Download or read book Into the Maelstrom Music Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom written by David Toop and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize 2017. In this first installment of acclaimed music writer David Toop's interdisciplinary and sweeping overview of free improvisation, Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970 introduces the philosophy and practice of improvisation (both musical and otherwise) within the historical context of the post-World War II era. Neither strictly chronological, or exclusively a history, Into the Maelstrom investigates a wide range of improvisational tendencies: from surrealist automatism to stream-of-consciousness in literature and vocalization; from the free music of Percy Grainger to the free improvising groups emerging out of the early 1960s (Group Ongaku, Nuova Consonanza, MEV, AMM, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble); and from free jazz to the strands of free improvisation that sought to distance itself from jazz. In exploring the diverse ways in which spontaneity became a core value in the early twentieth century as well as free improvisation's connection to both 1960s rock (The Beatles, Cream, Pink Floyd) and the era of post-Cagean indeterminacy in composition, Toop provides a definitive and all-encompassing exploration of free improvisation up to 1970, ending with the late 1960s international developments of free music from Roscoe Mitchell in Chicago, Peter Brötzmann in Berlin and Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg in Amsterdam.
Download or read book Into the Maelstrom Music Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom written by David Toop and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first installment of acclaimed music writer David Toop's interdisciplinary and sweeping overview of free improvisation, Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970 introduces the philosophy and practice of improvisation (both musical and otherwise) within the historical context of the post-World War II era. Neither strictly chronological, or exclusively a history, Into the Maelstrom investigates a wide range of improvisational tendencies: from surrealist automatism to stream-of-consciousness in literature and vocalization; from the free music of Percy Grainger to the free improvising groups emerging out of the early 1960s (Group Ongaku, Nuova Consonanza, MEV, AMM, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble); and from free jazz to the strands of free improvisation that sought to distance itself from jazz. In exploring the diverse ways in which spontaneity became a core value in the early twentieth century as well as free improvisation's connection to both 1960s rock (The Beatles, Cream, Pink Floyd) and the era of post-Cagean indeterminacy in composition, Toop provides a definitive and all-encompassing exploration of free improvisation up to 1970, ending with the late 1960s international developments of free music from Roscoe Mitchell in Chicago, Peter Brötzmann in Berlin and Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg in Amsterdam.
Download or read book Sinister Resonance written by David Toop and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new work from one of the world's most erudite, intellectual, and influential thinkers and writers about sound and music. >
Download or read book Lament from Epirus An Odyssey into Europe s Oldest Surviving Folk Music written by Christopher C. King and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2018 In the tradition of Patrick Leigh Fermor and Geoff Dyer, a Grammy-winning producer discovers a powerful and ancient folk music tradition. In a gramophone shop in Istanbul, renowned record collector Christopher C. King uncovered some of the strangest—and most hypnotic—sounds he had ever heard. The 78s were immensely moving, seeming to tap into a primal well of emotion inaccessible through contemporary music. The songs, King learned, were from Epirus, an area straddling southern Albania and northwestern Greece and boasting a folk tradition extending back to the pre-Homeric era. To hear this music is to hear the past. Lament from Epirus is an unforgettable journey into a musical obsession, which traces a unique genre back to the roots of song itself. As King hunts for two long-lost virtuosos—one of whom may have committed a murder—he also tells the story of the Roma people who pioneered Epirotic folk music and their descendants who continue the tradition today. King discovers clues to his most profound questions about the function of music in the history of humanity: What is the relationship between music and language? Why do we organize sound as music? Is music superfluous, a mere form of entertainment, or could it be a tool for survival? King’s journey becomes an investigation into song and dance’s role as a means of spiritual healing—and what that may reveal about music’s evolutionary origins.
Download or read book Flutter Echo written by David Toop and published by Ecstatic Peace Library. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Toop has become one of our most significant touchstones of contemporary music writing and reportage. Employing intensified studies into World Music in relation to popular (as well as marginalized) contemporary trends, Toop has created one of the most distinctive publishing histories of modern music thinking for our times. Flutter Echo is his memoir of a life enchanted with all aspects of music both composed and abstract. Toop's personal growth as a practicing musician, visual artist, and witness to some of the most significant events in modern music history is a completely fascinating view into a world of considered thought and random access. From recording for Brian Eno's Obscure Records imprint in 1975 to co-publishing the radical music magazines Musics and Collusion to developing music programming for BBC to releasing recordings he personally made of Yanomami Shaman rituals to working with artists such as creative pop icon Bjork and Jamaican dub pioneer Prince Far-I, Toop has experienced one of the most interesting and dynamic timelines in the dynamic world of our contemporary sound world. Player, listener, scholar, reporter, communitarian, parent, iconoclast--David Toop brings his own life in music to focus in a remarkable, wonder-filled, engaging read.
Download or read book Musical ontology written by Lisa Giombini and published by Mimesis. This book was released on 2018-01-25T00:00:00+01:00 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is musical ontology? Why should we as philosophers address it, if ever? These questions constitute the Ariadne’s thread running throughout this whole work. The number of papers, volumes and essays that have recently been dedicated to the topic of art and musical ontology is so vast that trying to get a grip on the debate seems like trying to find ones bearings without a compass. This book is a guide to help hapless readers find their way through this philosophical jungle. It is constructed on three levels: the presentation of the debate on musical ontology, a meta-ontological inquiry and a sort of meta-meta-ontological overview, in which both the ontological and the meta-ontological are examined. It does not contain any apology for musical ontology, nor any attempt to definitively get it off the hook. The approach is aporetic, in the spirit of an open investigation in which more questions than answers are posited. But this is the whole point. If this study manages to provide the readers with the necessary theoretical tools to answer these questions for themselves, it could be considered a success.
Download or read book Inflamed Invisible written by David Toop and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich collection of essays tracing the relationship between art and sound. In the 1970s David Toop became preoccupied with the possibility that music was no longer bounded by formalities of audience: the clapping, the booing, the short attention span, the demand for instant gratification. Considering sound and listening as foundational practices in themselves leads music into a thrilling new territory: stretched time, wilderness, video monitors, singing sculptures, weather, meditations, vibration and the interior resonance of objects, interspecies communications, instructional texts, silent actions, and performance art. Toop sought to document the originality and unfamiliarity of this work from his perspective as a practitioner and writer. The challenge was to do so without being drawn back into the domain of music while still acknowledging the vitality and hybridity of twentieth-century musics as they moved toward art galleries, museums, and site-specificity. Toop focused on practitioners, whose stories are as compelling as the theoretical and abstract implications of their works. Inflamed Invisible collects more than four decades of David Toop's essays, reviews, interviews, and experimental texts, drawing us into the company of artists and their concerns, not forgetting the quieter, unsung voices. The volume is an offering, an exploration of strata of sound that are the crossing points of sensory, intellectual, and philosophical preoccupations, layers through which objects, thoughts and air itself come alive as the inflamed invisible.
Download or read book Playing for Keeps written by Daniel Fischlin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-24 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to Playing for Keeps examine the ways in which musical improvisation can serve as a method for negotiating violence, trauma, systemic inequality, and the aftermaths of war and colonialism. Outlining the relation of improvisatory practices to local and global power structures, they show how in sites as varied as South Africa, Canada, Egypt, the United States, and the Canary Islands, improvisation provides the means for its participants to address the past and imagine the future. In addition to essays, the volume features a poem by saxophonist Matana Roberts, an interview with pianist Vijay Iyer about his work with U.S. veterans of color, and drawings by artist Randy DuBurke that chart Nina Simone's politicization. Throughout, the contributors illustrate how improvisation functions as a model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action that can foster the creation of alternate modes of being and knowing in the world. Contributors. Randy DuBurke, Rana El Kadi, Kevin Fellezs, Daniel Fischlin, Kate Galloway, Reem Abdul Hadi, Vijay Iyer, Mark Lomanno, Moshe Morad, Eric Porter, Sara Ramshaw, Matana Roberts, Darci Sprengel, Paul Stapleton, Odeh Turjman, Stephanie Vos
Download or read book Sync or Swarm Revised Edition written by David Borgo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The revised edition of Sync or Swarm promotes an ecological view of musicking, moving us from a subject-centered to a system-centered view of improvisation. It explores cycles of organismic self-regulation, cycles of sensorimotor coupling between organism and environment, and cycles of intersubjective interaction mediated via socio-technological networks. Chapters funnel outward, from the solo improviser (Evan Parker), to nonlinear group dynamics (Sam Rivers trio), to networks that comprise improvisational communities, to pedagogical dynamics that affect how individuals learn, completing the hermeneutic circle. Winner of the Society for Ethnomusicology's Alan Merriam prize in its first edition, the revised edition features new sections that highlight electro-acoustic and transcultural improvisation, and concomitant issues of human-machine interaction and postcolonial studies.
Download or read book A Listener s Guide to Free Improvisation written by John Corbett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-03-13 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book of its kind, John Corbett's A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation provides a how-to manual for the most extreme example of spontaneous improvising: music with no pre-planned material at all. Drawing on over three decades of writing about, presenting, playing, teaching, and studying freely improvised music, Corbett offers an enriching set of tools that show any curious listener how to really listen, and he encourages them to enjoy the human impulse-- found all around the world-- to make up music on the spot.
Download or read book The Road from Damascus written by Robin Yassin-Kassab and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-06-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is summer 2001 and Sami Traifi has escaped his fraying marriage and minimal job prospects to visit Damascus. In search of his roots and himself, he instead finds a forgotten uncle in a gloomy back room, and an ugly secret about his beloved father... Returning to London, Sami finds even more to test him as his young wife Muntaha reveals that she is taking up the hijab. Sami embarks on a wilfully ragged journey in the opposite direction, away from religion – but towards what? As Sami struggles to understand Muntaha’s newly-deepened faith, her brother Ammar’s hip hop Islamism and his father-in-law’s need to see grandchildren, so his emotional and spiritual unraveling begins to accelerate. And the more he rebels, the closer he comes to betraying those he loves, edging ever-nearer to the brink of losing everything... Set against a powerfully-evoked backdrop of multi-ethnic, multi-faith London, The Road from Damascus explores themes as big as love, faith and hope, and as fundamental as our need to believe in something bigger than ourselves, whatever that might be.
Download or read book Lullaby of Birdland written by George Shearing and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-04-27 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pianist George Shearing is that rare thing, a European jazz musician who became a household name in the US, as a result of the "Shearing sound"—the recordings of his historic late 1940s quintet. Together with his unique "locked hands" approach to playing the piano, Shearing's quintet with guitar and vibraphone in close harmony to his own playing revolutionized small group jazz, and ensured that after seven years as Melody Maker's top British pianist, he achieved even greater success in America. His compositions have been recorded by everyone from Sarah Vaughan to Miles Davis, and his best known pieces include "Lullaby of Birdland", "She" and "Conception". His story is all the more remarkable because Shearing was born blind. His candid reminiscences include a behind the scenes experience of New York's 52nd Street in its heyday, as well as memories of a vast roll-call of professional colleagues that includes all the great names in jazz.
Download or read book Responsiveness in Music Therapy Improvisation written by Karette Stensaeth and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-30 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the adoption of Mikhail Bakhtin's terms, this book presents a new creative theory called Musical Responsiveness. The theory proposes that responsiveness in improvisation is an open-ended, continual process, and that it involves not just creating meaningfulness and harmony, but also engaging laughter, struggle, dispute, and misunderstanding. To become musically responsive is a process of becoming answerable to the client; and in doing so, the therapist undertakes ethical challenges and tensions. Although without immediate implications for what to do, this book offers new insights and fresh perspectives on the use of improvisation in the practice of music therapy.
Download or read book Sonny Rollins written by Richard Palmer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's great tenor saxophonists, Sonny Rollins has always been committed to the fundamental truths of jazz, especially swing. He has managed to be consistently experimental and forward-looking, and he has recorded at least a dozen essential albums. Here, Richard Palmer charts Rollins's career in full.
Download or read book Henry Cow written by Benjamin Piekut and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-27 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its open improvisations, lapidary lyrics, errant melodies, and relentless pursuit of spontaneity, the British experimental band Henry Cow pushed rock music to its limits. Its rotating personnel, sprung from rock, free jazz, and orchestral worlds, synthesized a distinct sound that troubled genre lines, and with this musical diversity came a mixed politics, including Maoism, communism, feminism, and Italian Marxism. In Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem Benjamin Piekut tells the band’s story—from its founding in Cambridge in 1968 and later affiliation with Virgin Records to its demise ten years later—and analyzes its varied efforts to link aesthetics with politics. Drawing on ninety interviews with Henry Cow musicians and crew, letters, notebooks, scores, journals, and meeting notes, Piekut traces the group’s pursuit of a political and musical collectivism, offering up its history as but one example of the vernacular avant-garde that emerged in the decades after World War II. Henry Cow’s story resonates far beyond its inimitable music; it speaks to the avant-garde’s unpredictable potential to transform the world.
Download or read book Soweto Blues written by Gwen Ansell and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2005-09-28 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the remarkable story of how jazz became a key part of South Africa's struggle in the 20th century, and provides a fascinating overview of the ongoing links between African and American styles of music. Ansell illustrates how jazz occupies a unique place in South African music.Through interviews with hundreds of musicians, she pieces together a vibrant narrative history, bringing to life the early politics of resistance, the atmosphere of illegal performance spaces, the global anti-apartheid influence of Hugh Masakela and Miriam Makeba, as well as the post-apartheid upheavals in the national broadcasting and recording industries.
Download or read book Jazz as Visual Language written by Nicolas Pillai and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a timely analysis of the relationship between jazz and recording and broadcast technologies in the early twentieth century. Jazz histories have traditionally privileged qualities such as authenticity, naturalness and spontaneity, but to do so overlooks jazz's status as a modernist, mechanised art form that evolved alongside the moving image and visual cultures. Jazz as Visual Language shows that the moving image is crucial to our understanding of what the materiality of jazz really is. Focusing on Len Lye's direct animation, Gjon Mili's experimental footage of musicians performing and the BBC's Jazz 625 series, this book places emphasis on film and television that conveys the 'sound of surprise' through formal innovation, rather than narrative structure. Nicolas Pillai seeks to refine a critical vocabulary of jazz and visual culture whilst arguing that jazz was never just a new sound; it was also a new way of seeing the world.
