The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Six Volume Set)

The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Six Volume Set) Review

Containing over 15,000 entries in its six volumes, this is a comprehensive encyclopaedia of popular music, with a history of each topic, birthdates and locations of individuals, a discography, a videography, and selected readings. Following the original publication in 1992, this second edition has been extensively revised and updated to cover the development of new and existing genres and the introduction of new artists and groups.

The Tapestry of Popular Songs in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century China: Reading, Imitation, and Desire (Sinica Leidensia)

The Tapestry of Popular Songs in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century China: Reading, Imitation, and Desire (Sinica Leidensia) Review

Popular songs in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China form a rich and intriguing body of materials hardly studied so far in the English-speaking world. This book is about these songs and their impact on Chinese culture and literary practice.

It examines the tapestry books in which popular songs circulated, how books shaped readers, how books were shaped by a range of literacies, and how arrangements of performance-texts aided imitation and selection of words or phrases.

Publishing histories of the popular song collections bring to light how songs were duplicated for readers among the elite and sub-elite. The analysis of how popular songs bring together the "high" and the "low" is of special value for literary scholars and intellectual historians, and challenges the traditonal dichotomy between elite and popular culture.

Popular Music Journalism

Popular Music Journalism Review

This book explores a variety of arguments and perspectives on the role of the music journalist and the wider popular music press within the cultural and operational contexts of popular music.

Individual chapters will analyse the music magazine genre and markets through an exploration of the medium's long history and its substantial impact on both the mainstream media and youth subcultures.

Throughout the text the author will draw on interviews with leading figures working within the music press, internationally renowned musicians and figures from the music and media industries.

Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music

Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music Review

"Sylvan's thesis furnishes far more of the same valued experiences than is usually realized: ritual activity, communal ceremony, a philosophy and worldview, a code for living one's life, a cultural identity, a social structure, a sense of belonging, and crucially, Sylvan argues encounters with the numinous."
—Journal of Religion

Most studies of the religious significance of popular music focus on music lyrics, offering little insight into the religious aspects of the music itself. Traces of the Spirit examines the religious dimensions of popular music subcultures, charting the influence and religious aspects of popular music in mainstream culture today and analyzing the religious significance of the audience's experiences, rituals, and worldviews. Sylvan contends that popular music subcultures serve the function of religious communities and represent a new and significant religious phenomenon.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork using interviews and participant observation, Sylvan examines such subcultures as the Deadheads, raves and their participants, metalheads, and Hip Hop culture. Based on these case studies, he offers a comprehensive theoretical framework in which to study music and popular culture. In addition, he traces the history of West African possession religion from Africa to the diaspora to its integration into American popular music in such genres as the blues, rock and roll, and contemporary musical youth subcultures.

Popular World Music

Popular World Music Review

     Exploring Popular World Music is the first introductory level text written to introduce students to popular music styles from around the world. Focusing on styles that all students will know -- from Reggae to Klezmer, from Afro-Pop to Kodo drums--the book offers a comprehensive, listening-oriented introduction to the world's popular musical cultures.
    Each chapter will focus on a specific music style and its associated geographic locale. The salient musical and cultural features associated with each example are discussed in detail to increase our appreciation of the music. Relevant artists will be highlighted and suggestions for further reading and listening will be offered. By the end of the book, the student should be able to 1) recognize a variety of world music styles, 2) articulate musical and cultural knowledge associated with each style, and 3) identify important artists related to the genre.
    Supplementing the text will be a web site fcreated by the author) featuring the author's world music map, enabling students to explore pop music cultures as they relate to each other; as well as an iTunes playlist for all the highlighted selections in the book. This book should strongly appeal to Intro to World Music Courses for non-majors who wish to study popular rather than traditional musics of the world, which would encompass a large majority of students enrolled in these courses.

Popular Music and Human Rights (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

Popular Music and Human Rights (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) Review

Popular music has long understood that human rights, if attainable at all, involve a struggle without end. The right to imagine an individual will, the right to some form of self-determination and the right to self-legislation have long been at the forefront of popular music's approach to human rights. In Eastern Europe, where states often tried to control music, the hundreds of thousands of Estonians who gathered in Tallinn between 1987 and 1991 are a part of the 'singing revolutions' that encouraged a sense of national consciousness, which had years earlier been crushed when Soviet policy declared Baltic folk music dead and ordered its replacement with mass song. Examples of this nature, where music has the power to enlighten, to mobilize, and perhaps even to change, suggest that popular music's response to issues of human rights has and will continue to be profound and sustained. This is the second volume published by Ashgate on Popular Music and Human Rights (the first volume covered British and American music). Contributors to this significant volume cover topics such as Movimento 77, Nepal's heavy metal scene, music and memory in Mozambique and Swaziland, hybrid metal in the muslim world, folksong in Latvia, popular music in the former Yugoslavia, indigenous human rights in Australia, Victor Jara, protest and gender in Ireland, rock and roll in China, and the anti-rock campaigns and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

Live from Dar es Salaam: Popular Music and Tanzania's Music Economy (African Expressive Cultures)

Live from Dar es Salaam: Popular Music and Tanzania's Music Economy (African Expressive Cultures) Review

When socialism collapsed in Tanzania, the government-controlled music industry gave way to a vibrant independent music scene. Alex Perullo explores the world of the bands, music distributors, managers, and clubs that attest to the lively and creative music industry in Dar es Salaam. Perullo examines the formation of the city's music economy, considering the means of musical production, distribution, protection, broadcasting, and performance. He exposes both legal and illegal strategies for creating business opportunities employed by entrepreneurs who battle government restrictions and give flight to their musical aspirations. This is a singular look at the complex music landscape in one of Africa's most dynamic cities.

British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide (Popular TV Genres)

British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide (Popular TV Genres) Review

From Doctor Who to Red Dwarf, Thunderbirds to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, some of the most memorable and cherished British television has been in the area of science fiction.This pioneering book, by leading writers in TV history and science fiction, offers for the first time a detailed national survey of this most well-loved of TV genres and provides in-depth reassessments of these shows, as well as others including Threads, Sapphire and Steel, Invasion: Earth and The Last Train. The volume argues that British science fiction television, too often in the past critically derided for the quality of its special effects compared to American equivalents such as Star Trek--deserves to be taken seriously as a legitimate object of cultural analysis, both in terms of its ambition and ideas and its value in illuminating wider aspects of recent social and cultural history. The book also features a contribution from an acclaimed biographer of the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as an exclusive published interview with Thunderbirds creator and producer Gerry Anderson.

American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3

American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 Review

The most complete, colorful, and authoritative package of its kind, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, Third Edition, examines popular music in the United States from its beginnings into the 21st century.

Highlighting the contributions of diverse groups, Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman trace the development of jazz, blues, country, rock, hip-hop, and other popular styles. They combine an in-depth treatment of the music itself--including discussions of stylistic elements and analyses of musical examples--with solid coverage of attendant historical, social, and cultural circumstances.

NEW TO THE THIRD EDITION

* Significantly expanded coverage of the Latin American stream of influence throughout, including Latin music in the big-band era, the mambo craze of the 1950s, bossa nova, and salsa
* Thoroughly updated discussions of online distribution models, technology, and new trends in popular music
* Exact timings included in the in-text listening guides to help students orient themselves as they use the two in-text
audio CDs
* New appendix--"Understanding Rhythm and Form"--illustrating the basic musical concepts of beat, tempo, rhythm, and form
* A FREE six-month subscription to the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Fourth Edition Online (0.00 value!)

Remarkably accessible and student-friendly, the third edition also offers:

* Detailed in-text listening charts that explain the most important elements of recordings discussed at length in the text
* Boxed inserts on significant individuals, recordings, and cultural issues, with an illustrated timeline at the back of the book
* An iMix (published at iTunes)
* An updated Companion Website (www.oup.com/us/popmusic) containing resources for both instructors (PowerPoint lecture slides, assignments and exercises, filmographies, and review/discussion questions) and students (chapter outlines, brief biographies, flashcards, and weblinks)
* A free Instructor's Manual and Computerized Test Bank on CD

American Popular Music: Readings From the Popular Press Volume 2: The Age of Rock (Readings from the Popular Press Series)

American Popular Music: Readings From the Popular Press Volume 2: The Age of Rock (Readings from the Popular Press Series) Review

Beginning with the emergence of commercial American music in the nineteenth century, Volume 1 includes essays on the major performers, composers, media, and movements that shaped our musical culture before rock and roll. Articles explore the theoretical dimensions of popular music studies; the music of the nineteenth century; and the role of black Americans in the evolution of popular music. Also included—the music of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, swing, the blues, the influences of W. S. Gilbert and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and changes in lyric writing styles from the nineteenth century to the rock era.

Crossroads: Popular Music in America

Crossroads: Popular Music in America Review

For introductory, general education pop-music courses intended for students who have no prior musical training; courses on American Popular Music. Innovative, lively, and contemporary in focus, this comparative study of the multicultural music of the United States explores the five broad groups that constitute American society. With its blended approach; strong contemporary focus; and coverage of a wide variety of musical styles-from folk music, to banda.

Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing men in popular genres, 1945-2000 (Continuum Literary Studies)

Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing men in popular genres, 1945-2000 (Continuum Literary Studies) Review

This book looks at a wide range of fiction and film texts, from the 1950s to the present, in order to analyse the ways in which masculinity has been represented in popular culture in Britain and the United States. It covers numerous genres, including spy fiction, science fiction, the Western and police thrillers. Each chapter focuses on key forms of masculinity found in each genre, such as the 'double agent', the 'rogue cop' and the 'citizen-soldier'.

Brian Baker takes a broad, contextual approach, placing a detailed discussion of key texts and issues concerning masculinity in their historical and cultural context. Written in a clear, accessible way, it explores the changing representation of men over the last fifty years.

Singing Poets: Literature And Popular Music in France And Greece, 1945-1975 (Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature) (Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature)

Singing Poets: Literature And Popular Music in France And Greece, 1945-1975 (Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature) (Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature) Review

Between 1945 and 1975, both France and Greece developed an interplay between literature and popular music, each making a new national canon. Literature provided the aesthetic criteria, the cultural prestige and the institutional basis for what aspired to be a higher form of popular song. Published poems were turned into popular songs, while a critical discourse, in return, celebrated songwriters not only for being as good as poets, but for being singing poets in their own right. In France, there were Georges Brassens, Leo Ferre and Serge Gainsbourg: in Greece, the presitigious title of tragoudopoios (maker of songs) was awarded to Mikis Theodorakis, Manos Hadjidakis and Dionysis Savvopoulos. This challenging and stimulating study draws on a wealth of materials, from theoretical writings by poets, through their lyrics, to the record sleeves and posters used to promote them.

The Rise of the Crooners: Gene Austin, Russ Columbo, Bing Crosby, Nick Lucas, Johnny Marvin and Rudy Vallee (Studies And Documentation In The History Of Popular Entertainment)

The Rise of the Crooners: Gene Austin, Russ Columbo, Bing Crosby, Nick Lucas, Johnny Marvin and Rudy Vallee (Studies And Documentation In The History Of Popular Entertainment) Review

Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Rudy Vallee—these cultural icons whose fame spanned all the important mass media, also played a vital role in the origin and development of the crooning tradition.

Crooning represented one of the most important musical styles of the twentieth century, intermingling with jazz and fronting the big band craze of the thirties and forties. Crooners spurred the rise of radio as home staple and the Golden Age of film musicals. When commercial television became a viable commodity, crooners anchored perhaps the first TV programming innovation, the variety show. It took the cataclysmic aesthetic and cultural changes ushered in by rock 'n' roll in the 1950s to finally bring crooners down from their pedestal.

The Rise of the Crooners examines the historical trends and events that led to the emergence of the crooning style. Ian Whitcomb, a successful popular music vocalist himself for almost 40 years, provides a personal perspective on this phenomenon. The lives and careers of six pioneers of the style—Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo, Gene Austin, Rudy Vallee, Johnny Marvin, and Nick Lucas—are covered at length. With the exception of one entry devoted to Crosby—possibly the greatest entertainer of the past century—these biographies (appended by lengthy bibliographies and discographies) are more thorough and up-to-date than any treatment in print about these seminal artists.

Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945

Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945 Review

Have records, compact discs, and other sound reproduction equipment merely provided American listeners with pleasant diversions, or have more important historical and cultural influences flowed through them? Do recording machines simply capture what's already out there, or is the music somehow transformed in the dual process of documentation and dissemination? How would our lives be different without these machines? Such are the questions that arise when we stop taking for granted the phenomenon of recorded music and the phonograph itself.

Now comes an in-depth cultural history of the phonograph in the United States from 1890 to 1945. William Howland Kenney offers a full account of what he calls "the 78 r.p.m. era"--from the formative early decades in which the giants of the record industry reigned supreme in the absence of radio, to the postwar proliferation of independent labels, disk jockeys, and changes in popular taste and opinion. By examining the interplay between recorded music and the key social, political, and economic forces in America during the phonograph's rise and fall as the dominant medium of popular recorded sound, he addresses such vital issues as the place of multiculturalism in the phonograph's history, the roles of women as record-player listeners and performers, the belated commercial legitimacy of rhythm-and-blues recordings, the "hit record" phenomenon in the wake of the Great Depression, the origins of the rock-and-roll revolution, and the shifting place of popular recorded music in America's personal and cultural memories.

Throughout the book, Kenney argues that the phonograph and the recording industry served neither to impose a preference for high culture nor a degraded popular taste, but rather expressed a diverse set of sensibilities in which various sorts of people found a new kind of pleasure. To this end, Recorded Music in American Life effectively illustrates how recorded music provided the focus for active recorded sound cultures, in which listeners shared what they heard, and expressed crucial dimensions of their private lives, by way of their involvement with records and record-players.

Students and scholars of American music, culture, commerce, and history--as well as fans and collectors interested in this phase of our rich artistic past--will find a great deal of thorough research and fresh scholarship to enjoy in these pages.

Popular Music and the Myths of Madness (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

Popular Music and the Myths of Madness (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) Review

Studies of opera, film, television, and literature have demonstrated how constructions of madness may be referenced in order to stigmatise but also liberate protagonists in ways that reinforce or challenge contemporaneous notions of normality. But to date very little research has been conducted on how madness is represented in popular music. In an effort to redress this imbalance, Nicola Spelman identifies links between the anti-psychiatry movement and representations of madness in popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, analysing the various ways in which ideas critical of institutional psychiatry are embodied both verbally and musically in specific songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, the Beatles, and Elton John. She concentrates on meanings that may be made at the point of reception as a consequence of ideas about madness that were circulating at the time. These ideas are then linked to contemporary conventions of musical expression in order to illustrate certain interpretative possibilities. Supporting evidence comes from popular musicological analysis - incorporating discourse analysis and social semiotics - and investigation of socio-historical context. The uniqueness of the period in question is demonstrated by means of a more generalised overview of songs drawn from a variety of styles and eras that engage with the topic of madness in diverse and often conflicting ways. The conclusions drawn reveal the extent to which anti-psychiatric ideas filtered through into popular culture, offering insights into popular music's ability to question general suppositions about madness alongside its potential to bring issues of men's madness into the public arena as an often neglected topic for discussion.

Popular Music and Society

Popular Music and Society Review

This new edition of Popular Music and Society, fully revised and updated, continues to pioneer an approach to the study of popular music that is informed by wider debates in sociology and media and cultural studies. Astute and accessible, it continues to set the agenda for research and teaching in this area.

The textbook begins by examining the ways in which popular music is produced, before moving on to explore its structure as text and the ways in which audiences understand and use music. Packed with examples and data on the contemporary production and consumption of popular music, the book also includes overviews and critiques of theoretical approaches to this exciting area of study and outlines the most important empirical studies which have shaped the discipline.

Topics covered include:

• The contemporary organisation of the music industry;
• The effects of technological change on production;
• The history and politics of popular music;
• Gender, sexuality and ethnicity;
• Subcultures;
• Fans and music celebrities.

For this new edition, two whole new chapters have been added: on performance and the body, and on the very latest ways of thinking about audiences and the spaces and places of music consumption.

This second edition of Popular Music and Society will continue to be required reading for students of the sociology of culture, media and communication studies, and popular culture.