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Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology
In 1972, a group of creative Brazilian musicians and poets informally led by singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento recorded a landmark double-LP titled Clube da Esquina (Corner Club). The album saw highly original songs by Milton, already an award-winning international star, sharing vinyl with those of Lo Borges, an unknown eighteen-year-old from Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais. There, where the street "corner" still exists, grew their collective also known as the Corner Club, as the artists collaborated on many subsequent albums boasting innovative blends of pop, jazz, rock, folk, classical influences, and, before Brazil's return to civilian rule in 1985, poignant protest songs aimed at a cruel dictatorship. Drawing on a thirty-year relationship with Minas Gerais that includes interviews with Corner Club members and extensive research of Portuguese language sources, Jonathon Grasse presents an analysis of the artists, songs, and ideas comprising the LP that helps define this Brazilian generation. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-based books and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.
American composer Morton Feldman is increasingly seen to have been one of the key figures in late-twentieth-century music, with his work exerting a powerful influence into the twenty-first century. At the same time, much about his music remains enigmatic, largely due to long-standing myths about supposedly intuitive or aleatoric working practices. In Composing Ambiguity, Alistair Noble reveals key aspects of Feldman's musical language as it developed during a crucial period in the early 1950s. Drawing models from primary sources, including Feldman's musical sketches, he shows that Feldman worked deliberately within a two-dimensional frame, allowing a focus upon the fundamental materials of sounding pitch in time. Beyond this, Feldman's work is revealed to be essentially concerned with the 12-tone chromatic field, and with the delineation of complexes of simple proportions in 'crystalline' forms. Through close reading of several important works from the early 1950s, Noble shows that there is a remarkable consistency of compositional method, despite the varied experimental notations used by Feldman at this time. Not only are there direct relations to be found between staff-notated works and grid scores, but much of the language developed by Feldman in this period was still in use even in his late works of the 1980s.
Though The Velvet Underground were critically and commercially unsuccessful in their time, in ensuing decades they have become a constant touchstone in art rock, punk, post-punk, indie, avant pop and alternative rock. In the 1970s and 80s Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico produced a number of works that traveled a path between art and pop. In 1993 the original band members of Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker briefly reunited for live appearances, and afterwards Reed, Cale and briefly Tucker, continued to produce music that travelled the idiosyncratic path begun in New York in the mid-1960s. The influence of the band and band members, mediated and promoted through famous fans such as David Bowie and Brian Eno, seems only to have expanded since the late 1960s. In 1996 the Velvet Underground were in inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, demonstrating how far the band had traveled in 30 years from an avant-garde cult to the mainstream recognition of their key contributions to popular music. In these collected essays, Pattie and Albiez present the first academic book-length collection on The Velvet Underground. The book covers a range of topics including the band's relationship to US literature, to youth and cultural movements of the 1960s and beyond and to European culture - and examines these contexts from the 1960s through to the present day.
Throughout the history of slavery, enslaved people organized resistance, escape, and rebellion. Sustaining them in this struggle was their music, some examples of which are sung to this day. While the existence of slave songs, especially spirituals, is well known, their character is often misunderstood. Slave songs were not only lamentations of suffering or distractions from a life of misery. Some songs openly called for liberty and revolution, celebrating such heroes as Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner, and, especially, celebrating the Haitian Revolution. The fight for freedom also included fugitive slaves, free Black people, and their white allies who brought forth a set of songs that were once widely disseminated but are now largely forgotten, the songs of the abolitionists. Often composed by fugitive slaves and free Black people, and first appearing in the eighteenth century, these songs continued to be written and sung until the Civil War. As the movement expanded, abolitionists even published song books used at public meetings. Mat Callahan presents recently discovered songs composed by enslaved people explicitly calling for resistance to slavery, some originating as early as 1784 and others as late as the Civil War. He also presents long-lost songs of the abolitionist movement, some written by fugitive slaves and free Black people, challenging common misconceptions of abolitionism. Songs of Slavery and Emancipation features the lyrics of fifteen slave songs and fifteen abolitionist songs, placing them in proper historical context and making them available again to the general public. These songs not only express outrage at slavery but call for militant resistance and destruction of the slave system. There can be no doubt as to their purpose: the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of African American people, and a clear and undeniable demand for equality and justice for all humanity.
In The Politics of Vibration Marcus Boon explores music as a material practice of vibration. Focusing on the work of three contemporary musicians-Hindustani classical vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, Swedish drone composer and philosopher Catherine Christer Hennix, and Houston-based hip-hop musician DJ Screw-Boon outlines how music constructs a vibrational space of individual and collective transformation. Contributing to a new interdisciplinary field of vibration studies, he understands vibration as a mathematical and a physical concept, as a religious or ontological force, and as a psychological determinant of subjectivity. Boon contends that music, as a shaping of vibration, needs to be recognized as a cosmopolitical practice-in the sense introduced by Isabelle Stengers-in which what music is within a society depends on what kinds of access to vibration are permitted, and to whom. This politics of vibration constitutes the hidden ontology of contemporary music because the organization of vibration shapes individual music scenes as well as the ethical choices that participants in these scenes make about how they want to live in the world.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the most beloved anime series of all time, and if you ask its fans why, you can expect to hear about its music. Composer Yoko Kanno created an eclectic blend of jazz, rock, lullabies, folk and funk (to list just a few) for Cowboy Bebop's many moods and environments. Cowboy Bebop's blend of science fiction, westerns and gangster films promised to be "the work which becomes a new genre itself," and only Kanno's score could deliver. In this volume of 33 1/3 Japan, musicologist Rose Bridges helps listeners make sense of the music of Cowboy Bebop. The book places it within the context of Bebop's influences and Kanno's larger body of work. It analyzes how the music tells Spike, Faye, Jet and the rest of the crew's stories. Cowboy Bebop and its music are like nothing else, and they deserve a guide to match. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-basedbooks and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.
A Pitchfork Best Music Book of 2022 When Tom Breihan launched his Stereogum column in early 2018, "The Number Ones"-a space in which he has been writing about every #1 hit in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, in chronological order-he figured he'd post capsule-size reviews for each song. But there was so much more to uncover. The column has taken on a life of its own, sparking online debate and occasional death threats. The Billboard Hot 100 began in 1958, and after four years of posting the column, Breihan is still in the early aughts. But readers no longer have to wait for his brilliant synthesis of what the history of #1s has meant to music and our culture. In The Number Ones, Breihan writes about twenty pivotal #1s throughout chart history, revealing a remarkably fluid and connected story of music that is as entertaining as it is enlightening. The Numbers Ones features the greatest pop artists of all time, from the Brill Building songwriters to the Beatles and the Beach Boys; from Motown to Michael Jackson, Prince, and Mariah Carey; and from the digital revolution to the K-pop system. Breihan also ponders great artists who have never hit the top spot, like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and James Brown. Breihan illuminates what makes indelible ear candy across the decades-including dance crazes, recording innovations, television phenomena, disco, AOR, MTV, rap, compact discs, mp3s, social media, memes, and much more-leaving readers to wonder what could possibly happen next.
The book shows the importance for parents to encourage a child's imagination. Imagination has a strong connection to language and logical thinking for a child in learning and it promotes their sociability where children are led to success. Presenting a Japanese-Austrian music-project that took place in Utsunomiya (Japan), the study offers a new view on children's imagination, their different family cultures and the role of parents in raising successful children.
- Offers a diverse snapshot of current studies of music notation as material culture, encompassing a wide range of methodological approaches - Broad historical and regional/stylistic scope, covering material from the middle ages to the present
Artistic creation has proven remarkably resistant to philosophical analysis. Artists have long struggled to explain how they do what they do, and philosophers have struggled along with them. This study does not attempt to offer a comprehensive account of all creativity or all art. Instead it tries to identify an essential feature of an activity that has been cloaked in mystery for as long as history records. Jeff Mitscherling and Paul Fairfield argue that the process by which art is created has a good deal in common with the experience of the audience of a work, and that both experiences may be described phenomenologically in ways that show surprising affinities with what artists themselves often report.
Just as music has the power to inspire, it has the power to irritate and enrage. Why does certain music annoy us? Why does it force us to leave rooms, invade our personal space and affect us on a visceral level? Based on more than 70 interviews, this book discusses the everyday challenges of living together with unwanted music. It examines issues of taste, individual rights, private and public spaces, violence and the law. The interviews explore various relationships with forced listening and the behaviors that result. Interviewees talk about emotions and reactions to the nuisance caused by music, highlighting matters of otherness, individualism and rights. They discuss experiences with neighbors, at stores, on the street, while commuting and even in their homes - and reveal the complex social interactions mediated by music and sounds in our day-to-day lives.
This book presents a world-class collection of Brain-Computer Music Interfacing (BCMI) tools. The text focuses on how these tools enable the extraction of meaningful control information from brain signals, and discusses how to design effective generative music techniques that respond to this information. Features: reviews important techniques for hands-free interaction with computers, including event-related potentials with P300 waves; explores questions of semiotic brain-computer interfacing (BCI), and the use of machine learning to dig into relationships among music and emotions; offers tutorials on signal extraction, brain electric fields, passive BCI, and applications for genetic algorithms, along with historical surveys; describes how BCMI research advocates the importance of better scientific understanding of the brain for its potential impact on musical creativity; presents broad coverage of this emerging, interdisciplinary area, from hard-core EEG analysis to practical musical applications.
* Intense focus on the emergence of a new, post-Civil Rights Movement black identity * Offers an alternative history and musicology of the Black Power Movement * Defines Black Power Music - a musical and political reality * Explores the intense interconnections between black popular culture and black political culture * Essential reading for all students engaged in black popular music studies, African American studies, popular culture studies, ethnic studies as well as sociology, ethnomusicology and political science.
Since rock's beginnings, there have been groupies. These chosen few women who bed, but not often wed, the musicians of their dreams are almost as much a part of music history as the musicians themselves. Pamela Des Barres, the world's foremost supergroupie, here offers an all-access backstage pass to the world of rock stars and the women who love them. Having had her own affairs with legends such as Keith Moon and Jimmy Page--as documented in her bestselling memoir "I'm with the Band"--Pamela now turns the spotlight onto other women who have found their way into the hearts and bedrooms of some of the world's greatest musicians. In "Let's Spend the Night Together, "she tells, in their own words, the stories of these amazing women who went way beyond the one-night stand. Here you'll get to know 24 outrageous groupies, including - Tura Satana, Miss Japan Beautiful, who taught Elvis how to dance and gave him lessons in lovemaking - Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who tangled with Tom Jones in Sin City - Soulful Miss Mercy, who discovered that not only does the rest of the world listen to Al Green while making love--so does Al Green - Cynthia Plaster Caster, who redefined art and made history when Jimi Hendrix plunged his member into her plaster mold - The mysterious Miss B, who reveals Kurt Cobain's penchant for lip gloss and pantyhose - and over a dozen more
Punk rock may have started in the United Kingdom and United States but it certainly didn't stay in either country. The genre flew around the globe like a contagion, touching off simultaneous movements in nearly every market imaginable: Japan, Yugoslavia, the Philippines, South Africa, New Zealand, Chile, Mexico, Poland, Burma, Singapore, and Turkey, among countless others. Performing punk rock in many of these places wasn't just rebellious, it was legitimately dangerous, thanks to regimes far more oppressive and brutal than what existed in the West. Brave Punk World immerses readers in these foreign scenes, describing the lifestyles and art of passionate, hard-charging groups who remain secret to the punk majority but who are just as crucial as the Ramones or the Sex Pistols. James Greene, Jr. explores Brazilian bands like Ulster who angrily protested and openly mocked their region's cruel dictatorship, Germans such as Slime who see many of their songs still banned to this day, the Algerian-by-way-of-France performers Carte de Sejour who had an alleged hand in inspiring the landmark Clash hit "Rock The Casbah," and a galaxy of other punk groups from more exotic locales. Punk diehards and travel enthusiasts with a taste for chaos will enjoy the country-by-country cultural explorations and wild stories offered within these pages.
- Comprehensive overview offering a careful balance of the practical and theoretical - No competing titles - Diverse set of contributors from a range of geographical regions and professional/academic backgrounds
- Comprehensive overview offering a careful balance of the practical and theoretical - No competing titles - Diverse set of contributors from a range of geographical regions and professional/academic backgrounds
The book combines cutting edge insights from the fields of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, semiotics, linguistics, and music cognition, using a broad range of examples from traditional, classical and popular world musics, into a theoretical system that shows how the focus on the grounding problem may help researchers convincingly resolve the apparent ungraspability of musical semantics.
Activism through Music during the Apartheid Era and Beyond documents the grassroots activism of Sharon Katz and the Peace Train against the backdrop of enormous diversity and the volatile social and political climate in South Africa in the early 1990s. Among the intersections of race, healing and the "soft power" of music, Katz offers a vision of the possibilities of national identity and belonging as South Africans grappled with the transition from apartheid to democracy. Through extensive fieldwork across two countries (South Africa and the United States) and drawing on personal experiences as a South African of color, Ambigay Yudkoff reveals a compelling narrative of multigenerational collaboration. This experience creates a sense of community fostering relationships that develop through music, travel, performances, and socialization. In South Africa and the United States, and recently in Cuba and Mexico, the Peace Train's journey in musical activism provides a vehicle for racial integration and intercultural understanding.
- Emphasizes the creative process, not only individual techniques, allowing students to better grasp the full process of composing a piece of music - Includes examples of perspectives on the creative process from wide variety of composers, helping students understand how composers think about their work - Flexible chapter structure allows instructors to adapt the text to their preferred order of teaching topics
- Emphasizes the creative process, not only individual techniques, allowing students to better grasp the full process of composing a piece of music - Includes examples of perspectives on the creative process from wide variety of composers, helping students understand how composers think about their work - Flexible chapter structure allows instructors to adapt the text to their preferred order of teaching topics
In addition to being a great composer, Richard Wagner was also an important philosopher. Julian Young begins by examining the philosophy of art and society Wagner constructs during his time as a revolutionary anarchist-communist. Modernity, Wagner argued, is to be rescued from its current anomie through the rebirth of Greek tragedy (the original Gesamtkunstwerk) in the form of the "artwork of the future," an artwork of which his own operas are the prototype. Young then examines the entirely different philosophy Wagner constructs after his 1854 conversion from Hegelian optimism to Schopenhauerian pessimism. "Redemption" now becomes, not a future utopia in this world, but rather "transfigured" existence in another world, attainable only through death. Viewing Wagner's operas through the lens of his philosophy, the book offers often novel interpretations of Lohengrin, The Ring cycle, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal. Finally, Young dresses the cause of Friedrich Nietzsche's transformation from Wagner's intimate friend and disciple into his most savage critic. Nietzsche's fundamental accusation, it is argued, is one of betrayal: that Wagner betrayed his early, "life affirming" philosophy of art and life in favor of "life-denial." Nietzsche's assertion and the final conclusion of the book is that our task, now, is to "become better Wagnerians than Wagner."
Low End Theory probes the much-mythologized field of bass and low-frequency sound. It begins in music but quickly moves far beyond, following vibratory phenomena across time, disciplines and disparate cultural spheres (including hauntings, laboratories, organ workshops, burial mounds, sound art, studios, dancefloors, infrasonic anomalies, and a global mystery called The Hum). Low End Theory asks what it is about bass that has fascinated us for so long and made it such a busy site of bio-technological experimentation, driving developments in science, technology, the arts, and religious culture. The guiding question is not so much what we make of bass, but what it makes of us: how does it undulate and unsettle; how does it incite; how does it draw bodily thought into new equations with itself and its surroundings? Low End Theory is the first book to survey this sonorous terrain and devise a conceptual language proper to it. With its focus on sound's structuring agency and the multi-sensory aspects of sonic experience, it stands to make a transformative contribution to the study of music and sound, while pushing scholarship on affect, materiality, and the senses into fertile new territory. Through energetic and creative prose, Low End Theory works to put thought in touch with the vibratory encounter as no scholarly book has done before. For more information, visit: http://www.lowendtheorybook.com/ |
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