Music-History & Criticism

This comprehensive guidebook covers all that is Celtic in music today, through essays exploring solo artists, bands, singers, and players of specialized instruments, such as harps, pipes, fiddles, drums, squeezeboxes, whistles, mandolins and more. Performers profiled range from the rock-influenced group Clannad, to Welsh...

This book explores the evolution of 19 intriguing artists bred by the unique 1960s music scene, and traces the musical and cultural threads that gave birth to their electrifying innovations. From folk-rockers to blue- and brown-eyed soulsters to rock satirists and beyond, acclaimed rock...

This book looks inside the artists and music that transformed the American and British soundscape of the 1980s and '90s. Scene-setting essays - some with interviews of key figures - explore alternative rock's primary influences, from Captain Beefheart to Brian Eno, and its many...

From 1940 to 1989, nearly every hotel on the Las Vegas Strip employed a full-time band or orchestra. After the late 1980s, when control of the casinos changed hands from independent owners to corporations, almost all of these musicians found themselves unemployed. Played Out...

While much has been written about the sociological significance of the blues, this is a unique inquiry into the blues and the mind, a study of the blues as thought. Here, the subconscious power of the blues is examined from a poetic and psychological...

Possibly the best spiral-bound manuscript book available, featuring 64 pages of the same quality controlled sheet used for our premium manuscript paper. Twelve staves printed in black ink on cream colored, high-grade, heavy paper.Author: Mel Bay Publications IncISBN-10: 0871666413ISBN-13: 9780871666413Publisher: Mel Bay PublicationsLanguage: EnglishPublished:...

Gary Herman cuts through the PR spin to expose rock and roll's long history of decadence and degradation. From the stars of the 1950s to the rappers, divas, and heavy metal icons of today, he details lurid scandals, outrageous antics, tragic deaths, and who...

In their brief life as a band the Sex Pistols managed to create a resounding legend that lives on today. More than 20 years after their break-up, the band regrouped and achieved commercial success they never enjoyed in their heyday. Their memorabilia is even...

Following on from Giant Steps, comes the second instalment in Kenny Mathieson's series of jazz histories.Cookin' examines the birth and development of two of the key jazz styles of the post-war era, hard bop and its related offshoot, soul jazz. Hard bop was the...

This volume concentrates on the composer's vocal music, including the late Rueckert Lieder, the 8th Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde. A monument in Mahler studies, this volume concentrates on the composer's vocal music and, in particular, on some of his most famous,...

A crucial year in the Britten/Auden relationship, which reshaped and redefined artistic direction in the immediate pre-war period. Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden were key figures of the 1930s, and here Donald Mitchell traces their lives during one crucial year, 1936. They worked hard...

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are widely acknowledged as the great pop poets of the 1960s, transforming the popular song into a medium for questionng the personal, social, and political norms of their times. They emerged at a time when the music industry was...

Posing more riddles than the average sphinx, with its decipherable answers pointing somewhere dark, Song Cycle was anything but passive. I had already witnessed hippie bands playing with their backs to the hall, so the thought of late '60s musicians being interested in their...

In the fall of 1980 Richard and Linda Thompson (of Fairport Convention fame) had recently been dumped from their record label and were on the verge of divorce. Somehow they overcame these miserable circumstances and managed to make an album considered by many to...

A brilliant new survey and intelligent exploration of progressive rock, from its origins through to contemporary artists. Nicely illustrated, it includes rare photos of artists like Kate Bush and Genesis.Author: Paul Hegarty, Martin HalliwellISBN-10: 0826423329ISBN-13: 9780826423320Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLCLanguage: EnglishPublished: 06/23/2011Pages: 328Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.20lbsSize:...

Released in the U.S. in January 1968, The Who Sell Out was, according to critic Dave Marsh, a complete backfire--the album sold well, but not spectacularly and was] ultimately a nostalgic in-joke: Who but a pop intellectual could appreciate such a thing? Further rarifying...

When the Motor City 5 stormed the stage, the band combined the kinetic flash of James Brown on acid with the raw musical dynamics of the Who gone berserk. It's a unique band that can land itself on the cover of Rolling Stone a...

(Music Sales America). Taken from original sources, and carefully fingered for the modern player, this guitar anthology is as faithful as possible to the original while offering a practical performing score. All the pieces are graded in difficulty, and some are appropriate for beginners....

"Taken as a trilogy, consent not to be a single being is a monumental accomplishment: a brilliant theoretical intervention that might be best described as a powerful case for blackness as a category of analysis."-Brent Hayes Edwards, author of Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary...

Addressing a wide range of improvised art and music forms-from jazz and cinema to dance and literature-this volume's contributors locate improvisation as a key site of mediation between the social and the aesthetic. As a catalyst for social experiment and political practice, improvisation aids...

Singing was just one element of blues performance in the early twentieth century. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and other classic blues singers also tapped, joked, and flaunted extravagant costumes on tent show and black vaudeville stages. The press even described these women as "actresses"...

In The Political Force of Musical Beauty, Barry Shank shows how musical acts and performances generate their own aesthetic and political force, creating, however fleetingly, a shared sense of the world among otherwise diverse listeners. Rather than focusing on the ways in which music...

The forgotten history of the "all-girl" big bands of the World War II era takes center stage in Sherrie Tucker's Swing Shift. American demand for swing skyrocketed with the onslaught of war as millions-isolated from loved ones-sought diversion, comfort, and social contact through music...

From the silent era to the present day, popular music has been a key component of the film experience. Yet there has been little serious writing on film soundtracks that feature popular music. Soundtrack Available fills this gap, as its contributors provide detailed analyses...

Texas-born T Bone Burnett is an award-winning musician, songwriter, and producer with over forty years of experience in the entertainment industry. In The Philosopher King, Heath Carpenter evaluates and positions Burnett as a major cultural catalyst by grounding his work, and that of others...

During the 1920s, a visit to the movie theater almost always included a sing-along. Patrons joined together to render old favorites and recent hits, usually accompanied by the strains of a mighty Wurlitzer organ. The organist was responsible for choosing the repertoire and presentation...

Sounds American provides new perspectives on the relationship between nationalism and cultural production by examining how Americans grappled with musical diversity in the early national and antebellum eras. During this period a resounding call to create a distinctively American music culture emerged as a...

Today, country music enjoys a national fan base that transcends both economic and social boundaries. Sixty years ago, however, it was primarily the music of rural, working-class whites living in the South and was perceived by many Americans as "hillbilly music." In Smile When...

The first ethnographic study of music-making in modern SyriaHow does a Middle Eastern community create a modern image through its expression of heritage and authenticity? In Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria, Jonathan H. Shannon investigates expressions of authenticity in...

Inside the culture of an artistically influential music communityBritain is widely considered the cradle of independent music culture. Bands like Radiohead and Belle and Sebastian, which epitomize indie music's sounds and attitudes, have spawned worldwide fanbases. This in-depth study of the British independent music...

Examines the significance of the 'hood in rap and hip hopThe 'Hood Comes First looks at the increasingly specific emphasis on real neighborhoods and streets in rap music and hip hop culture as an urgent response to the cultural and geographical ghettoization of black...

A groundbreaking work expanding our view of music beyond the Western classical tradition.Cited by Soundpost as "remarkable and revolutionary" upon its publication in 1977, Music, Society, Education has become a classic in the study of music as a social force. Christopher Small sets out...

The year 2016 will mark the centennial of the birth of Albert Murray (1916-2013), who in thirteen books was by turns a lyrical novelist, a keen and iconoclastic social critic, and a formidable interpreter of jazz and blues. Not only did his prizewinning study...

In 1968, the New Yorker hired Ellen Willis as its first popular music critic. Her column, Rock, Etc., ran for seven years and established Willis as a leader in cultural commentary and a pioneer in the nascent and otherwise male-dominated field of rock criticism....

Norwegian Emigrant Songs and Ballads was first published in 1936. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.This book, presenting the English and Norwegian texts of more...

A groundbreaking collection of essays in feminist music criticism, this book addresses problems of gender and sexuality in repertoires ranging from the early seventeenth century to rock and performance art. ". . . this is a major book . . . [McClary's] achievement borders...

Originally published in 1946 and never before available in English, Music in Cuba is not only the best and most extensive study of Cuban musical history, it is a work of literature. Drawing on such primary documents as church circulars and musical scores, Carpentier...

The Sabbath Eve Service, a three-book set, is to date the most comprehensive annotated anthology of authentic musical liturgy of the Eastern European synagogue Friday night Shabbat service. Part of a projected five-volume set, this series is dedicated to the preservation of the legacy...

Sholom Kalib has taken on the crucial task of collecting, analyzing, and systematically presenting in over 160 examples a magnificent tradition to future generations of cantors, scholars of Jewish music, and music enthusiasts worldwide. Traditionally, this body of music was a source of great...

Keeping Score is a diverse collection of essays that argues for and demonstrates the current effort to redefine the methods, goals, and scope of musical scholarship. This volume gives voice to new directions in music studies, including traditional and "new" musicology, music and psychoanalysis,...

" After Pearl Harbor, Tin Pan Alley songwriters rushed to write the Great American War Song-an "Over There" for World War II. The most popular songs, however, continued to be romantic ballads, escapist tunes, or novelty songs. To remedy the situation, the federal government...

In the early seventies, King Crimson, Yes, Jethro Tull, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and many others brought forth a series of adventurous and visionary works, often of epic length. Responding both to the new possibilities in rock music opened up by "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely...

In 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know." Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach #13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal...

The Steelband Movement examines the dramatic transformation of pan from a Carnival street music into a national art and symbol in Trinidad and Tobago. By focusing on pan as a cultural process, Stephen Stuempfle demonstrates how the struggles and achievements of the steelband movement...

In this first in-depth look at the series, Alicia Kopfstein-Penk illustrates how the cultural, social, political, and musical upheavals of the long sixties impacted Bernstein's life and his Young People's Concerts.Author: Alicia Kopfstein-PenkISBN-10: 0810888491ISBN-13: 9780810888494Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield PublishersLanguage: EnglishPublished: 01/22/2015Pages: 354Format: HardcoverWeight: 1.40lbsSize:...

In Bon Jovi, Margaret Olson chronicles the history and music of the band from its inception to present day. She closely examines Bon Jovi's musical and social relevance to listeners past and present, exploring the remarkable ways the band has emerged as the expression...

Produced in 1958, The Big Country featured an all-star cast that included Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, and Oscar-winner Burl Ives. One of the most enduring elements of the film has been Jerome Moross's score. In Jerome Moross's The Big Country: A Film Score Guide,...

In Bach's Testament: On the Philosophical and Theological Background of The Art of Fugue, Gcz probes the philosophic-theological background of The Art of Fugue, revealing the special structures that supported the 1993 reconstruction. Bach's Testament investigates the reconstruction's metaphysical dimensions, focusing on the quadruple...

In Reading the Grateful Dead: A Critical Survey, Nicholas G. Meriwether has assembled a collection of essays that examine the development of Grateful Dead studies. This volume includes work from three generations of scholars and includes a wide variety of perspectives on the band...

During his early years, Franz Liszt worked as a traveling piano virtuoso, his adventures highlighted by his entrée into the literary world as a correspondent for the most popular French journals of his time. In this second volume of Janita Hall-Swadley's The Collected Writings...