Monday, January 16, 2012

Art of Modern Rock: Mini # 1 A-Z

Art of Modern Rock: Mini # 1 A-Z Review



From the coauthor of the smash success Art of Modern Rock comes its impish sibling, a compact volume ofdynamic rock posters. Filled with classic hits from the original volume plus loads of new material, Art of Modern Rock Mini #1: AZ is reformatted into a witty, giftable alphabet-book package. From "Anarchy" to "Zombie," all the key poster tropes and genres are covered. Designed for rock fans, art and design aficionados, and poster collectors alike, this mini spin-off is perfectly poised to reach legions of young (and young at heart) fans and new enthusiasts for the most enduring visual artifact and collectible of current musicthe rock poster.


Sunday, January 15, 2012

Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)

Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology) Review



In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium—the portable cassette player—caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption.

Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism.

Cassette Culture is the first scholarly account of Indian popular music and the first case study of a technological revolution now occurring throughout the world. It will be an essential resource for anyone interested in modern India, communications theory, world popular music, or contemporary global culture.






Friday, January 13, 2012

Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997-2001 (New Perspectives in Se Asian Studies)

Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997-2001 (New Perspectives in Se Asian Studies) Review



Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997-2001 (New Perspectives in Se Asian Studies) Feature

  • ISBN13: 9780299229047
  • Condition: New
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What happens to “local” sound when globalization exposes musicians and audiences to cultural influences from around the world? Jeremy Wallach explores this question as it plays out in the eclectic, evolving world of Indonesian music after the fall of the repressive Soeharto regime. Against the backdrop of Indonesia's chaotic and momentous transition to democracy, Wallach takes us to recording studios, music stores, concert venues, university campuses, video shoots, and urban neighborhoods. Integrating ground-level ethnographic research with insights drawn from contemporary cultural theory, he shows that access to globally circulating music and technologies has neither extinguished nor homogenized local music-making in Indonesia. Instead, it has provided young Indonesians with creative possibilities for exploring their identity in a diverse nation undergoing dramatic changes in an increasingly interconnected world. Ultimately, he finds, the unofficial, multicultural nationalism of Indonesian popular music provides a viable alternative to the religious, ethnic, regional, and class-based extremism that continues to threaten unity and democracy in that country.


Wednesday, January 11, 2012

100 Most Popular Genre Fiction Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies (Popular Authors Series)

100 Most Popular Genre Fiction Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies (Popular Authors Series) Review



Genre authors, like genre fiction, often get no respect. Traditional biographical dictionaries tend to focus on established authors with literary credentials, and if genre writers are included, they are certainly not the focus of the book. Yet genre fans hunger for information about their favorite writers. This compilation focuses exclusively on genre fiction authors, more specifically today's most popular genre authors. It profiles representatives from all major genres (mystery/detective, crime, adventure/suspense, thriller, horror, fantasy, science fiction, western, historical, women's, and romance). Most are contemporary authors, but a few classics who are still in print and widely read (e.g., J.R.R. Tolkien), are included. Featured authors include Julia Alvarez, Maeve Binchy, Lawrence Block, Clive Cussler, Tony Hillerman, Jan Karon, Faye Kellerman, Dean Koontz, Charles de Lint, Robert Ludlum, Terry McMillan, Anne Rice, Nora Roberts, Scott Turow, and Stuart Woods. A wonderful reference, particularly for readers' advisors and adult and teen readers seeking information about their favorite writers, this book can also be used as a source for student reports and research papers. It is an affordable alternative to multivolume sets. Young adult and adult. Grades 10 and up.


Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Popular Music Studies (Hodder Arnold Publication)

Popular Music Studies (Hodder Arnold Publication) Review



Introduces students to the most significant debates in the field, offering fresh perspectives and suggesting new directions. Genuinely interdisciplinary on scope, the book outlines the history and development of popular music studies while offering and unprecedentedly international perspective on popular music, featuring writers from North and South America, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Combining insights from media and cultural studies, sociology, music analysis, ethnomusicology, and performance studies, the essays cover textual analysis, place and space, production, consumption, and everyday life.


Friday, January 6, 2012

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.


Thursday, January 5, 2012

Media and Popular Music (Media Topics)

Media and Popular Music (Media Topics) Review



This book analyses the relationships between music and contemporary media, both via the mediation of music, and music as mediator. This will involve considering music as a means of understanding events, and also of establishing, confirming or subverting the 'meaning' of events.

Examining visual, print, radio and 'new' media, this textbook draws together disparate elements of music and media which formerly have not been considered together, and provides a fresh and innovative contribution to the swiftly growing field of popular music studies. Key topics are presented via chapter-long case studies and more broadly applied theoretical analyses.