Popular music

From 1940 to 1990, new machines and devices radically changed listening to music.

The most compelling art form to emerge from the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, rock & roll stands in an edgy relationship with its own mythology, its own musicological history and the broader culture in which it plays a part.

This collection analyses the remaking of culture and music spaces during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon.

The Penderyn 2020 Music Book Prize (UK edition)Living Blues Critics Choice Best Blues Book of 2019Living Blues Readers Choice Best Blues Book of 2019Certificate of Merit in the Best Historical Research in Recorded Blues, Soul, Gospel, or R&B category from ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections)An essential story of blues lore, black culture, and American music historyRobert Johnson's recordings, made in 1936 and 1937, have profoundly influenced generations of singers, guitarists, and songwriters.

When the Nicholas Brothers danced, uptown at the Cotton Club, downtown at the Roxy, in segregated movie theatres in the South, and dance halls across the country, audiences cheered, clapped, stomped their feet, and shouted out uncontrollably.

The Enigmatic Founder of Israel: A Nuanced Portrait of David Ben-GurionIn this definitive biography of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's leading journalist-historian Tom Segev draws on previously unreleased archival material to paint a nuanced and startling portrait of Israel's founder.

Jews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity explores the meaning of Jewish involvement in the world of American jazz.

Jay-Z: King of America is the first in-depth biography to dissect the life and music of the most successful rapper of all time.

A jazz writer for three decades, W.

It dominates our lives.

Samuel Wesley and the Crisis of Tory Piety, 1685-1720 uses the experiences of Samuel Wesley (1662-1735) to examine what life was like in the Church of England for Tory High Church clergy.

Counting Downis a unique series of titles designed to select the best songs or musical works from major performance artists and composers in an age of design-your-own playlists.

With its rich but underappreciated musical heritage, Washington, D.

Barbershop singing is a distinctive and under-documented facet of Britain's musical landscape.

Surveying the impact of Cuba's economic crisis after the demise of the eastern socialist block, this book documents a relatively unexplored transnational network of collaborations among Cuban musicians that migrated to many different countries from the 1990s forward.

Bhangra is commonly understood as the hybrid music produced in Britain by British Asian music producers through mixing Panjabi folk melodies with western pop and black dance rhythms.

This book presents the recent positions, theories, and methods of artistic research in jazz, inviting readers to critically engage in and establish a sustained discourse regarding theoretical, methodological, and analytic perspectives.

The life and songs of singer/songwriter Momus during his time at Creation records and beyond.

Since the 1960s, the Grateful Dead have welcomed and participated in academic work on the band, encouraging scrutiny from a wide variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, from anthropology to sociology.

What's it like growing up as the offspring of rock royalty?

In Memory Eternal, Sergei Kan combines anthropology and history, anecdote and theory to portray the encounter between the Tlingit Indians and the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska in the late 1700s and to analyze the indigenous Orthodoxy that developed over the next 200 years.

Over the course of his long career, legendary bluesman William "e;Big Bill"e; Broonzy (18931958) helped shape the trajectory of the genre, from its roots in the rural Mississippi River Delta, through its rise as a popular genre in the North, to its eventual international acclaim.

ONE OF PITCHFORK'S BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF 2019.

Singer-Songwriters and Musical Open Mics is an ethnographic exploration of New York City's live music events where musicians signup and perform short sets.

Blackstar Theory takes a close look at David Bowie's ambitious last works: his surprise 'comeback' project The Next Day (2013), the off-Broadway musical Lazarus (2015) and the album that preceded the artist's death in 2016 by two days, Blackstar.

Keywords in Remix Studies consists of twenty-four chapters authored by researchers who share interests in remix studies and remix culture throughout the arts and humanities.

Before military action, and even before mobilization, the decision on whether to go to war is debated by politicians, pundits, and the public.

Comprehensive and richly illustrated, Close Harmony traces the development of the music known as southern gospel from its antebellum origins to its twentieth-century emergence as a vibrant musical industry driven by the world of radio, television, recordings, and concert promotions.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti was the Afrobeat music maestro whose life and time provide the lens through which we can outline the postcolonial trajectory of the Nigerian state as well as the dynamics of most other African states.

Following the 1960's sexual revolution, rock and pop have continued to map the societal understanding of sexuality, feminism, and gender studies.

The first book-length study of romance novels to focus on issues of sexuality rather than gender, Historical Romance Fiction moves the ongoing debate about the value and appeal of heterosexual romance onto new ground, testing the claims of cutting-edge critical theorists on everything from popular classics by Georgette Heyer, to recent 'bodice rippers,' to historical fiction by John Fowles and A.

A deep dive into the history and retro appeal of musical exotica, including the Orientalism, Hawaiianesque, and Afro-tropicalism sub-sets.

We were all equal, but sometimes the band could be led by whoever shouted the loudest.

Throughout Africa, artists use hip-hop both to describe their lives and to create shared spaces for uncensored social commentary, feminist challenges to patriarchy, and resistance against state institutions, while at the same time engaging with the global hip-hop community.

This is not just an important music book; it is an important history book.

This book examines how popular music is able to approach subjects of bio-politics, climate change, solastalgia, and anthropomorphisation, alongside its more common diet of songs about love, dancing, and break-ups - all while satisfying its primary remit of being entertaining and listenable.

The Routledge Companion to Music, Autoethnography, and Reflexivity represents a substantial contribution to the field of writing reflexively about an individual's practice within music studies.

In the 1920s and 30s, musicians from Latin America and the Caribbean were flocking to New York, lured by the burgeoning recording studios and lucrative entertainment venues.

The pianist, composer, and bandleader Randy Weston is one of the world's most influential jazz musicians and a remarkable storyteller whose career has spanned five continents and more than six decades.

Jazz has always been a genre built on the blending of disparate musical cultures.

Popular Polish Electronic Music, 1970-2020 offers a cultural history of popular Polish electronic music, from its beginning in the late 1960s/early 1970s up to the present day, in the context of Polish economic, social and political history, and the history of popular music in this country.

Canons are central to our understanding of our culture, and yet in the last thirty years there has been much conflict and uncertainty created by the idea of the canon.

Between Beats: The Jazz Tradition and Black Vernacular Dance offers a new look at the complex intersections between jazz music and popular dance over the last hundred-plus years.

This ebook is now available from Bloomsbury Academic.