Music-History & Criticism

From the chaotic world of music journalism comes this collection of unabridged, unexpurgated interviews with four of the brightest, most influential and complex pop and rock musicians alive: Gene Simmons of Kiss, Peter Hook of New Order, Jerry Casale of Devo, and Scott Thunes...

Chicago's love affair with opera began early, in 1850, when the frontier town welcomed its first traveling opera singers. A full house applauded the opening performance, but during a repeat performance the next day, the theater burned to the ground. Nonetheless, Chicago had been...

'Engaging With Everyday Sounds' is a rich and inspiring exploration of the role of sounds in everyday life, including their impact on human actions, emotions, and imagination. Marcel Cobussen intertwines sonic studies with philosophy, sound art, sociology and more to create an impressively lucid...

Philip Larkin (1922-85) was not only one of the foremost English poets of the twentieth century, but also a notable novelist and a distinguished writer on jazz. He was jazz critic for The Daily Telegraph between 1961 and 1971. Jazz Writings brings together Larkin's...

Turn it Up! is part-memoir of my time as a musician and journalist, and part-pop history, examining some of the unsung or more interesting bands which I have connected with in some way since I began listening to the radio as a kid.It begins...

For over three decades now, David Byrne has been a leading light in American culture - in popular music, experimental theatre, film, television, fine art, and writing. Based on the cultural capital he gained with his groundbreaking band Talking Heads, Byrne is able to...

The Life of Rossini, has been acknowledged as a major work throughout human history, and we have taken precautions to assure its preservation by republishing this book in a modern manner for both present and future generations. This book has been completely retyped, revised,...

A little more than 50 years ago, in 1955, Ali AkbarKhan issued an LP called Music of India: Morning and Evening Ragas, with spoken introduction by violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Until then, Indian music was terra incognita in the West. When the same album was...

The American musical is a paradox. On stage or screen, musicals at once hold a dominant and a contested place in the worlds of entertainment, art, and scholarship. Born from a m駘ange of performance forms that included opera and operetta, vaudeville and burlesque, minstrelsy...

In jazz circles, players and listeners with "big ears" hear and engage complexity in the moment, as it unfolds. Taking gender as part of the intricate, unpredictable action in jazz culture, this interdisciplinary collection explores the terrain opened up by listening, with big ears,...

Few expressions of popular culture have been shaped as profoundly by the relationship between commercialism and authenticity as country music has. While its apparent realism, sincerity, and frank depictions of everyday life are country's most obvious stylistic hallmarks, Diane Pecknold demonstrates that commercialism has...

With its steel guitars, Opry stars, and honky-tonk bars, country music is an American original. The most popular music in America today, it's also big business. Amazing, then, that country music has been so little studied by critics, given its predominance in American culture....

Formed in Wiltshire, England, in 1980, the Subhumans are rightly held in high regard as one of the best punk rock bands to ever hail from the UK. Over the course of five timeless studio albums and just as many classic EPs, not to...

This volume provides a transnational study of the impact of musical cultures in the Eastern Baltics-Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Russia-at the end of the Cold War and in the early post-Communist period.Author: Rūta StanevičiūteISBN-10: 1644698943ISBN-13: 9781644698945Publisher: Academic Studies PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/15/2022Pages: 362Format: HardcoverWeight: 1.50lbsSize:...

In this book, the glory days of progressive rock are relived in a series of insightful essays about the key bands, songwriters and songs that made prog-rock such an innovative style.Author: Kevin Holm-HudsonISBN-10: 0815337159ISBN-13: 9780815337157Publisher: RoutledgeLanguage: EnglishPublished: 10/19/2001Pages: 290Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.89lbsSize: 8.96h x 6.02w...

Once, there were four university students who started a rock band named after a firetruck. Five and a half decades later, REO Speedwagon are still going strong, still drawing massive crowds, and, thankfully, still have no plans to stop. With classic albums like the...

The African Diaspora presents musical case studies from various regions of the African diaspora, including Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, and Europe, that engage with broader interdisciplinary discussions about race, gender, politics, nationalism, and music. Featured here are jazz, wassoulou music, and...

Green Day are one of rock history's greatest and most successful bands. Singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tré Cool have been together creating rock music with a punk heart for over three decades. The trio has reigned supreme, shattering previously...

Twenty of Israel's leading art-music composers discuss the interaction of inspiration, method and cultural context in their work, revealing both international and national influence and scope. Israel's contemporary art music reflects a modern society that is an intricate fabric of national and ethnic origins,...

Examines a pan-ethnic style of music created by North African and Middle Eastern Israeli musicians in the late twentieth century. The relocation of North African and Middle Eastern Jews to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s brought together communities from Egypt, Iraq, Kurdistan, Yemen,...

Nowhere is the richness and variety of the English Renaissance better shown than in the dramatic works of the period which combined to an unusual degree the arts of poetry, music, acting, and dance. This collection of essays by a number of distinguished scholars...

Keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman is one of the most talented and influential musicians and composers to have graced the world of popular music. He is also one of the most prolific, with more than a 100 albums to his credit. The 1970s, however was...

R. Murray Schafer: A Creative Life is the authoritative exploration of the life and work of this preeminent Canadian composer, artist, educator, and activist. Working closely with the composer and his family, L. Brett Scott has created the most up-to-date and accurate exploration of...

Few bands in the past three decades have proven as affecting or exciting as the Misfits, the ferocious horror punk outfit that lurked in the shadows of suburban New Jersey and released a handful of pivotal underground recordings during their brief, tumultuous time together....

Reflects on the biggest artists of the MTV era--Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis, and even "Weird Al" Yankovic--in addition to acts from Van Halen to Prince and the year's top R&B, alternative, country and jazz releases.The On Record series is an year-by-year, comprehensive look...

Now in Paperback! J.J. Johnson, known as the spiritual father of modern trombone, has been a notable figure in the history of jazz. His career has embodied virtually every innovation and development in jazz over the past half-century. The first comprehensive biography, filmography, catalog...

American folk musicians Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, once musical partners, have had careers which are at once conservative and innovative, imbuing the best of folk traditions with their own powerful style. In The Unbroken Circle, Fred Metting challenges the musical labels that often...

Chronicles the first stirrings of synth pop writ large (the Human League, Soft Cell), the gated reverb drum sound that became ubiquitous (Phil Collins), superstars from Stevie Nicks to Billy Joel to the Police, and a full complement of one-hit wonders and R&B, country...

Histories of these songs, biographical information about the composers and lyricists, and background on each song's entrance into status as 'official' make this source the most comprehensive in existence. The entries include sheet music, allowing readers to reproduce for themselves the tunes that have...

Richard and JoAnne Reuss expertly capture the personality of this era and the fascinating chronology of events in American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927-1957, a historical analysis of singers, writers, union members and organizers and their connection with left-wing politics and folk music...

Masters of French Music, has been acknowledged as a major work throughout human history, and we have taken precautions to assure its preservation by republishing this book in a modern manner for both present and future generations. This book has been completely retyped, revised,...

Drawing on the authors' personal interviews and biographies, Stride! traces stride piano from generation to generation, from the originators Eubie Blake, Luckey Roberts, and James P. Johnson, through a succession of pianists like Willie the Lion Smith. Fell and Vinding also examine its influence...

Bernart de Ventadorn was a twelfth-century Catalan poet and troubador. These forty-one poems, filled with nostalgia, joy, and tenderness, were written between 1150 and 1180. This edition, with notes and a complete glossary, contains the original texts accompanied by the only English translations available...

Life of Haydn, has been acknowledged as a major work throughout human history, and we have taken precautions to assure its preservation by republishing this book in a modern manner for both present and future generations. This book has been completely retyped, revised, and...

Music was one of the first casualties of the Iranian Revolution. It was banned in 1979, but it quickly crept back into Iranian culture and politics. The state made use of music for its propaganda during the Iran-Iraq war. Over time music provided an...

Ranging chronologically from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries and thematically from Latin to vernacular literary modes, this book challenges standard assumptions about the musical cultures and philosophies of the European Middle Ages. Engaging a wide range of premodern texts and contexts, from the...

A brilliant new biography of the extraordinary, outrageous performer who helped open the floodgates of Rock 'n' Roll. In June, 2007, Little Richard's 1955 Specialty Records single, "Tutti Frutti," topped Mojo magazine's list of "100 Records That Changed the World." But back in the...

A master of mystery and paradox, Wagner spent his life composing himself while composing music. Written between 1864 and 1878, the essays in Art and Politics converge upon Wagner's desire to define and reform German culture. He was deeply annoyed that Germany seemed to...

Americana music isn't just a musical form--it's a state of mind. In this book, Monte Dutton charts the coordinates of this state of mind with a series of interviews and intimate portraits from the heart of alternative country, often known to its adherents simply...

The book is the prequel to Straight Outta Compton the most successful biopic of all time. This story takes you through the untold story of Alonzo "Lonzo" Williams the God father of West Coast hip hop, as he paved the way for superstars Dr....

This book details the origins of the names of 240 musical acts, focusing on the most popular groups (and a few individual performers) from the 1960s through today. Even casual music fans will recognize almost all of the acts discussed. A few one-hit wonders...

The Inner Game of Music, the breakout hit that became a standard primer in the music world, has taught thousands of musicians--professionals and amateurs alike--how to overcome self-consciousness and stage fright and to recapture a youthful, almost effortless capacity to learn. Now, in his...

What would a Deleuzian music philosophy be like? For Deleuze, music informed his work on several levels. He did not merely write about music, it formed part of his thinking. Deleuze and Music is the first volume to explore Deleuze's ideas from the perspective...

The flute (or closely related instrument) has been known since prehistoric times, but up until the middle of the nineteenth century it was still far from being a satisfactory instrument, despite the quantity of important music that had been written for it. Its tone...

A dictionary containing 3500 biographical entries, each representing a composer whose work has been used within the worship of the church in Britain and Ireland.Author: Robert Evans, Maggie HumphreysISBN-10: 0720123305ISBN-13: 9780720123302Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLCLanguage: EnglishPublished: 04/30/1998Pages: 448Format: HardcoverWeight: 1.61lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.00d

Second edition of a book which caused huge controversy in its first printing - now completely revised and updated. Argues that research into the cultural history of music can significantly help our understanding of the evolution of English national identity. Only book of its...

Why is classical music predominantly the preserve of the white middle classes? Contemporary associations between classical music and social class remain underexplored, with classical music primarily studied as a text rather than as a practice until recent years. In order to answer this question,...

For more than the first half of the last century, the voice of women in Top-40 popular music has been one of neediness and dependency. Please love me; I'll do anything for you; just be my baby, even if you're no good and treat...

Volume 2 of 3. This monumental three-volume work on the Italian madrigal from its beginnings about 1500 to its decline in the 17th century is based on the research of 40 years, and is a cultural history of the development of Italian music. Mr....

Volume 1 of 3. This monumental three-volume work on the Italian madrigal from its beginnings about 1500 to its decline in the 17th century is based on the research of 40 years, and is a cultural history of the development of Italian music. Mr....