Flamenco: Passion, Politics and Popular Culture (Explorations in Anthropology)

Flamenco: Passion, Politics and Popular Culture (Explorations in Anthropology) Review

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Flamenco is renowned for its passion and flamboyance. Yet because it generates such visceral responses, it is often overlooked as a site for subtler discourses.

This absorbing book articulates powerful and convincing arguments on such key subjects as ethnicity, irony, authenticity, the body and resistance. Franco's 'politics of original sin' had left its mark on every aspect of Spanish life between 1936 and 1975, and flamenco music was no exception. Although widely portrayed as an apolitical, even frivolous form of entertainment, flamenco is shown here to have played a role in both the strategies of Franco's supporters and of those who opposed him. The author explores how the meaning of flamenco shifts according to the social, cultural and historical contexts within which it appears. In so doing, he demonstrates that flamenco is an ideal subject for analyzing the construction and appropriation of popular culture, given the way in which it was developed for middle-class audiences, converted into grand spectacle, and conscripted to serve political ends.

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• Gypsies and Flamenco: The Emergence of the Art of Flamenco in Andalusia, Interface Collection Volume 6
• Flamenco: Conflicting Histories of the Dance

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Jul 31, 2011 10:04:04

The Complete Singer-Songwriter: A Troubadour's Guide to Writing, Performing, Recording and Business

The Complete Singer-Songwriter: A Troubadour's Guide to Writing, Performing, Recording and Business Review

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Of all the paths available to today's musicians, the life of the singer-songwriter remains one of the most alluring and popular. This handbook is the ultimate guide for the modern singer-songwriter, full of real-world advice and encouragement for both aspiring and accomplished troubadours. The founding editor of Acoustic Guitar magazine, Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers draws on his own experiences as a performing songwriter and interviews with artists such as Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, Arlo Guthrie, Chrissie Hynde and Paul Simon to offer an invaluable companion for the journey from idea to song to stage and studio. Also includes inside info from managers, agents, lawyers and record execs. "A lucid, well-written, fact-stuffed work." - Bruce Cockburn

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• Songwriters On Songwriting: Revised And Expanded
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• Songwriting and the Guitar Book (String Letter Publishing) (Acoustic Guitar) (Acoustic Guitar Guides)

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Jul 30, 2011 04:33:35

Ladies of Soul (American Made Music)

Ladies of Soul (American Made Music) Review

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American soul music of the 1960s is one of the most creative and influential musical forms of the twentieth century. With its merging of gospel, R&B, country, and blues, soul music succeeded in crossing over from African American culture into the general pop culture. Soul became the byword for the styles, attitudes, and dreams of an entire era.

Female performers were responsible for some of the most enduring and powerful contributions to the genre. All too frequently overlooked by the star-making critics, seven of these women are profiled in this book -Maxine Brown, Ruby Johnson, Denise LaSalle, Bettye LaVette, Barbara Mason, Carla Thomas, and Timi Yuro.

Getting started during the heyday of soul, each of these talented women had recording contracts and gave live performances to appreciative audiences. Their careers can be tracked through the popularity of soul during the 1960s and its decline in the 1970s. With humor, candor, pride, and honest recognition that their careers did not surge into the mainstream and gain superstardom, they recount individual stories of how they struggled for success.

Their oral histories as told to David Freeland address compelling issues, including racism and sexism within the music industry. They discuss their grueling hardships on the road, their conflicts with male managers, and the cutthroat competition in the recording business. As each singer examines her career with the author, she reveals the dreams, hopes, and desires on which she has built her professional life. All seven face up to the career swings, from the highs of releasing the first hit to the frustrating lows when the momentum stops.

Although the obstacles to stardom are heartbreaking, these singers are committed to their art. With determination and style these seven have pressed onward with club appearances and recordings. They survive through their savvy mix of talent, hubris, and honesty about their lives and their music.

David Freeland is an oral historian and artistic adviser of a performance series at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. He has been a guest lecturer at Columbia's School for Social Work.

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Jul 28, 2011 16:14:05

France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema

France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema Review

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This book focuses on the evolutions that have occurred in French popular cinema in recent years. It provides an extensive overview of some of the significant changes affecting a film market which is showing strong signs of revitalisation after years of Hollywood dominance. A number of domestic productions released since the late 1990s have rivalled American blockbusters in terms of audience figures and many of these big commercial successes are discussed in detail in this volume. The strength of this book lies not only in its timeliness in terms of its publication, but also in the fact that it combines case studies of films which enjoyed international appreciation as well as productions which were not distributed abroad. Consequently, the volume affords a unique insight into French films which resonate with audiences outside of France as well as those which are purely available to and enjoyed by local, domestic viewing groups. Moreover, many of the contributors to this volume extend beyond film analysis and explore the production, distribution and exhibition contexts as well as critical and audience reception. As a result, the book as a whole makes an original contribution to the growing area of French Film Studies and is intended to be enjoyed by students and scholars as well as keen followers of cinema in France.

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Jul 27, 2011 16:10:50

Beatles Anthology

Beatles Anthology Review

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So much has been written about the most famous and successful band of all time and yet one story has not been told - the band's own story. Spanning their early lives, their rise to pre-eminence, and a year-by-year account of the golden period of fame right through to the break-up in 1970, THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY is the Beatles' own book. To the never-before-disclosed recollections of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are added the memories of associates such as road manager Neil Aspinall, producer George Martin and spokesman Derek Taylor. Interwoven with these are the recollections of John Lennon, and almost all of these have never been published before. Add to this the astonishing collection of over 1,000 photographs drawn from the Apple Corps archive and The Beatles' own personal collections and you have a truly unique book. Created with their full co-operation, THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY is nothing less than The Beatles autobiography.

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• Michael Jackson: This Is It

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Jul 26, 2011 15:49:08

Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop

Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop Review

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From the beginning of the American occupation in 1945 to the post-bubble period of the early 1990s, popular music provided Japanese listeners with a much-needed release, channeling their desires, fears, and frustrations over an ever-shifting geopolitical reality into a pleasurable and fluid art. Pop music allowed Japanese artists and audiences to assume various identities, reflecting the country's uncomfortable position under American hegemony. Michael Bourdaghs composes the first English-language study of this phenomenon, considering genres as diverse as boogie-woogie, rockabilly, enka, 1960s rock and roll, 1970s New Music, folk, and technopop. Reading these forms and their cultural import through music, literary, and cultural theory, he introduces a range of readers to the sensual moods and meanings of modern Japan.

As he unpacks the complexities of Japanese pop production and consumption, Bourdaghs interprets a country as it worked through (or tried to forget) its imperial past. These efforts grew even murkier as Japanese pop migrated to the nation's former colonies. In postwar Japan, pop music both accelerated and protested the commodification of everyday life, challenged and reproduced gender hierarchies, and insisted on the uniqueness of a national culture, even as it participated in an increasingly integrated global marketplace. Each chapter examines a single genre through a particular theoretical lens: the relation of music to liberation; the influence of cultural mapping on musical appreciation; the role of translation in transmitting musical genres across the globe; the place of noise in music and its relation to historical change; the tenuous connection between ideologies of authenticity and imitation; the link between commercial success and artistic integrity; and the function of melodrama. Bourdaghs concludes with a look at recent Japanese pop music culture.

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Jul 25, 2011 15:20:34

The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1880 - 1935 (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1880 - 1935 (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) Review

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As a popular music, the evolution of jazz is tied to the contemporary sociological situation. Jazz was brought from America into a very different environment in Britain and resulted in the establishment of parallel worlds of jazz by the end of the 1920s: within the realms of institutionalized culture and within the subversive underworld. Parsonage demonstrates the importance of image and racial stereotyping in shaping perceptions of jazz, and leads to the significant conclusion that the evolution of jazz in Britain was so much more than merely an extension or reflection of that in America. The book examines the cultural and musical antecedents of the genre, including minstrel shows and black musical theatre, within the context of musical life in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Parsonage is particularly concerned with the public perception of jazz in Britain and provides close analysis of the early European critical writing on the subject. The processes through which an evolution took place are considered by looking at the methods of introducing jazz in Britain, through imported revue shows, sheet music, and visits by American musicians. Subsequent developments are analysed through the consideration of modernism and the Jazz Age as theoretical constructs and through the detailed study of dance music on the BBC and jazz in the underworld of London. The book concludes in the 1930s by which time the availability of records enabled the spread of 'hot' music, affecting the live repertoire in Britain. Parsonage therefore sheds entirely new light on the development of jazz in Britain, and provides a deep social and cultural understanding of the early history of the genre.

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Jul 24, 2011 13:12:35

Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation

Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation Review

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Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation Feature

• ISBN13: 9780822341567
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Tiki torches, cocktails, la dolce vita, and the music that popularized them—Mondo Exotica offers a behind-the-scenes look at the sounds and obsessions of the Space Age and Cold War period as well as the renewed interest in them evident in contemporary music and design. The music journalist and radio host Francesco Adinolfi provides extraordinary detail about artists, songs, albums, and soundtracks, while also presenting an incisive analysis of the ethnic and cultural stereotypes embodied in exotica and related genres. In this encyclopedic account of films, books, TV programs, mixed drinks, and above all music, he balances a respect for exotica’s artistic innovations with a critical assessment of what its popularity says about postwar society in the United States and Europe, and what its revival implies today.

Adinolfi interviewed a number of exotica greats, and Mondo Exotica incorporates material from his interviews with Martin Denny, Esquivel, the Italian film composers Piero Piccioni and Piero Umiliani, and others. It begins with an extended look at the postwar popularity of exotica in the United States. Adinolfi describes how American bachelors and suburbanites embraced the Polynesian god Tiki as a symbol of escape and sexual liberation; how Les Baxter’s album Ritual of the Savage (1951) ushered in the exotica music craze; and how Martin Denny’s Exotica built on that craze, hitting number one in 1957. Adinolfi chronicles the popularity of performers from Yma Sumac, “the Peruvian Nightingale,” to Esquivel, who was described by Variety as “the Mexican Duke Ellington,” to the chanteuses Eartha Kitt, Julie London, and Ann-Margret. He explores exotica’s many sub-genres, including mood music, crime jazz, and spy music. Turning to Italy, he reconstructs the postwar years of la dolce vita, explaining how budget spy films, spaghetti westerns, soft-core porn movies, and other genres demonstrated an attraction to the foreign. Mondo Exotica includes a discography of albums, compilations, and remixes.

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• Exotica
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Jul 23, 2011 11:22:05

Madame Butterfly: Japonisme, Puccini, and the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San

Madame Butterfly: Japonisme, Puccini, and the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San Review

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Long before Puccini wrote his masterpiece, the tale of the poor Japanese girl abandoned by her foreign lover had been taken up by numerous Western writers as part of the wave of Japonisme in late-19th-century Europe. But was there a "real" Madame Butterfly? Following the tragic trail back to its roots in Nagasaki, Jan van Rij believes he’s found the answer. Opera lovers will delight in the revelation, and learn not only about the cultural forces and personal fixations that inspired this popular work but why many Japanese remain unconvinced.

A long-time opera buff, Jan van Rij served as an E.U. diplomat in Japan, highly regarded for his intimate understanding of Japanese-European relations.

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• Puccini - Madame Butterfly / Huang, Troxell
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Jul 21, 2011 12:40:38