion allows viewers to observe that state, in imagination, for an extended period of time. Two older essays round out the collection-another classic, "Categories of Art," and a less well known essay, "Style and the Products and Processes of Art," which examines the role of appreciators' impressions of how a work of art came about, in understanding and appreciation. None of the reprinted essays is abridged, and new postscripts have been added to several of them.

Harmony and Normalization - US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy (Hardcover): Timothy P. Storhoff Harmony and Normalization - US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy (Hardcover)
Timothy P. Storhoff
R2,910 Discovery Miles 29 100 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy explores the channels of musical exchange between Cuba and the United States during the eight-year presidency of Barack Obama, who eased the musical embargo of the island and restored relations with Cuba. Musical exchanges during this period act as a lens through which to view not only US-Cuban musical relations but also the larger political, economic, and cultural implications of musical dialogue between these two nations. Policy shifts in the wake of Raul Castro assuming the Cuban presidency and the election of President Obama allowed performers to traverse the Florida Straits more easily than in the recent past and encouraged them to act as musical ambassadors. Their performances served as a testing ground for political change that anticipated normalized relations. While government actors debated these changes, music forged connections between individuals on both sides of the Florida Straits. In this first book on the subject since Obama's presidency, musicologist Timothy P. Storhoff describes how, after specific policy changes, musicians were some of the first to take advantage of new opportunities for travel, push the boundaries of new regulations, and expose both the possibilities and limitations of licensing musical exchange. Through the analysis of both official and unofficial musical diplomacy efforts, including the Havana Jazz Festival, the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba's first US tour, the Minnesota Orchestra's trip to Havana, and the author's own experiences in Cuba, this ethnography demonstrates how performances reflect aspirations for stronger transnational ties and a common desire to restore the once-thriving US-Cuban musical relationship.

Popular Music and the Politics of Novelty (Hardcover): Pete Dale Popular Music and the Politics of Novelty (Hardcover)
Pete Dale
R4,632 Discovery Miles 46 320 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Popular music, today, has supposedly collapsed into a 'retromania' which, according to leading critic Simon Reynolds, has brought a 'slow and steady fading of the artistic imperative to be original.' Meanwhile, in the estimation of philosopher Alain Badiou, a significant political event will always require 'the dictatorial power of a creation ex nihilo'. Everywhere, it seems, at least amongst commentators of a certain age and type, pessimism prevails with regards to the predominant aesthetic preferences of the twenty first century: popular music, supposedly, is in a rut. Yet when, if ever, did the political engagement kindled by popular music amount to more than it does today? The sixties? The punk explosion of the late 1970s? Despite an on-going fixation upon these periods in much rock journalism and academic writing, this book demonstrates that the utilisation of popular music to promote political causes, on the one hand, and the expression of dissent through the medium of 'popular song', on the other hand, remain widely in practice today. This is not to argue, however, for complacency with regards to the need for expressions of political dissent through popular culture. Rather, the book looks carefully at actual usages of popular music in political processes, as well as expressions of political feeling through song, and argues that there is much to encourage us to think that the demand for radical change remains in circulation. The question is, though, how necessary is it for politically-motivated popular music to offer aesthetic novelty?

We are what we listen to - The impact of Music on Individual and Social Health (Hardcover): Patricia Caicedo We are what we listen to - The impact of Music on Individual and Social Health (Hardcover)
Patricia Caicedo
R846 Discovery Miles 8 460 Ships in 18 - 22 working days
Amplifications - Poetic Migration, Auditory Memory (Hardcover): Paul Carter Amplifications - Poetic Migration, Auditory Memory (Hardcover)
Paul Carter
R2,703 Discovery Miles 27 030 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Written by one of the most prominent thinkers in sound studies, Amplifications presents a perspective on sound narrated through the experiences of a sound artist and writer. A work of reflective philosophy, Amplifications sits at the intersection of history, creative practice, and sound studies, recounting this narrative through a series of themes (rattles, echoes, recordings, etc.). Carter offers a unique perspective on migratory poetics, bringing together his own compositions and life's works while using his personal narrative to frame larger theoretical questions about sound and migration.

Musical Instruments Of The Indigenous People Of South Africa (Hardcover, Third Edition): Percival Kirby Musical Instruments Of The Indigenous People Of South Africa (Hardcover, Third Edition)
Percival Kirby
R475 R438 Discovery Miles 4 380 Save R37 (8%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Percival Kirby was one of the greatest South African musicologists and ethnomusicologists. Born in Scotland in 1887, after completing his studies at the Royal College of Music in London he came out to South Africa as the Music Organiser to the Natal Education Department. In 1920 he moved to Johannesburg as acting Professor of Music at the then University College. He was soon appointed Professor of Music and stayed at the University of the Witwatersrand for 30 years. Kirby was a conductor, timpanist, flautist, composer, teacher, musicologist, scientist and artist. As well as researching and writing on African music, he wrote the definitive book on the wreck of the Grosvenor.

Kirby was concerned about the demise of traditional cultural practices of African people. Whilst at Wits, he was encouraged by his colleagues, people like Raymond Dart and Louis Maingard, to make a comprehensive study of the musical practices of the indigenous peoples of southern Africa. Between 1923 and 1933, supported by several study grants, he travelled thousands of miles, undertook more than nine special expeditions as well as many shorter excursions in his ancient Model T Ford to places like Pietersburg and Potgietersrus, to the area then known as Sekhukhuneland, Transvaal, and to Swaziland and Botswana. He was hosted by local chiefs and taught to play the instruments he encountered. He managed to purchase many of them, and this collection is now known as the Kirby Collection and is housed at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town.

The book Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa, first published in 1934, was the culmination of these research trips. It has become the standard reference on indigenous South African musical instruments, but has been out of print for many years. This third edition, with a revised title, contains an introduction by Mike Nixon, Head of the Ethnomusicology and African Music programme at the South African College of Music, and new reproductions of the valuable historic photographs by Paff and others, but leaves Kirby’s original text unchanged.

Nothing Has Been Done Before - Seeking the New in 21st-Century American Popular Music (Hardcover, Paperback): Robert Loss Nothing Has Been Done Before - Seeking the New in 21st-Century American Popular Music (Hardcover, Paperback)
Robert Loss
R3,185 Discovery Miles 31 850 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Is there such a thing today as music that's meaningfully new? In our contemporary era of remixing and retro styles, cynics and romantics alike cry "It's all been done before" while record labels and media outlets proclaim that everything is new. Coded into our daily conversations about popular music, newness as an artistic and cultural value is too often taken for granted. Nothing Has Been Done Before instigates a fresh debate about newness in American pop, rock 'n' roll, rap, folk, and R&B made since the turn of the millennium. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that combines music criticism, philosophy, and the literary essay, Robert Loss follows the stories of a diverse cast of musicians who seek the new by wrestling with the past, navigating the market, and speaking politically. The transgressions of Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft". The pop spectacle of Katy Perry's 2015 Super Bowl halftime show. Protest songs against the war in Iraq. Nothing Has Been Done Before argues that performance heard in a historical context always creates a possibility for newness, whether it's Kendrick Lamar's multi-layered To Pimp a Butterfly, the Afrofuturist visions of Janelle Monae, or even a Guided By Voices tribute concert in a local dive bar. Provocative and engaging, Nothing Has Been Done Before challenges nothing less than how we hear and think about popular music-its power and its potential.

Musical Psychedelia - Research at the Intersection of Music and Psychedelic Experience (Hardcover): Gemma L. Farrell Musical Psychedelia - Research at the Intersection of Music and Psychedelic Experience (Hardcover)
Gemma L. Farrell
R3,936 Discovery Miles 39 360 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Psychedelic music is a fascinating yet under-researched field of study. This thought-provoking collection offers a broad introduction to the fi eld of psychedelic music studies, bringing together scholarly work on psychedelic music in genres like rock, folk, electronic dance music and pop. Through an expanded purview on psychedelic music, an emerging trend in research, the collection affords students and academics alike an introduction to a rich, multi-faceted field. The contributing authors explore a range of different facets of musical psychedelia: its transgressive and transcendent aspects, its foregrounding of timbre and texture, the way it changes our perception of time, its influence on “non-psychedelic” music, key composition and production techniques that composers and musicians use in its creation, how it is mediated by different places and spaces, and the interplay between psychedelic visual and sonic aesthetics. This interdisciplinary work reveals both commonalities in musical psychedelic experiences and the contestation inherent in a fi eld of study that juxtaposes music of different genres and eras with a variety of theoretical approaches and methodologies. In broadening the scope of psychedelic music research, the collection not only makes for varied and absorbing reading on the subject level but also stimulates reflexive thought about interdisciplinary research.

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