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.

Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction

Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction Review

Award Winning Finalist USA News Best Book Awards Writing & Publishing -
Named #5 in 10 of This Year's Terrific Writing Books byThe Writer Magazine (2011)

Award-winning author Michael A. Arnzen and Heidi Ruby Miller gather the voices of today's top genre writers and writing instructors alongside their published students. Many Genres, One Craft fosters the writing process in a way that focuses almost exclusively on writing the novel. Using a compilation of instructional articles penned by well-known authors affiliated with Seton Hill University's acclaimed MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction, the book emphasizes how to write genre novels and commercially appealing fiction. The articles are modeled after actual learning modules that have successfully taught students in the program how to reach a wider audience for over a decade.

Award-winning and best-selling contributors from a spectrum of genres and literary careers offer their sage advice, including David Morrell, Tess Gerritsen, Victoria Thompson, Nancy Kress, Shelley Bates, Nicole Peeler, Maria V. Snyder, Thomas Monteleone, Susan Mallery, and over fifty other published authors, teachers, and alumni, as well as special guest agents and editors who have visited the program. Divided into three parts Craft, Genre, and The Writer's Life the book provides advice on everything from point-of-view to writing media tie-in novels to marketing romance, all from writers who have actually done it.

Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno: Culture, Identity and Society (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno: Culture, Identity and Society (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) Review

In France during the 1960s and 1970s, popular music became a key component of socio-cultural modernization as the music/record industry became increasingly important in both economic and cultural terms in response to demographic changes and the rise of the modern media. As France began questioning traditional ways of understanding politics and culture before and after May 1968, music as popular culture became an integral part of burgeoning media activity. Press, radio and television developed free from de Gaulle's state domination of information, and political activism shifted its concerns to the use of regional languages and regional cultures, including the safeguard of traditional popular music against the centralizing tendencies of the Republican state. The cultural and political significance of French music was again revealed in the 1990s, as French-language music became a highly visible example of France's quest to maintain her cultural "exceptionalism" in the face of the perceived globalizing hegemony of English and US business and cultural imperialism. Laws were passed instituting minimum quotas of French-language music. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed developing issues raised by new technologies, as compact discs, the minitel telematics system, the Internet and other innovations in radio and television broadcasting posed new challenges to musicians and the music industry. These trends and developments are the subject of this volume of essays by leading scholars across a range of disciplines including French studies, musicology, cultural and media studies and film studies. It constitutes an attempt to provide a complete and up-to-date overview of the place of popular music in modern France and the reception of French popular music abroad.

Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Vol. 1: Chart Detail & Encyclopedia, 1900-1949

Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Vol. 1: Chart Detail & Encyclopedia, 1900-1949 Review

This valuable reference work's principle feature is 600 monthly popularity charts that document January 1900 through December 1949. Gardner then displays these charts in a spreadsheet format so the reader can see how each song rose and fell during its period of popularity and how it compared with the other competing songs of its day. The remaining section contains a massive and comprehensive encyclopedia of all charted songs, including chart highlights, writers, shows, movies, records, and principal artists. An easy-to-read alphabetical index of song titles eliminates confusion from duplicated song titles or when a song re-charted as a revival or remake. Gardner's research reveals that music periodicals of the day tell a very different story from what has been, until now, recorded history. For example, contrary to popular belief, some enduring standards such as "St Louis Blues" and "Star Dust" never became big chart "hits," and some songs, enormously popular in their time, receive only scant mention in previously issued music history books and encyclopedias. Section 1: Alphabetical Index of Charted SongsSection 2: Monthly Top-20 Song ChartsSection 3: Semi-Monthly Top-20 Songs SpreadsheetsSection 4: Encyclopedia of Charted Songs>

Cave Droppings: Nick Cave and Religion (STUDIES IN POPULAR MUSIC)

Cave Droppings: Nick Cave and Religion (STUDIES IN POPULAR MUSIC) Review

Cave Droppings analyses the work of Nick Cave, a singular, idiosyncratic and brilliant musician, specifically through his engagements with theology and the Bible. It does so not merely in terms of his written work, the novels and plays and poetry and lyrics that he continues to produce, but also the music itself. Covering more than three decades of extraordinarily diverse creativity, the book has seven chapters focusing on: the modes in which Cave engages with the Bible; the total depravity of the worlds invoked in his novels and other written work; the consistent invocation of apocalyptic themes; his restoration of death as a valid dimension of life; the twists of the love song; the role of a sensual and heretical Christ; and then a detailed, dialectical analysis of his musical forms. The book draws upon a select number of theorists who provide the methodological possibilities of digging deep into the theological nature of Cave's work, namely Ernst Bloch, who is the methodological foundation stone, as well as Theodor Adorno, Theodore Gracyk and Jacques Attali.

Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930

Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930 Review

Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters,1880-1930 is a classic work on a little-studied subject in American music history: the contribution of African-American songwriters to the world of popular song. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as "thoroughly researched and entertainingly written," this work documents the careers of songwriters like James A. Bland ("Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny"), Bert Williams ("Nobody"), W. C. Handy ("St. Louis Blues"), Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake ("I'm Just Wild About Harry"), and many more. Richly illustrated with rare photographs from sheet music, newspapers, and other unique sources, the book documents an entire era of performance when black singers, dancers, and actors were active on the New York stage.

In sheer depth of research, new information, and full coverage, Spreadin' Rhythm Around offers a comprehensive picture of the contributions of black musicians to American popular song. For anyone interested in the history of jazz, pop song, or Broadway, this book will be a revelation.