Download or read book Performing Rites written by Simon Frith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-02-06 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who's better? Billie Holiday or P. J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan or Keats? And how many friendships have ridden on the answer? Such questions aren't merely the stuff of fanzines and idle talk; they inform our most passionate arguments, distill our most deeply held values, make meaning of our ever-changing culture. In Performing Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. What's good, what's bad? What's high, what's low? Why do such distinctions matter? Instead of dismissing emotional response and personal taste as inaccessible to the academic critic, Simon Frith takes these forms of engagement as his subject--and discloses their place at the very center of the aesthetics that structure our culture and color our lives. Taking up hundreds of songs and writers, Frith insists on acts of evaluation of popular music as music. Ranging through and beyond the twentieth century, Performing Rites puts the Pet Shop Boys and Puccini, rhythm and lyric, voice and technology, into a dialogue about the undeniable impact of popular aesthetics on our lives. How we nod our heads or tap our feet, grin or grimace or flip the dial; how we determine what's sublime and what's "for real"--these are part of the way we construct our social identities, and an essential response to the performance of all music. Frith argues that listening itself is a performance, both social gesture and bodily response. From how they are made to how they are received, popular songs appear here as not only meriting aesthetic judgments but also demanding them, and shaping our understanding of what all music means.

Download or read book Tango Lessons written by Marilyn G. Miller and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-07 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its earliest manifestations on the street corners of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires to its ascendancy as a global cultural form, tango has continually exceeded the confines of the dance floor or the music hall. In Tango Lessons, scholars from Latin America and the United States explore tango's enduring vitality. The interdisciplinary group of contributors—including specialists in dance, music, anthropology, linguistics, literature, film, and fine art—take up a broad range of topics. Among these are the productive tensions between tradition and experimentation in tango nuevo, representations of tango in film and contemporary art, and the role of tango in the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Taken together, the essays show that tango provides a kaleidoscopic perspective on Argentina's social, cultural, and intellectual history from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Contributors. Esteban Buch, Oscar Conde, Antonio Gómez, Morgan James Luker, Carolyn Merritt, Marilyn G. Miller, Fernando Rosenberg, Alejandro Susti

Download or read book Understanding Music written by N. Alan Clark and published by . This book was released on 2015-12-21 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music moves through time; it is not static. In order to appreciate music wemust remember what sounds happened, and anticipate what sounds might comenext. This book takes you on a journey of music from past to present, from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Period to the 20th century and beyond!

Download or read book Sounding the Cape written by Denis Martin and published by African Minds. This book was released on 2013 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For several centuries Cape Town has accommodated a great variety of musical genres which have usually been associated with specific population groups living in and around the city. Musical styles and genres produced in Cape Town have therefore been assigned an "identity" which is first and foremost social. This volume tries to question the relationship established between musical styles and genres, and social - in this case pseudo-racial - identities. In Sounding the Cape, Denis-Constant Martin recomposes and examines through the theoretical prism of creolisation the history of music in Cape Town, deploying analytical tools borrowed from the most recent studies of identity configurations. He demonstrates that musical creation in the Mother City, and in South Africa, has always been nurtured by contacts, exchanges and innovations whatever the efforts made by racist powers to separate and divide people according to their origin. Musicians interviewed at the dawn of the 21st century confirm that mixture and blending characterise all Cape Town's musics. They also emphasise the importance of a rhythmic pattern particular to Cape Town, the ghoema beat, whose origins are obviously mixed. The study of music demonstrates that the history of Cape Town, and of South Africa as a whole, undeniably fostered creole societies. Yet, twenty years after the collapse of apartheid, these societies are still divided along lines that combine economic factors and "racial" categorisations. Martin concludes that, were music given a greater importance in educational and cultural policies, it could contribute to fighting these divisions and promote the notion of a nation that, in spite of the violence of racism and apartheid, has managed to invent a unique common culture.

Download or read book William Grant Still written by Catherine Parsons Smith and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compact introduction to the life and work of eminent African American composer William Grant Still (1895-1978), Catherine Parsons Smith tracks the composer's interrelated careers in popular and concert music. Still merged both musical traditions in his work, studying composition with George W. Chadwick at the New England Conservatory, collaborating with Langston Hughes on "Troubled Island," and working as a commercial arranger and composer on Broadway and radio during the Harlem Renaissance. Still also played in the pit band for "Shuffle Along," served as recording director for the first black-owned record label, Black Swan, and arranged music for artists such as Sophie Tucker, Paul Whiteman, and Artie Shaw. Best known for his "Afro-American Symphony" and other works that drew heavily on black American musical heritage, Still struggled against financial hardship and declining attention to his work, which he attributed to political and racist conspiracies. This "dean of Afro-American composers" created his own, unique version of musical modernism, influencing commercial music, symphonic music, and opera in the process."

Download or read book The Cultural Study of Music written by Martin Clayton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book Rebetiko Worlds written by Dafni Tragaki and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-01-14 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebetiko Worlds invites the reader to share the experience of rebetiko music-making in the city of Thessaloniki today. It aims at representing an ethnographic world made of diverse realities united by the melancholic sounds of rebetiko songs. Rather than a musicological account on rebetiko music, this ethnography is about the human encounters happening in certain rebetiko venues of the Ano Poli area in Thessaloniki. How do people perceive, practice, feel and imagine rebetiko song—a music tradition coming from the beginning of the 20th century—today? What are the worldviews embodied and inspired in the context of the ongoing rebetiko performances? And, how may the exploration of rebetiko revivalist culture convey understandings of broader music-cultural orientations defining contemporary Greek society? This ethnography is primarily interested in knowing contemporary rebetiko culture as a ‘lived experience’. It captures instances of the life-worlds of the people involved in the rebetiko revival, which unravel the ways local traditions are re-defined in the context of the nostalgic re-invention of ‘ethnic’ music in postcolonial times. On this level, the representation of the discourses and aesthetics associated with rebetiko performances today instigate further interpretations of local cultural trends, the visions of ‘our’ future triggered by the mythicized representations of ‘our’ past. Beyond a window to the rebetiko worlds of today, this book recounts the story of an ethnographer engaged in fieldwork ‘at home’. It aims at communicating the dynamics of reflexivity shaping the ethnographic self by proposing an understanding of the fieldwork experience as a ‘special ontology’. In this way, it reveals the various dilemmas, moments of enthusiasm and moments of despair lived in the process of research in an attempt to illuminate the poetics of the subjective cultural knowledge. Rebetiko Worlds incites the reader to share the poetics of ethnographic ‘fiction’ and interpretation and, through this, the gradual ‘making’ of the ethnomusicologist in the field.

Download or read book The Detroit Symphony Orchestra written by Paul Ganson and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-09 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first history of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to describe and document its origins in 1887 to the present day, relating its changing fortunes in light of the economic, demographic, and cultural history of the city of Detroit. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra: Grace, Grit, and Glory details the history of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as seen through the prism of the city it has called home for nearly 130 years. Now one of America’s finest orchestras, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra began in 1887 as a rather small ensemble of around thirty-five players in a city that was just emerging as an industrial powerhouse. Since then, both the city and its orchestra have known great success in musical artistry for the symphony and economic influence for the city. They have each faced crises as well—financial, social, and cultural—that have forced the DSO into closure three times, and the city to the brink of dissolution. Yet somehow, in the face of adversity, the DSO stands strong today, a beacon of perseverence and rebirth in a city of second chances. This is the first history of the DSO to document the orchestra from its earliest incarnation in the late nineteenth century to its current status as one of the top orchestras in the country. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra tells the story of the organization—the musicians, the musical directors, the boards, and the management—as they strove for musical excellence, and the consistent funding and leadership to achieve it in the changing economic and cultural landscape of Detroit. Author Laurie Lanzen Harris, with Paul Ganson, explores the cycles of glory, collapse, and renewal of the orchestra in light of the city’s own dynamic economic, demographic, and cultural changes. Any reader with an interest in Detroit history or the history of American smphony orchestras should have this book on his or her shelf.

Download or read book Expectations Unfulfilled Norwegian Migrants in Latin America 1820 1940 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Expectations Unfulfilled scholars from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, Norway, Spain and Sweden study the experiences of Norwegian migrants in Latin America between the Wars of Independence and World War II.

Download or read book Music and the Functions of the Brain Arousal Emotions and Pleasure written by Mark Reybrouck and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music impinges upon the body and the brain. As such, it has significant inductive power which relies both on innate dispositions and acquired mechanisms and competencies. The processes are partly autonomous and partly deliberate, and interrelations between several levels of processing are becoming clearer with accumulating new evidence. For instance, recent developments in neuroimaging techniques, have broadened the field by encompassing the study of cortical and subcortical processing of the music. The domain of musical emotions is a typical example with a major focus on the pleasure that can be derived from listening to music. Pleasure, however, is not the only emotion to be induced and the mechanisms behind its elicitation are far from understood. There are also mechanisms related to arousal and activation that are both less differentiated and at the same time more complex than the assumed mechanisms that trigger basic emotions. It is imperative, therefore, to investigate what pleasurable and mood-modifying effects music can have on human beings in real-time listening situations. This e-book is an attempt to answer these questions. Revolving around the specificity of music experience in terms of perception, emotional reactions, and aesthetic assessment, it presents new hypotheses, theoretical claims as well as new empirical data which contribute to a better understanding of the functions of the brain as related to musical experience.

Download or read book The Bible in Music written by Siobhán Dowling Long and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been numerous publications in the last decades on the Bible in literature, film, and art. But until now, no reference work has yet appeared on the Bible as it appears in Western music. In The Bible in Music: A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More, scholars Siobhán Dowling Long and John F. A. Sawyer correct this gap in Biblical reference literature, providing for the first time a convenient guide to musical interpretations of the Bible. Alongside examples of classical music from the Middle Ages through modern times, Dowling Long and Sawyer also bring attention to the Bible’s impact on popular culture with numerous entries on hymns, spirituals, musicals, film music, and contemporary popular music. Each entry contains essential information about the original context of the work (date, composer, etc.) and, where relevant, its afterlife in literature, film, politics, and liturgy. It includes an index of biblical references and an index of biblical names, as well as a detailed timeline that brings to the fore key events, works, and publications, placing them in their historical context. There is also a bibliography, a glossary of technical terms, and an index of artists, authors, and composers. The Bible in Music will fascinate anyone familiar with the Bible, but it is also designed to encourage choirs, musicians, musicologists, lecturers, teachers, and students of music and religious education to discover and perform some less well-known pieces, as well as helping them to listen to familiar music with a fresh awareness of what it is about.

Download or read book The Philosophy of Software written by D. Berry and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-05-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a critical introduction to code and software that develops an understanding of its social and philosophical implications in the digital age. Written specifically for people interested in the subject from a non-technical background, the book provides a lively and interesting analysis of these new media forms.

Download or read book Fakesong written by David Harker and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "'Folksongs' interest many people nowadays, because they are meant to be the kinds of songs most of our ancestors sang, before industrialisation, before the mass media, before music and song became commodities, and before all the assorted evils associated with advanced capitalist society. 'Folksongs' and 'ballads' represent real values something honest and straightforward and beautiful to hang on to, and make us feel our roots in the Britain of 1900 or 1800 or even 1700. The only problem with this way of thinking is that it is based on myths. What we now know as 'folksongs' and 'ballads' were sought after, collected, edited and published by individuals who were either members of the rising bourgeoisie, or were ideologically sympathetic to bourgeois culture and values. The working people who sang their songs, and had them chopped up, amended and sometimes re-written or invented on their behalf, are remarkably absent from the story of 'folksong'. Before we can begin to piece together the real history of our ancestors' culture, we have to penetrate the 'mediations' of people like Cecil Sharp, Francis James Child and Albert Lancaster Lloyd, and to begin building again on firmer foundations. This book sets out to clear the ground"--Page 4 of cover.

Download or read book The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music written by Isabelle Peretz and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-07-10 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years the discpline of 'music psychology' has grown dramatically. In this volume, the two leaders in this field Isabelle Peretz and Robert Zatorre, have brought together an impressive list of contributors to present this study of the neutral correlates of music.

Download or read book International Handbook of Research in Arts Education written by Liora Bresler and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-01-26 with total page 1568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a distillation of knowledge in the various disciplines of arts education (dance, drama, music, literature and poetry and visual arts), this essential handbook synthesizes existing research literature, reflects on the past, and contributes to shaping the future of the respective and integrated disciplines of arts education. While research can at times seem distant from practice, the Handbook aims to maintain connection with the live practice of art and of education, capturing the vibrancy and best thinking in the field of theory and practice. The Handbook is organized into 13 sections, each focusing on a major area or issue in arts education research.

Download or read book Listening to Western Music written by Craig Wright and published by Cengage Learning. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining a student-friendly presentation with cutting-edge digital resources, LISTENING TO WESTERN MUSIC equips you with the tools to actively listen to and inspire a lifelong appreciation for music. Known for his clear, conversational style, Professor Wright helps you immediately find connections to music by comparing pop and classical music concepts. His text is organized chronologically and discusses musical examples from each era in its social context -- describing the construction and culture of each piece. LISTENING TO WESTERN MUSIC is fully integrated with MindTap to better help you develop your listening skills and maximize your course success. Online resources include interactive exercises, streaming music, Active Listening Guides, chapter and critical thinking quizzes, iAudio lectures, YouTube videos, Beat the Clock games, and more. You also can download all music directly to a music library. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Download or read book Listening to Music written by Craig Wright and published by Schirmer Books. This book was released on 2007-01-25 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compact disc contains 25 tracks of music by different performers as listed in the text.