Download or read book Manufacturing the Muse written by Dennis G. Waring and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-29 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a 19th century instrument helped to shape New World culture.
Download or read book Manufacturing the Muse Estey Organs Consumer Culture in Victorian America written by Dennis G. Waring and published by . This book was released on 2002-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Estey Organ Company (1846-1960) produced over a half-million reed organs and 3,000 pipe organs in Brattleboro, Vermont. Dennis Waring's scholarly treatise on the Estey company reveals important connections between music and musical instruments with evolving American sensibilities, manufacturing and technological industrialism, marketing and advertising, international trade, social stratification, gender issues, emerging popular culture and general insight into Victorian Americana.
Download or read book Making Beats written by Joseph G. Schloss and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on ten years of research among hip-hop producers, Making Beats was the first work of scholarship to explore the goals, methods, and values of a surprisingly insular community. Focusing on a variety of subjects—from hip-hop artists’ pedagogical methods to the Afrodiasporic roots of the sampling process to the social significance of “digging” for rare records—Joseph G. Schloss examines the way hip-hop artists have managed to create a form of expression that reflects their creative aspirations, moral beliefs, political values, and cultural realities. This second edition of the book includes a new foreword by Jeff Chang and a new afterword by the author.
Download or read book Tuning the World written by Fanny Gribenski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-01-26 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tuning the World tells the unknown story of how the musical pitch A 440 became the global norm. Now commonly accepted as the point of reference for musicians in the Western world, A 440 hertz only became the standard pitch during an international conference held in 1939. The adoption of this norm was the result of decades of negotiations between countries, involving a diverse group of performers, composers, diplomats, physicists, and sound engineers. Although there is widespread awareness of the variability of musical pitches over time, as attested by the use of lower frequencies to perform early music repertoires, no study has fully explained the invention of our current concert pitch. In this book, Fanny Gribenski draws on a rich variety of previously unexplored archival sources and a unique combination of musicological perspectives, transnational history, and science studies to tell the unknown story of how A 440 became the global norm. Tuning the World demonstrates the aesthetic, scientific, industrial, and political contingencies underlying the construction of one of the most “natural” objects of contemporary musical performance and shows how this century-old effort was ultimately determined by the influence of a few powerful nations.
Download or read book Listening and Longing written by Daniel Cavicchi and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Northeast Popular Culture Association’s Peter C. Rollins Book Award (2012) Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award (2012) Listening and Longing explores the emergence of music listening in the United States, from its early stages in the antebellum era, when entrepreneurs first packaged and sold the experience of hearing musical performance, to the Gilded Age, when genteel critics began to successfully redefine the cultural value of listening to music. In a series of interconnected stories, American studies scholar Daniel Cavicchi focuses on the impact of industrialization, urbanization, and commercialization in shaping practices of music audiences in America. Grounding our contemporary culture of listening in its seminal historical moment—before the iPod, stereo system, or phonograph—Cavicchi offers a fresh understanding of the role of listening in the history of music.
Download or read book The Cultural Work written by Corinna Campbell and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do people in an intensely multicultural city live alongside one another while maintaining clear boundaries? This question is at the core of The Cultural Work, which illustrates how the Maroons (descendants of escaped slaves) of Suriname and French Guiana, on the northern coast of South America, have used culture-representational performance to sustain their communities within Paramaribo, the capital. Focusing on three collectives known locally as "cultural groups," which specialize in the music and dance traditions of the Maroons, it marks a vital contribution to knowledge about the cultural map of the African diaspora in South America, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Download or read book Sensational Knowledge written by Tomie Hahn and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DVD contains: Examples of performances.
Download or read book Antiphonal Histories written by Julia Byl and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Positioned on a major trade route, the Toba Batak people of Sumatra have long witnessed the ebb and flow of cultural influence from India, the Middle East, and the West. Living as ethnic and religious minorities within modern Indonesia, Tobas have recast this history of difference through interpretations meant to strengthen or efface the identities it has shaped. Antiphonal Histories examines Toba musical performance as a legacy of global history, and a vital expression of local experience. This intriguingly constructed ethnography searches the palm liquor stand and the sanctuary to show how Toba performance manifests its many histories through its “local music”—Lutheran brass band hymns, gong-chime music sacred to Shiva, and Jimmie Rodgers yodeling. Combining vivid narrative, wide-ranging historical research, and personal reflections, Antiphonal Histories traces the musical trajectories of the past to show us how the global is manifest in the performative moment.
Download or read book Running with the Devil written by Robert Walser and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A solid, scholarly analysis of the power, meaning, musical structure, and sociopolitical contexts of the most popular examples of heavy metal.” —Library Journal Dismissed by critics and academics, condemned by parents and politicians, and fervently embraced by legions of fans, heavy metal music continues to attract and embody cultural conflicts that are central to society. In Running with the Devil, Robert Walser explores how and why heavy metal works, both musically and socially, and at the same time uses metal to investigate contemporary formations of identity, community, gender, and power. This edition includes a new foreword by Harris M. Berger contextualizing the work and a new afterword by the author. Ebook Edition Note: all photographs (sixteen) have been redacted. “Walser belongs to a small but influential group of academics trying to reconcile ‘high theory’ with a streetwise sense of culture . . . an excellent book.” —Rolling Stone “Takes musicology where it has never gone before; I once saw the chapter on metal guitarists and the classical tradition performed live in a lecture hall, but even on paper it smokes.” —SF Weekly “Walser is truly gifted at doing what few critics before him have done: analyzing the music . . . In virtuoso readings of metal music that forge persuasive links between metal and particular classical music traditions, Walser reveals the ways that musical structures themselves are social texts.” —The Nation “Making surprising connections to classical forms and debunking stereotypes of metal’s musical crudity, Walser delves enthusiastically into guitar conventions and rituals.” —The Washington Post
Download or read book Listening to Salsa written by Frances R. Aparicio and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the MLA's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book published in English in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and culture (1999) For Anglos, the pulsing beats of salsa, merengue, and bolero are a compelling expression of Latino/a culture, but few outsiders comprehend the music's implications in larger social terms. Frances R. Aparicio places this music in context by combining the approaches of musicology and sociology with literary, cultural, Latino, and women's studies. She offers a detailed genealogy of Afro-Caribbean music in Puerto Rico, comparing it to selected Puerto Rican literary texts, then looks both at how Latinos/as in the US have used salsa to reaffirm their cultural identities and how Anglos have eroticized and depoliticized it in their adaptations. Aparicio's detailed examination of lyrics shows how these songs articulate issues of gender, desire, and conflict, and her interviews with Latinas/os reveal how they listen to salsa and the meanings they find in it. What results is a comprehensive view "that deploys both musical and literary texts as equally significant cultural voices in exploring larger questions about the power of discourse, gender relations, intercultural desire, race, ethnicity, and class."
Download or read book Setting the Record Straight written by Colin Symes and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-29 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The words surrounding music influence how we listen to it.
Download or read book The Hidden Musicians written by Ruth Finnegan and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark in the study of music and culture, this acclaimed volume documents the remarkable scope of amateur music-making in the English town of Milton Keynes. It presents in vivid detail the contrasting yet overlapping worlds of classical orchestras, church choirs, brass bands, amateur operatic societies, and amateur bands playing jazz, rock, folk, and country. Notable for its contribution to wider theoretical debates and its influential challenge to long-held assumptions about music and how to study it, the book focuses on the practices rather than the texts or theory of music, rejecting the idea that only selected musical traditions, “great names,” or professional musicians are worth studying. This opens the door to the invisible work put in by thousands of local people of diverse backgrounds, and how the pathways creatively trodden by amateur musicians have something to tell us about both urban living and what it is to be human. Now with a new preface by the author, this long-awaited reissue of The Hidden Musicians will bring its insights and innovations to a new generation of students and scholars.
Download or read book The City of Musical Memory written by Lise A. Waxer and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Popular Music Books (2002) Winner of the Society for Ethnomusicology's (SEM) Alan P. Merriam Prize (2003) Salsa is a popular dance music developed by Puerto Ricans in New York City during the 1960s and 70s, based on Afro-Cuban forms. By the 1980s, the Colombian metropolis of Cali emerged on the global stage as an important center for salsa consumption and performance. Despite their geographic distance from the Caribbean and from Hispanic Caribbean migrants in New York City, Caleños (people from Cali) claim unity with Cubans, Puerto Ricans and New York Latinos by virtue of their having adopted salsa as their own. The City of Musical Memory explores this local adoption of salsa and its Afro-Caribbean antecedents in relation to national and regional musical styles, shedding light on salsa's spread to other Latin American cities. Cali's case disputes the prevalent academic notion that live music is more "real" or "authentic" than its recorded versions, since in this city salsa recordings were until recently much more important than musicians themselves, and continued to be influential in the live scene. This book makes valuable contributions to ongoing discussions about the place of technology in music culture and the complex negotiations of local and transnational cultural identities.
Download or read book Traveling Spirit Masters written by Deborah Kapchan and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A group of ritual musicians and former slaves brought from sub-Saharan Africa to Morocco, the Gnawa heal those they believe to be possessed, using incense, music, and trance. But their practice is hardly of only local interest: the Gnawa have long participated in the world music market through collaborations with African-American jazz musicians and French recording artists. In this first book in English on Gnawa music and its global reach, author Deborah Kapchan explores how these collaborations transfigure racial and musical identities on both sides of the Atlantic. She also addresses how aesthetic styles associated with the sacred come to inhabit non-sacred contexts, and what new amalgams they produce. Her narrative details the fascinating intrinsic properties of trance, including details of enactment, the role of gesture and the body, and the use of the senses, and how they both construct authentic Gnawa identity and reconstruct historically determined relations of power. Traveling Spirit Masters is a captivating and elucidating demonstration of how and why trance—and indeed all sacred music—is fast becoming a transnational sensation.
Download or read book Planet Beethoven written by Mina Yang and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Planet Beethoven, Mina Yang makes the compelling case that classical music in the twenty-first century is just as vibrant and relevant as ever—but with significant changes that give us insight into the major cultural shifts of our day. Perusing events, projects, programs, writings, musicians, and compositions, Yang shines a spotlight on the Western art music tradition. The book covers an array of topics, from the use of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” in YouTube clips and hip-hop, to the marketing claims of Baby Einstein products, and the new forms of music education introduced by Gustavo Dudamel, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. While the book is global in its outlook, each chapter investigates the unique attributes of a specific performer, performance, or event. One chapter reflects on Chinese pianist Yuja Wang’s controversial performance at the Hollywood Bowl, another explores the highly symbolic Passion 2000 Project in Stuttgart, Germany. Sure to be of interest to students, professionals, and aficionados, Planet Beethoven traces the tensions that arise from the “classical” nature of this tradition and our rapidly changing world. Ebook Edition Note: One image has been redacted.
Download or read book Sounds of the Metropolis written by Derek B. Scott and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2008-07-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 'Sounds of the Metropolis', Derek Scott argues that it was in the 19th century that the first popular music revolution occurred. He illustrates how a distinct group of popular styles first began to challenge the classical tradition and assert their own values and independence.
Download or read book Music Politics and Violence written by Susan Fast and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music and violence have been linked since antiquity in ritual, myth, and art. Considered together they raise fundamental questions about creativity, discourse, and music’s role in society. The essays in this collection investigate a wealth of issues surrounding music and violence—issues that cross political boundaries, time periods, and media—and provide cross-cultural case studies of musical practices ranging from large-scale events to regionally specific histories. Following the editors’ substantive introduction, which lays the groundwork for conceptualizing new ways of thinking about music as it relates to violence, three broad themes are followed: the first set of essays examines how music participates in both overt and covert forms of violence; the second section explores violence and reconciliation; and the third addresses healing, post-memorials, and memory. Music, Politics, and Violence affords space to look at music as an active agent rather than as a passive art, and to explore how music and violence are closely—and often uncomfortably—entwined. CONTRIBUTORS include Nicholas Attfield, Catherine Baker, Christina Baade, J. Martin Daughtry, James Deaville, David A. McDonald, Kevin C. Miller, Jonathan Ritter, Victor A. Vicente, and Amy Lynn Wlodarski.
