Music reviews and criticism Books

Book SynopsisIn this generous collection of book reviews and literary essays, Robert Christgau shows readers a different side to his esteemed career with reviews of books ranging from musical autobiographies, criticism, and histories to novels, literary memoirs, and cultural theory.Trade Review"[A] substantial collection of nearly 100 eclectic, thought-provoking, and idea-laden book reviews. . . . [Christgau's] range of topics is impressive, and his references are prolific. These sprightly, highly opinionated 'adventures of an autodidact' reveal Christgau to be a highly literate, astute, and discerning book critic." * Kirkus Reviews *"Christgau mostly writes on books by or about notable musicians, though he hits other cultural touchstones too, such as George Orwell’s 1984. It’s in these nonmusic pieces that Christgau is most successful, shifting focus from his encyclopedic music-industry knowledge to the nuances of language. His essay on books about the 2008 financial crisis is a highlight." * Publishers Weekly *"There are few critics working today with the life-long commitment, focus, and curiosity of Robert Christgau. Book Reports doesn't scan the over half-century of the man's work, and that's what makes it all the more impressive. He's still searching, still pulling volumes from the shelves, looking at new or old ideas, cracking open the spines of preconceived notions all in the service of taking just one more look before walking away with the promise of yet another return." -- Christopher John Stephens * Popmatters *"For Christgau fans and anyone seeking thought-provoking musings on books and music." -- Melissa Engleman * Library Journal *"One reads Christgau for Christgau as much as for the subject of his work." -- Jeff Tamarkin * Mojo *"Though Christgau partisans have the most to gain from this collection, it’s also good for anyone looking for an accessible way into his extensive oeuvre." -- Chad Comello * Booklist *"Christgau is . . . one of America’s sharper public intellectuals of the past half century, and certainly one of its most influential—not to mention one of the better stylists in that cohort. Fun is a big part of why." -- David Cantwell * The New Yorker *"Though not everyone will agree with Christgau’s views (this reader certainly did not), all readers will likely appreciate his style and approach and the depth of his knowledge about a broad range of popular music. Those curious about popular music may find Christgau's style aggressive at times, but that is exactly the point; Christgau pushes the reader to think. Seasoned readers will discover that Christgau questions authors in a way that encourages one to evaluate a book at a deeper level. In short, this is a great read for fans, critics, and scholars alike." -- T. R. Harrison * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. Collectibles The Informer: John Leonard's When the Kissing Had to Stop 11 Advertisements for Everybody Else: Jonathan Lethem's The Ecstasy of Influence 14 Democratic Vistas: Dave Hickey's Air Guitar 17 II. From Blackface Minstrelsy to Track-and-Hook In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter 23 The Old Ethiopians at Home: Ken Emerson's Doo-Dah! 40 Before the Blues: David Wondrich's Stomp and Swerve 43 Rhythms of the Universe: Ned Sublette's Cuba and Its Music 46 Black Melting Pot: David B. Coplan's In Township Tonight! 49 Bwana-Acolyte in the Favor Bank: Banning Eyre's In Griot Time 56 In the Crucible of the Party: Charles and Angelilki Keil's Bright Balkan Morning 59 Defining the Folk: Benjamin Filene's Romancing the Folk 64 Folking Around: David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street 67 Punk Lives: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me 70 Biography of a Corporation: Nelson George's Where Did Our Love Go? 72 Hip-Hop Faces the World: Steven Hager's Hip Hop; David Toop's The Rap Attack; and Nelson George, Sally Banes, Susan Flinker, and Patty Romanowski's Fresh 75 Making Out Like Gangsters: Preston Lauterbach's The Chitlin' Circuit, Dan Charnas's The Big Payback, Ice-T's Ice, and Tommy James's Me, the Mob, and Music 80 Money Isn't Everything: Fred Goodman's The Mansion on the Hill 86 Mapping the Earworm's Genome: John Seabrook's The Song Machine 89 III. Critical Practice Beyond the Symphonic Quest: Susan McClary's Feminine Endings 97 All the Tune Family: Peter van der Merwe's Origins of the Popular Style 100 Bel Cantos: Henry Pleasant's The Great American Popular Singers 102 The Country and the City: Charlie Gillett's The Sound of the City 109 Reflections of an Aging Rock Critic: Jon Landau's It's Too Late to Stop Now 115 Pioneer Days: Kevin Avery's Everything Is an Afterthought and Nona Willis Aronowitz's (ed.) Out of the Vinyl Deeps 117 Impolite Discourse: Jim Derogatis's Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer's A Whore Jus Like the Rest, and Nick Tosches's The Nick Torches Reader 123 Journalism and/or Criticism and/or Musicology and/or Sociology (and/or Writing): Simon Firth 129 Serious Music: Robert Walser's Running With the Devil 137 Fifteen Minutes of . . . : William York's Who's Who in Rock Music 139 The Fanzine Worldview, Alphabetized: Ira A. Robbins's (ed.) Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records 140 Awesome: Simon Reynolds's Blissed Out 143 Ingenuousness Lost: James Miller's Flowers in the Dustbin 147 Rock Criticism Lives: Jessica Hopper's The Fist Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic 151 Emo Meets Trayvon Martin: Hanif Abdurraquib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us 156 IV. Lives in Music Inside and Out Great Book of Fire: Nick Tosches's Hellfire and Robert Palmer's Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks! 163 That Bad Man, Tough Old Huddie Ledbetter: Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's The Life and Legend of Leadbelly 169 The Impenetrable Heroism of Sam Cooke: Peter Guralnick's Dream Boogie 171 Bobby and Dave: Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One and Dave Van Ronk's The Mayor of MacDougal Street 178 Tell All: Ed Sanders's Fug You and Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water 180 King of the Thrillseekers: Richard Hell's I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp 185 Lives Saved, Lives Lost: Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl and Patti Smith's M Train 189 The Cynic and the Bloke: Rod Stewart's Rod: The Autobiography and Donald Fagen's Eminent Hipsters 194 His Own Shaman: RJ Smith's The One 199 Spotlight on the Queen: David Ritz's Respect 201 The Realist Thing You've Ever Seen: Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run 205 V. Fictions Writing for the People: George Orwell's 1984 213 A Classic Illustrated: R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis 217 The Hippie Grows Older: Richard Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout 222 Comic Gurdjieffianism You Can Masturbate To: Marco Vassis' Mind Blower 224 Porn Yesterday: Walter Kendrick's The Secret Museum 225 What Pretentious White Men Are Good For: Robert Coover's Gerald's Party 230 Impoverished How, Exactly? Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors 236 Sustainable Romance: Norman Rush's Mortals 237 Derrnig-Do Scrapping By: Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue 240 Futures by the Dozen: Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire 245 YA Poet of the Massa Woods: Sandra Newman's The Country of Ice Cream Star 248 A Darker Shade of Noir: The Indefatigable Walter Mosley 252 VI. Bohemia Meets Hegemony Épatant le Bourgeoisie: Jerrold Seigel's Bohemian Paris and T. J. Clark's The Painting of Modern Life 263 The Village People: Christine Stansell's American Moderns 278 A Slender Hope for Salvation: Charles Reich's The Greening of America 280 The Lumpenhippie Guru: Ed Sanders's The Family 285 Strait Are the Gates: Morris Dickstein's Gates of Eden 289 The Little Counterculture That Could: Carol Brightman's Sweet Chaos 293 The Pop-Boho Connection, Narrativized: Bernard F. Gendron's Between Montmarte and the Mudd Club 297 Cursed and Sainted Seekers of the Sexual Century: John Heidenry's What Wild Ecstasy 301 Bohemias Lost and Found: Ross Wetzsteon's Republic of Dreams, Richard Kostelanetz's SoHo, and Richard Lloyd's Neo-Bohemia 304 Autobiography of a Pain in the Neck: Meredith Maran's What It's Like to Live Now 309 VII. Culture Meets Capital Twentieth Century Limited: Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air 315 Dialectical Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary 320 Radical Pluralist: Andrew Ross's No Respect 323 Inside the Prosex Wars: Nadine Strossen's Defending Pornography, Joanna Frueh's Eroctic Faculties, and Lara Kipnis's Bound and Gagged 327 Growing Up Kept Down: William Finnegan's Cold New World 331 Jesus Plus the Capitalist Order: Jeff Sharlet's The Family 334 Dark Night of the Quants: Ten Books About the Financial Crisis 338 They Bet Your Life: Four Books About Hedge Funds 345 Living in a Material World: Raymond Williams's Long Revolution 350 With a God on His Side: Terry Eagleton's Culture and the Death of God, Culture, and Materialism 369 My Friend Marshall: Marshall Berman's Modernism in the Streets 374 Index 381

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Book SynopsisRobin James examines how twenty-first-century conceptions of sound as acoustic resonance shape notions of the social world, personhood, and materiality in ways that support white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.Trade Review“Through skillful and perceptive negotiations among diverse theoretical paradigms and material practices, Robin James articulates a bold thesis about the shift from the visual character of modernity articulated by Foucault to the sonic episteme characteristic of twenty-first-century biopolitical neoliberalism. In James’s hands, the sonic episteme becomes a diagnostic tool as well as an all-embracing metaphor of the way the new regime of neoliberal biopower works, its modes of governmentality, and its production of excluded groups. An outstanding book.” -- Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, author of * Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism *“The Sonic Episteme is a fascinating exploration of the problems of neoliberalism and the biopolitical that attends to the ways sound has come to be an object of study. Robin James asks readers to refuse the privileging of any one sense experience by examining the ways what she calls the sonic episteme is a part of neoliberal thought, not a break from it. The Sonic Episteme is about the practice of alternatives to the social order in thought and its epistemological possibilities rather than the search for alternatives emerging from the already given epistemological horizon and thrust of Western thought. As such, James offers a way to think sound studies, race, and material cultures together.” -- Ashon T. Crawley, author of * Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility *"James is an insightful philosopher and sharp cultural critic drawing comparisons between musical phenomena such as compression and the loudness wars, and the damages wreaked by neoliberal market economics." -- Karen D. Tregaskin * The Wire *"What makes The Sonic Episteme an impressive accomplishment is its academically acceptable reliance on Philosophy combined with a crucial gesture, beyond Philosophy’s purview, to commercially successful pop music, which has the potential to present a crucial something else." -- Jeff Heinzl * Spectrum Culture *"This extensive assemblage of source texts generates unexpected and often striking conclusions. Most valuably, James organises crucial texts at the intersection of sound studies and critical race studies, proffering their diverse methodologies as alternatives to the techniques of post-democratic perceptual coding. For those interested in the consequences of frequency modeling and the broader project of approaching philosophy through sound, The Sonic Episteme presents a bold . . . foray into the rich territory of neoliberal sonic representation." -- Madeline Collier * Sound Studies *“Robin James’s The Sonic Episteme is an incredibly provocative, well-argued, well-written, and necessary study of popular music and neoliberalism. It will surely be of interest to those in philosophy, popular music studies, sound studies, cultural studies, and Black studies.” -- Elliot H. Powell * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *“With The Sonic Episteme, James intervenes upon sound by asking us to think more critically, inclusively, and ethically with and about it.... [Its] topical and methodological breadth makes it a productive and useful addition to the field of popular music studies.” -- Kate Galloway * Journal of Popular Music Studies *“Robin James’ latest book is a compelling and rewarding showcase of her ability to use music and sound as a means to interrogate an array of contemporary philosophical, political, cultural and scientific perspectives.... By aggregating vernacular and non-elite ways of knowing, as expressed through a range of music and sound practices, she has succeeded in developing credible and coherent alternatives.” -- Matthew Lovett * Popular Music *"The Sonic Episteme promises to be an important addition to graduate syllabi and should push music scholars and practitioners to see how our ideas about the nature of sound might hamper our efforts to reshape the places, settings, and institutions where we make music." -- Alexandra M. Apolloni * Journal of the Society of American Music *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Neoliberal Noise and the Biopolitics of (Un)Cool: Acoustic Resonance as Political Economy 23 2. Universal Envoicement: Acoustic Resonance as Political Ontology 51 3. Vibration and Diffraction: Acoustic Resonance as Materialist Ontology 87 4. Neoliberal Sophrosyne: Acoustic Resonance as Subjectivity and Personhood 126 5. Social Physics and Quantum Physics: Acoustic Resonance as the Model for a "Harmonious" World 158 Conclusion 181 Notes 185 Bibliography 227 Index 239

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Book SynopsisIn The Sonic Episteme Robin James examines how twenty-first-century conceptions of sound as acoustic resonance shape notions of the social world, personhood, and materiality in ways that support white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Drawing on fields ranging from philosophy and sound studies to black feminist studies and musicology, James shows how what she calls the sonic episteme—a set of sound-based rules that qualitatively structure social practices in much the same way that neoliberalism uses statistics—employs a politics of exception to maintain hegemonic neoliberal and biopolitical projects. Where James sees the normcore averageness of Taylor Swift and Spandau Ballet as contributing to the sonic episteme''s marginalization of nonnormative conceptions of gender, race, and personhood, the black feminist political ontologies she identifies in Beyoncé''s and Rihanna''s music challenge such marginalization. In using sound to theorize political ontology, sTrade Review“Through skillful and perceptive negotiations among diverse theoretical paradigms and material practices, Robin James articulates a bold thesis about the shift from the visual character of modernity articulated by Foucault to the sonic episteme characteristic of twenty-first-century biopolitical neoliberalism. In James’s hands, the sonic episteme becomes a diagnostic tool as well as an all-embracing metaphor of the way the new regime of neoliberal biopower works, its modes of governmentality, and its production of excluded groups. An outstanding book.” -- Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, author of * Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism *“The Sonic Episteme is a fascinating exploration of the problems of neoliberalism and the biopolitical that attends to the ways sound has come to be an object of study. Robin James asks readers to refuse the privileging of any one sense experience by examining the ways what she calls the sonic episteme is a part of neoliberal thought, not a break from it. The Sonic Episteme is about the practice of alternatives to the social order in thought and its epistemological possibilities rather than the search for alternatives emerging from the already given epistemological horizon and thrust of Western thought. As such, James offers a way to think sound studies, race, and material cultures together.” -- Ashon T. Crawley, author of * Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility *"James is an insightful philosopher and sharp cultural critic drawing comparisons between musical phenomena such as compression and the loudness wars, and the damages wreaked by neoliberal market economics." -- Karen D. Tregaskin * The Wire *"What makes The Sonic Episteme an impressive accomplishment is its academically acceptable reliance on Philosophy combined with a crucial gesture, beyond Philosophy’s purview, to commercially successful pop music, which has the potential to present a crucial something else." -- Jeff Heinzl * Spectrum Culture *"This extensive assemblage of source texts generates unexpected and often striking conclusions. Most valuably, James organises crucial texts at the intersection of sound studies and critical race studies, proffering their diverse methodologies as alternatives to the techniques of post-democratic perceptual coding. For those interested in the consequences of frequency modeling and the broader project of approaching philosophy through sound, The Sonic Episteme presents a bold . . . foray into the rich territory of neoliberal sonic representation." -- Madeline Collier * Sound Studies *“Robin James’s The Sonic Episteme is an incredibly provocative, well-argued, well-written, and necessary study of popular music and neoliberalism. It will surely be of interest to those in philosophy, popular music studies, sound studies, cultural studies, and Black studies.” -- Elliot H. Powell * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *“With The Sonic Episteme, James intervenes upon sound by asking us to think more critically, inclusively, and ethically with and about it.... [Its] topical and methodological breadth makes it a productive and useful addition to the field of popular music studies.” -- Kate Galloway * Journal of Popular Music Studies *“Robin James’ latest book is a compelling and rewarding showcase of her ability to use music and sound as a means to interrogate an array of contemporary philosophical, political, cultural and scientific perspectives.... By aggregating vernacular and non-elite ways of knowing, as expressed through a range of music and sound practices, she has succeeded in developing credible and coherent alternatives.” -- Matthew Lovett * Popular Music *"The Sonic Episteme promises to be an important addition to graduate syllabi and should push music scholars and practitioners to see how our ideas about the nature of sound might hamper our efforts to reshape the places, settings, and institutions where we make music." -- Alexandra M. Apolloni * Journal of the Society of American Music *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. Neoliberal Noise and the Biopolitics of (Un)Cool: Acoustic Resonance as Political Economy 23 2. Universal Envoicement: Acoustic Resonance as Political Ontology 51 3. Vibration and Diffraction: Acoustic Resonance as Materialist Ontology 87 4. Neoliberal Sophrosyne: Acoustic Resonance as Subjectivity and Personhood 126 5. Social Physics and Quantum Physics: Acoustic Resonance as the Model for a "Harmonious" World 158 Conclusion 181 Notes 185 Bibliography 227 Index 239

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Book SynopsisThe contributors to Playing for Keeps examine the ways in which musical improvisation can serve as a way to negotiate violence, trauma, systemic inequality, and the aftermaths of war and colonialism.Trade Review“Casting an eye on the world of improvisation, Playing for Keeps is a major corrective to the latent ethnocentrism of improvisation studies and shifts the field's focus in a revolutionary way. The volume challenges readers to think more carefully and critically about the status of improvisation in various traditional cultural contexts and the intersection of those contexts found in contemporary society. A smart, decisive statement on globalism and improvisation.” -- John Corbett, author of * Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium *"This is a rewarding project that is already extended by a special edition of the Journal Critical Studies In Improvisation and is to be further extended in a companion book now in progress." -- Phil England * The Wire *"A major academic achievement, Playing for Keeps: Improvisation In The Aftermath is an enlightening examination of different manifestations of improvisation, their transforming possibilities, and of the ethics of listening." -- Ian Patterson * All About Jazz *"I was deeply touched by the description of your experience of our visit to Ramallah and the camps together. I would sincerely hope that your book will be read by more than the academics and intelligentsia, it’s very important." -- John McLaughlin"Playing for Keeps collects critical, thoughtfully selected on how musical improvisation can respond to and through trauma. . . . Case studies in this collection illustrate global improvisatory practices, framing them as solutions to encounters with difference that have failed in the past. These solutions seem especially timely for a world reckoning with dual crises: racism and disease. Each case study testifies to improvisation’s power to maintain and restore dignity through dialogic exchanges of creative response to horrific injustices, exchanges that facilitate co-creation of new community identities with an eye toward nurturing rather than perpetuating destruction. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- S. Schmalenberger * Choice *“With beautifully written individual chapters on different musical events and communities, and each writer’s interpretation of improvisation in their research topic, [Playing for Keeps] is significant as a collection of essays, and builds upon the growing field of interdisciplinary critical research on improvisation.” -- Rebecca Zola * Jazz Perspectives *“[Playing for a Keeps] is a beacon of hope in times of crisis and will continue to be a reference point as the aftermaths of current crises persist in the years to come. The authors all outline ways in which improvisatory musics—and, more fundamentally, improvisation itself—can help those who suffer through and navigate crises and, afterward, salve the psychological wounds of the survivors.” -- Mike Ford * Current Musicology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Playing for Keeps: An Introduction / Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter 1 1. manifesto / Matana Roberts 25 2. The Exhibition of Vandalizim: Improvising Healing, Politics, and Film in South Africa / Stephanie Vos 29 3. The Rigors of Afro/Canarian Jazz: Sounding Peripheral Vision with Severed Tongues / Mark Lomanno 55 4. "Opening Up a Space That Maybe Wouldn't Exist Otherwise" / Holding It Down in the Aftermath / Vijay Iyer in conversation with Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter 81 5. Experimental and Improvised Norths: The Sonic Geographies of Tanya Tagaq's Collaborations with Derek Charke and the Kronos Quartet / Kate Galloway 94 6. Nina Simone: CIVIL JAZZ! / Randy DuBurke 121 7. Free Improvised Music in Postwar Beirut: Differential Sounds, Intersectarian Collaborations, and Critical Collective Memory / Rana El Kadi 129 8. Street Concerts and Sexual Harassment in Post-Mubarak Egypt: Tarab as Affective Politics / Darci Sprengel 160 9. Improvisation, Grounded Humanity, and Witnessing in Palestine: An Interview with Al-Mada's Odeh Turjman and Reem Abdul Hadi / Daniel Fischlin 191 10. Silsulim (Improvised "Curls") in the Vocal Performance of Israeli Popular Music: Identity, Power, and Politics / Moshe Morad 250 11. Three Moments in Kī Hō`alu (Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar): Improvising as a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) Adaptive Strategy / Kevin Fellezs 275 12. From Prepeace to Postconflict: The Ethics of (Non) Listening and Cocreation in a Divided Society / Sara Ramshaw and Paul Stapleton 300 Contributors 325 Index 331

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Book SynopsisThe contributors to Playing for Keeps examine the ways in which musical improvisation can serve as a way to negotiate violence, trauma, systemic inequality, and the aftermaths of war and colonialism.Trade Review“Casting an eye on the world of improvisation, Playing for Keeps is a major corrective to the latent ethnocentrism of improvisation studies and shifts the field's focus in a revolutionary way. The volume challenges readers to think more carefully and critically about the status of improvisation in various traditional cultural contexts and the intersection of those contexts found in contemporary society. A smart, decisive statement on globalism and improvisation.” -- John Corbett, author of * Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium *"This is a rewarding project that is already extended by a special edition of the Journal Critical Studies In Improvisation and is to be further extended in a companion book now in progress." -- Phil England * The Wire *"A major academic achievement, Playing for Keeps: Improvisation In The Aftermath is an enlightening examination of different manifestations of improvisation, their transforming possibilities, and of the ethics of listening." -- Ian Patterson * All About Jazz *"I was deeply touched by the description of your experience of our visit to Ramallah and the camps together. I would sincerely hope that your book will be read by more than the academics and intelligentsia, it’s very important." -- John McLaughlin"Playing for Keeps collects critical, thoughtfully selected on how musical improvisation can respond to and through trauma. . . . Case studies in this collection illustrate global improvisatory practices, framing them as solutions to encounters with difference that have failed in the past. These solutions seem especially timely for a world reckoning with dual crises: racism and disease. Each case study testifies to improvisation’s power to maintain and restore dignity through dialogic exchanges of creative response to horrific injustices, exchanges that facilitate co-creation of new community identities with an eye toward nurturing rather than perpetuating destruction. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- S. Schmalenberger * Choice *“With beautifully written individual chapters on different musical events and communities, and each writer’s interpretation of improvisation in their research topic, [Playing for Keeps] is significant as a collection of essays, and builds upon the growing field of interdisciplinary critical research on improvisation.” -- Rebecca Zola * Jazz Perspectives *“[Playing for a Keeps] is a beacon of hope in times of crisis and will continue to be a reference point as the aftermaths of current crises persist in the years to come. The authors all outline ways in which improvisatory musics—and, more fundamentally, improvisation itself—can help those who suffer through and navigate crises and, afterward, salve the psychological wounds of the survivors.” -- Mike Ford * Current Musicology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Playing for Keeps: An Introduction / Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter 1 1. manifesto / Matana Roberts 25 2. The Exhibition of Vandalizim: Improvising Healing, Politics, and Film in South Africa / Stephanie Vos 29 3. The Rigors of Afro/Canarian Jazz: Sounding Peripheral Vision with Severed Tongues / Mark Lomanno 55 4. "Opening Up a Space That Maybe Wouldn't Exist Otherwise" / Holding It Down in the Aftermath / Vijay Iyer in conversation with Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter 81 5. Experimental and Improvised Norths: The Sonic Geographies of Tanya Tagaq's Collaborations with Derek Charke and the Kronos Quartet / Kate Galloway 94 6. Nina Simone: CIVIL JAZZ! / Randy DuBurke 121 7. Free Improvised Music in Postwar Beirut: Differential Sounds, Intersectarian Collaborations, and Critical Collective Memory / Rana El Kadi 129 8. Street Concerts and Sexual Harassment in Post-Mubarak Egypt: Tarab as Affective Politics / Darci Sprengel 160 9. Improvisation, Grounded Humanity, and Witnessing in Palestine: An Interview with Al-Mada's Odeh Turjman and Reem Abdul Hadi / Daniel Fischlin 191 10. Silsulim (Improvised "Curls") in the Vocal Performance of Israeli Popular Music: Identity, Power, and Politics / Moshe Morad 250 11. Three Moments in Kī Hō`alu (Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar): Improvising as a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) Adaptive Strategy / Kevin Fellezs 275 12. From Prepeace to Postconflict: The Ethics of (Non) Listening and Cocreation in a Divided Society / Sara Ramshaw and Paul Stapleton 300 Contributors 325 Index 331

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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

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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

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Book SynopsisMarcus Boon explores music as a material practice of vibration that emerges from a politics of vibration and which constructs a vibrational space of individual and collective transformation.Trade Review"The boldest aspect of Boon's argument . . . is his move to the level of ontology—to the nature of being or reality itself. For him music's social and racial significance operates not at the level of social codes or experience, but as an intervention in how reality itself is organised: 'music does tell us something about being.' His framework certainly allows a place for aspects of music-making that usually get screened out of modern criticism: its religious power, its role in many cultures' sense of the world's structure. . . ." -- Dan Barrow * The Wire *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Music as a Cosmopolitical Practice 1 1. Lord’s House, Nobody’s House: Pandit Pran Nath and Music as Sadhana 29 2. The Drone of the Real: The Sound-Works of Catherine Christer Hennix 75 3. Music and the Continuum 125 4. Slowed and Throwed: DJ Screw and the Decolonization of Time 179 Coda. July 2, 2020 227 Acknowledgments 231 Notes 235 Bibliography 255 Index 269

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Book SynopsisLEO SMITH—cellist, journalist, composer, and teacher—was one of the most picturesque and frequently idolized artists on the Canadian scene. His career spanned the years between the old music and the new, between the time when artistic education was private and the time when people fasten their cultural hopes on public education and government funds, between the last days when white gloves were worn to drawing room musicales and the days when men dash to recitals without ties. Throughout this period, Leo Smith not only composed and performed for the public, but carried his public with him into the new era. His history, then, provides a changing picture of the Canadian cultural scene through one of the most formative periods in the country's social history. To the crowds at large popular concerts such as the Toronto Proms, this elderly, contented musician represented the epitome of the music maker. In his music, Leo Smith bridged the gap between the old orthodoxies and

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Book SynopsisThis book tells the story of a life spent on the road recording the rich diversity of music in America when it was a major part of our lives, not just digital background noise. For music fans, there was a golden era of live music stretching from the 1960s through the 1980s, and even evolving into the 1990s, if you want to be generous. In the pre digital era, music fans spent a large part of their free time (and money) listening to their favorite artist's recordings. It was an analog world so if they wanted to hear the music, they actually had to listen to the radio, buy the records, and go to the concerts. Popular artists had long performed live concerts in the major markets, but it took rock n'' roll to make national touring a viable business. Touring sound systems grew from scratch to keep up with larger and larger venues. Likewise, the ability to record those shows had to grow as well. The rudimentary collection of semi-professional gear grew into full-blown remote

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Book SynopsisIn this behind-the-scenes look at the making of Fleetwood Mac's epic, platinum-selling double album, Tusk, producers and engineers Ken Caillat and Hernan Rojas tell their stories of spending a year with the band in their new million-dollar studio trying to follow up Rumours, the biggest rock album of the time. Following their massive success, the band continued its infamous soap opera when its musical leader and guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham, threatened to quit if he didn't get things his way, resulting in clashes not only with his band but especially Caillat, who had been essential to the band's Grammy-winning sound. Hernan Rojas's story recounts a young man who leaves Chile after General Pinochet's coup to seek his future in the music industry of Los Angeles, where he finds success at one of the hottest studios in town. When Fleetwood Mac arrives, Rojas falls in love with its star singer, Stevie Nicks, and the two of them become romantically involved.

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Book SynopsisMetallica: The $24.95 Book features an in-depth look at Metallica''s cultural significance with chapters devoted to each member, each album, touring, fashion, books, film, influences, fandom, and more, exploring the band''s politics and religion along the way. With over 125 million records sold worldwide, Metallica is the biggest metal band of all time. Four decades into their unparalleled career, Metallica is a massive cultural force who drastically changed the sound of popular music by creating their own rules. Yet for all their popularity, Metallica can seem impenetrable. They've built the unexpected into their music and career, raising more questions and inspiring more discourse as their mythos grows. Metallica questions run deeper than what people find on the internet. Metallica questions deserve a book. Metallica, by dedicated fan and music journalist Ben Apatoff (including a foreword by What

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Book SynopsisMoving Pictures takes a novel historical approach to the making and recording of Rush''s album by the same name. This 1981 release was a landmark record, not only for Rush, but also for the entirety of progressive rock.There''s nothing else like it in the Rush catalog. Permanent Waves and Hemispheres were important releases in their evolution as a progressive band, but neither provided the necessary commercial firepower to blast the Canadian trio into the stratosphere of rock stardom. Moving Pictures, with its thematic work and positioning as the antithesis of a concept record, balanced opposing creative sensibilities, garnered the attention of radio programmers across North America, and sold millions of copies around the globe.As the title of the record suggests, each track projects unique filmic properties, allowing the collective work to escape into the realm of the audiovisual. Unparalleled in the band''s recorded output, Moving Pictures boasts multisensory qualiti

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Book SynopsisIn Take a Sad Song: The Emotional Currency of Hey Jude, James Campion dives deeply into the song''s origins, recording, visual presentation, impact, and eventual influence, while also discovering what makes Hey Jude a classic musical expression of personal comfort and societal unity conceived by a master songwriter, Paul McCartney. Within its melodic brilliance and lyrical touchstones of empathy and nostalgia resides McCartney''s personal and professional relationship with his childhood friend and songwriting partner, John Lennon, and their simultaneous pursuit of the women who would complete them. There are also clues to the growing turmoil within the Beatles and their splintering generation scarred by war, assassination, and virulent protest.Campion''s journey into the song includes the insights of academic experts and professors in the field of musicology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and history. Campion also reveals commentary from noted Beatles authors, biographer

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Book SynopsisEven before the Beatnik Riots of 1961, New York City''s Greenwich Village was the epicenter of revolutionary movements in American music and culture. But, in the early 1960s and throughout the decade, a new wave of writers and performers inspired by the folk music revival of the 1950s created socially aware and deeply personal songs that spoke to a generation like never before. These writersBob Dylan, Richard Fariña, Janis Ian, and Phil Ochs, to name a fewchanged the folk repertoire from traditional songs to songs sprung from personal, contemporary experiences and the nation''s headlines, raising the level of political self-expression to high art. Message and music merged and mirrored society.In Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, Richard Barone tells this freewheelin'' historical narrative, peppered with personal stories and insights from those who were there, celebrating the lasting legacy of this pivotal decade with stories behind songs that resonate just a

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Book SynopsisThe greatest backup group in the history of recorded music undoubtedly was the Jordanaires, a gospel group of mostly Tennessee boys, formed in the 1940s, that set the standard for studio vocal groups in the ''50s, ''60s, ''70s, and beyond. In their sixty-five-year career, from 1948 through 2013, the recordings they sang on have sold an estimated eight billion copies.They sang on more than 200 of Elvis''s recordings, including most of his biggest hits. They were in three of his best-known movies, appeared with him on most of his early nation-wide TV shows, and toured with him for many years. Throughout Elvis''s early career, they were his most trusted friends and probably his most positive influence. No telling how many thousands of miles we rode together over those fourteen years, remembered Gordon Stoker, the group''s manager and high tenor, and most of those miles were good miles, with lots of laughs, and lots of talk about life.While the Jordanaires'' bread and butt

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Book SynopsisSelling over forty-five million copies, The Dark Side of the Moon topped the US Billboard charts when it was first released in 1973 and took up residence there for over 700 weeks. Lunacy delves into the making of this iconic record and why it continues to speak to generation after generation of music lovers around the world. Music biographer John Kruth starts with Pink Floyd's band history, leading up to the creation of their masterpiece and exploring what inspired the sonic stew of stylesa mixture of avant-garde electronic, jazz, and classical music all contributed to the timeless album. With interviews of musicians, artists, DJs, and fans, Kruth gets to the heart of the lasting importance of The Dark Side of the Moon. Lunacy also looks at Pink Floyd after the departure of the band's original leader and visionary songwriter Syd Barrett. Pink Floyd became a rudderless ship and released a series of nebulous (yet highly enjoyable) jam albums and went on tours that almost

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Book SynopsisAlmost thirty years after Rock Opera, his first book on Jesus Christ Superstar, Ellis Nassour returns to the world of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to complete the fascinating story of the Broadway musical that rocked the stage and pushed boundaries. Nassour goes behind the scenes to show the evolution of Jesus Christ Superstar from an album to a Broadway musical, exploring not only the breakthroughs, but also the frustrations and pitfalls. With never-before-seen photos and new interviews, Superstar presents a detailed account of the life of the musical from 19691973.

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Book SynopsisAddicted to Noise collects the best interviews, profiles, and essays Michael Goldberg has written during his forty-plus years as a journalist. From combative interviews with Frank Zappa and Tom Waits to essays on how Jack Kerouac influenced Bob Dylan and the lasting importance of San Francisco's first punk rock club, Goldberg, as novelist Dana Spiotta wrote, shows us how consequential music can be.Contained within these pages: interviews with Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Flipper, John Fogerty, Neil Young, and Rick James, along with profiles of Robbie Robertson, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, the Clash, Prince, Michael Jackson, the Flamin' Groovies, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, X, Laurie Anderson, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, Devo, San Francisco punks Crime, and more. Plus short takes on Muddy Waters, Townes Van Zandt, Captain Beefheart, Professor Longhair, and others. As Greil Marcus writes in the Foreword, You can feel the atmosphere: someone has wal

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Book SynopsisWho doesn't want to be a rockstar? After years of producing rock tours throughout the world and working with icons like Roger Daltrey, Ringo Starr, Joe Walsh, and so many more, David Fishof wanted to capture the rock n' roll experience for everyone. He was inspired to create the one-of-a-kind Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp, where over the past twenty-five years 6,000 campers and counselors have lived, played, and become family with rockstars. Campers get to meet and jam with their musical idolsincluding Joe Perry, Vince Neil, Jack Bruce, and Jeff Beckin such legendary venues like Abbey Road Studios in London, Whisky a Go Go in Hollywood, and Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas.Rock Camp: An Oral History shares the history of the camp through interviews from the people who got to live out their dreams. Fishof gives a behind-the-scenes look at the origins, early struggles, and challenges he faced to meet the level of excellence he envisioned for the campers and rockers. With original ph

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Book SynopsisKSAN!: The Hippie Radio Revolution that Rocked America is an oral history of America's first hippie underground FM station which broadcasted the countercultural consciousness of the 60s and 70s to a new generation. A communal radio band of intrepid hellraisers, pranksters, and drug-enlightened geniuses defined this psychedelic era, from the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park, to the rebellion and bitter end of the late 1970s, which launched the Reagan Revolution.Founded in San Francisco by Tom Donahue, a 1996 inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, an entire generation of Americans discovered a new musical universe among dance clubs, light shows and street feststhe original pop-ups. Almost overnight, KSAN became an audio clubhouse, where anyone could belong with friends and the cool cats and hipsters they just met.Rock gods, political stars, and literary celebrities, including Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey, Sly Stone, and John Lennon were all interviewed by founder Tom D

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Book SynopsisFew songs have captured the contradictions and ambiguities of the 1960s as memorably as California Dreamin', the iconic folk music single that catapulted The Mamas & The Papas into rock and roll history. In All the Leaves Are Brown, SiriusXM producer Scott Shea details how John Phillips, Denny Doherty, Michelle Phillips, and Mama Cass Elliot became standard-bearers for California counterculture, following their transformation from folk music wannabes to rock sensations and chronicling the tumultuous events that followed their unexpected success. Shea gives a definitive account of the group's short time together, from their hitmaking approach with legendary producer Lou Adler to John's unique songwriting to their tours and friendships with other musicians riding the folk-rock wave. He explores the emotional vicissitudes that came with being in the Mamas & the Papas, from Cass's unrequited love for Denny, his affair with Michelle, and the ebb and flow of dysfunction in John and

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Book SynopsisDuring the rise of second-wave feminism in the 60s and 70s, political activists were not the only ones at work to usher in a more equitable world. In the music world, female rock performers were pursuing a revolution of their own: rejecting the industry's manufactured pop personas and the unacknowledged labor they contributed to male-led groups, women took control of their own music, messages, and images. Even while they often used music to critique rampant chauvinism, they made some of their greatest impacts by paving the way for subsequent musicians to simply be true to themselves. In this way, they helped to transform the music business and society more broadly.In She's a Badass, rock critic Katherine Yeske Taylor interviews more than a dozen of these influential, fearless women about their experiences in an era when female rockers were not given the same respect and opportunities as their male peers. Each chapter focuses on an individual artist, taking an in-depth look at

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Book SynopsisThe Beatles'' North American tours turned the entertainment business on its ear and forever changed the landscape of the concert touring industry. In February 1964 after finally achieving a number-one hit in America the Fab Four came to the country with high hopes performing on the wildly popular ÊEd Sullivan ShowÊ in both New York City and Miami and playing concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Washington Coliseum. In just fifteen short days the Beatles conquered America. The Beatles made music-entertainment history with their North American tours from 1964 to 1966.ÞÊSome Fun Tonight! The Backstage Story of How the Beatles Rocked America: The Historic Tours of 1964-1966Ê is a comprehensive two-volume set which gives you a city-by-city synopsis of the group''s activities as they traveled the United States and Canada for their groundbreaking series of concerts. From San Francisco''s Cow Palace show on August 19 1964 through their last-ever live performances at that city''s famed Candl

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Book SynopsisSOME FUN TONIGHT: THE BACKSTAGE STORY OF HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED AMERIC

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Book SynopsisÊA Stowaway Ukulele Revealed: Richard Konter & the Byrd Polar ExpeditionsÊ is the unlikely and compelling story of a globe-trotting ukulele-strumming Brooklyn sailor named Richard Konter and his famous autographed instrument. At the height of the ukulele craze Konter was a go-to arranger for Tin Pan Alley composers and publishers.ÞIn 1926 Konter shipped out as a member of the crew of the Byrd Arctic Expedition. As a riveted world followed their progress (and that of their arch-rival Roald Amundsen the world''s greatest polar explorer) Konter managed to get his ukulele aboard Byrd''s plane for the first successful polar flight.ÞA keen contributor to history in the making Konter managed to obtain the autographs of more than 150 individuals both famous and unknown all of whom respected the importance of Konter''s North Pole ukulele. Later Konter accompanied Byrd to Antarctica and later married for the first time at age 80 the love of his life.ÞFor the first time ÊA Stowaway U

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Book SynopsisMaryland, My Maryland was one of the most popular Confederate songs during the American Civil War, yet its story is full of ironies that draw attention to the often painful and contradictory actions and beliefs that were both cause and effect of the war. James A. Davis illuminates the incongruities underlying this Civil War anthem and what they reveal about patriotism during the war.Trade Review"Maryland, My Maryland is a strong and important contribution to the field of Civil War history and hopefully will inspire others to take up their own microhistory research to shed more light on the most divisive period in US history."—David K. Graham, H-CivWar"Davis gives us some useful and often insightful observations about life, society, and popular culture during the war, and is at times quite amusing. Maryland, My Maryland is a good read for anyone with an interest in the Home Front during the war, or in American musical history, and, of course, in the still unfinished issues that brought about the war."—A. A. Nofi, Strategy Page"Moving chronologically through the Civil War years, Davis's book meticulously explores the song's origins, reception, use, and reuse, detailing the tension between the nation's love of a good melody and its conflicting ideas of what constitutes a good cause."—Stephanie Dunson, Journal of Southern History“James Davis sheds light on a crucial but understudied dimension of the conflict: the role of music in inspiring devotion to the causes for which both sides fought. He demonstrates an impressive command of the historical and musicological sources necessary to make his analysis persuasive.”—Michael W. Schaefer, professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas and author of A Reader’s Guide to the Short Stories of Stephen Crane “Once again Davis has approached the familiar subject of music in the Civil War with a remarkably fresh take on one of the era’s most popular songs. His latest contribution raises the level of academic inquiry and will stimulate new investigations into broader contexts for music that has often been mentioned but seldom taken seriously.”—Candace Bailey, professor of musicology at North Carolina Central University and author of Music and the Southern Belle: From Accomplished Lady to Confederate Composer“Davis’s historical acumen is impressive, and, combined with his knowledge of musicology, style, phrasing, and other numerous features of song-making, the reader is treated to a multidimensional view of the song. Maryland, My Maryland is not only readable; it is very enjoyable, even a page-turner. Davis is able to write to both the layman and the scholar without making either of them feel that they are trespassing on foreign ground. Anyone interested in the Civil War—really anyone who cares about the subject—will find great treasures in it.”—Randal Allred, professor of English at Brigham Young University–HawaiiTable of Contents Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Patriotic Music and the Civil War 1. Maryland and the Coming of War: Bargain Patriotism and the Need for an Anthem 2. Spring 1861: The Pratt Street Riot and the Birth of a Song 3. “Maryland, My Maryland”: Lyrics, Music, and Publication 4. Fall 1861: The Cary Invincibles, Flags, and Symbolic Patriotism 5. Spring 1862: Marylanders, the Military, and Regionalism 6. Summer 1862: Tropes, Class, and the Rise of an Anthem 7. Fall 1862: Antietam and the Battle of Parodies 8. Spring 1863: pows, Civilians, and Military Patriotism 9. Summer 1863: Gettysburg, Slavery, and the Patriotism of Sacrifice 10. Fall 1863: Women, Hospitals, and Diverging Audiences 11. 1864: Monocacy and the Victory of Song over State 12. 1865: Performing Patriotism and Nostalgia after Appomattox Epilogue: “Maryland, My Maryland” after the War Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis is the first book exclusively dedicated to Miles Davis's watershed 1969 album, Bitches Brew. Hoewever, it is not just the story of the album. It also reveals much of the legend of Miles Davis - his attitude and will, his grace under pressure, his bands, his relationship to the masses, and his response to extraordinary social conditions seemingly aligned to bring him down.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis“Is there jazz in China?” This is the question that sent author Eugene Marlow on his quest to uncover the history of jazz in China. Marlow traces China's introduction to jazz in the early 1920s, its interruption by Chinese leadership under Mao in 1949, and its rejuvenation in the early 1980s with the start of China's opening to the world under Premier Deng Xiaoping.

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Book SynopsisThroughout his life, Louis Armstrong tried to explain how singing with a barbershop quartet on the streets of New Orleans was foundational to his musicianship. Creating the Jazz Solo shows that Armstrong understood exactly the relationship between what he sang and what he played, and that he he was singing through his horn.

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Book SynopsisIn this groundbreaking volume, Laurent Cugny examines and connects the theoretical and methodological processes that underlie all of jazz. Jazz in all its forms is researched and analysed by performers, scholars, and critics. This book is required reading for any serious study of jazz.

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Book SynopsisAdrian Rollini, an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, played the bass saxophone, piano, vibraphone, and an array of other instruments. This book draws on oral history, vintage articles, and family archives to trace Rollini's life, from his family's arrival in the US to his development and career as a musician, to his retirement and death.

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Book SynopsisPresents an innovative history of funk music focused on the performers, regarding them as intellectuals who fashioned a new aesthetic. Utilizing musicology, literary studies, performance studies, and African American intellectual history, Tony Bolden explores what it means for music, or any cultural artifact, to be funky.

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Book SynopsisFor more than fifty years, Chicago drummer Jimmi Mayes served as a sideman behind some of the greatest musicians and musical groups in history. This sideman to the stars witnessed music history from the best seat in the house - behind the drum set.

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Book SynopsisOffers the first book-length portrait of punk as a musical style with an emphasis on how punk developed in relation to changing ideas of race in American society from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The book provides fresh interpretations of race and American society during this period and illuminates the contemporary importance of that era.

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Book SynopsisInvokes and critiques the relationship between blues-based popular music and poetry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume is anchored in music from the 1960s, when a concentration of artists transformed modes of popular music from entertainment to art-that-entertains.

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