Entertainment Books
Duke University Press African Rhythms
Book SynopsisAfrican Rhythms is the autobiography of the important jazz pianist, composer and band leader Randy Weston. He tells of his childhood in Brooklyn, his six decades long musical career, his time living in Morocco, and his lifelong quest to learn about the musical and cultural traditions of Africa.Trade Review“. . . Part memoir, part travelogue, part philosophical treatise. Mr. Weston is especially informative about how he briefly fled New York in his early 20s to escape the drug scene that was becoming endemic among young jazzmen, as well as about the making of classic albums like Uhuru Africa and Blue Moses." -- Will Friedwald * Wall Street Journal *“African Rhythms is perhaps the next truly wonderful jazz autobiography. It succeeds so fully not because of hyperbole or personality but because Weston—a pianist and composer criminally underappreciated even among serious jazz fans—has a unique musical story to tell. This story is highly recommended to jazz listeners, in large part, because it makes you want to dive back into one of the most gripping discographies in the music. . . . If you haven’t heard Weston’s music, really listened to it, then African Rhythms is the strongest possible incentive to tune in. Is there any higher praise for a book about music than that it got you to start listening?” -- Will Layman * PopMatters *“No one has done more to explore and celebrate the African roots of jazz than pianist/composer Randy Weston. Weston demonstrates a pride in his ancestry and culture that is both the primary source of his artistic inspiration and the central theme that suffuses this fascinating autobiography. . . . Weston refers to himself as ‘a storyteller through music’ rather than a jazz musician. He's unsurpassed as a goodwill ambassador.” -- Jay Trachtenberg * Austin Chronicle *“Now in his 80’s, Weston, in this book, sounds eternally optimistic and full of wonder about his life. He comes off as joyous and spiritual as his music. Reading this is enough to make you want to dig out whatever Weston CDs you might have and listen to them again with a greater understanding of what went into the music. This book is worthy of his expansive talents.” -- Jerome Wilson * Cadence *“Randy Weston is a monumental figure in contemporary jazz, a man whose creativity remains undimmed at the age of 83. He is a living link with the golden era of the 1950s and 60s, a time during which trailblazing musicians and revolutionary thinkers wholly energised African-American arts and politics. As this absolutely fascinating biography reveals, Weston. . . has lived a very full life that has seen him not only excel as a musician but also make hugely important cultural and political statements that had the intent and effect of uplifting blacks in America during a time of second class citizenship. A recurrent theme in the text is thus Weston’s focus on concrete initiatives to improve civil rights. . . . Essential reading for anybody interested in learning something of a great man as well as a great musician.” -- Kevin La Gendre * Jazzwise *“Randy Weston knows more about jazz and more about Africa than most of us. Hence this book—more musical, philosophical and spiritual, with a more personal voice than most jazz autobiographies—is loaded with knowledge and insights about both topics. . . . From Stearns to the Gnawa musician healers of Morocco, from poet Langston Hughes to Dizzy Gillespie, Weston’s fascinating journey is well worth the read.” -- George Kanzler * All About Jazz *“Weston has dedicated his life to spreading African music throughout the world and forging a bond with his identity as an African American musician. African Rhythms ably recounts his sometimes arduous journey to becoming a true cross-cultural ambassador.” -- Jon Ross * DownBeat *Table of ContentsArranger's Preface / Willard Jenkins xi Acknowledgments xix Introduction 1 1. Origins 5 2. Growing Up in Brooklyn 18 3. The Scene Shifts to the Pacific 28 4. Postwar: Escaping the Panic 37 5. Post-Berkshires: Succumbing to the Irresistible Lure 55 6. Enter Melba Liston 70 7. Uhuru Afrika: Freedom Africa 82 8. Making the Pilgrimage 102 9. Touring the Motherland 114 10. Making a Home in Africa 135 11. Connecting with the Gnawa 171 12. Building a Life in Tangier: The African Rhythm Club 183 13. Festival Blues, Then Divine Intervention: Blue Moses 194 14. Post Morroco and the Ellington Connection 206 15. Compositions and Sessions 220 16. The African Rhythms Quintet 235 17. The African Queen 252 18. The Adventures of Randy Weston 262 19. Ancient Future 278 Conclusion: Randy Weston ... Philosophically Yours 299 Discography 305 Awards and Citations 323 Index 325
£20.69
Fordham University Press Peculiar Attunements
Book SynopsisPeculiar Attunements places the recent turn to affect into conversation with an earlier affective turn that took place in European music theory of the eighteenth century. It offers a new way of thinking through affect historically and dialectically, drawing attention to repeating patterns and problems in affect theory's history.Table of ContentsNotes on Orthography and Translation | vii Introduction | 1 1 Eighteenth-Century Opera and the Mimetic Affektenlehre | 29 2 Comic Opera: Mimesis Exploded | 61 3 “Sonate, que me veux-tu?” and Other Dilemmas of Instrumental Music | 86 4 The Attunement Affektenlehre | 108 Coda: Affect after the Affektenlehre | 131 Acknowledgments | 143 Bibliography | 147 Index | 161
£78.30
East European Monographs Linguistic Changes in PostCommunist Eastern
Book Synopsis
£35.70
Johns Hopkins University Press Empire Films and the Crisis of Colonialism
Book SynopsisThe first transnational history of cinema's role in decolonization.Using popular cinema from the United States, Britain, and France, Empire Films and the Crisis of Colonialism, 19461959, examines postwar Western attitudes toward colonialism and race relations. Historians have written much about the high politics of decolonization but little about what ordinary citizens thought about losing their empires. Popular cinema provided the main source of images of the colonies, and, according to Jon Cowans in this far-reaching book, films depicting the excesses of empire helped Westerners come to terms with decolonization and even promoted the dismantling of colonialism around the globe.Examining more than one hundred British, French, and American films from the postWorld War II era, Cowans concentrates on movies that depict interactions between white colonizers and nonwhite colonial subjects, including sexual and romantic relations. Although certain conseTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I The Persistence of Empire1. The White Woman's Burden2. Heroes of Empire3. WesternsPart II Coming to Terms4. The British Empire and Decolonization5. The French Empire and Decolonization6. American in Postwar AsiaPart III Dangerous Liaisons7. Miscegnation in Westerns8. Romance across the Pacific9. Black-White Couples and Internal DecolonizationConclusionAppendix AAppendix BNotesIndex
£42.75
Johns Hopkins University Press Equipping James Bond
Book SynopsisJames Bond's amazing gadgets reveal both enthusiasm about technology and fear of its potential ramifications. The popularity of the 007 franchise depends on a seductive formula of sex, violence, and snobbery. Much of its appeal, too, lies in its gadgets: slick, somewhat improbable technological devices that give everyone's favorite secret agent the edge over his adversaries. In Equipping James Bond, André Millard chronicles a hundred-year history of espionage technology through the lens of Ian Fleming's infamous character and his ingenious spyware. Beginning with the creation of MI6, the British secret service, Millard traces the development of espionage technology from the advanced weaponry of the nineteenth century to the evolving threat of computer hacking and surveillance. Arguing that the gadgets in the books and films articulate the leading edge of technological awareness at the time, Millard describes how Bond goes from protecting 1950s England from criminal activity to savingTrade Review"Equipping James Bond sheds fascinating light on . . . the weapons and technology depicted throughout the 007 books and films."—Matthew Chernov, James Bond RadioOne of the best capsulized histories of technology in warfare I've ever read.—John Greenya, Washington TimesTable of ContentsIntroduction1. The Technological Enthusiasts2. The Secret Intelligence Service3. The Great War and the Threat of Modernity4. Imagining the Future: Technology on Film5. Spy Films6. Ian Fleming, Intelligence Officer 7. Equipment8. Irregular Warriors9. The Treasure Hunt10. Nuclear Anxieties11. Gadgets12. Guns13. The Special Relationship and the Cold War14. The Technological Revolution15. Into the Future16. Keeping up with the TimesNotesIndex
£38.70
Johns Hopkins University Press Math in Drag
Book Synopsis
£18.45
The University of North Carolina Press The Invention and Reinvention of Big Bill Broonzy
Book SynopsisOver the course of his long career, legendary bluesman William "Big Bill" Broonzy (1893–1958) 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. Along the way, Broonzy adopted an evolving personal and professional identity, tailoring his self-presentation to the demands of the place and time. His remarkable professional fluidity mirrored the range of expectations from his audiences, whose ideas about race, national belonging, identity, and the blues were refracted through Broonzy as if through a prism. Kevin D. Greene argues that Broonzy''s popular success testifies to his ability to navigate the cultural expectations of his different audiences. However, this constant reinvention came at a personal and professional cost. Using Broonzy''s multifaceted career, Greene situates blues performance at the center of understanding African American self-presentation and racial identity in the first half of the twentieth century. Through Broonzy''s life and times, Greene assesses major themes and events in African American history, including the Great Migration, urbanization, and black expatriate encounters with European culture consumers. Drawing on a range of historical source materials as well as oral histories and personal archives held by Broonzy''s son, Greene perceptively interrogates how notions of race, gender, and audience reception continue to shape concepts of folk culture and musical authenticity.
£26.36
University of Texas Press Music Sound and Architecture in Islam
Book SynopsisTracing the connections between music making and built space in both historical and contemporary times, Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam brings together domains of intellectual reflection that have rarely been in dialogue to promote a greater understanding of the centrality of sound production in constructed environments in Muslim religious and cultural expression.Representing the fields of ethnomusicology, anthropology, art history, architecture, history of architecture, religious studies, and Islamic studies, the volume’s contributors consider sonic performances ranging from poetry recitation to art, folk, popular, and ritual musics—as well as religious expressions that are not usually labeled as “music” from an Islamic perspective—in relation to monumental, vernacular, ephemeral, and landscape architectures; interior design; decoration and furniture; urban planning; and geography. Underscoring the intimate relationship between trTrade ReviewThis volume presents a compelling case for increased attention to sound as both a design principle and a primary factor that shapes the social utility of built environments....the chapters provide a powerful demonstration of the multifaceted ways that the interaction between sounds and surfaces can hold meaning for the people who create, experience, and transform them...The difficult task that the editors have undertaken to create a multidisciplinary and multisensory exploration of sound and space is accomplished admirably while leaving room for further exploration of sound and space in Islamic cultures that were not included in the volume. * Ethnomusicology *Table of Contents List of Figures, Plates, Charts, and Tables Foreword, by Ali S. Asani Acknowledgments Introduction: Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam, by Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti Part One: Transregional 1. Listening to Islamic Gardens and Landscapes, by D. Fairchild Ruggles Part Two: The Ottoman Empire and Turkey 2. A Sound Status among the Ottoman Elite: Architectural Patrons of Sixteenth-Century Istanbul Mosques and Their Recitation Programs, by Nina Ergin 3. A Concert Platform: A Space for a Style in Turkish Music, by John Morgan O’Connell 4. Articulating Otherness in the Construction of Alevi-Bektaşi Rituals and Ritual Space in a Transnational Perspective, by Irene Markoff Part Three: The Arab World 5. Venerating Cairo’s Saints through Monument and Ritual: Islamic Reform and the Rise of the Architext, by Michael Frishkopf 6. Nightingales and Sweet Basil: The Cultural Geography of Aleppine Song, by Jonathan H. Shannon 7. Aural Geometry: Poetry, Music, and Architecture in the Arabic Tradition, by Samer Akkach Part Four: Andalusia and Europe 8. Tents of Silk and Trees of Light in the Lands of Najd: The Aural and the Visual at a Mawlid Celebration in the Alhambra, by Cynthia Robinson 9. Aristocratic Residences and the Majlis in Umayyad Córdoba, by Glaire D. Anderson 10. Sounds of Love and Hate: Sufi Rap, Ghetto Patrimony, and the Concrete Politics of the French Urban Periphery, by Paul A. Silverstein Part Five: Central and South Asia 11. Ideal Form and Meaning in Sufi Shrines of Pakistan: A Return to the Spirit, by Kamil Khan Mumtaz 12. The Social and Sacred Microcosm of the Kiiz Üi: Space and Sound in Rituals for the Dead among the Kazakhs of Mongolia, by Saida Daukeyeva Part Six: Iran 13. Listening to Pictures in Iran, by Anthony Welch 14. Of Mirrors and Frames: Music, Sound, and Architecture at the Iranian Zūrkhāneh, by Federico Spinetti References Contributors Index
£25.19
University of Texas Press Comic Book Film Style
Book SynopsisEmphasizing films such as Batman: The Movie that have received little scholarly attention, this book presents a new and more coherent definition of the comic book film as a stylistic approach rather than a genre.Trade ReviewHighly Recommended. With the emerging hegemony of the comic-book style in Hollywood adaptations, Jeffries astutely explores what he calls, repeatedly, the remediation of a particular aesthetic grounded in comics. . . [Comic Book Film Style] adds a fresh, provocative, illuminating voice to the ongoing negotiation of film style. * Choice *Comic Book Film Style is a well‐researched book that proves benefit to both scholars interested in in‐depth exploration of how comics have shaped our current film industry, as well as the lay researcher who has an interest in comics or film‐making and wants to learn more about how the two work together to create the current state of media in our society. * Journal of Popular Culture *Comic Book Film Style extensively provides many new terms to explain the language of comics film style, from panel moments to compositional mimesis, and he follows each explanation with multiple examples, most of which include figures that directly visualize concepts at hand. * Popular Culture Studies Journal *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. The Six Modes of Interaction between Comics and Film Chapter 2. Vandalizing the Fourth Wall: Word-Image Hybridity and a Comic Book Cinema of Attractions Chapter 3. These Panels Have Been Formatted to Fit Your Screen: Remediating the Comics Page through the Cinematic Frame Chapter 4. The Privileged Instant: Remediating Stasis as Movement Chapter 5. The Polymedial Comic Book Film Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
£21.59
University of Texas Press Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters
Book SynopsisFinalist, 2024Lesbian Memoir/Biography, Lambda Literary Award for Arts and Culture Winner — Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award, 45th Annual American Book Awards, Before Columbus FoundationA queer, Black “biography in essays” about the performer who gave us “Hound Dog,” “Ball and Chain,” and other songs that changed the course of American music. Born in Alabama in 1926, raised in the church, appropriated by white performers, buried in an indigent’s grave—Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton''s life events epitomize the blues—but Lynnée Denise pushes past the stereotypes to read Thornton’s life through a Black, queer, feminist lens and reveal an artist who was an innovator across her four-decade-long career. Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters “samples” elements of Thornton’s art—and, occasionally, the author’s own story—to create “a biography in essays” that explores the life of its subject as a DJ might dig through a crate of records. Denise connects Thornton’s vaudevillesque performances in Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue to the vocal improvisations that made “Hound Dog” a hit for Peacock Records (and later for Elvis Presley), injecting music criticism into what’s often framed as a cautionary tale of record-industry racism. She interprets Thornton’s performing in men’s suits as both a sly, Little Richard–like queering of the Chitlin Circuit and a simple preference for pants over dresses that didn’t have a pocket for her harmonica. Most radical of all, she refers to her subject by her given name rather than 'Big Mama,' a nickname bestowed upon her by a white man. It''s a deliberate and crucial act of reclamation, because in the name of Willie Mae Thornton is the sound of Black musical resilience. Trade ReviewDenise offers a desperately-needed corrective in this volume about the art, life, and legacy of Thornton, whose song “Hound Dog” (later recorded by Elvis) changed the course of American music. A standout installment in the University of Texas Press’s always great Music Matters series. * The Millions *The enigmatically intelligent and scholarly productive thinker, Lynnée Denise, who has made strides in Black realms of music for well over a decade is now presenting a new book. Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters gives an honest and incredibly bright examination of the relevance of Big Mama Thornton. * The New York Amsterdam News *Denise uses shrewd music criticism and a Black, queer, feminist lens, to reintroduce Thornton as a performer who transcended gender norms . . . Denise’s thoughtful reimagination of Thornton’s career pays tribute to a woman that embodied Black creation and resilience. * Alternative Press *Impressive research and thoughtful commentary illuminate the life and career of Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton (1926–84) in this eloquent volume...What emerges is a portrait of an extraordinary woman who influenced later blues, rock, and pop music performers such as Janis Joplin...An engaging and well-written must-read with generous resources for further study. * Library Journal, starred review *Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was a Black, queer blues woman often recognized for her song, “Hound Dog,” but she was so much more. In the latest volume of the Music Matters series, Lynnée Denise rediscovers and reclaims Thornton’s life and legacy, a gift to us all. * Ms. Magazine *Denise reintroduces Thornton as a performer who transcended genres and gender norms. * The 19th *Denise effectively delivers perhaps her most salient point: Who is authorized to convey the story of these Black musicians? * The Austin Chronicle *Table of Contents Introduction Mothering the Blues The Black South Matters Sisters of the Dirty Blues White Boy Magic and the Making of Genre Grown Little Girls, Tomboy Women, and Black Radio Don’t Ask Me No More about Elvis California Love / California Dreamin’ Willie Mae inna England Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine Mixtapes, White Biographers, and Black Blues People Saved by the Amazing Grace of Mahalia Jackson A Jailed Sassy Mama The ’80s Blackness of Willie Mae’s Blues Epilogue Acknowledgments Sources and References
£18.99
University of Texas Press The Running Kind
Book Synopsis2022 Belmont Award for the Best Book on Country Music, International Country Music Conference/Belmont UniversityNew and expanded biography of one of country music's most celebrated singer-songwriters.Merle Haggard enjoyed numerous artistic and professional triumphs, including more than a hundred country hits (thirty-eight at number one), dozens of studio and live album releases, upwards of ten thousand concerts, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and songs covered by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Bobby Blue Bland, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan.In The Running Kind, a new edition that expands on his earlier analysis and covers Haggard''s death and afterlife as an icon of both old-school and modern country music, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard's music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especTrade ReviewCantwell captures why Haggard's best-known songs still matter while never shying away from honest critiques of weaker selections that never made it into the classic country canon. Ultimately, this warts-and-all look at a half-century-spanning back catalog gives its subject his due. * Wide Open Country *Sharp-eyed and sharp-eared insight...abounds in [Cantwell's] book...The Running Kind paints Merle Haggard in a broad and nuanced American cultural landscape, rather than the tight corners that Nixon, the counterculture, country fans, and Haggard himself frequently painted him into. * New York Journal of Books *If you want to read the definitive book on Merle Haggard, this is the one...The beauty of Cantwell’s book lies in his in-depth, astute, and entertaining close readings of Hag’s songs and the covers of those songs by others, from Dylan to Bobby 'Blue' Bland. * No Depression *A remarkable book by one of Merle's most astute scholars. * Lawyers, Guns & Money *In essays on the songs, eras and influences that shaped Haggard’s life and legacy, Cantwell makes a case for Haggard's genius not by leaving out the contradictions that are evident in his work, but by shining a light on them. * Holler *Table of ContentsIntroduction. “Silver Wings”: Kansas City, Missouri, September 14, 2001 1. “Hungry Eyes,” 1969 2. The Roots of His Raising 3. “Mama Tried,” 1968 4. Toward the Bad He Kept on Turnin’ 5. He Loves Them So: A Playlist of Early Influences 6. “Leonard,” 1981 7. The Bakersfield Sound and Fury 8. Someone Told His Story in a Song 9. “I Started Loving You Again,” 1968 10. The Legend of Bonnie and Him 11. “Sing Me Back Home,” 1967 12. They Won’t Let His Secret Go Untold 13. He’s Living in the Good Old Days: Countrypolitan, Country Soul, Country Rock 14. “Workin’ Man Blues,” 1969 15. He Likes Living Right and Being Free 16. “Irma Jackson,” 1969 17. His Fightin’ Side 18. He’d Rather Be Gone 19. “It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad),” 1972 20. He Wishes He Was Santa Claus 21. Merle Loves Dolly 22. Songs He’ll Always Sing 23. He Takes a Lot of Pride in What He Is (Hint: He’s a White Boy) 24. “A Working Man Can’t Get Nowhere Today,” 1977 25. His Country Girl with Hot Pants On 26. He’s Always on a Mountain When He Falls 27. “Rainbow Stew,” 1981 28. He Wishes a Buck Was Still Silver (Not Really) and Likes the Taste of Yesterday’s Wine (Really) 29. “Kern River,” 1985 30. He’s Going Where the Lonely Go 31. “Me and Crippled Soldiers,” 1990 32. The Hag versus the Man in Black 33. He’ll Never Be Gone? Merle Haggard in the Twenty-First Century 34. “If I Could Only Fly,” 2001 Epilogue. Cuba, Missouri: July 15, 2010 Acknowledgments Selected Discography Selected Bibliography Index
£22.79
University of Texas Press Maybe Well Make It
Book SynopsisAn October 2022 IndieNext pick”[An] engaging and beautifully narrated quest for personal fulfillment and musical recognition...This is a fast-paced tale in which music and love always take center stage...A truly gifted musician, Price writes about her journey with refreshing candor.”—Kirkus, starred review”Brutally honest…a vivid and poignant memoir.”—The GuardianCountry music star Margo Price shares the story of her struggle to make it in an industry that preys on its ingenues while trying to move on from devastating personal tragedies. When Margo Price was nineteen years old, she dropped out of college and moved to Nashville to become a musician. She busked on the street, played open mics, and even threw out her TV so that she would do nothing but write songs. She met Jeremy Ivey, a fellow musician who would become her closest collaborator and her husband. But after worTrade Review[An] engaging and beautifully narrated quest for personal fulfillment and musical recognition...This is a fast-paced tale in which music and love always take center stage...A truly gifted musician, Price writes about her journey with refreshing candor. * Kirkus, starred review *[A] dazzling debut...Told with moving candor, Price’s tale of overcoming squalor and pain provides powerful emotional context to her hard-won country music stardom. Fans will adore this story of survival. * Publishers Weekly *[Maybe We'll Make It] documents [Price's] prolonged plight and the unsung truth of breaking into the biz: It’s not glamorous...Her candid memoir takes the reader on a life-affirming journey. * BuzzFeed News *Brutally honest…a vivid and poignant memoir. * The Guardian *Margo Price delivers an unflinching self-portrait of an artist striving to find her sound and make her Music City dreams come true...Artists of all creeds will find something relatable in Maybe We’ll Make It, with its raw depictions of the artist’s perennial dilemma: bridging the transcendental need to create with the very real need to survive. Beyond this, Price’s memoir offers a heart-wrenching account of her journey as a mother. * Chapter 16 *Price has a knack for telling stories and drawing readers into her life and experience, and Maybe We’ll Make It radiates with her bright candor; she’s not interested in hiding her heart in the shadows and covering her feelings with darkness. Price bares her soul and the jaggedness of her emotions, making Maybe We’ll Make It one of the best music memoirs so far this year. * No Depression *An astonishing tale of an incredible journey...Of its many notable successes, the book efficiently and effectively seals the chapter on popular, mainstream country music's divorce from its diverse, rustic roots. Plus, Price's tales highlight that split's honest, near-destructive impact on the genre's metaphorical orphaned children. Even deeper, these artists energizing themselves and their careers via digital-era globalization and DIY bootstrapping—amid East Nashville-residing marginalization from country music's mainstream industry—reads like the most authentic and timeless outlaw tale combining elements of punk rock and country's crossover into 70s-era rock and roll. * The Tennessean *The gritty struggle of how to get noticed in Nashville…Now established as a favourite songwriter of Willie Nelson, Margo Price had a hard ride to where she is today, her memoir reading like a soap opera borne from a song...As Price's music evolved, so her wisdom grows during the book, and at its heart is stoic love: for each other, for family and friends, and above all for music and creative freedom. * Mojo *Courageously frank, utterly moving...Price tells us, with breathtaking honesty and courage, her story to achieve a sustainable career as a singer-songwriter. Through all manner of struggles, humiliations, disappointments, and personal tragedies, Price maintains her perseverance despite being tested to the core. * The Current *Compelling, honest, and powerful...Maybe We’ll Make It should be required reading for anyone thinking about how music is made in the 2020’s. That applies not only to artists, but also (perhaps especially) to club owners, journalists, or record company executives. * Americana Highways *[A] stunning, emotional, inspiring new memoir…In her authentic, no-nonsense voice, Price shares the stories that became songs, and the small acts of love and camaraderie it takes to survive in a music industry that is often unkind to women. * Our Quad Cities *A rough, rowdy, and brutally honest story of dreams and frustrations, good and bad choices, pain and joy...Price’s willingness to be open and honest about her experiences and mistakes is one of the most fascinating aspects of the book. She also avoids the twin traps common to memoirists, neither amping up her tales for exploitative shock value nor casting her past in self-pitying justification. Instead, she presents her stories of substance abuse, bad choices, and infidelity as simple facts...While Price’s personal journey centers the book, a larger story unfolds alongside it. Price’s encounters with the 21st-century mainstream Nashville music-biz complex are informative, entertaining, and, at times, unsettling. * The Nashvillian *[Maybe We'll Make It] begins with Price’s childhood in rural Illinois and ends with her April 2016 appearance on 'Saturday Night Live.' Most of her fans have followed the music she’s made since then, but Maybe We’ll Make It sheds light on the long road that got her there. * Austin American-Statesman *Margo Price's memoir of grit and resilience is one of our favorites to come out on University of Texas Press's consistently quality American Music Series. The Nashville-based, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter relates the twenty years since she dropped out of college to become a musician with a keenly illustrative narrative voice and invokes a storyteller who 'quit trying to change the past' in order to share the lessons for 'the recent future.' * Rough Trade, "US Books of the Year 2022" *[Price’s] new memoir, which covers her childhood and her years struggling to start her career in Nashville, proves that she’s just as talented at penning prose as she is at writing songs – which is to say, really damn good. Reading this book feels like hanging out with one of your smartest, liveliest friends. * NPR, "2022 Books We Love" *Maybe We’ll Make It is a beautiful, soul-bearing memoir…Despite her elegant prose, Price does not hold back any of the ugly details of her starving artist lifestyle…Her unabashed commentary on the sexist undertones of the country music industry, and the grueling need to prove herself to record labels that are only too eager to cast her aside, reveal her fighter spirit...Even in her darkest moments, Price writes with crushing honesty and humility. Her story serves as a poignant reflection on finding courage in chaos and leaning on a support system when life is too difficult to shoulder alone. * SPIN, "9 Can’t-Put-Down Music Memoirs Of 2022" *[An] unflinching memoir...Price paints a vivid portrait of a musician who moves to Nashville with big dreams. * The Boot, "10 Best Country Music Books of 2022" *Maybe We’ll Make It never becomes a morality tale, which would be out of character for the artist and a poor interpretation of her life. Price’s early years become part of the complexity of who she is, not just as an artist but as a person...It might be unusual for an artist to pen a memoir so early in her career, but Price has never done things the normal way, and in this case, the choice to write was an excellent decision. * Spectrum Culture *[Maybe We'll Make It leaves] you hankering for a sequel this sharply remembered, keenly written and marvelously self-perceptive. * Variety, "Best Music Books of 2022" *Price is a forthright and spirited raconteur with a quick turn of phrase. Her affable, earnest nature draws in the reader, despite her occasional transgressions (and, at times, maybe even because of them). * Relix *This is the best music memoir of the year. As she does in her music, Price lays her soul bare here, pulling no punches in revealing her highs and lows, including her struggles with addiction and the faltering early days of her marriage, with bright candor. Price knows well how tell a story and draws us easily into the shadows and light of her life and music. * No Depression, "2022's Most Memorable Music Books" *[An] excellent memoir. * Rolling Stone *It would be an understatement to call her poignant, pulverizing memoir, ... Maybe We’ll Make It, soul-baring. Price practically plops her heart, spleen, and a couple of kidneys onto the page. * Jezebel *A riveting, often shocking read. * Clash Music *In terms of heartbreaking honesty, [Maybe We'll Make It] gives Prince Harry a run for his money. * The Irish Times *Much like [Price's] music, her memoir is written with an authentic, singular voice. She opens up more about loss, motherhood, drinking, her songs, and much more. * The Bluegrass Situation *[Maybe We'll Make It] offers a beautifully wrought narrative of cheerleading, waitressing, poverty, substance abuse, drunk tanks and grievous personal loss as she was rebuffed by the music business for over a decade. * The Telegraph *The writer and woman we find in the memoir is the same person we find in [Price's] music: candid and vulnerable with the ability to make you laugh with one line and make you cry with the next. Maybe We’ll Make It explores the balance of art and life, the ups and downs of 'making it,' profound love, and profound loss. Price’s writing is conversational, lyrical, and above all, human. You can hear the person behind the prose. * Literary Hub *[An] outstanding and unflinching memoir. * Nashville Scene *Price has to be praised for writing such an open and honest account of her early life as a musician, struggling to ‘make it’ in the modern day music business. Reading this book, you can’t help but think that every wannabe music star should be sat down and forced to read this before they embark on their first gig, because this is an incredibly honest account of just how difficult it can be to even get on the bottom rung of that long climb to the top...This book is every bit as compelling as her songs...[Maybe We'll Make It] is, quite simply, a great read. * Americana UK *'Singing is not a real job,' a guidance counselor once told a teenage Margo Price. What she shows us in her moving memoir is what a heck of a lot of work it is...Here, you sense, is someone who has fought every day for what she wants to do—and a reminder of how much unseen toil goes into a creative life. * Wall Street Journal, "Five Best Books on Country Music" *The story of [Price's] development as an artist—and a person—who, by almost any means necessary, is making it by sticking to her beliefs and doing it her way, makes for a interesting read. * Ft.Myers Magazine *Price’s music is the soundtrack to her courageous story in progress. In the best possible way, this book reads like the liner notes: honest, heartfelt, and profound. * Shepherd *She has never lost that early hunger, or her rebellious streak. Hers is a tale of committed endurance punctuated by euphoria, and gives insight into several unlikely influences – the Kinks and Sylvia Plath among them – on her irrepressible music. * Times Literary Supplement *Table of Contents Prologue Chapter 1. The Unpaved Road Chapter 2. Rearview Mirror Chapter 3. Fifty-Seven Dollars Chapter 4. Strays Chapter 5. Lay Around with the Dogs Chapter 6. This Town Gets Around (and Around and Around) Chapter 7. Black Water Chapter 8. Stealing from Thieves Chapter 9. Floating Chapter 10. Pearls to Swine Chapter 11. Hell in the Heartland Chapter 12. Everywhere Chapter 13. Mesa Boogie Chapter 14. C for California Chapter 15. Aimless Fate Chapter 16. Ball and Unchained Chapter 17. New Mama Chapter 18. Ezra and Judah Chapter 19. Drowning Chapter 20. Uppers, Downers, Out-of-Towners Chapter 21. Burn Whatever’s Left Chapter 22. Treading Water Chapter 23. Weekender Chapter 24. A Band of My Own Chapter 25. Midwest Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 26. One Dark Horse Chapter 27. The Recent Future Epilogue Acknowledgments
£20.89
University of Texas Press Making The Best Years of Our Lives
Book Synopsis2023 Wall Award Finalist, Theatre Library AssociationHow a Hollywood gem transformed the national discourse on post-traumatic stress disorder.Released in 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives became an immediate success. Life magazine called it the first big, good movie of the post-war era to tackle the veterans problem. Today we call that problem PTSD, but in the initial aftermath of World War II, the modern language of war trauma did not exist. The film earned the producer Samuel Goldwyn his only Best Picture Academy Award. It offered the injured director, William Wyler, a triumphant postwar return to Hollywood. And for Harold Russell, a double amputee who costarred with Fredric March and Dana Andrews, the film provided a surprising second act.Award-winning author Alison Macor illuminates the film's journey from script to screen and describes how this authentic motion picture moved audiences worldwide. General Omar Bradley believed The Best Y
£21.59
University of Texas Press Mission Unaccomplished
£41.25
Duke University Press Millennials Killed the Video Star
Book SynopsisDrawing on interviews with industry workers from MTV programs such as The Real World and Teen Mom, Amanda Ann Klein examines the historical, cultural, and industrial factors leading to MTV's shift away from music videos to reality programming in the early 2000s and 2010s.Trade Review“Amanda Ann Klein's extended interviews with both participants and producers of MTV programming as well as her inspired and enjoyable writing make this book an important, compelling, and lively contribution to the study of media and culture.” -- Brenda R. Weber, author of * Latter-day Screens: Gender, Sexuality, and Mediated Mormonism *“Amanda Ann Klein's engaging book analyzes a specific phenomenon: MTV's twenty-first-century reality television programming. But her detailed and thoughtful account reveals so much about the history of a transformative television genre, the evolution of an iconic cable channel, and the construction of identity for an entire generation, making it essential reading to understand contemporary American media and culture.” -- Jason Mittell, author of * Television and American Culture *"My mother used to tell me that Jersey Shore would rot my brain; with Millennials Killed the Video Star, Amanda Ann Klein would seem to agree. In this release, the East Carolina University film professor helps make sense of the noise, walking readers through MTV’s evolution from music videos to scripted reality TV—maximizing stereotypes about race, gender, and class along the way, and shaping how an entire generation would come to understand identity." -- Emma Kenfield * IndyWeek *“[Millennials Killed the Video Star] is a fascinating analysis of media construction and presentation of identities, and how audiences respond to or reject those identities.... Klein’s writing is thoughtful and crisp.... Her writing blends an academic perspective and a fan perspective to produce a thoroughly entertaining analysis.” -- Fiona McQuarrie * PopMatters *"Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- C. A. Nadon * Choice *“Through her insightful and engaging writing, Klein successfully weaves together industry studies, media and cultural analysis, interviews, and an entertaining retelling of her own personal encounter with Jersey Shore’s DJ Pauly D. The author successfully crafts a book that would appeal to multiple audiences across disciplines.” -- Abshi Iftin * Journal of Popular Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. What Killed the Video Star? 1 1. "It's Videos, Fool": A Targeted History of MTV (1981–2004) 24 2. "This Is the True Story . . .": The Real World and MTV's Turn to Identity (1992–) 57 3. "She's Gonna Always Be Known at the Girl Who Didn't Go to Paris": Can-Do and At-Risk White Girls on MTV (2004–2013) 89 4. "If You Don't Tan, You're Pale": The Regional and Ethnic Other on MTV (2009–2013) 124 5. "That Moment Is Here, Whether I Like It or Not": When MTV's Programming Fails (2013–2014) 153 Conclusion. Catfish and the Future of MTV's Reality Programming (2012–) 173 Appendix A. MTV Reality Series since 1981 189 Appendix B. Other Television Series Discussed in This Book 193 Notes 197 References 213 Index 233
£18.89
Duke University Press Experts in Action
Book SynopsisAction movie stars ranging from Jackie Chan to lesser-known stunt women and men like Zoë Bell and Chad Stahelski stun their audiences with virtuosic martial arts displays, physical prowess, and complex fight sequences. Their performance styles originate from action movies that emerged in the industrial environment of 1980s Hong Kong. In Experts in Action Lauren Steimer examines how Hong Kong--influenced cinema aesthetics and stunt techniques have been taken up, imitated, and reinvented in other locations and production contexts in Hollywood, New Zealand, and Thailand. Foregrounding the transnational circulation of Hong Kong--influenced films, television shows, stars, choreographers, and stunt workers, she shows how stunt workers like Chan, Bell, and others combine techniques from martial arts, dance, Peking opera, and the history of movie and television stunting practices to create embodied performances that are both spectacular and, sometimes, rendered invisible. By descriTrade Review“Experts in Action is a rich, painstakingly researched work on the evolutions of global stunt acting as a mode of performance. It beautifully shifts conversations about expertise into the realms of fandom, without relinquishing the rigor of its mixed methods engaging production history, performance studies, and transnational media theory. There's nothing at all like it in other accounts of Hong Kong cinema, and its consideration of the craft of stunt techniques is matched by the craft and meticulousness of Lauren Steimer's prose.” -- Karen Tongson, author of * Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries *“With high ambition and conceptual creativity, Experts in Action is the first book on stunt work that takes its topic from the specialist margins of cinema and media studies and lobs it right at the heart of broad critical debate about transnationalism in culture. A breakthrough achievement.” -- Meaghan Morris, author of * Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture *"Students and scholars of Hong Kong cinema, global media, performance, and industry studies will find much of value in Experts in Action. As a behind-the-scenes look into the specialized labor of contemporary stunts and physical performance, Steimer’s book offers a fascinating glimpse into how the human spectacle of modern action cinema straddles both cutting-edge motion capture technologies and low-tech paraphernalia such as cardboard boxes to break falls." -- Karen Fang * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Experts in Action 1 1. Risky Business: Financial and Physical Risk in the Action Stardom of Jackie Chan 23 2. Hong Kong Action Cinema as a Mode in Thai Action Stardom: Tony Jaa and the New Stunting Star Model 56 3. A Hong Kong Reservoir for Xena: Communicative Translation and the Bodily Disposition of Stunting Star Zoë Bell 86 4. Hong Kong Action in Transit: The Postmillennial Stunt Craftwork of Chad Stahelski and Dayna Grant 121 Conclusion. Novice and Expert Performance—a Call to Action 162 Notes 175 Bibliography 199 Index 215
£19.94
Duke University Press Songbooks
Book SynopsisIn Songbooks, critic and scholar Eric Weisbard offers a critical guide to books on American popular music from William Billings''s 1770 New-England Psalm-Singer to Jay-Z''s 2010 memoir Decoded. Drawing on his background editing the Village Voice music section, coediting the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and organizing the Pop Conference, Weisbard connects American music writing from memoirs, biographies, and song compilations to blues novels, magazine essays, and academic studies. The authors of these works are as diverse as the music itself: women, people of color, queer writers, self-educated scholars, poets, musicians, and elites discarding their social norms. Whether analyzing books on Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, and Madonna; the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Gayl Jones, and Jennifer Egan; or varying takes on blackface minstrelsy, Weisbard charts an alternative history of American music as told through its writing. As Weisbard demonstrates, thTrade Review“Entertaining scholarship! Entertaining criticism! What a revelation! Eric Weisbard is one of those rare writers who understands that in mirroring the music it addresses, literary analysis should provide pleasure as well as insights. With great verve, Songbooks provides both.” -- David Ritz, co-composer, “Sexual Healing”“Embracing the fact that there's no hearing any music without mediations of crosstalk, mythography, humbug, gatekeeping, and taste war, Eric Weisbard's exuberant and encyclopedic history of music writing delivers two and a half centuries of vernacular bounce—sheets of sound, if you will. Heroic, acutely discerning, compulsively readable, and bound to be enduringly useful.” -- Eric Lott, author of * Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism *“Eric Weisbard is the rare critic who can pair a deep, intersectional, and breathtakingly intelligent survey of music writing with the nuance and joy of someone who has actually done the strange, difficult work of parsing sound on paper. Songbooks is an extraordinary look at how we try to make sense of the music that buoys and destroys us. It made me rethink what criticism can do, what music can do, and how both can change our lives.” -- Amanda Petrusich, author of * Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records *"Weisbard reshuffles the canon, paying close attention to Black, gay and other voices that have often been pushed to the margins. . . . He doesn’t penetrate his subjects so much as hurl himself at them and bounce off, like a bird smacking into a window. Weisbard falls to the ground, dusts himself off, then counts the intellectual change that’s fallen from his pockets." -- Dwight Garner * New York Times *"Weisbard’s comprehensiveness means he may introduce many music fans to works they might not know otherwise. . . . A valuable literature review of American pop. . . ." * Kirkus Reviews *"Weisbard’s book will be required reading for all music critics and journalists." -- Henry Carrigan * No Depression *"Could you perchance use an overview of everything that’s been thought in the 50-plus years since rock critics turned popular music journalism into an intellectually and for a while economically viable enterprise? Songbooks is it, only it goes back a lot further—two and a half centuries. . . . An inspiring, provocative vision of the many ways popular music matters." -- Robert Christgau"Songbooks is the kind of book you keep picking up and dipping into for the rest of your life." -- Michaelangelo Matos * Rock and Roll Globe *"Weisbard's book is a valuable resource for those who are interested in researching and learning more about the history of American popular music." -- Kristine Dizon * European Journal of American Studies *"In 500-some pages that read like 200 — the writing is fluid, playful, funny, tough, fast on the eye — Weisbard lightly packs more critical judgment and original phrase-making into each of his two- or three-page chapters than most scholars can manage in 50. This is a literary history of American popular music, but it’s also a map of the country so many other writers have marked out. . . . Songbooks is a great reference book, but before and after that it’s a funhouse." -- Greil Marcus * Chronicle of Higher Education *"Songbooks is a Herculean achievement of both research and tribute, a book that excavates and illuminates the intellectual history that it promises and so much more." -- Jack Hamilton * Journal of Popular Music Studies *"... Serious students of American popular music will find the book a strong introduction to the literature and scholarship that have defined American popular music. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." * Choice *"On more than one occasion, I was reminded of late-night conversations I have enjoyed at popular music conferences – witty, erudite, entertaining debates, in which a variety of connections and comparisons, explanations and opinions compete for attention, often straying from the original topic. . . . [T]he essays here illuminate the diverse histories and circumstances of popular song. In that regard, the essays here are not unlike the musics of the past two centuries to which they refer: revelatory, confusing, dynamic, irritating, rewarding, ephemeral, unexpected, disruptive and always provocative." -- Ian Inglis * Popular Music *"[Weisbard's] task, distilling the American music experience into under 600 pages, is ambitious, and his efforts to incorporate a broad range of titles are noteworthy and commendable. . . . Weisbard’s expertise, passion, and knowledge are undeniable." -- Gregory Stall * Library Journal *"As a valuable resource for scholars of popular music, Songbooks should encourage more writers to enter the discussion. Eric Weisbard has now provided a guidebook to the sometimes chaotic but always vital conversation in popular music studies." -- Leigh H. Edwards * American Literary History *"Songbooks takes us on a fascinating journey through an alternative American popular music history, written not just by experts, but by people usually at the fringes – women, people of color, practitioners, and non-academics. Reading this book from start to finish will give one the best overview of this journey, but the book is perhaps better enjoyed by just dipping in and skipping around as time or interest permits. This book is recommended for all readers interested in popular music and for library collections of popular music." -- Mary Huisman * Music Reference Services Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Part I: Setting the Scene First Writer, of Music and on Music: William Billings: The New-England Psalm-Singer, 1770 20 Blackface Minstrelsy Extends Its Twisted Roots: T.D. Rice, "Jim Crow," c. 1832 22 Shape-Note Singing and Early Country: B.F. White and E.J. King, The Sacred Harp, 1944 25 Music in Captivity: Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: 1853 26 Champion of the White Male Vernacular: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855 28 Notating Spirituals: William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, eds., Slave Songs of the United States, 1867 30 First Black Music Historian: James Trotter, Music and Some Highly Musical People: The Lives of Remarkable Musicians of the Colored Race, 1878 32 Child Ballads and Folklore: James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols., 1882-1898 33 Women Not Inventing Ethnomusicology: Alice Fletcher, A Study of Omaha Indian Music, 1893 35 First Hit Songwriter, from Pop to Folk and Back Again: Morrison Foster, Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster, 1896 39 Americana Emerges: Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, 1905 44 Documenting the Story: O.G. Sonneck, Bibliography of Early Secular American Music, 1905 45 Tin Pan Alley's Sheet Music Biz: Charles K. Harris, How to Write a Popular Song, 1906 47 First Family of Folk Collecting: John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 1910 50 Proclaiming Black Modernity: James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912 52 Songcatching in the Mountains: Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, 1917 54 Part II: The Jazz Age Stories for the Slicks: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, 1920 62 Remembering the First Black Star: Mabel Rowland, ed., Bert Williams, Son of Laughter, 1923 64 Magazine Criticism across Popular Genres: Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, 1924 67 Harlem Renaissance: Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro: An Interpretation, 1925 69 Tin Pan Alley's Standards Setter: Alexander Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin, 1925 71 Broadway Musical as Supertext: Edna Ferber, Show Boat, 1926 74 Father of the Blues in Print: W.C. Handy, ed., Blues: An Anthology, 1926 76 Poet of the Blare and Racial Mountain: Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues, 1926 78 Blessed Immortal, Forgotten Songwriter: Carrie Jacobs-Bond, The Roads of Melody, 1927 80 Tune Detective and Expert Explainer: Sigmund Spaeth, Read 'Em and Weep: The Songs Your Forgot to Remember, 1927 82 Pop's First History Lesson: Isaac Goldberg: Tin Pan Alley: A Chronicle of the American Popular Music Racket, 1930 84 Roots Intellectual: Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character, 1931 85 Jook Ethnography, Inventing Black Music Studies: Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, 1935 87 What He Played Came First: Louis Armstrong, Swing That Music, 1936 90 Jazz's Original Novel: Dorothy Baker, Young Man with a Horn, 1938 94 Introducing Jazz Critics: Frederic Ramsey Jr. and Charles Edward Smith, eds., Jazzmen, 1939 95 Part III: Midcentury Icons Folk Embodiment: Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory, 1943 104 A Hack Story Soldiers Took to War: David Ewen, Men of Popular Music, 1944 106 From Immigrant Jew to Red Hot Mama: Sophie Tucker, Some of These Days, 1945 108 White Negro Drug Dealer: Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, 1946 110 Composer of Tone Parallels: Barry Ulanov, Duke Ellington, 1946 111 Jazz's Precursor as Pop and Art: Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime: The True Story of an American Music, 1950 114 Field Recording in the Library of Congress: Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz," 1950 118 Dramatizing Blackness from a Distance: Ethel Waters with Charles Samuels, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, 1951 120 Centering Vernacular Song: Gilbert Chase, America's Music, 1955 122 Writing about Records: Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tin Foil to High Fidelity, 1955 124 Collective Oral History of Document Scenes: Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, eds., Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It, 1955 127 The Greatest Jazz Singer's Star Text: Billie Holiday with William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues, 1956 129 Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957 133 Borderlands Folklore and Transnational Imaginaries: Américo Paredes, "With His Pistol in His Hands": A Border Ballad and Its Hero, 1958 136New Yorker Critic of a Genre Becoming Middlebrow: Whitney Balliett, The Sound of Surprise: 46 Pieces on Jazz, 1959 141 Part IV. Vernacular Counterculture Blues Revivalists: Samuel Charters, The Country Blues, 1959; Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning: The Meaning of the Blues, 1960 148 Britpop in Fiction: Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners, 1959 151 Form-Exploding Indeterminacy: John Cage, Silence, 1961 153 Science Fiction Writer Pens First Rock and Roll Novel: Harlan Ellison, Rockabilly [Spider Kiss], 1961 155 Pro-Jazz Scene Sociology: Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, 1963 159 Reclaiming Black Music: LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 1963 159 An Endless Lit, Limited Only in Scope: Michael Braun, "Love Me Do!": The Beatles Progress, 1964 162 Music as a Prose Master's Jagged Grain: Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act, 1964 167 How to Succeed in . . .: M. William Krasilovsky and Sidney Schemel, This Business of Music, 1964 169 Schmaltz and Adversity: Sammy Davis Jr. and Burt Boyar, Yes I Can, 1965 171 New Journalism and Electrified Syntax: Tom Wolfe, Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965 173 Defining a Genre: Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A.: A Fifty-Year History, 1968 175 Swing's Movers as an Alternate History of American Pop: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance, 1968 177 Rock and Roll's Greatest Hyper: Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, 1969/1970 182Ebony's Pioneering Critic of Black Pop as Black Power: Phyl Garland, The Sound of Soul: The Story of Black Music, 1969 184 Entertainment Journalism and the Power of Knowing: Lillian Roxon, Rock Encyclopedia, 1969 185 An Over-the-Top Genre's First Reliable History: Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1970 187 Rock Critic of the Trivially Awesome: Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock, 1970 188 Black Religious Fervor as the Core of Rock and Soul: Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, 1971 190 Jazz Memoir of "Rotary Perception" Multiplicity: Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 1971 193 Composing a Formal History: Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 1971 194 Krazy Kat Fiction of Viral Vernaculars: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, 1972 196 Derrière Garde Prose and Residual Pop Styles: Alec Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, 1972 198 Charts as a New Literature: Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Records, 1955–1972, 1973 201 Selling Platinum across Formats: Clive Davis with James Willwerth, Clive, Inside the Record Business, 1975 203 Blues Relationships and Black Women's Deep Songs: Gayl Jones, Corregidora, 1975 205 "Look a the World in a Rock 'n' Roll Sense . . . What Does That Even Mean?": Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music, 1975 207 Cultural Studies Brings Pop from the Hallway to the Classroom: Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 1976 211 Life in Country for an Era of Feminism and Counterculture: Loretta Lynn with George Vecsey, Coal Miner's Daughter, 1976 214 Introducing Rock Critics: Jim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 1976 216 Patriarchal Exegete of Black Vernacular as "Equipment for Living": Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues, 1976 219 Reading Pop Culture as Intellectual Obligation: Roland Barthes, Image—Music—Text, 1977 221 Paging through Books to Make History: Dean Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War, 1977 223 Historians Begin to Study Popular Music: Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, 1977 225 Musicking to Overturn Hierarchy: Christopher Small, Music, Society, Education, 1977 226 Drool Data and Stained Panties from a Critical Noise Boy: Nick Tosches, Country: The Biggest Music in America, 1977 229 Part V: After the Revolution Punk Negates Rock: Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock and Roll, 1978 236 The Ghostwriter behind the Music Books: Ray Charles and David Ritz, Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story, 1978 240 Disco Negates Rock: Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance, 1978 242 Industry Schmoozer and Black Music Advocated Fills Public Libraries with Okay Overviews: Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, 1978 245 Musicology's Greatest Tune Chronicler: Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America, 1979 247 Criticism's Greatest Album Chronicler: Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the '70s, 1981 248 Rock's Frank Capra: Cameron Crowe: Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, 1981 251 Culture Studies/Rock Critic Twofer!: Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll, 1981 252 A Magical Explainer of Impure Sounds: Robert Palmer, Deep Blues, 1981 255 Feminist Rock Critic, Pop-Savvy Social Critic: Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light: Pieces of a Decade, 1981 257 New Deal Swing Believer Revived: Otis Ferguson, In the Spirit of Jazz: The Otis Ferguson Reader, 1982 259 Ethnomusicology and Pop, Forever Fraught: Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts, 1983 260 Autodidact Deviance, Modeling the Rock Generation to Come: V. Vale and Andrea Juno, eds., RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, 1983 263 The Rolling Stones of Rolling Stones Books: Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, 1984 266 Finding the Blackface in Bluegrass: Robert Cantwell, Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound, 1984 268 Cyberpunk Novels and Cultural Studies Futurism: William Gibson, Neuromancer, 1984 269 Glossary Magazine Features Writer Gets History's Second Draft: Gerri Hirshey, Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music, 1984 272 Theorizing Sound as Dress Rehearsal for the Future: Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 1977; Translation 1985 274 Classic Rock, Mass Market Paperback Style: Stephen Davis, Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zepplin Saga, 1985 275Love and Rockets, Signature Comic of Punk Los Angeles as Borderland Imaginary: Los Bros Hernandez, Music for Mechanics, 1985 277 Plays about Black American Culture Surviving the Loss of Political Will: August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, 1985 280 Putting Pop in the Big Books of Music: H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 1986 282 Popular Music's Defining Singer and Swinger: Kitty Kelley, His Way, The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, 1986 284 Anti-Epic Lyricizing of Black Music after Black Power: Nathaniel Mackey, Bedouin Hornbook, 1986 288 Lost Icon of Rock Criticism: Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, 1987 290 Veiled Glimpses of the Songwriter Who Invented Rock and Roll as Literature: Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, 1987 292 Making "Wild-Eyed Girls" a More Complex Narrative: Pamela Des Barres, I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, 1987 294 Reporting Black Music as Art Mixed with Business, Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues, 1988 295 Sessions with the Evil Genius of Jazz: Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, 1989 298 Part VI: New Voices, New Method Literature of New World Order Americanization: Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters, 1990 308 Ethnic Studies of Blended Musical Identities: George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, 1990 310 Ballad Novels for a Baby Boomer Appalachia: Sharyn McCrumb, If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, 1990 312 Pimply, Prole, and Putrid, but with a Surprisingly Diverse Genre Literature: Chuck Eddy, Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, 1991 314 How Musicology Met Cultural Studies: Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, 1991 318 Idol for Academic Analysis and a Changing Public Sphere: Madonna, Sex, 1992 320 Black Bohemian Cultural Nationalism: Greg Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, 1992 324 From Indie to Alternative Rock: Gina Arnold, Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana, 1993 326 Musicology on Popular Music—In Pragmatic Context: Richard Crawford, The American Musical Landscape, 1993 330 Listenign, Queerly, Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, 1993 332 Blackface as Stolen Vernacular: Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, 1993 334 Media Studies of Girls Listening to Top 40: Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, 1994 338 Ironies of a Contested Identity: Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, 1994 339 Two Generations of Leading Ethnomusicologists Debate the Popular: Charles Keil and Steven Feld: Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 1944 344 Defining Hip-Hop as Flow, Layering, Rupture, and Postindustrial Resistance: Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, 1994 346 Regendering Music Writing, with the Deadly Art of Attitude: Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers, eds., Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop, and Rap, 1995 348 Soundscaping References, Immersing Trauma: David Toop, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, 1995 348 Sociologist Gives Country Studies a Soft-Shell Contrast to the Honky-Tonk: Richard Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, 1997 354 All That Not-Quite Jazz: Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century, 1998 355 Jazz Studies Conquers the Academy: Robert G. O'Meally, ed., The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, 1998 357 Part VII: Topics in Progress Paradigms of Club Culture, House and Techno to Rave and EDM: Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture, 1998 368 Performance Studies, Minoritarian Identity, and Academic Wildness: José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentification: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, 1999 372 Left of Black: Networking a New Discourse: Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture, 1999 375 Aerobics as Genre, Managing Emotions: Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 2000 377 Confronting Globalization: Thomas Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe, 2000 378 Evocations of Cultural Migration Centered on Race, Rhythm, and Eventually Sexuality: Alejo Carpentier, Music in Cuba, 2001 (1946) 382 Digging Up the Pre-Recordings Creation of a Black Pop Paradigm: Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895, 2002 386 When Faith in Popular Sound Wavers, He's Waiting: Theodor Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, 2002 388 Codifying a Precarious but Global Academic Field: David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus, eds., Popular Music Studies, 2002 391 Salsa and the Mixings of Global Culture: Lise Waxer, City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia, 2002 393 Musicals as Pop, Nationalism, and Changing Identity: Stacy Wolf, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical, 2002 396 Musical Fiction and Criticism by the Greatest Used Bookstore Clerk of All Time: Jonathan Lethem, Fortress of Solitude, 2003 399 Poetic Ontologies of Black Musical Style: Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, 2003 401 Rescuing the Afromodern Vernacular: Guthrie Ramsey Jr., Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, 2003 402 Sound Studies and the Songs Question: Jonathan Sterne: The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, 2003 404 Dylanologist Conventions: Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, 2004 405 Two Editions of a Field Evolving Faster Than a Collection Could Contain: Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, eds., That's the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 2004, 2012 410 Revisionist Bluesology and Tangled Intellectual History: Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, 2004 412 Trying to Tell the Story of a Dominant Genre: Jeff Chang, Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, 2005 415 Refiguring American Music—And Its Institutionalizations: Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, 2005 419 Country Music Scholars Pioneer Gender and Industry Analysis: Diane Pecknold, The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry, 2007 423 Where Does Classical Music Fit In?: Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, 2007 426 Poptimism, 33 1/3 Books, and the Struggles of Music Critics: Carl Wilson, Let's Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, 2007 429 Novelists Collegial with Indie Music: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010 432 YouTube, Streaming, and the Popular Music Performance Archive: Will Friedwald, A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, 2010 437 Idiosyncratic Musician Memoirs—Performer as Writer in the Era of the Artist as Brand: Jay-Z, Decoded, 2010 438 Acknowledgments 443 Works Cited 447 Index 513
£20.69
Duke University Press How Do We Look
Book SynopsisIn How Do We Look? Fatimah Tobing Rony draws on transnational images of Indonesian women as a way to theorize what she calls visual biopolitics—the ways visual representation determines which lives are made to matter more than others. Rony outlines the mechanisms of visual biopolitics by examining Paul Gauguin’s 1893 portrait of Annah la Javanaise—a trafficked thirteen-year-old girl found wandering the streets of Paris—as well as US ethnographic and documentary films. In each instance, the figure of the Indonesian woman is inextricably tied to discourses of primitivism, savagery, colonialism, exoticism, and genocide. Rony also focuses on acts of resistance to visual biopolitics in film, writing, and photography. These works, such as Rachmi Diyah Larasati’s The Dance that Makes You Vanish, Vincent Monnikendam’s Mother Dao (1995), and the collaborative films of Nia Dinata, challenge the naturalized methods of seeing that justify exTrade Review“Fatimah Tobing Rony's passionate appeal for a different kind of filmmaking that might interrupt the representational violence of what she calls visual biopolitics animates every page of this innovative and important book. Building a powerful argument about how habitual ways of seeing and not seeing are produced, reproduced, and resisted via visual media, Rony makes a welcome and original contribution to both film studies and Southeast Asian studies.” -- Karen Strassler, author of * Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia *“Fatimah Tobing Rony traces a fascinating visual archive across time, media, and sites of power, drawing out chilling resonances among primary media texts with great erudition, critical force, and lyricism. No other author is a sophisticated art historian, critical ethnographer, postcolonial feminist theorist, and filmmaker all in one. This powerful and remarkable book positions Rony as a brilliant and essential cultural voice.” -- Patricia White, author of * Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ixTongue 1 Introduction. How Do We Look? 3The Peonies 24 1. Annah la Javanaise 27Under the Tree 70 2. The Still Dancer 72The Dressing Down 108 3. Mother Dao 110Flight 147 4. Nia Dinata 148 Conclusion. The Fourth Eye 187 Notes 191 Bibliography 213 Index 225
£18.89
Duke University Press Radiation Sounds
Book SynopsisJessica A. Schwartz examines the seventy-five years of Marshallese music developed in response to the United States' nuclear weapons testing on their homeland, showing how Marshallese singing practices make heard the harmful effects of US nuclear violence.Trade Review“In this fascinating ethnography of singing as a sonic politics of Indigenous postcolonial identity, Jessica A. Schwartz reveals the intimate historical relations between aurality and nuclear war. Ambitious and unique, Radiation Sounds brings the sensory materialities of ‘the bomb’ home to the lives lived and songs sung in its shadow.” -- David Novak, author of * Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation *"This is a very sophisticated and well-researched book, enriched by the sharing of personal experience and observations that illuminate the research relationships that form its foundation. . . . This book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars: historians, political scientists, anthropologists, Pacific studies, gender studies, and disaster studies scholars, in addition to ethnomusicologists and dance ethnologists. In teaching, it would be a good resource for graduate students." -- Kirsty Gillespie * Yearbook for Traditional Music *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: "It Was the Sound That Terrified Us" 1 1. Radioactive Citizenship: Voices of the Nation 41 2. Precarious Harmonies 83 3. MORIBA: "Everything Is in God's Hands" 131 4. Uwaañañ (Spirited Noise) 170 5. Anemkwōj 211 Notes 253 Bibliography 273 Index 287
£20.69
Duke University Press Lions Share
Book SynopsisVeit Erlmann examines the role of copyright law in post-apartheid South Africa and its impact on the South African music industry, showing how copyright is inextricably entwined with race, popular music, postcolonial governance, indigenous rights, and the struggle to create a more equitable society.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. “We Do Not Speak the Same Language” 1 1. Aspirations and Apprehensions: Toward an Anthropology in Law 16 2. The Past in the Present: Copyright, Colonialism, and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” 62 3. Assembling Tradition, Representing Indigeneity: The Making of the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Act 28 of 2013 109 4. Circulating Evidence: The Truth about Piracy 174 5. Which Collective? The Infrastructure of Royalties 232 Conclusion. How to Speak the Same Language, or at Least Try To 301 Appendix. Southern African Copyright: The Basics 309 Notes 315 Bibliography 345 Index 371
£77.35
Duke University Press TV Snapshots
Book SynopsisLynn Spigel explores historical snapshots of people posing in front of their television sets in the 1950s through the early 1970s, showing how TV snapshots were a popular photographic practice through which people visualized their lives in an increasingly mediated culture.Trade Review“In this brilliant book Lynn Spigel examines TV snapshots as an activity, hobby art, expressive medium, and a thing people did with television, convincingly arguing for the importance of thinking about how photography and television work together. She reorients television studies away from programs and questions of spectatorship toward an exploration of the home as a ‘theater of everyday life,’ offering a diverse picture of how people use television, what the medium means, and where and how people live. I love this book and can’t wait to teach it.” -- Pamela Robertson Wojcik, author of * The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 *"Spigel uses midcentury photographs of people posing next to television sets to construct a fascinating study of Americana. . . . A vital addition to media studies and popular culture collections." -- Claire Sewell * Library Journal *"Spigel indicates that she worked on the book during the years when the center of gravity of television shifted from broadcast to digital streaming. Her archive of snapshots documents a phase of the medium's development shrinking into the rearview mirror. But they are also artifacts embodying something now much more familiar. The compact camera and the TV set correspond to two phases in the circulation of imagery: production and consumption respectively. In these snapshots, the image cycle is limited: flow, not a flood. The screen remains part of domestic space—and not yet, as it's becoming now, a home of sorts in its own right." -- Scott McLemee * Inside Higher Ed *"Spigel has yet again shown herself to be a signal historian of the family, helping us make sense of the ways we actually were, in the flickering light of the pressure to be otherwise." -- Hannah Zeavin * New York Review of Books *“Spigel dives deep into histories of race, sexuality, family and domesticity, architecture, and more, as they are called up by these snapshots. The result is a rich, wide-ranging historical account of cultural, social, and familial practices surrounding both television and photography that extrapolate what are often considered to be the dominant uses of these two media.” -- Bruno Guaraná * Film Quarterly *"Displaying a sophisticated mastery of media studies, photographic history, and contemporary art theory, Spigel shifts seamlessly through a wide span of intellectual underpinnings. . . . At times whimsical and frequently revealing gender and class relationships, this work is engaging and thoughtful. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- D. McClure * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Companion Technologies 1 1. TV Portraits: Picturing Families and Household Things 25 2. TV Performers: A Theater of Everyday Life 72 3. TV Dress-Up: Fashion Poses and Everyday Glamour 121 4. TV Pinups: Sex and the Single TV 175 5. TV Memories: Snapshots in Digital Times 222 Conclusion: Hard Stop 255 Notes 263 Bibliography 289 Index 307
£20.69
Duke University Press The Media Swirl
Book SynopsisCarol Vernallis examines short form audiovisual mediafrom TikTok mashups to Beyoncé's Lemonadeto offer techniques for understanding digital media.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi A Note on the Cover xiii Introduction 1 I. Post-Classical Cinema at the Limit 1. Partying in The Great Gatsby: Baz Luhrmann’s Audovisual Sublime 27 2. Shattered Pleasures: Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction 48 II. Music Video and the Art-Video Border 3. Beyoncé’s Overwhelming Opus; or, the Past and Future of Music Video 71 4. Avant-Gardists and the Lure of Pop Music 97 5. Beyoncé’s Lemonade: She Dreams in Both Worlds (Carol Vernallis, Lisa Perrot, and Holly Rogers) 122 6. Tracing the Carters through the Galleries: “APES**T/APESHIT” and the Louvre 138 7. Storytelling on the Ledge: Lady Gaga and Jonas Åkerlund’s “Paparazzi” 154 III. Music Video’s Late Late Style 8. How to Analyze Music Videos: Beyoncé and Melina Matsoukas’s “Pretty Hurts” 175 9. Dave Meyer’s Moments of Audiovisual Bliss 196 10. Janelle Monáe’s “You Make Me Feel” and Anderson.Paak with Kendrick Lamar’s “Tints”: Getting Up in My [Rearview] Mirror 211 IV. Audiovisual Aesthetics Online 11. Who Needs Music Documentaries When There’s TikTok and Carpool Karaoke? 231 12. TikTok and Costume-Drama Mashups on YouTube 247 V. New Modes of Analysis: Industry 13. The Art of Color Grading (Carol Vernallis, Jonathan Leal, Eric Weldt, and Aubrey Woodiwiss) 265 14. Music Video Directors, Production Houses, and the Media Swirl 290 VI. New Modes of Analysis: Neuroscience 15. Music Video’s Multisensory 307 16. Tracing the Asset: Humanistic and Quantitative Approaches to Cybercrime Film Trailers (Snowden and Bourne) 319 VII. New Modes of Analysis: Politics and Vernacular Culture 17. New Technologies, Social Justice, and the Future in Beyoncé’s Audiovisual Albums 335 18. Fox News, COVID-19, Brief Media Aesthetics, and Historical Resonances 356 Afterword 369 Notes 373 Bibliography 403 Index 429
£22.49
Duke University Press Visitation
Book SynopsisJennifer DeClue examines Black feminist avant-garde films from filmmakers including Kara Walker, Tourmaline, and Ja'Tovia Gary that visualize violence suffered by Black women in the United States.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Visitation 1 1. The Archive and the Silhouette: Framing Black Feminist Avant-Garde Cinema 29 2. Reckoning at the Bridge: Saved and the Archive of Laura Nelson 65 3. Carrying the Knowledge / Performing the Archive: An Afternoon with Marsha P. Johnson 99 4. Ecstasy and the Archive: A Black Feminist Phenomenology of Freedom 143 Coda. On Tenderness 183 Notes 187 Bibliography 211 Index 221
£18.99
Duke University Press Working Musicians
Book SynopsisTimothy D. Taylor offers a behind-the-scenes look at the working composers, musicians, and engineers who create soundtracks for film, television, and video games.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Working Musicians 1 1. Group Production, the Collective Laborer, Supply Chains, and Fields 19 2. Creativity 48 3. Composers’ Labor 81 4. The Music Supply Chain after the Composer: Adding Value 119 5. Challenges 138 6. It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World 156 7. Neoliberalization as (Self-)Exploitation 177 8. “Thousands of Guys Like Me” 212 Notes 217 References 231 Index 245
£19.94
Duke University Press Future Varda
Book SynopsisThis special issue recognizes the work and legacy of Agnès Varda (19282019), a Belgian-born film director, screenwriter, photographer, and artist whose work was part of the French New Wave film movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the wake of Varda's passing in March 2019, contributors offer reflections on the continued relevance of her work.Until the end of her life, Varda was engaged with feminism, ethics, politics, and the representation of women in the film industry. Rather than focusing on Varda's most famous films, the contributors to this issue consider aspects of her oeuvre that have contemporary relevance and those that point to the future: films, art installations, and photographs that have received less scholarly attention; her political activism; her role as manager of her own production company; and her Instagram presence. By emphasizing these often-overlooked elements of Varda's creative output, the contributors reveal the depth of her artistic legacy and demonstrate how v
£8.99
Duke University Press The Dark Tree
Book SynopsisIn this revised and updated edition of The Dark Tree, Steven L. Isoardi tells the story of Horace Tapscott and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community arts group in Los Angeles that provided community-oriented jazz and jazz training for African American musicians, poets, playwrights, and artists for four decades.Trade Review“The Dark Tree is just wonderful. One cannot understand the history of Black arts on the West Coast without a thorough assessment of this movement; Isoardi knows this history so well and tells a much bigger story. The book does a fantastic job of capturing the nitty-gritty nature of the music scene and resurrecting local figures in the Arkestra who have never gotten any press for their astounding musicianship. This is a remarkable book.” -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of * Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original *“This is a revelatory document, virtuosically combining scholarship and oral history to connect the dots of African American music on the West Coast. Far more than a mere historical ‘overdub’ of an underdocumented scene, this book disrupts the mythic notions of jazz history, showing instead how music and community unfold as one. Both a celebratory and a cautionary tale, it also delivers some of the most frank and eye-opening musicians’ accounts since Arthur Taylor’s Notes and Tones.” -- Vijay Iyer, musician and composer“In these pages, Horace Tapscott says to the audience, ‘This is one more you wrote through us.’ And this is what Isoardi has done here: given voice to the nearly lost history of a revolutionary community movement through its key players. Epic in scope, dazzling in detail, and sensual as any Coltrane solo, this rare book—informative, intimate, lyrical, scholarly, nuanced, and essential—reads like no history book you’ve read before.” -- Chris Abani, author of GraceLand"An impressively constructed tapestry of voices, it includes memories and opinions from myriad people while maintaining a strong narrative thread through lsoardi's authoritative voice. . . . lsoardi's interviews with dozens of members—not one of whom declined to participate—recover a wealth of information crucial to the history of Los Angeles jazz. In the process, he has made The Dark Tree a truly collaborative project that itself shares in the communal spirit of the UGMAA." -- Matthew Blackwell * The Wire *Table of ContentsPreface to the Second Edition ix Acknowledgments xv 1. Ancestral Echoes: Roots of the African American Community Artist 1 2. Ballad for Samuel: The Legacy of Central Avenue and the 1950s Avant-Garde in Los Angeles 19 3. Lino’s Pad: African American Los Angeles and the Formation of the Underground Musicians Association (UGMA) 43 4. The Giant is Awakened: The Watts Uprising and Cultural Resurgence 69 5. Warriors All: UGMA in the Middle of It 117 6. The Mothership: From UGMA/UGMAA to the Pan Afrikan Peoples Akrestra and UGMAA 141 7. To the Great House: The Arkestra in the 1970s 179 8. Thoughts of Dar es Salaam: The Institutionalization of UGMAA 215 9. At the Crossroads: The Ark and UGMAA in the 1980s 259 10. The Hero’s Last Dance: The ’90s Resurgence 285 11. Aiee! The Phantom: Horace Tapscott 311 12. The Black Apostles: The Arkestra/UGMAA Ethos/Aesthetic: Music, Artists, Community 341 Epilogue: The Post-Horace Pan African Peoples Arkestra 363 Appendix: A View from the Bottom: The Music of Horace Tapscott and The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, by Roberto Miranda 369 Notes 379 Bibliography 407 Index 425
£21.59
Duke University Press The Only Way Out
Book SynopsisIn The Only Way Out, Katherine Brewer Ball explores the American fascination with the escape story. Brewer Ball argues that escape is a key site for exploring American conceptions of freedom and constraint. Stories of escape are never told just once but become mythic in their episodic iterations, revealing the fantasies and desires of society, the storyteller, and the listener. While white escape narratives have typically been laden with Enlightenment fantasies of redemption where freedom is available to any individual willing to seize it, Brewer Ball explores how Black and queer escape offer forms of radical possibility. Drawing on Black studies, queer theory, and performance studies, she examines a range of works, from nineteenth-century American literature to contemporary queer of color art and writing by contemporary American artists including Wilmer Wilson IV, Tourmaline, Tony Kushner, Junot Díaz, Glenn Ligon, Toshi Reagon, and Sharon Hayes. Throughout, escape emerge
£19.94
New York University Press The Revolution Will Be Hilarious
Book SynopsisAn insider's look at the power of comedy to effect social changeFrom Trevor Noah's The Daily Show and Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act, to Issa Rae's Insecure and Corey Ryan Forrester's Twitter feed, today's multi-platform comedy refuses to shy away from the social issues that define our time.As more comedians lean into social justice activism, they help reshape the entertainment industry and offer creative, dynamic avenues for social change. The Revolution Will Be Hilarious offers a compelling insider's look at how comedy and social justice activists are working together in a revolutionary media moment. Caty Borum invites readers into an expanding, enterprising arena of participatory culture and politics through in-depth interviews with comedians, social justice leaders, and Hollywood players. Their insights shed light on questions such as: What role does comedy play in helping communities engage the public with challenging social issues? HoTrade ReviewCaty Borum shows us why she is the leading expert in the field of comedy & social justice. The Revolution Will Be Hilarious is essential reading for all the creative deviants out there who wish to engage with comedy as a form of artistic resistance. -- Josh Church, producer of Bros and George Carlin’s American Dream, Apatow ProductionsCaty Borum's analysis of the intersection of activism and humor highlights how much comedy plays a role in shaping the way we think and shaping the way we see the world as it is. This book also beautifully illustrates how humor can help us shape the world into what we hope it could be. There is no one more qualified to take us on such a journey than Caty Borum. -- Roy Wood Jr., Comedian, Correspondent, The Daily ShowArguing that humor is a fuel that powers positive change, Borum shows up- close how comedians turn communities of laughter into communities of action. A fun read and full of insight, this book is essential for anyone interested in the business of comedy and the power of grassroots politics. -- Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz, authors of That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for ThemThe book that comedy and social justice never knew it needed! The revelations, stories, and ideas presented are inspirational. A must-read for anyone who is interested in the intersection of entertainment and culture. -- Deniese Davis, founder/CEO, Reform Media Group; co-executive producer, Insecure; producer, A Black Lady Sketch ShowIn response to years of clear social upheaval in the United States, from renewed fights for social justice to new threats of authoritarianism, a new, diverse set of comedy voices are using humor in their activism. Caty Borum chronicles this phenomenon in her entertaining book The Revolution Will Be Hilarious. * Foreword Reviews *An important addition to support multidisciplinary research in the social sciences and fine arts, with a wide appeal for those interested in the role of activist comedy on emerging social media platforms. * Library Journal *The Revolution Will Be Hilarious shows how much media can emerge, converge, and use comedy as an effective tool for bringing about lasting change. -- Brian Boone * Vulture *It is clear from reading The Revolution Will Be Hilarious that Borum cares quite deeply about the power of civic organizations to drive social and political change and that her active, engaged scholarship is helping to promote a revolution that is both funny and impactful....Borum shows us just what can happen when comedians and activists work together to promote social change. * International Journal of Communication *
£22.79
University of Toronto Press Hope in a Collapsing World
Book SynopsisFor young people, the space of the drama classroom can be a space for deep learning as they struggle across difference to create something together with common purpose. Collaborating across institutions, theatres, and community spaces, the research in Hope in a Collapsing World mobilizes theatre to build its methodology and create new data with young people as they seek the language of performance to communicate their worries, fears, and dreams to a global network of researchers and a wider public. A collaboration between a social scientist and a playwright and using both ethnographic study and playwriting, Hope in a Collapsing World represents a groundbreaking hybrid format of research text and original script titled Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope for reading, experimentation, and performance. Table of ContentsDedication Figures and Tables Acknowledgements I Acknowledgements II Prologue Part I: Listening, Pedagogy, Theatre, and Cultural Citizenship Listening as an Artful Practice of Care Listening and Caring as Political Acts Creating Social Value from Theatre The System: Worlds Apart but Structurally Familiar The Settings: Brief Social, Political and Educational Portraits of Athens, Lucknow, Coventry, Tainan, Toronto Athens, Greece: Setting the Context Lucknow, India: Setting the Context Coventry, England: Setting the Context Tainan, Taiwan: Setting the Context Toronto, Canada: Setting the Context Ethnography and its Ecologies An Overview of Data Collection A Word about Ethnography The Qualitative Landscape: Care and Cultural Citizenship Daring to Dream in Greek Austerity Misfit Citizenship and Political Personhood in India: A Methodology of Critical Dialogue and Rehearsed Futurity Hope, Performance Pedagogies, and Democratic Citizenship Canley Youth Theatre’s Missive to the World—Listen A Pedagogy of Hope Tainan Students Making the World they Need The Self, the Collective: Theatre and Social Change Interdependency Against All Odds Voicing Toronto Stories for a more Equal World The Territory of Race, Racism, and Gender in Verbatim Theatre Creation Visible and Invisible Vulnerabilities in Oral History Storytelling Muckles’ Story of Hearing and Being Heard Youth Alienation from Mainstream Politics: Who is the Knowledgeable Citizen? Devising Theatre, Identity and the Search for Structure and Meaning Hope and Care in the Quantitative Landscape Key Quantitative Findings Across Sites ‘Outside the Mainstream’ and the Nature of Personal Hope and Experiences of Care Generating Hope through Self-Creation in the School, the Community, and in the Drama-Making Space Young People as Care-Givers Finding and Giving Care in Context To Conclude: Wrestling Towards Hope through Relationships of Care Epilogue: Acting in Concert Turning Towards Part II: Towards Youth Audience Research Part II: A Step Towards Youth By Andrew Kushnir Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope By Andrew Kushnir Appendix References Index
£23.39
University of Toronto Press Beyond Human
Book SynopsisChronicling sixteenth-century Spain to the present day, Beyond Human aims to decentre the human and acknowledge the material historicity of more-than-human nature. The book explores key questions relating to ecological equity, justice, and responsibility within and beyond Spain in the Anthropocene. Examining relations between Iberian cultural practices, historical developments, and ecological processes, Maryanne L. Leone, Shanna Lino, and the contributors to this volume reveal the structures that uphold and dismantle the non-humanhuman dichotomy and nature-culture divide. The book critiques works from the Golden Age to the twenty-first century in a wide range of genres, including comedia, royal treatises, agricultural reports, paintings, satirical essays, horror fiction and film, young adult and speculative literature, poetry, graphic novels, and television series. The authors contend that Spanish cultural studies must expose the material historicity thTable of ContentsList of Map and Illustrations Foreword Luis I. Prádanos Acknowledgments Introduction: Historicizing the Ecocrisis: Beyond-Human Experiences in Spanish Natureculture Maryanne L. Leone and Shanna Lino Part One: Tracing Environmental Culture in Spain 1. Lope’s Los guanches de Tenerife y conquista de Gran Canaria: An Ecolonialist Reading Bonnie L. Gasior 2. Birdsong and the Earth’s Polyrhythm: The Life of a Caged Blue Rock Thrush in Early Modern Spain John Beusterien 3. Water Grabbing and the Dammed Esla: The Enchanted Waters of Jorge de Montemayor and the Riaño Reservoir Margaret Marek 4. Of Witches and Land Reform in Enlightenment Spain Daniel Frost 5. Plant, Animal, and Human Consciousness in Julio Llamazares’s Luna de lobos Olga Colbert Part Two: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene 6. Leonardo Torres Quevedo’s Automata and the Consolidation of Technological Regenerationism Óscar Iván Useche 7. The Specter of Capitalism: Reading the Anthropocene in Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s Cañas y barro Michael L. Martínez, Jr. 8. Jesús Carrasco’s Intemperie: The Literature of Post-Immunological Modernity William Viestenz 9. Transhumanism and Necropolitics in Rosa Montero’s Times of Hatred Juan Carlos Martín Galván 10. The Salvage Poetics of Ben Clark’s Basura Micah McKay Part Three: Disruptive Agentic Paradigms 11. Ecofeminist Materialism and Entanglements of Care in Sara Mesa’s Un incendio invisible Maryanne L. Leone 12. Trans-Corporeal Matter Narratives in Hierro Ma Luz González-Rodríguez and Ma Concepción Brito-Vera 13. ¡El toro no entiende de toreo!: Taurine Naturecultures, Wenceslao Fernández Flórez’s Antitaurine Essays, and the Emergence of Posthumanist Views of Animals in Spain Daniel Ares-López 14. Ecohorror as Critique of Anthropogenic (Self-)Destruction in Sánchez Piñol’s Cold Skin Shanna Lino Part Four: Medium as Activism Igniter 15. Monstrous Humanity: An Ecopostcolonial Reading of Laura Gallego García’s Trilogy Guardianes de la Ciudadela Victoria L. Ketz 16. La cuenta atrás: An Ecodystopian Graphic Novel on Spain’s Greatest Ecological Disaster Carla Almanza-Gálvez 17. Drawing Ecological Thought: Anthropomorphism and Satire as Critique of Capitalism in the Twenty-First-Century Spanish Comic Christine M. Martínez List of Contributors Index
£58.65
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Todd Haynes
Book SynopsisA pioneer of the New Queer Cinema, Todd Haynes (b. 1961) is a leading American independent filmmaker. He has garnered numerous awards and nominations and an expanding fan base for his provocative and engaging work. Gathering interviews from 1989 to 2012, this collection presents a range of themes, films, and moments in the burgeoning career of Todd Haynes.
£22.46
University Press of Mississippi The Gaithers and Southern Gospel
Book SynopsisIn The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither's Homecoming video and concert series--a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has outperformed all Christian and much secular popular music on the American music market.The Homecomings represent 'southern gospel.' Typically that means a musical style popular among white evangelical Christians in the American South and Midwest, and it sometimes overlaps in style, theme, and audience with country music. The Homecomings' nostalgic orientation--their celebration of 'traditional' kinds of American Christian life--harmonize well with southern gospel music, past and present. But amidst the backward gazes, the Homecomings also portend and manifest change. The Gaithers' deliberate racial integration of their stages, their careful articulation of a relatively inclusive evangelical theology, and their experiments with an array of musical forms demons
£77.35
University Press of Mississippi Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Hat
Book SynopsisWho Framed Roger Rabbit emerged at a nexus of people, technology, and circumstances that is historically, culturally, and aesthetically momentous. By the 1980s, animation seemed a dying art. Not even the Walt Disney Company, which had already won over thirty Academy Awards, could stop what appeared to be the end of an animation era.To revitalize popular interest in animation, Disney needed to reach outside its own studio and create the distinctive film that helped usher in a Disney Renaissance. That film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, though expensive and controversial, debuted in theaters to huge success at the box office in 1988. Unique in its conceit of cartoons living in the real world, Who Framed Roger Rabbit magically blended live action and animation, carrying with it a humor that still resonates with audiences.Upon the film's release, Disney's marketing program led the audience to believe that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was made solely by director Bob Zemeckis,
£23.96
University Press of Mississippi Animating the Spirited
Book SynopsisContributions by Graham Barton, Raz Greenberg, Gyongyi Horvath, Birgitta Hosea, Tze-yue G. Hu, Yin Ker, M. Javad Khajavi, Richard J. Leskosky, Yuk Lan Ng, Giryung Park, Eileen Anastasia Reynolds, Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, Koji Yamamura, Masao Yokota, and Millie YoungGetting in touch with a spiritual side is a craving many are unable to express or voice, but readers and viewers seek out this desired connection to something greater through animation, cinema, anime, and art. Animating the Spirited: Journeys and Transformations includes a range of explorations of the meanings of the spirited and spiritual in the diverse, dynamic, and polarized creative environment of the twenty-first century. While animation is at the heart of the book, such related subjects as fine art, comics, children's literature, folklore, religion, and philosophy enrich the discoveries. These interdisciplinary discussions range from theory to practice, within the framework of an ever-changing media landscap
£29.21
University Press of Mississippi The School Story
Book SynopsisThe School Story: Young Adult Narratives in the Age of Neoliberalism examines the work of contemporary writers, filmmakers, and critics who, reflecting on the realm of school experience, help to shape dominant ideas of school. The creations discussed are mostly stories for children and young adults. David Aitchison looks at serious novels for teens including Laurie Halse Anderson''s Speak and Faiza Guène''s Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, the light-hearted, middle-grade fiction of Andrew Clements and Tommy Greenwald, and Malala Yousafzai''s autobiography for young readers, I Am Malala. He also responds to stories that take young people as their primary subjects in such novels as Sapphire''s Push and films including Battle Royale and Cooties. Though ranging widely in their accounts of young life, such stories betray a mounting sense of crisis in education around the world, especially in terms of equity (the extent to which students from diverse bac
£26.06
University Press of Mississippi Cmon Get Happy
Book SynopsisIn their third and final screen teaming, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly starred together in the MGM musical Summer Stock. In C'mon, Get Happy, David Fantle and Tom Johnson present a comprehensive study of this 1950 motion picture, from start to finish and after its release.Trade ReviewThank you for your insightful and loving book about the movie, Summer Stock. I’m sure that, without a doubt, it will make your readers forget their troubles and just Get Happy!" - Lorna Luft, singer, author, and daughter of Judy Garland"Just like the dance Gene Kelly does on a squeaky board and newspaper that builds from a hesitating start to an explosive finish, Dave and Tom expertly chronicle the making of Summer Stock from uncertain beginnings to its ultimate triumph on the screen." - Tommy Tune, ten-time Tony Award–winning director, choreographer, and dancer"This very special book is entertaining and meticulously researched. It offers a clear sense of how they created a musical during the Golden Age of Hollywood and connects the dots of the process, combining the strands of many important voices, leaving the modern reader agog at the wonders of the MGM factory and the studio system. I thoroughly enjoyed it!" - Michael Feinstein, singer, songwriter, and ambassador of the Great American Songbook"Shout ‘HALLELUJAH!’—Fantle and Johnson have given us a rare peek into the miracle that is filmmaking. Their love for movie musicals of the Golden Age comes through in every glorious and riveting detail." - Rob Marshall, film and Broadway director and choreographer of Chicago, Nine, and Into the Woods"I know every step in Summer Stock like the back of my hand, and David and Tom have done a brilliant job capturing the magic of this beloved classic. What a thrill to be taken behind the scenes to glimpse the extraordinary talents who brought to life one of the all-time greats from the MGM era. An absolute must-read!" - Susan Stroman, five-time Tony Award–winning choreographer and director of the Broadway and film versions of The Producers"Whenever a film scoring assignment took me to MGM, I looked forward to eating lunch in the studio café where Gene Kelly and Judy Garland dined, peeking into soundstages 26 and 27 where they rehearsed and filmed the great musicals of MGM’s Golden Age. ‘If only these walls could talk,’ I wondered. Well, it’s as if they spilled all they had seen and heard to David Fantle and Tom Johnson who have given me and all you lucky readers this fascinating, meticulously researched, mega-readable book. I ate it up and couldn’t wait to watch Summer Stock again, only this time as a privileged insider." - David Shire, Oscar-winning songwriter, composer, and arranger for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Conversation, and All the President’s Men"The authors have done us a great service. They bring us into the world of the creation of an MGM musical—Summer Stock—in the waning days of the studio system and let us see the process in ways we seldom get to know. They take us behind the scenes and show us what went into creating these moments, and all the others, while at the same time giving us a glimpse into the lives of the wildly talented actors and artists; people who were doing the creating. This is the present the authors have given us in this remarkable and delightful book—a full tour of how an MGM musical was really made. In Fantle and Johnson’s hands, the making of Summer Stock is touching—and ultimately moving." - Richard Maltby Jr., Tony Award-winning director and lyricist of such shows as Ain’t Misbehavin’, Fosse, and Miss Saigon"The book brings to life every detail of the making of this movie, and I enjoyed it immensely. The research and the result should be applauded." - Alan Bergman, multiple Oscar-, Emmy-, and Grammy-winning songwriterTable of Contents Foreword by Savion Glover Introduction: Why Summer Stock? I. The Studio: MGM: Dream Factory in Transition II. The Story: It’ll Make Oklahoma! Look like a Bum III. The Talent: It’s up to You—Your Blood and Guts IV. The Production: How Dare This Look like We’re Having Any Fun! V. The Musical Numbers: A Brilliant Creation! VI. Marketing, Reviews, Revenue, and Revivals: The Voice of Garland and the Feet of Kelly Are at High Tide in Summer Stock VII. Straight Up All the WayVIII. Taking Stock: Who’s Doing Anything Remotely like It Now? I’ll Tell You Who—Nobody! Key Dates in the Making of Summer Stock Cast and Crew of Summer Stock Acknowledgments Appendix I: Johnny Green and the MGM Orchestra Appendix II: Arrangements Have Been Made: Conrad Salinger and Skip Martin and the "MGM Sound" Appendix III: Summer Stock from Vinyl Album to Digital CD Notes Selected Bibliography Index
£27.96
University Press of Mississippi The Brothers Mankiewicz
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 Peter C. Rollins Book AwardLonglisted for the 2020 Moving Image Book Award by the Kraszna-Krausz FoundationNamed a 2019 Richard Wall Memorial Award Finalist by the Theatre Library Association Herman J. (1897-1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture''s only Academy Award. Joe earned the second pair of his four Oscars for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won Best Picture. Despite triumphs as diverse as Monkey Business and Cleopatra, and Pride of the Yankees and Guys and Dolls, the witty, intellectual brothers spent their Hollywood years deeply discontented and yearning for what they did not have--a career in New York theater. Herman, formerly an Algonquin Round Table habitué, New York Times and New Yorker theater
£22.36
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Asghar Farhadi
Book SynopsisThe winner of two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film in only five years, Asghar Farhadi has become Iran's most prominent director since the late Abbas Kiarostami. This volume offers a unique perspective into his career and sheds light on what Farhadi sees as his role and responsibilities as an Iranian filmmaker in a global age.
£19.90
University Press of Mississippi Do You Remember
Book SynopsisTaces the humble beginning of Maurice White, his development as a musician, and his formation of Earth, Wind & Fire. Earth, Wind & Fire stood apart from other soul bands with their philosophical lyrics and extravagant visual art, much of which is studied in the book, including album covers, concerts, and music videos.
£18.86
Cornell University Press Singing Like Germans
Book SynopsisIn Singing Like Germans, Kira Thurman tells the sweeping story of Black musicians in German-speaking Europe over more than a century. Thurman brings to life the incredible musical interactions and transnational collaborations among people of African descent and white Germans and Austrians. Through this compelling history, she explores how people reinforced or challenged racial identities in the concert hall. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, audiences assumed the categories of Blackness and Germanness were mutually exclusive. Yet on attending a performance of German music by a Black musician, many listeners were surprised to discover that German identity is not a biological marker but something that could be learned, performed, and mastered. While Germans and Austrians located their national identity in music, championing composers such as Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as national heroes, the performance of their works by Black musicTrade ReviewSinging Like Germans is a superb piece of historical research enlivened by its author's deep fascination with her subject matter. This book will be fascinating to a wide body of readers who are interested in classical music, German history, and African American history. * New York Journal of Books *Thurman's exacting research, synthesizing a kaleidoscope of source material, paints a rich portrait of Black classical music-making in Europe spanning well over a century. Filled with compelling accounts of the contradictions inherent in classical music's universalist claims, Singing Like Germans demonstrates that the lives of Black classical musicians cannot be reduced to a narrative of struggle. * Boston Review *Sometimes, a book comes along that completely breaks new ground—a total eye-opener. And that's the book called Singing Like Germans. It's meticulously researched, but the writing style goes down like water. Most importantly, it uncovers a story of people and a performance practice and rebuilds an unknown period in music history. * NPR *In Singing Like Germans, the historian Kira Thurman adds a new dimension to the story by focusing on African American classical musicians who studied, performed, or settled in German-speaking Europe, offering valuable insights into how Germans viewed these Black artists. * New York Review of Books *We love history like this that explores how people reinforced or challenged racial identities in specific circumstances. * East Bay Booksellers, Oakland, CA *Thurman's study of Black musicians is an indispensable and foundational achievment. Thurman's work represents a monumental and necessary step towards rewritng the history of German music. * Monatshefte *With Singing Like Germans, Thurman joins Naomi Adele André, author of Black Opera, at the vanguard of cultural histories reexamining musical production and consumption through the lens of critical race theory. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I: 1870–1914 1. How Beethoven Came to Black America: German Musical Universalism and Black Education after the Civil War 2. African American Intellectual and Musical Migration to the Kaiserreich 3. The Sonic Color Line Belts the World: Constructing Race and Music in Central Europe Part II: 1918–1945 4. Blackness and Classical Musicin the Age of the Black Horror on the Rhine Campaign 5. Singing Lieder, Hearing Race: Debating Blackness, Whiteness, and German Music in Interwar Central Europe 6. "A Negro Who Sings German Music Jeopardizes German Culture": Black Musicians under the Shadow of Nazism Part III: 1945–1961 7. "And I thought they were a decadent race": Denazification, the Cold War, and (African) American Involvement in Postwar West German Musical Life 8. Breaking with the Past: Race, Gender, and Opera after 1945 9. Singing in the Promised Land: Black Musicians in the German Democratic Republic Conclusion
£18.04
Stanford University Press Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of
Book SynopsisMusic was one of the first casualties of the Iranian Revolution. It was banned in 1979, but it quickly crept back into Iranian culture and politics. The state made use of music for its propaganda during the Iran–Iraq war. Over time music provided an important political space where artists and audiences could engage in social and political debate. Now, more than thirty-five years on, both the children of the revolution and their music have come of age. Soundtrack of the Revolution offers a striking account of Iranian culture, politics, and social change to provide an alternative history of the Islamic Republic. Drawing on over five years of research in Iran, including during the 2009 protests, Nahid Siamdoust introduces a full cast of characters, from musicians and audience members to state officials, and takes readers into concert halls and underground performances, as well as the state licensing and censorship offices. She closely follows the work of four musicians—a giant of Persian classical music, a government-supported pop star, a rebel rock-and-roller, and an underground rapper—each with markedly different political views and relations with the Iranian government. Taken together, these examinations of musicians and their music shed light on issues at the heart of debates in Iran—about its future and identity, changing notions of religious belief, and the quest for political freedom. Siamdoust shows that even as state authorities resolve, for now, to allow greater freedoms to Iran's majority young population, they retain control and can punish those who stray too far. But music will continue to offer an opening for debate and defiance. As the 2009 Green Uprising and the 1979 Revolution before it have proven, the invocation of a potent melody or musical verse can unite strangers into a powerful public. Trade Review"Nahid Siamdoust's beautiful writing paints a vivid portrait of the struggles over popular music in the Islamic Republic and brings to life some of the most unique and colorful characters in Iranian society today. An instant classic that will launch conversations on Iran and contemporary popular music globally." -- Mark LeVine * author of Heavy Metal Islam *"Nahid Siamdoust's Soundtrack of the Revolution is a groundbreaking study of a potent cultural register in post-revolutionary Iran. For both the casual reader and the aficionado, Siamdoust's pioneering insights are revelatory." -- Hamid Dabashi * author of Iran: A People Interrupted *"Music is the language of liberation. Nahid Siamdoust, who knows all the players and has taken personal risks to tell this story, has written a lovely tribute to the courage and creativity of Iran's musicians. This is a book that, like Iran itself, is filled with hope and sadness—and the universal human desire for freedom." -- Joe Klein * Time Magazine *"Siamdoust manages to capture valuable qualities about the practice of popular music in Iran in depth, while also covering a broad period. This is a premium resource for students and researchers at the intersection of popular music and politics. Overall, it is an eye-opening and enjoyable work." -- Amin Hashemi * Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1The Politics of Music chapter abstractThis chapter provides the historical and political context for an understanding of the issue of music in post-revolutionary Iran. It narrates the process of the Islamization of Iranian politics after the revolution and the problematic of music within Islamic tradition, and posits music as an alternative public sphere. It also provides short overviews of the history of Persian music, music education in Iran, as well as government regulations on music and female musicians, in particular. 2The Nightingale Rebels chapter abstractChapter Two offers insight into the status of music in the immediate years before the revolution and goes on to highlight the trajectory of Iran's preeminent vocalist of Persian classical music, Mohammad Reza Shajarian. It delves into discussions about Persian art music versus popular music, pop music in Shah-era Iran, evolving forms of poetic protest in twentieth-century Iran, and the important role of radio both for Persian classical music as well as for the making of Shajarian. 3The Musical Guide: Mohammad Reza Shajarian chapter abstractThis chapter follows Mohammad Reza Shajarian's trajectory from a "revolutionary" singer and one of the most prominent voices of the Chavosh group—at the onset of the 1979 revolution—to a vocalist whose "popular" politics are increasingly at odds with those of the new state. It provides the necessary background for an understanding of evolutions in state policy and media technology before returning to a closer look at Shajarian's carefully charted repertoire of resistance. As he breaks into open opposition to state policy following the 2009 Green Uprising, he is increasingly portrayed as a lowly entertainer and traitor by hardline state media. 4Revolution and Ruptures chapter abstractChapter Four examines the approach of the new state and its leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to music, and to cultural policymaking more generally. Initially Khomeini had pronounced music forbidden, but what did he mean by "music," and how did "music" come to be permitted eventually? What Islamic traditions have Islamic Republic officials abided by for their understanding of music's permissibility? This chapter also examines the musical fare on state media during the revolution's first decade, and provides an in-depth look at the official structures that regulate music in the Islamic Republic. 5Opening the Floodgates to Pop Music: Alireza Assar chapter abstractThis chapter tells the as yet untold story of the creation of state-approved pop music in Islamic Iran, as shared by the officials and musicians at the center of its making. Pop music, once banned because the new state perceived it as representing the cultural promiscuity of Shah-era Iran, was greenlighted and broadcast from within conservative state media toward the end of the 1990s, following President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's reconstruction period. This chapter presents the musicians that spearheaded this process. It highlights the work of one of the most popular stars among post-revolutionary Iran's first generation of pop singers, Alireza Assar, and argues that his projection of an alternative religiosity in contradistinction to the state's dogmatic Islam attracted Iran's post-1980–88 war youth. 6The Rebirth of Independent Music chapter abstractChapter Six examines the rebirth of independent music in post-revolutionary Iran, which flourished during the terms of reformist President Mohammad Khatami and his government's more liberal music policy. The chapter narrates the beginnings of rock and fusion music starting in the late 1980s and onward to Iran's "first" semi-public underground rock concert, as well as the importance of the webzine Tehranavenue in bringing to light Iran's active underground music scene. The chapter follows the trajectory of the musician Mohsen Namjoo in delineating these processes. 7Purposefully Fālsh: Mohsen Namjoo chapter abstractThis chapter is a study of the coming of age of the alternative musician Mohsen Namjoo, and his struggles to emerge as a musician under politically repressive circumstances. It narrates his cultivation of a discourse of absurdist nihilism, which finds great resonance with a community of post-ideological cynics, as well as his rhetorical and musical iconoclasm. It traces his arc from a student struggling to make it as a musician in Iran to his emigration and self-stated decision to break his "self-censorship" following the 2009 unrest. 8Going Underground chapter abstractChapter Eight proceeds in the book's chronological treatment of music in post-revolutionary Iran to discuss the changes in cultural policy from the more liberal government of Mohammad Khatami to that of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This transition coincided with a period of great technological transformation around 2005, when the impact of new media was changing the face of music production, distribution, and consumption in Iran. It then goes on to describe discussions of the category of underground music, how it is defined and categorized internally, and the government's reckoning with this new reality. 9Rap-e Farsi: Hichkas chapter abstractThis chapter delves deeper into the underground music scene by foregrounding one of its best-known performers, Soroush Lashkary, aka Hichkas. It discusses categorizations of Rap-e Farsi and the coming of age of Hichkas, the "Godfather of Rap-e Farsi," from a middle-class kid in Tehran to a household name. The chapter also analyzes the generational differences between Namjoo and Hichkas, and how these differences are reflected in their music. It further explores the music of Hichkas, which draws on an old Iranian honor ethic to find traction with its listeners. 10The Music of Politics chapter abstractChapter Ten narrates developments in music during the 2009 Green Uprising, and draws comparisons to musical trajectories at the time of the 1979 revolution, as discussed in Chapters One and Two. It also discusses the election of President Hassan Rouhani as a continuation of the political sentiments of the Green Movement, and proceeds to narrate more recent musical developments. The chapter then offers some conclusions on the bigger questions in the book about expressions of joy, freedom, and political repression.
£999.99
University of Minnesota Press Scenarios: Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Every Man
Book SynopsisI do not follow ideas, I stumble into stories or into people; and I know that this is so big, I have to make a film. Very often, films come like uninvited guests, like burglars in the middle of the night. They are in your kitchen; something is stirring, you wake up at 3 a.m. and all of a sudden they come wildly swinging at you.When I write a screenplay, I write it as if I have the whole film in front of my eyes. Then it is very easy for me, and I can write very, very fast. It is almost like copying. But of course sometimes I push myself; I read myself into a frenzy of poetry, reading Chinese poets of the eighth and ninth century, reading old Icelandic poetry, reading some of the finest German poets like Hölderlin. All of this has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of my film, but I work myself up into this kind of frenzy of high-caliber language and concepts and beauty.And then sometimes I push myself by playing music, for example, a piano concerto by Beethoven, and I play it and write furiously. But none of this is an answer to the question of how you focus on a single idea for a film. And then, during shooting, you have to depart from it sometimes, while keeping it alive in its essence. —Werner Herzog, on filmmakingWerner Herzog doesn’t write traditional screenplays. He writes fever dreams brimming with madness, greed, humor, and dark isolation that can shift dramatically during production—and have materialized into extraordinary masterpieces unlike anything in film today. Harnessing his vision and transcendent reality, these four pieces of long-form prose earmark a renowned filmmaker at the dawn of his career.Trade Review"A compulsively readable, probing collection. It’s equal parts challenging and satisfying, infuriating and enlightening."—Publishers Weekly"Herzog seems to peer nonstop into the abyss combining vainglory, cruelty, and madness. Those are the coordinates at which Herzog geolocates humanity."—BookForum"Scenarios contains more than merely dialogue in cold type. Herzog’s screenplays read like novellas—the characters are fully thought-out and the settings are vividly described, albeit in long, medium and close shots."—Shepherd Express"Herzog doesn’t write traditional scripts. Instead, Herzog writes scenarios which are like a hybrid of film, fiction, and prose poetry."—Film International
£17.99
University of Minnesota Press Italian Political Cinema: Figures of the Long ’68
Book SynopsisAn exploration of how film has made legible the Italian long ’68 as a moment of crisis and transitionTraditionally, the definition of political cinema assumes a relationship between cinema and politics. In contrast to this view, author Mauro Resmini sees this relationship as an impasse. To illustrate this theory, Resmini turns to Italian cinema to explore how films have reinvented the link between popular art and radical politics in Italy from 1968 to the early 1980s, a period of intense political and cultural struggles also known as the long ’68.Italian Political Cinema conjures a multifaceted, complex portrayal of Italian society. Centered on emblematic figures in Italian cinema, it maps the currents of antagonism and repression that defined this period in the country’s history. Resmini explores how film imagined the possibilities, obstacles, and pitfalls that characterized the Italian long ’68 as a moment of crisis and transition. From workerism to autonomist Marxism to feminism, this book further expands the debate on political cinema with a critical interpretation of influential texts, some of which are currently only available in Italian.A comprehensive and novel redefinition of political film, Italian Political Cinema introduces its audience to lesser-known directors alongside greats such as Pasolini, Bertolucci, Antonioni, and Bellocchio. Resmini offers access to untranslated work in Italian philosophy, political theory, and film theory, and forcefully advocates for the continued artistic and political relevance of these films in our time.Trade Review "Mauro Resmini’s Italian Political Cinema is a powerful and original reimagining of the question of the political in Italian cinema. Bracingly theorized and enriched by a fine handling of form and historical context, Resmini’s book heralds a new era in Italian film studies while making an important contribution to the theorization of cinema’s political possibilities."—John David Rhodes, author of Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film "By being courageous enough to embrace unresolved tensions, Resmini constructs one of the most exciting explorations of political cinema to date, one sure to have encouraging effects for film analysis, political struggle, and knowledge production at large."—Film Quarterly
£21.59
University of Minnesota Press Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form beyond
Book SynopsisA formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question—what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production? In Anime’s Identity, Stevie Suan examines how anime’s recognizable media-form—no matter where it is produced—reflects the problematics of globalization. The result is an incisive look at not only anime but also the tensions of transnationality.Far from valorizing the individualistic “originality” so often touted in national creative industries, anime reveals an alternate type of creativity based in repetition and variation. In exploring this alternative creativity and its accompanying aesthetics, Suan examines anime from fresh angles, including considerations of how anime operates like a brand of media, the intricacies of anime production occurring across national borders, inquiries into the selfhood involved in anime’s character acting, and analyses of various anime works that present differing modes of transnationality. Anime’s Identity deftly merges theories from media studies and performance studies, introducing innovative formal concepts that connect anime to questions of dislocation on a global scale, creating a transformative new lens for analyzing popular media.Trade Review "Stevie Suan utterly transforms our understanding of anime. Using media theory to expand the formal analysis of anime conventions, while calling on a transnational framework to avoid a simplistic opposition between local and global, he not only provides incisive readings of key anime series, but also lays out a powerful and much-needed methodology for thinking anime in the world."—Thomas Lamarre, author of The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media "Focusing on formalism and performance studies in particular, rather than taking a phenomenological or sociological approach, Stevie Suan proposes a radical alternative for engaging with anime studies."—Daisuke Miyao, author of Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema "Anime's Identity provides a multilayered overview of cultural debates on anime for an English-reading audience."—The Journal of Asian Studies Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Anime’s Performance of Identity1. Anime’s Local–Global Tensions2. Anime’s Dispersed Production3. Anime’s Media Heterotopia4. Anime’s Citationality5. Anime’s Creativity6. Anime’s Actors7. Anime’s (Anti)Individualism8. Anime’s DislocationConclusion: Anime’s WorldAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex
£23.39
University of Minnesota Press Movies under the Influence
Book SynopsisA cultural history of the enduring relationship between film spectatorship and intoxicating substances Movies under the Influence charts the entangled histories of moviegoing and mind-altering substances from early cinema through the psychedelic 1970s. Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece examines how the parallel trajectories of these two enduring aspects of American culture, linked by their ability to influence individual and collective consciousness, resulted in them being treated and regulated in similar ways. Rather than looking at representations of drug use within film, she regards cinema and intoxicants as kindred experiences of immersion that have been subject to corresponding forces of ideology and power. Exploring the effects of intoxicants such as caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, and psychedelics on film spectatorship, Szczepaniak-Gillece demonstrates how American movie theaters sought to cultivate a dual identity, presenting themselves as both a place of wholesome entert
£19.79
MP - University Of Minnesota Press Stardust
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the fundamental bond between cinema and the cosmos The advent of cinema occurred alongside pivotal developments in astronomy and astrophysics, including Albert Einstein's theories of relativity, all of which dramatically altered our conception of time and provided new means of envisioning the limits of our world. Tracing the many aesthetic, philosophical, and technological parallels between these fields, Stardust explores how cinema has routinely looked toward the cosmos to reflect our collective anxiety about a universe without us. Employing a cosmocinematic gaze, Hannah Goodwin uses the metaphorical frameworks from astronomy to posit new understandings of cinematic time and underscore the role of light in generating archives for an uncertain future. Surveying a broad range of works, including silent-era educational films, avant-garde experimental works, and contemporary blockbusters, she carves out a distinctive area of film analysis that extends its reach far
£19.94
Purdue University Press Golden Age Comedia: Text, Theory and Performance
Book SynopsisDrawing on the groundbreaking Spanish scholarship and editions of earlier generations and relying on research conducted in Spanish archives, this pioneering group of English-speaking scholars offers a new treatment of familiar material. The editors yoke together widely varying critical practices, including incisive New Critical readings and far-reaching explorations that draw on the most current European critical thought. In addition to these more strictly literary studies, there are interdisciplinary essays focusing on seventeenth- and twentieth-century reception and the social makeup of the comedia audience. The whole thus presents a balanced picture of the many ways in which the comedia can be viewed, and the contributors complement each other's work in often surprising ways, illuminating the same corpus from a number of perspectives.
£19.76
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Berlioz's Semi-Operas: Roméo et Juliette and La
Book SynopsisA full-length study of two of Berlioz's most unique works, which combine the highest goals of both symphony and opera and incorporate two of the greatest classics of Western literature into a total fusion of the arts. This work studies two works that are among the most challenging of the entire Romantic Movement, not least because they assault the notion of genre: they take place in a sort of limbo between symphony and opera, and try to fulfillthe highest goals of each simultaneously. Berlioz was a composer who strenuously resisted any impediments that stood in the way of complete compositional freedom. Most of his large-scale works nevertheless obey the strictures of some preexistent form, whether opera or symphony or mass or cantata; it is chiefly in these two experiments that Berlioz allowed himself to be Berlioz. One of the central characteristics of Romanticism is the belief that all arts are one, that literature, painting, and music have a common origin and a common goal; and this book tries to show that Berlioz achieved a Gesamtkunstwerk, a fusion of arts, in a manner even more impressive (in certain respects) than that of Wagner, in that Berlioz implicated into his total-art-work texts by two of the greatest poets of Western literature, Shakespeare and Goethe. The method of this book is unusual in that it pays equally close attention to the original text [Romeo and Juliet and Faust] as well as to the musical adaptation; furthermore, it suggests many analogues in the operatic world which Berlioz knew -- the world of Gluck, Mozart, Mehul, Spontini, Cherubini -- in order to show exactly how Berlioz followed or flouted the dramatic conventions of his age. This book aims to contribute to Berlioz studies, to studies of the Romantic Movement, and to the rapidly growing field of comparative arts. Daniel Albright is Richard L. Turner Professor in the Humanities at the University of Rochester.Trade ReviewAlbright has written a literary essay of great originality and charm, appealing to undergraduates through faculty, general readers, and professionals in both music and the humanitites. * CHOICE *Albright's work will inform and entertain admirers of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Berlioz alike. -- Julian Rushton, West Riding Professor of Music, University of LeedsThe rhetoric is comfortable, modern, familiar. . . 132 affable, inviting pages. . . of its originality there can be no doubt. * OPERA QUARTERLY *The originality of Albright's work lies in his unusual capacity to read texts and listen to music with a similar degree of sensitivity and insight and to detect the deeper resonance in structure and signification between the two without compromising their individuality. * THE EUROPEAN ROMANTIC REVIEW, December 2003 *This is a wonderful, concise, and compact discussion of two interesting and complex musical works of the Romantic period, exploring the historical and dramatic backgrounds of two of the more popular literary stories in human history. While written from the scholarly perspective, this book is easy to read and not overly technical in its presentation. -- Dr. Brad Eden * OPERATODAY.COM *Table of ContentsShakespeare's Romeo and Juliet From Shakespeare to Berlioz Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette Goethe's Faust From Goethe to Berlioz Berlioz's La damnation de Faust
£76.00
