Download or read book Racionais MCs Sobrevivendo no Inferno written by Derek Pardue and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1997 the rap group Racionais MCs (the 'Rational' MCs) recorded the album Sobrevivendo no Inferno (Surviving in Hell), subsequently changing the hip-hop scene in São Paulo and firmly establishing itself as the point of reference for youth across Brazil. In an era when rappers needed to defend the very idea that their work was indeed music and a time when neighborhoods such as Capão Redondo, from where Racionais frontman Mano Brown hailed, often topped homicide statistics, Sobrevivendo empowered as it provoked. As one journalist noted, “the underworld of São Paulo's working-class suburbs is dominated by cheap thrills and provides little space for representation.” Sobrevivendo changed all of that; a brutal but invigorating imagination was born. The lure of Sobrevivendo is the particular combination of word and sound that powerfully involves listeners, especially those millions of young Brazilians who live in the neighborhoods on the periphery of Brazil's megacities. This book celebrates the 25-year anniversary of Sobrevivendo by representing the album's power not only within the hip-hop community but also in other cultural domains such as cinema and literature. The author also provides his own narrative spins on the sentiment of Sobrevivendo, thus making the book a creative mix of cultural analysis and inspired testimony.
Download or read book A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin written by Rolf J. Goebel and published by Camden House. This book was released on 2009 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) has emerged as one of the leading cultural critics of the twentieth century. His work encompasses aesthetics, metaphysical language and narrative theories, German literary history, philosophies of history, the intersection of Marxism and Messianic thought, urban topography, and the development of photography and film. Benjamin defined the task of the critic as one that blasts endangered moments of the past out of the continuum of history so that they attain new significance. This volume of new essays employs this principle of actualization as its methodological program in offering a new advanced introduction to Benjamin's own work. The essays analyze Benjamin's central texts, themes, terminologies, and genres in their original contexts while simultaneously situating them in new parameters, such as contemporary media, memory culture, constructions of gender, postcoloniality, and theories of urban topographies. The Companion brings together an international group of established and emerging scholars to explicate Benjamin's actuality from a multidisciplinary perspective. Designed for audiences interested in literary criticism, cultural studies, and neighboring disciplines, the volume serves as a stimulus for new debates about Benjamin's intellectual legacy today. Contributors: Wolfgang Bock, Willi Bolle, Dianne Chisholm, Adrian Daub, Dominik Finkelde, Eric Jarosinski, Lutz Koepnick, Vivian Liska, Karl Ivan Solibakke, Marc de Wilde, Bernd Witte Rolf J. Goebel is Distinguished Professor of German and Chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Download or read book Law and Disorder in the Postcolony written by Jean Comaroff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are postcolonies haunted more by criminal violence than other nation-states? The usual answer is yes. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, Jean and John Comaroff and a group of respected theorists show that the question is misplaced: that the predicament of postcolonies arises from their place in a world order dominated by new modes of governance, new sorts of empires, new species of wealth—an order that criminalizes poverty and race, entraps the “south” in relations of corruption, and displaces politics into the realms of the market, criminal economies, and the courts. As these essays make plain, however, there is another side to postcoloniality: while postcolonies live in states of endemic disorder, many of them fetishize the law, its ways and itsmeans. How is the coincidence of disorder with a fixation on legalities to be explained? Law and Disorder in the Postcolony addresses this question, entering into critical dialogue with such theorists as Benjamin, Agamben, and Bayart. In the process, it also demonstrates how postcolonies have become crucial sites for the production of contemporary theory, not least because they are harbingers of a global future under construction.
Download or read book Life in the Megalopolis written by Lucia Sa and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern metropolis has been called 'the symbol of our times', and life in it epitomizes, for many, modernity itself. But what to make of inherited ideas of modernity when faced with life in Mexico City and São Paulo, two of the largest metropolises in the world? Is their fractured reality, their brutal social contrasts, and the ever-escalating violence faced by their citizens just an intensification of what Engels described in the first in-depth analysis of an industrial metropolis, nineteenth century Manchester? Or have post-industrial and neo-globalized economies given rise to new forms of urban existence in the so-called developing world? Life in the Megalopolis: Mexico City and São Paulo investigates how such questions are explored in cultural productions from these two Latin American megalopolises, the focus being on literature, film popular music, and visual arts. This book combines close readings of works with a constant reference to theoretical, anthropological and social studies of these two cities, and builds on received definitions of the concept megalopolis Life in the Megalopolis is the first book to combine urban-studies theories (particularly Lefebvre, Harvey, and de Certeau) with Benjaminian cultural analyses, and theoretical discussions with close-readings of recent cultural works in various media. It is also the first book to compare Mexico City and São Paulo.
Download or read book Lost for Words written by Goetz Frank Ottmann and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-10-06 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lost for Words? explores the rise and decline of progressive Catholic grassroots activism and its drive for social justice and democratic change in four low-income neighborhoods in S‹o Paulo, Brazil. Ottmann focuses on the obstacles faced by the poor who took seriously the claim that "the people" were to transform Brazilian society "from the bottom up." He follows their travails through periods of democratization, mass unemployment, and conservative backlash within the Church.Goetz Frank Ottmann moves beyond purely political analysis to record how residents and progressive Catholic activists were drawn into a struggle for a "juster" society, and how this movement began to unravel even before it reached its peak in the early 1980s. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation, and drawing on theoretical insights from recent debates on social movements and the sociology of religion, he examines how, by the early 1990s, the liberationist movement had lost its following, lost its allies, failed to achieve its core goals, and seemed to die. Ottmann then shows how in recent years activists have worked to create a new and pragmatic form of religious activism, one that draws on a range of agendas, including Catholic feminism.
Download or read book African Roots Brazilian Rites written by C. Sterling and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text explores how Afro-Brazilians define their Africanness through Candomblé and Quilombo models, and construct paradigms of blackness with influences from US-based perspectives, through the vectors of public rituals, carnival, drama, poetry, and hip hop.
Download or read book Living Il legalities in Brazil written by Sara Brandellero and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflecting on some of Brazil’s foremost challenges, this book considers the porous relationship between legality and illegality in a country that presages political and societal changes in hitherto unprecedented dimensions. It brings together work by established scholars from Brazil, Europe and the United States to think through how (il)legalities are produced and represented at the level of institutions, (daily) practice and culture. Through a transdisciplinary approach, the chapters cover issues including informal work practices (e.g. street vendors), urban squatter movements and migration. Alongside social practices, the volume features close analyses of cultural practices and cultural production, including migrant literature, punk music and indigenous art. The question of (il)legalities resonates beyond Brazil’s borders, as concepts such as "lawfare" have crept into vocabularies, and countries the world over grapple with issues like state interference, fake news and the definition of "illegal" migration. This is valuable reading for scholars in Brazilian and Latin American Studies, as well as those working in literary and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, geography and political science.
Download or read book Latin American Cyberculture and Cyberliterature written by Claire Taylor and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of critical essays investigates an emergent and increasingly important field of cultural production in Latin America: cyberliterature and cyberculture in their varying manifestations, including blogs and hypertext narratives, collective novels and e-mags, digital art and short Net-films. Highly innovative in its conception, this book provides the first sustained academic focus on this area of cultural production, and investigates the ways in which cyberliterature and cyberculture in the broadest sense are providing new configurations of subjects, narrative voices, and even political agency, for Latin Americans. The volume is divided into two main sections. The first comprises eight chapters on the broad area of cyberculture and identity formation/preservation including the development of different types of cybercommunities in Latin America. While many of the chapters applaud the creative potential of these new virtual communities, identities and cultural products to create networks across boundaries and offer new contestatory strategies, they also consider whether such phenomena may risk reinforcing existing social inequalities or perpetuate conservatism. The second section comprises six chapters and an afterword that deal with the nature of cyberliterature in all its many forms, from the (cyber)cultural legacies of writers such as Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges, to traditional print literature from the region that reflects on the subject of new technology, to weblogs and hypertext and hypermedia fiction proper.
Download or read book John Farnham s Whispering Jack written by Graeme Turner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-03-10 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The album examined in this book transformed the singer John Farnham from a faded teen pop star into the most popular solo rock performer in Australia, in a career that has lasted for more than 30 years. Whispering Jack remains the top-selling album by an Australian artist in Australia, and constitutes the turning point in Farnham's bid to achieve credibility as an adult contemporary musician. The first single from the album, 'You're the Voice,' has achieved such iconic status that it is routinely referred to as Australia's unofficial national anthem. The book examines the album, its context and that history in order to recover a crucial conjuncture in the development of Australian rock and popular music, one that has previously been ignored in Australian popular music studies.
Download or read book Bea Palya s I ll Be Your Plaything written by András Rónai and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, the state-run music industry in Hungary has artificially isolated musical worlds. The 2010 album I'll Be Your Plaything is a concept album comprising at times drastically re-imagined cover versions of Hungary's most popular hits from the socialist era. As such it is a testament to music as a medium's aptness to reflect on public and personal pasts. The album moreover exemplifies how rich and appealing synthesis of sounds and traditions can be concocted when folk, classically trained, rock, and jazz musical artists collaborate. Along with this freedom to blend and synthesize, the album opens up some long overdue space for women; playing with personas, voices, and singing styles, Palya reflects on issues of femininity, maternity, sexuality, and coupledom across generations.
Download or read book Kylie Minogue s Kylie written by Adrian Renzo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kylie Minogue's self-titled debut album produced hits, controversy and a perfect mainstream storm. The then soap and children's television star 'crossed over' to music with hit writer/producers SAW - and the shamelessly commercial approach of all involved saw the 'real' music industry get its back up. This book interrogates the way that commercial pop albums are remembered in both the popular music press and in academic research. Is there a way of dealing with 'mainstream' pop without denigrating the music and (just as importantly) without validating it according to the terms of a 'high art' canon? This text sheds light on the way that notions of 'mainstream' and 'other' play out in a local context-specifically, Australia and New Zealand music on a global stage.
Download or read book Shonen Knife s Happy Hour written by Brooke McCorkle Okazaki and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shonen Knife-an all-female punk trio from Osaka, Japan-cultivated a global fan base that has included the likes of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. Their 1998 album Happy Hour, filled with tunes about delicacies ranging from sushi to banana chips, encapsulates the band's charming fusion of cuteness with punk rock cool. Tracing histories of food and josei rock in Japan, McCorkle Okazaki outlines the ways Shonen Knife has, over the last forty years, consistently used seemingly straightforward songs about food to comment on gender stereotypes in popular culture.
Download or read book Los Rodr guez s Sin Documentos written by Héctor Fouce and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-10-06 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sin Documentos is a landmark album in Spanish popular culture and continues to maintain considerable popularity more than two decades after its release. The characteristic guitar riff of the title song, a kind of rumba-rock, still occupies a place at every party in Spain. Los Rodríguez's success came after a decade characterized by the rise and fall of local-language punk and new wave bands. By the time Sin Documentos appeared, however, rock journalism was fascinated by the thriving indie scene, where the bands were singing in English and had turned to grunge and noise rock. This book evaluates the influence of Latin American pop-rock in the modernization of Spanish popular music from the 1950s, despite the Anglophilia of Spanish rock scenes, especially in the 1990s. Through interviews with members of the band and members of the record label DRO, analysis of the media coverage of the album and a cultural analysis of its meanings, it delves into the cultural trends of Spain throughout the 1990s and beyond.
Download or read book Nenes Koza Dabasa written by Henry Johnson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Koza Dabasa explores Okinawa's island culture and its ghosts of war through the lens of Nenes, a four-woman pop group that draws on the distinctiveness and exoticism of Okinawan musical tradition. Both a tropical island paradise and the site of some of the bloodiest battles of World War II, Okinawa has a unique culture and a contentious history. Its musical traditions are distinct from other parts of Japan, varying in instrumentation, poetic forms, and musical scales. Nenes marks its cultural difference as Okinawan by emphasizing its own exoticism, expressed through its music, fashion, imagery, and performance style. Henry Johnson listens to Koza Dabasa as a representation of Okinawa's relationship with the Japanese music industry and with the broader themes of international warfare and local tourism. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-based books and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.
Download or read book Yuming s The 14th Moon written by Lasse Lehtonen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is not an exaggeration that Matsutoya Yumi-better known by her stage name Yuming-is one of the most influential figures in Japanese popular music history. A singer-songwriter recognized globally for her songs used in Miyazaki Hayao's beloved animations, Yuming has captured the hearts of listeners of different generations since her debut in the early 1970s. Her fourth album, The 14th Moon, released in 1976, was a milestone in establishing her signature style: the posh, “city” sound that later paved the way to the 1980s City Pop and 1990s J-pop. In addition to examining the album's astonishing stylistic versatility, this book explores how Yuming revolutionized the position of women in Japanese popular music and how her work can help us understand social changes in Japan of the 1970s.
Download or read book Alastair Riddell s Space Waltz written by Ian Chapman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-02-09 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alastair Riddell's band Space Waltz was a short-lived one-album New Zealand rock act who hit gold with a #1 hit single in October 1974 with the song 'Out On The Street' but thereafter failed to achieve anything even close to that feat. While relegated to one-hit-wonder status in the eyes of many, to this day Riddell and Space Waltz epitomize the mid-1970s heyday of glam rock in New Zealand. But in truth their impact went far beyond this. Their generationally divisive nation-wide debut on the hugely popular MOR television talent quest Studio One/New Faces demonstrated the power of mass media exposure – they were instantly signed to a record deal with industry giant EMI – while Riddell's controversial gender-bending image provided a cultural crossroads that greatly impacted the wider youth culture of Aotearoa New Zealand. In addition, while the album's most famous track, 'Out On The Street,' is rightly regarded as New Zealand's glam rock anthem, the wider album demonstrates a compositional and musical depth that goes far beyond glam rock and into the realm of sophisticated progressive rock, ultimately providing an unlikely and highly unique musical amalgam.
Download or read book Darkthrone s A Blaze in the Northern Sky written by Ross Hagen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darkthrone's A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992) is a foundational keystone of the musical and aesthetic vision of the notorious Norwegian black metal scene and one of the most beloved albums of the genre. Its mysterious artwork and raw sound continue to captivate and inspire black metal fans and musicians worldwide. This book explores the album in the context of exoticism and musical geography, examining how black metal music has come to conjure images of untamed Nordic wildernesses for fans worldwide. In doing so, it analyzes aspects of musical style and production that created the distinctly "grim" sound of Darkthrone and Norwegian black metal.
