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.

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.

Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Focus of Place (Haymarket Series)

Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Focus of Place (Haymarket Series) Review

In a wild tour across the globe, touching down in Havana, Port-au-Prince, Kingston, Budapest, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo, George Lipsitz explores the fusion of immigrant and mainstream cultures displayed in world music, including rap, jazz, reggae, zouk, bhangra, juju, swamp pop, and Puerto Rican bugalu and Chicago punk.

Youth Identities and Argentine Popular Music: Beyond Tango

Youth Identities and Argentine Popular Music: Beyond Tango Review

What are the main music preferences among the youth in Argentina? How do these preferences fit into Argentine society, culture, and politics? The essays in this volume show how religion, class, ethnic, generational, and gender issues in Argentina are constructed and negotiated through a variety of musical practices. Rock, cumbia, and romantic music articulate gender, sexual, class, and ethnic identities for young people, whose socio-musical life goes beyond the traditional stereotypes of Argentina, tango, and passion.

Sonic Synergies: Music, Technology, Community, Identity (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)

Sonic Synergies: Music, Technology, Community, Identity (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) Review

"Sonic Synergies: Music, Technology, Community, Identity" focuses on the new and emerging synergies of music and digital technology within the new knowledge economies. Eighteen scholars representing six international perspectives explore the global and local ramifications of rapidly changing new technologies on creative industries, local communities, music practitioners and consumers. Diverse areas are considered, such as production, consumption, historical and cultural context, legislation, globalization and the impact upon the individual. Drawing on a range of musical genres from jazz, heavy metal, hip-hop and trance, and through several detailed case studies reflecting on the work of professional and local amateur artists, this book offers an important discussion of the ways in which the face of music is changing. Approaching these areas from a cultural studies perspective, this text will be a valuable tool for anyone engaged in the study of popular culture, music or digital technologies.

Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction (Music Culture)

Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction (Music Culture) Review

Popular Music in Theory is an original introduction to the key theoretical issues which arise in the study of contemporary popular music. It is organized in a way that shows how popular music is created across a series of relationships that link together industry and audiences, producers and consumers. Starting from the dichotomy between production and consumption which characterizes much work on popular culture, Keith Negus explores the equally significant social processes that intervene between and across the production-consumption divide, and examines how popular music is mediated by technological, cultural, historical, geographical, and political factors. This broad framework provides signposts to various tracks taken by sounds and images, and also highlights distinctive theoretical routes into the study of contemporary popular music. Although intended mainly for students in sociology, media and communication studies, and cultural studies, the book will also give others a deeper understanding of popular music.

American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century

American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century Review

Designed as a broad introductory survey, and written by experts in the field, this book examines the rise of American music over the past hundred years-the period in which that music came into its own and achieved unprecedented popularity. Beginning with a look at music as a business, eleven essays explore a variety of popular musical genres, including Tin Pan Alley, blues, jazz, country, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, folk, rap, and Mexican American corridos. Reading these essays, we come to see that the forms created by one group often appeal to, and are in turn influenced by, other groups-across lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, region, and age.

The chapters speak to one another, arguing for the primacy of such concepts as minstrelsy, urbanization, hybridity, and crossover as the most powerful tools for understanding American popular music. Moving beyond outdated music-industry categories and misleading genre labels, while acknowledging the complexities of the market, the book recovers and reinforces the essential blackness of much popular music-even a presumably white form like country and western.

In addition to Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey Melnick, contributors include Reebee Garofalo, Geoffrey Jacques, Kip Lornell, Mark Anthony Neal, Millie Rahn, David Sanjek, James Smethurst, Elijah Wald, and Gail Hilson Woldu.

American Popular Music: Readings From the Popular Press Volume I: The Nineteenth-Century Tin Pan Alley

American Popular Music: Readings From the Popular Press Volume I: The Nineteenth-Century Tin Pan Alley 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.

American Popular Music: The Rock Years

American Popular Music: The Rock Years Review

Rock, country, pop, soul, funk, punk, folk, hip-hop, techno, grunge--it's all here. In American Popular Music: The Rock Years, Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman take readers on a fascinating journey through the rich historical and stylistic landscape of American rock. An abridged version of the authors' acclaimed American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV, this volume includes chapters 8-14 of the longer book along with new introductory and concluding chapters.
American Popular Music: The Rock Years traces the development of rock from its roots in the mid-1940s to its current state in the twenty-first century, integrating in-depth discussions of the music itself with solid coverage of the attendant historical, social, and cultural circumstances. It strikes a balance between musical analysis and social context, showing how rock and American culture have continuously influenced each other over time. Using well-chosen examples, insightful commentaries, and an engaging writing style, the authors highlight the contributions of diverse groups to the development of rock music, explain the effects of advancements in recording technology, and chronicle the growth of rock music as an industry. The book is enhanced by a rich illustration program; boxed inserts on significant individuals, recordings, and intriguing topics; and well-organized listening charts for recordings that are discussed in detail in the text. Remarkably accessible, American Popular Music: The Rock Years is ideal for introductory courses in the history of rock and roll and will encourage readers to become more critically aware listeners of rock music.

Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely (Profiles in Popular Music)

Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely (Profiles in Popular Music) Review

How the British rock band Radiohead subverts the idea of the concept album in order to articulate themes of alienation and anti-capitalism is the focus of Marianne Tatom Letts's analysis of Kid A and Amnesiac. These experimental albums marked a departure from the band's standard guitar-driven base layered with complex production effects. Considering the albums in the context of the band's earlier releases, Letts explores the motivations behind this change. She places the two albums within the concept-album/progressive-rock tradition and shows how both resist that tradition. Unlike most critics of Radiohead, who focus on the band's lyrics, videos, sociological importance, or audience reception, Letts focuses on the music itself. She investigates Radiohead's ambivalence toward its own success, as manifested in the vanishing subject of Kid A on these two albums.

(2011)

Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (American Crossroads)

Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (American Crossroads) Review

Ranging from Los Angeles to Havana to the Bronx to the U.S.-Mexico border and from klezmer to hip hop to Latin rock, this groundbreaking book injects popular music into contemporary debates over American identity. Josh Kun insists that America is not a single chorus of many voices folded into one, but rather various republics of sound that represent multiple stories of racial and ethnic difference. To this end he covers a range of music and listeners to evoke the ways that popular sounds have expanded our idea of American culture and American identity. Artists as diverse as The Weavers, Café Tacuba, Mickey Katz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bessie Smith, and Ozomatli reveal that the song of America is endlessly hybrid, heterogeneous, and enriching--a source of comfort and strength for populations who have been taught that their lives do not matter. Kun melds studies of individual musicians with studies of painters such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and of writers such as Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. There is no history of race in the Americas that is not a history of popular music, Kun claims. Inviting readers to listen closely and critically, Audiotopia forges a new understanding of sound that will stoke debates about music, race, identity, and culture for many years to come.

Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual (Music and the Moving Image)

Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual (Music and the Moving Image) Review

Music and other sound effects have been central to a whole host of media forms throughout the twentieth century, either as background, accompaniment, or main driving force. With the widespread growth of digital technologies, such interactions will continue to mutate in new directions.

Despite the expansion of research into the use of music and sound in film, the investigation of sonic interactions with other media forms has been a largely under-researched area. Music, Sound and Multimedia provides a unique study of how music and other sounds play a central part in our understandings and uses of a variety of communications media. It focuses on four areas of sound and music within broader multimedia forms—music videos, video game music, performance and presentation, and production and consumption—and addresses the centrality of such aural concerns within our everyday experiences. Charting historical developments, mapping contemporary patterns, and speculating on future possibilities, this book is essential for courses on sound and media within media and communications studies, cultural studies, and popular music studies.

Key features: Charts a number of key developments in music and multimedia interactions

Provides both historical overviews and theoretical analyses

Features a number of in-depth case studies of important issues.

Caribbean Popular Music: An Encyclopedia of Reggae, Mento, Ska, Rock Steady, and Dancehall

Caribbean Popular Music: An Encyclopedia of Reggae, Mento, Ska, Rock Steady, and Dancehall Review

Reggae music is more than just steel drum bands on white sand beaches. Its history is rich with culture and evolution, helping to tell the story of Jamaica's past. Due to its depth and extensive coverage, this book is the most complete and up to date encyclopedia about reggae, mento, ska, rocksteady, and dancehall music on the market today. Ideal for reggae lovers and college students studying music, this encyclopedia is comprehensive for high school students and non-music students as well. From Bob Marley to Wayne Wonder, this easy to use encyclopedia contains over 700 entries. Indices in both the front and back of the book make navigating through entries extremely user-friendly.

Entries cover singers and songwriters, producers, record labels, and different styles of music that evolved from reggae. Moskowitz truly captures the history and evolution of Jamaican music in this extensive, illuminating encyclopedia, while all the while making it accessible to both high school and college students.

Nordic Art Music: From the Middle Ages to the Third Millennium

Nordic Art Music: From the Middle Ages to the Third Millennium Review

The five countries that make up Northern Europe—Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland—have, over the course of the last several centuries, developed and unique and viable art music history that easily rivals that of their continental neighbors. Nordic Art Music: From the Middle Ages to the Third Millennium provides an informative and accessible overview of the fascinating historical and aesthetic developments of this music and its creators, from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, through the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, to the beginning of this new century. Though some Nordic composers, including Edvard Grieg, Carl Nielsen, and Jean Sibelius, have found great acclaim in all parts of the world, author Frederick Key Smith lays the foundation for their work in his discussion of the many composers relatively unknown outside of Northern Europe.

Smith ably discusses the composers, styles, and representative works of each era in language that makes for a highly readable musical history as well as a superior reference guide. The first English-language book of its type in nearly 40 years, Smith's study brings into focus this broad and exciting aspect of music history.

A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music (American Made Music)

A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music (American Made Music) Review

From the smiling, sentimental mothers portrayed in 1930s radio barn dance posters, to the sexual shockwaves generated by Elvis Presley, to the female superstars redefining contemporary country music, gender roles and imagery have profoundly influenced the ways country music is made and enjoyed. Proper male and female roles have influenced the kinds of sounds and images that could be included in country music; preconceptions of gender have helped to determine the songs and artists audiences would buy or reject; and gender has shaped the identities listeners made for themselves in relation to the music they revered.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays is the first book-length effort to examine how gender conventions, both masculine and feminine, have structured the creation and marketing of country music. The essays explore the uses of gender in creating the personas of stars as diverse as Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, and Shania Twain. The authors also examine how deeply conventions have influenced the institutions and everyday experiences that give country music its image: the popular and fan press, the country music industry in Nashville, and the line dance crazes that created the dance hall boom of the 1990s.

From Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life" to Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue," from Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" to Loretta Lynn's ode to birth control, "The Pill," A Boy Named Sue demonstrates the role gender played in the development of country music and its current prominence.

Kristine M. McCusker is a professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University.

Diane Pecknold is an independent scholar in Chicago, Illinois.

Music, Power, and Politics

Music, Power, and Politics Review

Music, Power, and Politics presents sixteen different cultural perspectives on the concept of music as a site of socio-political struggle. Essays by scholars from around the world explore the means by which music's long-acknowledged potential to persuade, seduce, indoctrinate, rouse, incite, or even silence listeners, has been used to advance agendas of power and protest. The essays included examine: music used to convey political ideology in Nazi Germany, apartheid-era South Africa, and modern-day North Korea postcolonial musical efforts to reclaim ethnic heritage in Serbia and the Caribbean music as a means of establishing new cultural identities for recently empowered social groups in the UK and Brazil the subversion of racial stereotypes through popular music in the USA music as a tool of popular resistance to oppressive government policies in modern day Iran and the Bolivian Andes