Popular music Books

Book SynopsisA feminist - and former model - scrutinizes hip-hop cultureTrade ReviewPimps Up, Ho's Downis an ambitious project that engages, rather than skirts, the complicated domain of sex, gender, power and hip hop. The book is extremely readable and suitiable for a variety of audiences. -- Valerie Chepp * Cultural Sociology *Sharpley-Whitings book does not suffer from the sort of cowardice one too often hears from black academics who genuflect to hip hop in order to stay current with the tastes of the students who provide them with whatever power they have on college campuses. Sharpley-Whiting calls them as she sees them and wisely quotes the offensive material when necessary. Her book is high level in its research and its thought, and those looking for adult ideas about the subject should look it up. -- Stanley Crouch * New York Daily News *Offers an insightful look into the strip clubs, groupie culture, and other aspects of hip hop that have given a voice to the disenfranchised while raising troubling questions about what those voices are saying and doing. * Vanderbilt Magazine *Sharpley-Whiting gets at the heart of the paradox . . . and puts the discussion on the turntable. * Washington Post *Offers damning evidence about hip hops underlying racial and social prejudices, examining the politics of gender and providing a feminists perspective and insights into black musics underlying message. * The Midwest Book Review *Sharpley-Whiting unmasks thought provoking socio-political commentaries concerning sexual obsession in rap music and its effects on the black female sense of self. * Allhiphop.com *Sharpley-Whitings uncommon perspective is one that deserves to be examined more often. * Bitch *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue Sex, Power, and Punanny Introduction Pimpin' Ain't Easy, But Somebody's Got to Do It 1 "I See the Same Ho": Video Vixens, Beauty Culture, and Diasporic Sex Tourism 2 Too Hot to Be Bothered: Black Women and Sexual Abuse 3 "I'm a Hustla, Baby": Groupie Love and the Hip Hop Star 4 Strip Tails: Booty Clappin', P-poppin', Shake Dancing 5 Coda, or a Few Last Words on Hip Hop and Feminism Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisThe Song Index features over 150,000 citations that lead users to over 2,100 song books spanning more than a century, from the 1880s to the 1990s. The songs cited represent a multitude of musical practices, cultures, and traditions, ranging from ehtnic to regional, from foreign to American, representing every type of song: popular, folk, children''s, political, comic, advertising, protest, patriotic, military, and classical, as well as hymns, spirituals, ballads, arias, choral symphonies, and other larger works. This comprehensive volume also includes a bibliography of the books indexed; an index of sources from which the songs originated; and an alphabetical composer index.Trade Review"Public librarians will kill for a reference book like Ellen Luchinsky's The Song Index of the Enoch Pratt FreeLibrary. The Song Index will prove highly useful to librarians and patrons trying to locate favorite songs." -- Against the Grain"A welcome addition to the available print indexes to song collections. Libraries of all types will want to acquire a copy and benefit from the breadth and depth of indexing done by the Pratt Library's staff for nearly a century. The broad range of collections indexed make it an essential purchase." -- ane Gottlieb, Head Librarian, The Juilliard School"Anyone who has ever worked in a public library knows the frustration of trying to fill the enormous demand on the part of the public for songs. This publication of the renowned song index from the Enoch Pratt Free Library will go a long way toward making many librarians' lives much easier." -- Susan T. Sommer, The New York Public LibraryTable of ContentsIntroduction, Acknowledgements, How to Use This Book, The Bibliography, The Song Index, The Composers, The Sources (Operas, Musicals, Movies and Other Sources of Songs)

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Engrossing and exhaustive, Everybody’s Heard about the Bird is an invaluable pop history document that chronicles the nascent Minneapolis recording and music industry and early rock-and-roll stew. All in all, a labor of love that feels both fresh and long overdue." —Jim Walsh, journalist, songwriter, and author of The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History"A meticulously researched and thoughtfully told celebration of the successes Minnesota musicians achieved in the ‘60s."—Pioneer Press"A deep, exhilarating, educational and inspiring rabbit hole that leads to aural artifacts from a time when ballroom dance floors looked like sizzling pans of human flesh, so wild and freely were they filled with dancing kids."—MinnPost.com"If you didn’t experience rock and roll in Minnesota in the 1960s, this book will make you wish you had."—Fox 9 News"Relive the years of Augie Garcia and Bobby Vee, the Castaways and the Trashmen, whose hit “Surfin’ Bird” inspired hundreds of bands in the Upper Midwest. Word is that this fun read. . . is selling out all over town."—Pioneer Press"Just like ‘Surfin’ Bird’ and the other songs of that era, the best word that could be used to describe Shefchik’s book is simply ‘fun.’"—Star Tribune"Rick Shefchik...has meticulously re-created the scene whose biggest names included the Castaways, the Underbeats, the Avanties, and the Gestures."—Minnesota History"Shefchik’s meticulously researched history is the authoritative document of this early, fertile era of rock ‘n’ roll."—Minnesota HistoryTable of ContentsContentsPrologue1. Suzie Baby2. The Rajah of the Records3. Battle of the Bands4. Trashman’s Blues5. The Bird is the Word6. The British Arrive7. On the Move8. The Big Three9. The Great Deception10. Run, Run, Run11. Liar, Liar12. We Gotta Get Out of This Place13. Dream if You CanEpilogue: Bringing It All Back HomeAcknowledgmentsIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Albert Murray is . . . an authority on soul from the days of old . . . and commands respect. He doesn't have to look it up. If you want to know, look him up. He is the unsquarest person I know."—Duke Ellington"Like Barthes and Bazin, Murray is a truly original thinker . . . Murray Talks Music is irresistibly stimulating." —The New Yorker "The name Albert Murray was never household familiar. Yet his complex, mind-opening analysis of art and life remains as timely as ever—probably more so. Devlin’s book is both a public service and a testament to how Murray could impress and inspire those who came in contact with him."—The Nation "Insightful." —New York Times "Murray Talks Music bears indelible witness to the writer’s role in elevating both jazz itself and the scholarship surrounding the music." —JazzTimes "Murray is rare touchstone writer for jazz. Indeed, there’s an argument that the later career of Wynton Marsalis and the entire edifice of Jazz at Lincoln Center is founded on Murray’s work. This is the only case of a major jazz musician treating the work of a major jazz writer with such reverence."—Ethan Iverson, DO THE M@TH "A compelling and comprehensive work, which will no doubt make Murrayites of us all."—DownBeat "Before Murray Talks Music, there was little in print of Albert Murray as spontaneous orator. This new collection corrects that problem and shows how brilliant he could be even when he didn’t have time to polish his prose."—The Arts Fuse "Murray Talks: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues is further testimony to the fact that Murray was a charming character and a determined thinker. It is a fascinating edition to the Murray canon." —Living Blues "The freewheeling give-and-take in Murray Talks Music is robust and colorful. In conversation, Murray was even more of a paradigmatic jazzman in his spontaneous digressions and in his ability to call on a breathtaking range of resources and references." —Bookforum "If Allan Bloom was right that 'this is the age of music and the states of soul that accompany it,' then Albert Murray is a guide for our time. Against this backdrop, we can appreciate the posthumous publication of Murray’s work." —The Weekly StandardTable of ContentsContentsForeword: St. George and the BluesGary GiddinsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Albert Murray: Talking the Blues and So Much MorePaul Devlin1. Interview with Wynton Marsalis2. Interview with Dizzy Gillespie3. Interview with Dan Minor4. Interview with Greg Thomas5. A Talk at St. John’s University (with Paul Devlin)6. Interview with Russell Neff7. Liner Notes to Revelations and Blues Suite8. Murray’s Note on The Second Line and The Third Line9. Foreword to The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards10. Foreword to Mitchell & Ruff: An American Profile in Jazz11. Interview with Paul Devlin12. Murray’s 1958 Morocco Lecture Notes (translated by Lauren Walsh)13. Biographical Sketch of Count Basie14. Interview with Susan Page15. Interview with Robert G. O’Meally16. A Discussion of Duke Ellington with Loren Schoenberg and Stanley Crouch17. Jazz: Notes Toward a DefinitionAfterword: The Blues and Jazz as Aesthetic StatementGreg ThomasAppendix 1: Albert Murray’s Canon of Jazz ArrangementsAppendix 2: American Patterns and Variations on Rhythm and Tune: An Ellington-Strayhorn ListNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Fascinating and at times brilliant, Extended Play addresses a number of issues that circle around ‘music’ in ways that are new and stimulating, and explores them with wit, intelligence, and sophistication. Corbett is an important thinker, as well as a good journalist—a rare combination."—John Szwed, John Musser Professor of African and Afro-American studies, American studies, Music, and Anthropology, Yale University"One of the most important aspects of Corbett’s trawl along the musical fringe is that it denies the genre definitions that usually constrain music books—this is not a book about jazz or rock or art music but about all of them. It is precisely this which enables him to address the broad questions about the effect of technology, globalization, etc. on our sense of what it is to make and listen to music. An outstanding work—lucidly written, well organized, engaged, and intelligent. It is certainly one of the most stimulating books on music I've read in the last couple of years."—Simon Frith, author of Sound Effects and Music for Pleasure"Yes, contemporary musical creativity is alive and well and well-celebrated in this valuable book. Great music that often has audiences of three people is here discussed along with great music that has audiences of thousands."—Michael Snow, film, sound, and visual artist, and editor of a collection of essays, Music/Sound“Extended Play is a poststructural tour de force.” -- Steve Sweeney-Turner * Musical Times *“Corbett has honed in on some of the most intriguing music happening today and his discussion is never less than lively, intelligent, and politically concerned.” -- Ben Watson * The Wire *“[A] frequently revealing, frequently frustrating book, and it's different from the usual collections of jazz journalism for two reasons. The first reason is Corbett's wide range of interests. . . . The other special quality of Extended Play is its pure, clear focus on creativity.” -- John Litweiler * Chicago Tribune *“Extended Play offers rare, caring glimpses of gifted musicians few music fans know, but should.” * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisLooks at how jazz music has actually been heard and felt at different levels of American culture.Trade Review"Bringing together all these pieces in one place is startling, and should jump-start the field of jazz studies by demonstrating, convincingly, that it need not be conducted as a bad imitation of 1950s musicology. Gabbard is to be commended not only for encouraging these diverse intellects to work on jazz, but also for gathering such an appealing and balanced collection. It works well as an overview of the possibilities of the field, while exploring idiosyncratic areas with great zeal."—Scott DeVeaux, University of Virginia"If it is true that new knowledge always demands new tools, then we are surely on the way to a paradigm shift with the publication of Krin Gabbard’s two masterful anthologies of jazz. The wonderful introductions—in themselves masterpieces of preparation for a new discipline—are complemented in every way by a variety of absolutely first-rate writing. We may well be glancing with these anthologies through the telescope that will show us the future of jazz studies in the international academy. These are indispensable tools for anyone who wishes to understand sociology and philosophy of knowledge for our era."—Houston A. Baker, Jr."One of the strongest jazz anthologies I have seen. Its focus is original. Jazz in literature has been treated before to some extent, but not in the same fashion, and there is little elsewhere on jazz in dance or jazz and the visual arts."—Lewis Porter, author, with Michael Ullman, of Jazz: From Its Origins to the Present Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Writing the Other History / Krin Gabbard 1 Jazz in Literature and Film Jammin' the Blues, or the Sight of Jazz, 1944 / Arthur Knight 11 Improvising and Mythmaking in Eudora Welty's "Powerhouse" / Leland H. Chambers 54 Fabulating Jazz / Frederick Garber 70 Signifyin(g) the Phallus: Mo' Better Blues and Representations of the Jazz Trumpet / Krin Gabbard 104 Jazz Autobiography: Theory, Practice, Politics / Christopher Harlos 131 Excursus: Cabin in the Sky Uptown Folk: Blackness and Entertainment in Cabin in the Sky / James Naremore 169 Doubling, Music, and Race in Cabin in the Sky / Adam Knee 193 Jazz and Dance Divine Frivolity: Hollywood Representations of the Lindy Hop, 1937–1942 / Robert P. Crease 207 Keeping the Spirit Alive: The Jazz Dance Testament of Mura Dehn / Karen Backstein 229 Picturing Jazz Jazz and the New York School / Mona Hadler 247 The Tenor's Vehicle: Reading Way Out West / Michael Jarrett 260 Vocalese: Representing Jazz with Jazz Purple Passages of Fiestas in Blue? Notes Toward an Aesthetic of Vocalese / Barry Keith Grant 285 Contributors 305 Index 307

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Book SynopsisIncludes essays that offer a sophisticated view of the growing power of popular culture and its increasing inseparability from contemporary structures of economic and political power and from our everyday lives. This title reveals the ways in which popular culture is being mobilised in the service of economic and political struggles.Trade Review“Larry Grossberg’s exposition of the history and structure of the problems defining cultural studies, the debate about postmodernism, and contemporary approaches to popular culture is exemplary.”—Meaghan Morris“These essays constitute a distinctive and impressive body of work by a leading cultural studies scholar and theorist. Dancing in Spite of Myself significantly adds to the literature of cultural studies and provides a valuable service in bringing together a rich body of theory and criticism.”—Tony Bennett“These essays represent an original contribution to and sustained reflection on the central debates in critical cultural theory by one of its leading practitiioners and most engaged and distinctive voices.”—Stuart Hall

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Book SynopsisSuitable for the students of jazz, American music, African American studies, American culture, and cultural studies, this title studies the music and thought of three pioneering twentieth-century musicians: Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton.Trade Review“Graham Lock’s Blutopia will stand as a pivotal text in the development of a serious consideration of African American creative music. Lock offers a range of fresh, new materials, and is at the same time approaching the problematic of the black musical intellectual tradition from an extremely exciting and original perspective.”— John Corbett, author of Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein“Graham Lock’s rightly-named book expertly and impeccably attends to the mission African-American music has been on. Its address of a utopic assertion shaded by blue, dystopic truth in the work of Sun Ra, Ellington, and Braxton knowingly shows how distinctly out music ‘in the tradition’ has long been. Entering the discourse advanced by such assertion with exemplary grace and discernment, ever the right tone and touch, it succeeds beautifully in recognizing and furthering the music’s blutopic studies.”—Nathaniel Mackey, University of California, Santa Cruz“Lock is upping the ante on the scholarship of music. He gently leads the reader into largely unknown territory with impressive lucidity and evenhandedness.”—John Szwed, author of Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra“Blutopia is a lucidly written, expansively annotated exposition of ‘an African American visionary future stained with memories.’ ” -- Julian Cowley * The Wire *“Blutopia is a wonderful book. Lock lays out each man’s life and ideas in a readable and informative fashion. In addition, his thorough research and reasonable analysis shed new light on previously unexamined aspects of these artists’ careers. in fact, his chapter on Sun Ra is perhaps the best summation of his philosophy that exists. Additionally, his techniques for uncovering the idea-worlds lurking in the interviews and other effluvia generated by an artist living a public life, point the way for future researchers into the world of jazz studies.” -- John Howard * American Studies International *“[Lock’s] book offers a very fertile line of thought, and he must be right that it could be applied to other African American music from Scott Joplin to Cecil Taylor. There’s copious annotation but while the scholarship is formidable, the presentation is clear and readable. Blutopia is an important and novel addition to the jazz literature.” -- Andy Hamilton * Jazz Review *“[Lock] is a lucid writer, intelligent and incisive, and Blutopia displays the sterling qualities we’ve come to expect from him. . . . Lock should be congratulated for recontextualising the music of Ra, Ellington ,and Braxton, and enhancing our understanding of it by way of social, cultural, and historical perspectives. Blutopia makes their musical philosophy more comprehensible, and their vision seem more profound. That’s no small achievement.” -- Brian Marley * Avant Music News *“It seems odd to lump together the greatest jazz showman, Sun Ra; the greatest Jazz orchestrator, Duke Ellington; and the greatest contemporary Jazz experimentalist, Anthony Braxton. But Lock illuminatingly argues that the three men’s cultural motivations are similar. . . . Explicating music-as-sociology rather than music per se, Lock is utterly enthralling, even in the notes.” -- Ray Olson * Booklist *“Lock deserves praise for his explication of the influence Ellington’s race-conscious secondary school education had on his racial-uplift agenda and epic sense of pageantry; ditto for his comparisons of Ra with the Yoruba trickster god Esu, and for elucidating the mystical content of Braxton’s diagrammatic song titles. . . . Throughout Blutopia, Lock makes the most of his research. . . [He] is good at teasing out the subtle and not so subtle patronizing tone many white observers have taken regarding the highfalutin artistic aspirations of jazz’s African-American experimenters.” -- Greg Tate * Bookforum *“Lock explains [the musicians] from the inside out. His achievement is to take the musicians seriously as theorists in their own right, then to draw them into the meshes of African-American musical and spiritual traditions. . . . ” -- Scott Saul * TLS *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Blutopia Part I: Sun Ra: A Starward Eye 1. Astro Black: Mythic Future, Mythic Past 2. Of Aliens and Angels: Mythic Identity Part II: Duke Ellington: Tone Parallels 3. In the Jungles of America: History Without Saying It 4. Zajj: Renegotiating Her Story Part III: Anthony Braxton: Crossroad Axiums 5. All the Things You Are: Legba’s Legacy 6. Going to the Territory: Sound Maps of the Meta-Real Coda: House of Voices, Sea of Music Appendix Notes Works Cited Index of Compositions and Recordings Index

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Book SynopsisFocuses on the role of African American folk music in Renaissance aesthetic and political debates about racial performance, social memory, and national identity. This book elucidates how spirituals, African American concert music, the blues, and jazz became symbolic sites of social memory and anticipation in the era of the Harlem Renaissance.Trade Review“Paul Anderson’s Deep River is the best, most convincing, and most richly textured work on black socio-musical criticism in print. In examining the views of twelve commentators on black music, ranging from W. E. B. DuBois and his ‘sorrow songs’ theory to Wynton Marsalis and his jazz neoclassicism, Anderson builds his interpretations and critiques on that of previous and current critics to develop a sophisticated examination and treatment of important ideas about social and cultural positioning of black music in America. I recommend this book to anyone interested in black music as a field of study or inquiry.”—Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., Columbia College“While many scholars have attempted histories of the early years of jazz—and even more have examined Du Bois’s appeals to the musical in his social and cultural criticism—few have attempted the kind of sustained examination of the critical debates about black music that Anderson does. Deep River places these long-standing debates in a crucial new context.”—Aldon L. Nielsen, author of Black Chant: Languages of African American PostmodernismTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. “Unvoiced Longings”: Du Bois and the Sorrow Songs 2. Swan Songs and Art Songs: The Spirituals and the “New Negro” in the 1920s 3. “The Twilight of Aestheticism”: Locke on Cosmopolitanism and Musical Evolution 4. “Beneath the Seeming Informality”: Hughes, Hurston, and the Politics of Form 5. Saving Jazz From Its Friends: The Predicament of Jazz Criticism in the Swing Era Epilogue Notes Selected Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisYellow Music is the first history of the emergence of Chinese popular music and the larger urban media culture with which it was closely associated in early twentieth-century China. This book revises understandings of race, politics, popular culture, and technology in the making of modern Chinese culture.Trade Review“Yellow Music pushes commonsense presumptions forward by complicating theory with solid empirical study. Jones weaves rich information and intriguing conclusions throughout this historically grounded book.”—Miriam Silverberg, author of Changing Song: The Marxist Manifestos of Nakano Shigeharu“Yellow Music is a fantastic, one-of-a-kind read: a beautifully written, theoretically rich, and empirically grounded story about the relationship between American jazz music and the politics of colonialism and modernity in China during the interwar years. Andrew F. Jones puts the question of music at the center of debates about the role of the popular in the making of modern China.”—Ralph Litzinger, author of Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging“Jones illuminates Chinese cultural and political history from an unknown angle—that of popular music and an emergent transnational mass culture. In doing so, he not only enriches our understanding of this history but also makes an original contribution.”—Prasenjit Duara, author of Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern ChinaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Listening to Jazz Age China 1 1. The Orchestration of Chinese Musical Life 21 2. The Gramophone in China 53 3. The Yellow Music of Li Jinhui 73 4. Mass Music and the Politics of Phonographic Realism 105 Glossary 137 Notes 147 Bibliography 183 Index 207

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Book SynopsisJapan's jazz community - both musicians and audience - has been begrudgingly recognised for its talent, knowledge, and level of appreciation. This title shows how, strangely, Japan's own attitude toward jazz is founded on this same ambivalence about its authenticity. It explores the true and legitimate nature of Japanese jazz.Trade Review“Blue Nippon focuses on jazz in Japan but is actually much more far-reaching. It reminds me of The Modern Jazz Quartet—scholarly yet swingin’!”—Phil Morrison, Jazz Bassist and Composer“This is a powerful gem of a book. Atkins’s mixing of voices is wonderful and his scholarship impressive. Moreover, his complex argument is communicated in language that is straightforward, engaging, and compelling.”—Christine Yano, University of Hawaii, ManoaTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prelude: Plenty Plenty Soul 1. The Japanese Jazz Artist and the Authenticity Complex 2. The Soundtrack of Modern Life: Japan’s Jazz Revolution 3. Talkin’ Jazz: Music, Modernism, and Interwar Japan’s Culture Wars 4. “Jazz for the Country’s Sake”: Toward a New Cultural Order in Wartime Japan 5. Bop, Funk, Junk, and That Old Democracy Boogie: The Jazz Tribes of Postwar Japan 6. Our Thing: Defining “Japanese Jazz” Postlude: J-Jazz and the Fin de Siecle Blues Notes References Discography Index

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Book SynopsisFrom the silent era to the present day, popular music has been a key component of the film experience. This title aims to fill this gap, as its contributors provide detailed analyses of individual films as well as historical overviews of genres, styles of music, and approaches to film scoring.Trade Review“Soundtrack Available represents a great leap forward in the analysis of film soundtracks. It is a smart, lively book that moves nicely between the detailed analysis of individual cases and broader, theoretical issues. The editors are to be commended for a collection which covers so many historical periods and national cinemas, and for staking out exciting new directions for scholarship. At the same time, this is a compelling, refreshingly jargon-free read for the non-specialist interested in film, music, or media.”—Will Straw, McGill University“From Bollywood to Hollywood, Wim Wenders to Wong Kar-Wai, popular music permeates movies. Rigorous scholarship has finally begun to catch up with this phenomenon to make sense of its rich and varied cultural meanings. Wocjik’s and Knight’s first-rate collection is muscular, theoretically informed, historically textured, and full of exciting discoveries for all interested in the confluence of pop music, film, and identity.”—Claudia Gorbman, University of WashingtonTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Overture / Arthur Knight and Pamela Robertson Wojcik I. Popular vs. “Serious” Cinema and Popular Song: The Lost Tradition / Rick Altman Surreal Symphonies: “L’Age d’or and the Discreet Charms of Classical Music / Priscilla Barlow “The Future’s Not Ours to See”: Song, Singer, and Labryinth in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much / Murray Pomerance “You Think They Call Us Plastic Now . . . “: The Monkees and Head / Paul B. Ramaeker II. Singing Stars Real Men Don’t Sing Ballads: The Radio Crooner in Hollywood, 1929–1933 / Allison McCracken Flower of the Asphalt: The Chanteuse Realiste in 1930s French Cinema / Kelley Conway The Embodied Voice: Song Sequences and Stardom in Popular Hindi Cinema / Neepa Majumdar III. Music as Ethnic Marker Music as Ethnic Marker in Film: The “Jewish” Case / Andrew P. Killick Sounding the American Heart: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Contemporary American Film / Barbara Ching Crossing Musical Borders: The Soundtrack for Touch of Evil / Jill Leeper Documented/Documentary Asians: Gurinder Chadha’s I’m British But . . . and the Musical Mediation of Sonic and Visual Identities / Nabeel Zuberi IV. African American Identities Class Swings: Music, Race, and Social Mobility in Broken Strings / Adam Knee Borrowing Black Masculinity: The Role of Johnny Hartman in The Bridges of Madison County / Krin Gabbard V. Case Study: Porgy and Bess It Ain’t Necessarily So That It Ain’t Necessarily So: African American Recordings of Porgy and Bess as Film and Cultural Criticism / Arthur Knight “Hollywood Has Taken On a New Color”: The Yiddish Blackface of Samuel Goldwyn’s Porgy and Bess / Jonathan Gill VI. Contemporary Compilations Picturizing American Cinema: Hindi Film Songs and the Last Days of Genre / Corey K. Creekmur Popular Songs and Comic Allusion in Contemporary Cinema / Jeff Smith VII. Gender and Technology The Girl and the Phonograph; or the Vamp and the Machine Revisited / Pamela Robertson Wojcik Bibliography Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThe story, based on extensive individual interviews, of the women's swing bands that toured extensively during World War II and after -- a kind of League of their Own for jazz.Trade Review“Swing Shift is a long-overdue historical corrective and a compelling read—a thoroughly remarkable achievement.”—David Hajdu, author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn“Swing Shift is the most original, thought-provoking jazz book written in the last thirty years. Sherrie Tucker’s virtuoso performance not only tears down the bars of silence that have kept women musicians invisible, but she reveals how this silence works to uphold the race and gender mythologies that we know as the history of the ‘swing era.’ After prying open our eyes and ears, Tucker takes us on a funky, surprising, inspiring musical journey that will drive all jazzheads back to the woodshed. And if that’s not enough, as a writer this ‘girl’ can swing off the page!”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America “Sherrie Tucker’s beautifully written and meticulously researched book on women jazz bands introduces us to a generation of awesome musicians, whose stories raise provocative questions about the impact of race, class, gender, and sexuality on dominant conceptions of jazz history. In suggesting new ways of thinking about the place of women jazz musicians in recent U.S. history, Swing Shift boldly challenges our contemporary understandings of the unruly politics of culture. ”—Angela DavisTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t in the History Books” I Playing the Changes of World War II 1. Working the Swing Shift: Effects of World War II on “All-Girl” Bands 2. “Hours of Charm” with Phil Spitalny 3. Extracurricular Activities with the Prairie View Co-eds II Road Hazards 4. Surveillance and Survival in the Jim Crow South 5. Internationalism and the Sweethearts of Rhythm 6. The Darlings of Rhythm: On the Road and Ready to Run III USO-Camp Shows 7. Female Big Bands, Male Mass Audiences: Gendered Performances in a Theater of War 8. Battles of a “Sophisticated Lady”: Ada Leonard and the USO 9. “And, Fellas, They’re American Girls,”: On the Road with the Sharon Rogers All-Girl Band Conclusion: Post-War Changes, Familiar Refrains Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisSuitable for scholars and students in popular music studies and American Studies as well as general readers interested in popular music, this book brings voices and perspectives to the study of popular-and particularly rock-music.Trade Review“Smart, provocative, contradictory, suggestive, irritating, inspiring, exhaustive, exhausting and over the top—Rock Over the Edge takes the imperative of its title seriously, though often with a welcome sense of humor. Anyone who cares about popular music will find much in here to react to—either by shouting out in affirmation, or hurling the damn thing against the wall.”—Anthony DeCurtis, author of Rocking My Life Away: Writing About Music and Other Matters“Well written and engaging, these essays combine high levels of scholarship with a much more intimate familiarity with popular musical culture than is common within popular music studies. The range of styles makes for a lively and even endearing collection.”—Will Straw, McGill UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction / Roger Beebe, Denise Fulbrook, and Ben Saunders Discourses / Histories Reflections of a Disappointed Popular Music Scholar / Lawrence Grossberg Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of the Canon / Robert Fink “Think about What You’re Trying to Do to Me”: Rock Historiography and the Construction of a Race-Based Dialectic / John J. Sheinbaum Hijacked Hits and Antic Authenticity: Cover Songs, Race, and Postwar Marketing / Michael Coyle New Spaces / New Maps Why Isn’t Country Music “Youth” Culture? / Trent Hill Just A Girl? Rock Music, Feminism, and the Cultural Construction of Female Youth / Gayle Wald Satellite Rhythms: Channel V, Asian Music Videos, and Transnational Gender / Lisa Parks The “Feminization” of Rock / Tony Grajeda Rock’s Reconquista / Josh Kun Desires Affects A Fan’s Notes: Identification, Desire, and the Haunted Sound Barrier / R. J. Warren Zanes Mourning Becomes . . .? Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, and the “Waning of Affect” / Roger Beebe D. C. Punk and the Production of Authenticity / Jason Middleton Queen Theory: Notes on the Pet Shop Boys / Ian Balfour Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisFocuses on the socially relevant aspects of Hip Hop music: its treatment of the identity of the black subject in a white society, new definitions of blackness and its commercialization.Trade Review“Prophets of the Hood is the most comprehensive and intellectually original study to date of hip hop as a complex and innovative literary narrative form. Written with a refreshing blend of savvy critical rigor and brave and imaginative narrative verve, Imani Perry’s study is an impressive analysis of late-twentieth-century American popular culture.”—Daphne A. Brooks, Princeton University“Imani Perry has written the most subtle and nuanced treatment of hip hop that I know. Her complex view of hip hop as black democratic space subject to prophetic utterance and mainstream cooptation is powerful. Her call for the local engagement and global vision of the underground to revitalize hip hop is compelling. Her seminal work should silence all naive or ignorant trashers of this vital cultural form!”—Cornel West, Princeton University“Imani Perry’s Prophets of the Hood is an extraordinary and brilliant book. Eschewing a rigid division between the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ in hip hop, she takes the discussion of rap to new depths and greater heights with a probing analysis of the poetic and political dimensions of the art form. With lucid explanations, crisp writing, and sharp analysis, Perry has managed to actually say some very important things in a strikingly fresh manner. With the storytelling skills of Nas, the passion of Tupac, the lyrical dexterity of Lauryn Hill, the verbal mastery of Talib Kweli, and the conceptual acuity of krs-One, Perry has produced a stunning, magnificent work of art.”—Michael Eric Dyson, author of Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac ShakurTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Hip Hop's Mama: Originalism and Identity in the Music 9 2. My Mic Sound Nice: Art, Community, and Consciousness 38 3. Stinging Like Tabasco: Structure and Format in Hip Hop Compositions 58 4. The Glorious Outlaw: Hip Hop Narratives, American Law, and the Court of Public Opinion 102 5. B-Boys, Players, and Preachers: Reading Masculinity 117 6. The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto: Negotiating Spaces for Women 155 7. Bling Bling…and Going Pop: Consumerism and Co-optation in Hip Hop 191 Notes 205 Index 223

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of the political and cultural experience of jazz performers in Britain from the 1950s 'traditional jazz boom' onwardsTrade Review“Circular Breathing is a marvelous book. I admire George McKay’s knowledge of jazz, the British left, and cultural history. His ability to blend those elements is to my knowledge unique and unprecedented, and his interviews with jazz musicians enrich immeasurably the story that he is telling.”—Dennis Dworkin, author of Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies“Circular Breathing is quite simply the best book so far on jazz in Britain. George McKay acts as a cultural archaeologist, digging up traces of a ninety-year musical presence and writing them back into history. He comments acutely on a music which can be peripheral and exclusive but which he rightly sees as vital to the story of Britain’s social and political evolution.”—Andrew Blake, author of The Land without Music: Music, Culture, and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain“George McKay's book plugs a significant scholarly gap and provides a much-needed cultural history of jazz in Britain. . . . This book is a hugely impressive, detailed, and fascinating cultural history of jazz in Britain and should be recommended not only to cultural historians but also to historians of the Cold War, the British Left, and those interested in race relations and national identity in twentieth-century Britain.” -- James J. Nott * American Historical Review *“McKay has written an excellent study of one of the many new cultures and cultural spaces of postwar England. His emphasis on space and culture, gender and space, and race and identity make this a strong work well worth the time to read. . . . [H]is book places the playing and study of jazz music in clear class terms as few scholars have before him.” -- Gordon J. Marshall * Journal of British Studies *"It is only by reading Circular Breathing, George McKay's skillful examination of race relations, gender issues, and the Left in relation to British jazz, that we can understand why British jazz wasn't at the center of the European free-jazz revolution. . . . [V]aluable and imaginative scholarship." -- Stephanie Hanson * Bookforum *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Jazz, Europe, Americanization 1 1. New Orleans Jazz, Protest (Aldermaston), and Carnival (Beaulieu) 45 2. Whiteness and (British) Jazz 87 3. Jazz of the Black Atlantic and the Commonwealth 129 4. The Politics and Performance of Improvisation and Contemporary Jazz in the 1960s and 1970s 191 5. From "Male Music" to Feminist Improvising 243 Conclusion 297 Notes 305 Bibliography 333 Index 349

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Book SynopsisAn encyclopedic account of the sounds and obsessions of the Space Age/Cold War period and the renewed interest in them evident in contemporary music and design.Trade Review“Crammed with facts about sounds, composers, their histories, reminiscences and a whole lot more, Adinolfi has more than done his research, which , in such a odd, diverse, and obscure field of music, has to be applauded. . . . [A] very worthy edition to any bachelor pad. . . .” - Jonny Trunk, Record Collector“Adinolfi contextualizes the 1950s exotica trend by placing it within a long history of Western musical exoticism. He ably documents instances of cultural appropriation, from seventeenth-century motifs of the Indies to Mozart’s search for musical expressions evocative of ‘that elusive Turkish flavor’ (37).” - Khalil Anthony Johnson Jr., American Quarterly“Mondo Exotica is essential reading for those interested in twentieth-century American studies, popular musical culture, and twentieth-century visual culture. . . . Ultimately, this work is incredibly engaging and entertaining, equal parts mondo and exotic.” - Kim Cunningham, Visual Studies“[I]nterviews with some of exotica’s prime movers and shakers, most notably [Martin] Denny, Piero Piccioni and Esquivel, provide additional insight and immediacy to this fascinating study.” - Ken Hollings, The Wire"Part cult music and record colllectors' delight and part intriguing pop cultural study, Mondo Exotica is . . . a generally entertaining read that sheds some light on how larger cultural, social, and political trends are reflected in popular music." - Chris Heim, KMUW-FM“Mondo Exotica is a cornucopia of data documenting lounge music and culture and their mid-1990s revival. Francesco Adinolfi has written a book that is as fun to read as the lounge lifestyle is fun to live!”—Otto Von Stroheim, DJ, founder of Tiki News, and organizer of the annual Tiki Oasis weekend event“You want alternative culture? Here’s the real thing. Francesco Adinolfi looks beyond the camp value and discovers the exotic urges that drove a generation that was supposed to be respectable. This terrific book reminds you that some of the most unique records ever made can still be found at your local garage sale—and that it’s never too late to discover how to live.”—Brett Milano, author of The Sound of Our Town: A History of Boston Rock & Roll and Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting“Mondo Exotica is essential reading for those interested in twentieth-century American studies, popular musical culture, and twentieth-century visual culture. . . . Ultimately, this work is incredibly engaging and entertaining, equal parts mondo and exotic.” -- Kim Cunningham * Visual Studies *“[I]nterviews with some of exotica’s prime movers and shakers, most notably [Martin] Denny, Piero Piccioni and Esquivel, provide additional insight and immediacy to this fascinating study.” -- Ken Hollings * The Wire *“Adinolfi contextualizes the 1950s exotica trend by placing it within a long history of Western musical exoticism. He ably documents instances of cultural appropriation, from seventeenth-century motifs of the Indies to Mozart’s search for musical expressions evocative of ‘that elusive Turkish flavor’ (37).” -- Khalil Anthony Johnson Jr. * American Quarterly *“Crammed with facts about sounds, composers, their histories, reminiscences and a whole lot more, Adinolfi has more than done his research, which , in such a odd, diverse, and obscure field of music, has to be applauded. . . . [A] very worthy edition to any bachelor pad. . . .” -- Jonny Trunk * Record Collector *"Part cult music and record colllectors' delight and part intriguing pop cultural study, Mondo Exotica is . . . a generally entertaining read that sheds some light on how larger cultural, social, and political trends are reflected in popular music." -- Chris Heim * KMUW-FM *Table of ContentsPreface / Karen Pinkus vii 1. The Tiki Hour 1 2. Mondo Exotica 17 3. Exotic Fragments 34 4. The Laboratory of Dr. Les Baxter 45 5. Martin Denny: The Frog and the Prince 57 6. The Age of the Grand Expositions 67 7. Cocktails All Around 78 8. The Tribes of Exotica 96 9. A Venus in the Lounge 111 10. Destination: Space-Age Pop 121 11. The Moon in Stereo 145 12. Crime Jazz 168 13. Shaken and Stirred 180 14. Italian Style, from Spies to Exotica-Erotica 192 15. Italy's Exotic Adventures 211 16. Lounge Italia 226 17. La Dolce Vita 235 18. Hangovers? 262 Notes 267 Discography 307 Index 355

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Book SynopsisSamuel Charters recounts experiences from a half-century spent following, documenting, recording, and writing about the Africa-influenced music of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean.Trade Review“A Language of Song is an important work. Samuel Charters is a lovely writer, his observations and anecdotes are invaluable, and his background for writing this book perhaps unsurpassed among living writers. He has visited so many important places in the history of the music of the African diaspora during the last half century, and has always done so with great attentiveness and sensitivity.”—Ted Gioia, author of Work Songs and Healing Songs“From The Gambia to the Canary Islands, across the Atlantic to the American Deep South, New Orleans, St. Louis, Manhattan, down to the Bahamas, Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, and finally to Brazil. These were staging grounds of the horrific African slave trade, which eventually became outposts of freedom and cultural and musical creativity. With beautiful, highly evocative prose, Samuel Charters describes a lifetime of tracing these routes and documenting the music that was created along them—blues, ragtime, jazz, zydeco, calypso, reggae, steel band, rumba, samba, and much more—music that has changed the way the world listens and dances.”—David Evans, author of Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk Blues“In this highly readable account, Samuel Charters takes us on a personal, guided tour of the many musical worlds touched by the African diaspora. In a sensitive and revealing text, Charters portrays the real stars, often unknown to the general public, who have played a central role in melding a range of traditions, from ancient to modern, into new musical styles. Like that of Alan Lomax, Charters’s work has transcended genres and crossed the decades, laying the groundwork and providing inspiration for generations of scholars who have followed. This splendid book is a celebration of a lifetime of enthusiasms.”—Richard Carlin, author of Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways“Let’s hope Charters keeps extracting from his mine of inexhaustible stories of music from around the world for future tomes. Roots music lovers will devour them over and over again.” * Library Journal *“Reading Charter’s book, even an experienced researcher may find precious tips on how to articulate sources and conduct fieldwork. The author’s experience in finding and interviewing local musicians and making profitable use of literary and historical sources can be useful for the academic public as well as providing a pleasant reading experience for the non-specialist.” -- Conrado Falbo * Popular Music *“The scope of the book is pretty astounding, particularly considering that so much of Charters’ work with jazz, blues and other musics—not to mention his literary pursuits—is barely referenced here. The book flows smoothly thanks to Charters’ narrative style, which shifts effortlessly back and forth between colorful travelogues, summarizations of modern research, and his informed interpretations of the music and social settings he encounters. All in all it’s a delightful book that reflects a remarkable life in music.” -- Scott Barretta * Living Blues *“[A]n extraordinary journey, filled with vital, revealing details of cultures and music. Charters himself emerges as a guide fully worthy of all the guides he’s sought out so diligently and clearly been so blessed to discover.” -- Stuart Broomer * Signal to Noise *“Charters’s sensitive examination of the well-heeled Kingston audience and their ambivalent response to this inflammatory music is one of this book’s high points. . . . The present volume falls somewhere between a memoir and a compilation album: over 14 chapters he recounts his trips in search of what lies behind black music. . . . Charter’s elegant gambit is to switch back and forth from today’s music to its historical precedents...This is a quietly written book, but Charter’s excitement at such moments of epiphany is palpable. . . . His book is an absorbing, accessible read, underpinned by solid scholarship and the author’s good-humoured and seemingly endless curiosity” -- Clive Bell * The Wire *“No garden-variety writer about music, Samuel Charters deserves a respectful bow from anyone who values roots music. . . . Charters’ first-person writing—straightforward, flowing, quietly passionate, seldom dry, never afflicted by self-absorption or scholarly denseness—provides proof of his gift for understanding various types of African-derived music that he encountered on his travels. . . . Any reader beginning an investigation of this or that music discussed would be wise to spend time with A Language of Song. Readers already hip will find new information and appreciate Charters’ fresh enthusiasm over the golden sounds.” -- Frank-John Hadley * DownBeat *“What’s truly impressive is the scope of the whole work which, while it devotes a little space to blues and jazz, is basically about all of the rest of the African-derived music we hear from around the world. . . . The quality of the writing is invariably interesting and sympathetic, not to mention informative. . . . [T]here’s a timely attention to the economics of slavery and the present-day persistence of racism which merits a wide readership.” -- Brian Priestley * Jazzwise *Table of ContentsA Note 1. A Griot's Art: The Story of Everything 1 2. Canaries—Canarios: A New Music in an Old World 17 3. Go Down Chariot: The Georgia Sea Islands and Fanny Kemble. The Slavery Spirituals, Lydia Parrish and Zora Neale Hurston 37 4. Skiffles, Tubs and Washboards: Good Time Music before the Blues 62 5. Red Clark's List: New Orleans Street Jazz and the Eureka Brass Band in the 1950s 81 6. A Dance in Ragged Time: "Shake the World's Foundation with the Maple Leaf Rag" 105 7. Gal, You Got to Go Back to Bimini: The Bahamas, Its Rhymers, and Joseph Spence 133 8. Pretenders, Caressers, Lions, and a Mighty Sparrow: Trinidad's Sweet Calypso 152 9. It Be Like Thunder if a Man Live Close: Nights in Trinidad's Pan Yards 178 10. Reggae Is a New Bag: Kingston Streets, Kingston Nights 203 11. To Feel The Spirit: Gospel Song in the Great Churches of Harlem 230 12. A Prince of Zydeco: Louisiana's Zydeco Blues and Good Rockin' Dopsie 254 13. ¿Como se llama este ritmo? Bebo Valdés, the Music of Cuba, and the Buena Vista Social Club 283 14. Bahia Nights: Carnival in Brazil's Black World 308 Notes 335 Bibliography 339 Index 343

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Book SynopsisThis collection offers the first critical assessment of the music and culture of reggaeton, a popular genre that blends reggae and rap, Spanish-language lyrics, and Latin-Caribbean aesthetics.Trade Review“Reggaeton is a truly important contribution to our understanding of the most pervasive and perhaps most misunderstood Latin musical genre at the turn of the 21st century. The blend of academic and journalistic writings with artistic statements, interviews and visual art offers the reader an extraordinary window into the complex landscape of reggaeton. . . . Raquel Z. Rivera, Wayne Marshall, and Deborah Pacini Hernadez have established the foundation for the rich and productive academic conversation that the genre will still generate.” - Alejandro L. Madrid, Dancecult“This collection of essays is the first attempt to critically engage with the phenomenon, and wisely hedges its bets with a broad collection of writings—earnest academic appraisals are effectively offset by punchy location reportage from Latin America, Q&As with major protagonists and landmark magazine pieces from the music’s early days. . . . [A] largely informative and sometimes exhilarating survey of a multinational phenomenon.” - Derek Walmsley, The Wire“Reggaeton is an excellent collection which itself occasions many surprises. Overall the book is structured in much the same way as its subject (reggaeton), as a series of overlapping, interconnected and often contradictory layers. . . . This book is a tour de force of criticism and analysis which is relevant not only to the study of reggaeton but to the study of popular music in general.” - Cameron White, Transforming Cultures“The admirable book Reggaeton . . . invites us to carefully ‘read’ this extraordinary musical and social phenomenon of our times. . . . The authors in this volume extensively document the crossing of geographic, racial, ethnic and linguistic borders. . . . As the essays in this book skillfully demonstrate, the ‘reggaeton nation’ constantly moves between numerous countries and cities, between Spanish and English, between Caribbean and African American rhythms.” (Translated from the Spanish) - Jorge Duany, El Nuevo Día“I cannot overstate how critically important this volume is. It captures the synergies of a musical and cultural movement that few have seriously grappled with, even as the sounds and styles of reggaeton have dominated the air space of so many urban locales.”—Mark Anthony Neal, author of Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic“It’s about time academia dared to include reggaeton. This might mean that we’re finally understanding that all of us are los de atrás (the ones behind): our country, Puerto Rico, and the whole Caribbean. I hope people support this book so it can be translated into Spanish, and kids in Puerto Rico and Latin America can read it. Because we Caribbean people, even if we don’t want to, even if we don’t like it, even if it hurts, we come from behind . . . and there’s a value to that. There’s a beauty to being los de atrás.”—Residente, frontman of the Grammy and Latin Grammy award-winning duo Calle 13“The kinetic contributions in Reggaeton melt false borders—ones wrapped like straitjackets around peoples, knowledges, and cultures—and move the crowd. More than an exciting, exhaustive treatment of this vital musical culture, this anthology is a fine blueprint for engaged cultural scholarship right now.”—Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation“This anthology opens a chapter in hip-hop history that brings it all back home, back to our transnational Afro-Spanish-speaking countries and diasporas and ’hoods where young people are going through their hip-hop ecstasies and traumas, but in their own language, and in their own unique and hitherto-unknown style.”—Juan Flores, author of From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity, from the foreword to Reggaeton“Reggaeton is a truly important contribution to our understanding of the most pervasive and perhaps most misunderstood Latin musical genre at the turn of the 21st century. The blend of academic and journalistic writings with artistic statements, interviews and visual art offers the reader an extraordinary window into the complex landscape of reggaeton. . . . Raquel Z. Rivera, Wayne Marshall, and Deborah Pacini Hernadez have established the foundation for the rich and productive academic conversation that the genre will still generate.” -- Alejandro L. Madrid * Dancecult *“Reggaeton is an excellent collection which itself occasions many surprises. Overall the book is structured in much the same way as its subject (reggaeton), as a series of overlapping, interconnected and often contradictory layers. . . . This book is a tour de force of criticism and analysis which is relevant not only to the study of reggaeton but to the study of popular music in general.” -- Cameron White * Transforming Cultures *“The admirable book Reggaeton . . . invites us to carefully ‘read’ this extraordinary musical and social phenomenon of our times. . . . The authors in this volume extensively document the crossing of geographic, racial, ethnic and linguistic borders. . . . As the essays in this book skillfully demonstrate, the ‘reggaeton nation’ constantly moves between numerous countries and cities, between Spanish and English, between Caribbean and African American rhythms.” (Translated from the Spanish) -- Jorge Duany * El Nuevo Día *“This collection of essays is the first attempt to critically engage with the phenomenon, and wisely hedges its bets with a broad collection of writings—earnest academic appraisals are effectively offset by punchy location reportage from Latin America, Q&As with major protagonists and landmark magazine pieces from the music’s early days. . . . [A] largely informative and sometimes exhilarating survey of a multinational phenomenon.” -- Derek Walmsley * The Wire *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Foreword: What's all the noise about? / Juan Flores ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Reggaeton's Socio-Sonic Circuitry / Wayne Marshall, Raquel Z. Rivera, and Deborah Pacini Hernandez 1 Part I. Mapping Reggaeton From Música Negra to Reggaeton Latino: The Cultural Politics of Nation, Migration, and Commercialization / Wayne Marshall 19 Part II. The Panamanian Connection Placing Panama in the Reggaeton Narrative: Editor's Notes / Wayne Marshall 77 Reggae in Panama: Bien Tough / Christoph Twickel 81 The Panamanian Origins of Reggae in Español: Seeing History through "Los Ojos Café" of Renato / Interview by Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo 89 Muévelo (Move It!): From Panama to New York and Back Again, the Story of El General / Interview by Christoph Twickel 99 Part III. (Trans)Local Studies and Ethnographies Policing Morality, Mano Dura Stylee: The Case of Underground Rap and Reggae in Puerto Rico in the Mid-1990s / Raquel Z. Rivera 111 Dominicans in the Mix: Reflections on Dominican Identity, Race, and Reggaeton / Deborah Pacini Hernandezq 135 The Politics of Dancing: Reggaetón and Rap in Havana / Geoff Baker 165 You Got Your Reggaetón in my Hip-Hop: Crunkiao and "Spanish Music" in the Miami Urban Scene / Jose Davila 200 Part IV. Visualizing Reggaeton Visualizing Reggaeton: Editors' Notes / Wayne Marshall and Raquel Z. Rivera 215 Images by Miguel Luciano 218 Images by Carolina Caycedo 221 Images by Kacho López 222 Part V. Gendering Reggaeton (W)rapped in Foil: Glory at Twelve Words a Minute / Félix Jiménez 229 A Man Lives Here: Reggaeton's Hypermasculine Resident / Alfredo Nieves Moreno 252 How to Make Love with Your Clothes On: Dancing Regeton, Gender, and Sexuality in Cuba / Jan Fairley 280 Part VI. Reggaeton's Poetics, Politics, and Aesthetics Chamaco's Corner / Gallego (José Raúl González) 297 Salon Philosophers: Ivy Queen and Surprise Guests Take Reggaetón Aside / Alexandra T. Vazquez 300 From Hip-Hop to Reggaeton: Is There Only a Step? / Welmo Romero Joseph 312 Black Pride / Tego Calderón 324 Poetry of Filth: The (Post) Reggaetonic Lyrics of Calle 13 / Frances Negrón-Muntaner 327 Bibliography: Selected Sources for Reading Reggaeton 341 Index 345

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Book SynopsisAn ethnographic analysis of the Japanese embrace of dancehall reggae and other elements of Jamaican culture, including Rastafari, roots reggae, and dub music.Trade Review“Babylon East is an important work in a growing portfolio of interdisciplinary music related research and amid the growing attention to music in ex-musical disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, psychology and even geography. It shows the power of music to transcend borders and societies, concepts of local, global and hybrid, and to facilitate the performance of social identity.” - Moshe Morad, Ethnic and Racial Studies“What happens when Jamaican Rasta and the musical and cultural styles affiliated with it, from roots reggae to dancehall, are taken out of the white-black binary and the Euro-Caribbean matrix? This is the question taken up by Marvin D. Sterling in Babylon East. Sterling spent more than ten years investigating Japanese involvement with Jamaican musical traditions, and his book testifies to the limitations of cross-cultural appropriation even in a globalized cultural scene.” - J. Gabriel Boylan, Bookforum“Adroit and ingenious, Babylon East is an essential resource for scholars interested in the internationalization of the Rastafari, in cultural globalization, and in Africana studies.” - Darren J. N. Middleton, Religious Studies Review“Sterling writes in a style that makes his discussions accessible to non-experts.Babylon East makes useful and complex contributions to a number of discourses, including: work on popular music, globalization, gender, and race in contemporary Japan; work on Jamaican reggae and dancehall; and broader considerations of Blackness, race, and culture beyond the Black Atlantic, in Afro-Asia. . . . His work should inspire readers to learn more about performance and identity formation in Japan, the truly global spread of Jamaican culture, and other Afro-Asian articulations, performances, andidentities.” - James E. Roberson, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute“[Sterling’s] ethnography is written with an elegant but straightforward fluidity, meaning it is accessible to not only Japanese and cultural studies specialists, but also to undergraduates and other interested readerships. Sterling brings together vivid descriptions and sophisticated thinking about music, language, performance, gendered politics and sexuality in an ‘embodied practice’ that functions effectively to form alternative identities for the Japanese reggae practitioners.” - Carolyn S. Stevens, Journal of Asian Studies“[T]his book provides a wealth of ethnographic data gathered over ten years, situated in three overlapping genres of Jamaican cultural performance. Its skillful inclusion of social theory will help the most casual reader understand Japan’s incorporation of the foreign far beyond the overly simple “take the best and leave the rest.” Scholars, graduate and undergraduate students will find also great value in this text.” - Debra J. Occhi, Pacific Affairs“Marvin D. Sterling sensitively portrays the wide range of Japanese reggae dancehall practitioners, from chart-topping stars such as Miki Dōzan to underground pioneers such as Rankin’ Taxi, as well as Junko Kudo, the unlikely winner of Jamaica’s premier dance-diva contest. Along the way, we get to know the urban musicians who make up the traveling groups known as sound systems, as well as ‘Japanese Rastafari’ in the countryside. By considering Japanese youth who travel to Jamaica on journeys of self-discovery and the Jamaicans who sometimes look ambivalently on the explosion of the reggae scene in Japan, Sterling completes an engaging circle of analysis in this fascinating and insightful book.”—Ian Condry, author of Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization“The globalization of Jamaican culture has inspired Rastafari devotees and reggae/dancehall fans worldwide to claim hybridized identities, as evidenced in the unexpected emergence of a ‘Jamaican’ subculture in Japan. Babylon East is a rich, energetically written ethnography that lucidly articulates the contradictory ways in which exoticized cultural difference is voraciously consumed in a nation that is decidedly ambivalent about accepting the physical presence of the racialized ‘other.’ Deploying the Rastafari trope of Babylon as the biblical beast of Euro-American imperialism, Marvin D. Sterling judiciously destabilizes East/West binary constructs, authoritatively delineating the complexity of the Japanese performance of Jamaican identity.”—Carolyn Cooper, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica“Babylon East is an important work in a growing portfolio of interdisciplinary music related research and amid the growing attention to music in ex-musical disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, psychology and even geography. It shows the power of music to transcend borders and societies, concepts of local, global and hybrid, and to facilitate the performance of social identity.” -- Moshe Morad * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“[Sterling’s] ethnography is written with an elegant but straightforward fluidity, meaning it is accessible to not only Japanese and cultural studies specialists, but also to undergraduates and other interested readerships. Sterling brings together vivid descriptions and sophisticated thinking about music, language, performance, gendered politics and sexuality in an ‘embodied practice’ that functions effectively to form alternative identities for the Japanese reggae practitioners.” -- Carolyn S. Stevens * Journal of Asian Studies *“[T]his book provides a wealth of ethnographic data gathered over ten years, situated in three overlapping genres of Jamaican cultural performance. Its skillful inclusion of social theory will help the most casual reader understand Japan’s incorporation of the foreign far beyond the overly simple “take the best and leave the rest.” Scholars, graduate and undergraduate students will find also great value in this text.” -- Debra J. Occhi * Pacific Affairs *“Adroit and ingenious, Babylon East is an essential resource for scholars interested in the internationalization of the Rastafari, in cultural globalization, and in Africana studies.” -- Darren J. N. Middleton * Religious Studies Review *“Sterling writes in a style that makes his discussions accessible to non-experts. Babylon East makes useful and complex contributions to a number of discourses, including: work on popular music, globalization, gender, and race in contemporary Japan; work on Jamaican reggae and dancehall; and broader considerations of Blackness, race, and culture beyond the Black Atlantic, in Afro-Asia. . . . His work should inspire readers to learn more about performance and identity formation in Japan, the truly global spread of Jamaican culture, and other Afro-Asian articulations, performances, and identities.” -- James E. Roberson * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *“What happens when Jamaican Rasta and the musical and cultural styles affiliated with it, from roots reggae to dancehall, are taken out of the white-black binary and the Euro-Caribbean matrix? This is the question taken up by Marvin D. Sterling in Babylon East. Sterling spent more than ten years investigating Japanese involvement with Jamaican musical traditions, and his book testifies to the limitations of cross-cultural appropriation even in a globalized cultural scene.” -- J. Gabriel Boylan * Bookforum *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1. The Politics of Presence: Performing Blackness in Japan 2. Music and Orality: Authenticity in Japanese Sound System Culture 3. Fashion and Dance: Performing Gender in Japan's Reggae Dance Scene 4. Body and Spirit: Rastafarian Consciousness in Rural Japan 5. Text and Image: Bad Jamaicans, Tough Japanese, and the Third World "Search for Self" 6. Jamaican Perspectives on Jamaican Culture in Japan Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe best, most provocative reviews, interviews, columns, and essays written by the entertaining, idiosyncratic, and influential music writer Chuck Eddy over the past twenty-five years.Trade Review“This wide-ranging collection of essays (from the Voice, Rolling Stone, Spin, etc.) captures Eddy’s cantankerous, spirited, enthusiastic, and forceful takes on music from rap to country and musicians from Michael Jackson to Brad Paisley. . . . Eddy’s far-reaching insights into rock music push the boundaries of the rock criticism, showing why he remains one of our most important music critics.” - Publishers Weekly“Eddy’s eccentricity is not only refreshing and entertaining; it’s also valuable. . . . [S]omething compels Eddy to pay attention to music that no other music journalist can be bothered with. This is a vital counterbalance to the critical herd-mind, and a reminder of how much music making and music fandom exists outside the media radar, and never makes it into the official narrative.” - Simon Reynolds, Bookforum“[T]his new compendium of pieces by Eddy . . . reads like an alternate history of pop's last 25 (or so) years, in which album-oriented rock is saved from itself by the Ramones' Too Tough To Die, latter-day Def Leppard isn't rendered irrelevant by Nirvana, and horn-rimmed consensus about indie darlings Animal Collective is just a bad dream.” - Greg Beets, Austin Chronicle“You can predict what Eddy will think of something, and you’ll often be wrong, but what he actually thinks will always make more sense, will fit Eddy’s written persona better, than what you had in mind. Eddy’s taste has a deep coherence that’s close to unique among rock critics. . . . [F]or an Eddy fan, it’s a kick getting to read about his favorite music in-depth in these pages, especially when he’s in its first flush of Chuck-love. Will to Power, the Lordz of Brooklyn, Banda Bahia, and White Wizzard are all here, because who else was going to write about them?” - Josh Langhoff, Los Angeles Review of Books“Eddy's unflinching ability to connect the dots between what he's hearing and what he's living makes Rock and Roll an electric read. It should trip wires in the minds of not just aspiring and current critics but also casual listeners who might not realize how much is below the surface of what they're hearing.” - Michael Hoinski, Village Voice“Other anthologies of music writing leave you wanting to race to hear the music being written about. Rock and Roll Always Forgets leaves me wanting to read more Chuck Eddy. And more, and more…” - Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly“I don’t always agree with Chuck Eddy. In fact, I only occasionally agree with Chuck Eddy. But I’m always sure he cares, which I can tell not just because I know him, but because I love reading him. For more than twenty-five years he has been an original and indefatigable voice whose openness to new and unheralded music is legendary.”—Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics“When Chuck hears a pop song, it’s like he is the first person who has ever heard it; he’s certainly aware of what the rest of the world already wants to believe, but those pre-existing perceptions are never convincing to him. . . . More than any other critic, Chuck Eddy showed how the experience of listening to music was both intellectually limitless and acutely personal. There was no ‘correct’ way to hear a song, and there were no fixed parameters on how that song could be described in print, and if that song made you reconsider abortion or the Oakland Raiders or your father’s suicide, then that intellectual relationship mattered because your engagement was real.”—Chuck Klosterman, from the foreword“Few longtime pop music critics have been as fearlessly unhip in both their likes and dislikes, have been so willing to accept oft-ignored music on its own terms and have been as rock 'n' roll as Chuck Eddy, writer, former Village Voice music editor, self-described curmudgeon, ex-Army captain and hair-metal expert.” -- Randall Roberts * Los Angeles Times *“This smart, very funny anthology includes some of the best work by any writer on country, metal, teen pop, Eighties hip-hop and Eminem. It’s the only book you’ll ever read that compares Jay-Z’s The Blueprint to Huey Lewis’ Sports—and means it as a compliment.” -- Jody Rosen * Rolling Stone *“[T]his new compendium of pieces by Eddy . . . reads like an alternate history of pop's last 25 (or so) years, in which album-oriented rock is saved from itself by the Ramones' Too Tough To Die, latter-day Def Leppard isn't rendered irrelevant by Nirvana, and horn-rimmed consensus about indie darlings Animal Collective is just a bad dream.” -- Greg Beets * Austin Chronicle *“Eddy’s eccentricity is not only refreshing and entertaining; it’s also valuable. . . . [S]omething compels Eddy to pay attention to music that no other music journalist can be bothered with. This is a vital counterbalance to the critical herd-mind, and a reminder of how much music making and music fandom exists outside the media radar, and never makes it into the official narrative.” -- Simon Reynolds * Bookforum *“Eddy's unflinching ability to connect the dots between what he's hearing and what he's living makes Rock and Roll an electric read. It should trip wires in the minds of not just aspiring and current critics but also casual listeners who might not realize how much is below the surface of what they're hearing.” -- Michael Hoinski * Village Voice *“Other anthologies of music writing leave you wanting to race to hear the music being written about. Rock and Roll Always Forgets leaves me wanting to read more Chuck Eddy. And more, and more…” -- Ken Tucker * Entertainment Weekly *“This wide-ranging collection of essays (from the Voice, Rolling Stone, Spin, etc.) captures Eddy’s cantankerous, spirited, enthusiastic, and forceful takes on music from rap to country and musicians from Michael Jackson to Brad Paisley. . . . Eddy’s far-reaching insights into rock music push the boundaries of the rock criticism, showing why he remains one of our most important music critics.” * Publishers Weekly *“You can predict what Eddy will think of something, and you’ll often be wrong, but what he actually thinks will always make more sense, will fit Eddy’s written persona better, than what you had in mind. Eddy’s taste has a deep coherence that’s close to unique among rock critics. . . . [F]or an Eddy fan, it’s a kick getting to read about his favorite music in-depth in these pages, especially when he’s in its first flush of Chuck-love. Will to Power, the Lordz of Brooklyn, Banda Bahia, and White Wizzard are all here, because who else was going to write about them?” -- Josh Langhoff * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements xv Foreword / Chuck Klosterman xi Introduction 1 1. Predicting the Future Over and Out 9 Rhymed Funk Hits Area 10 Skin Yard, Skin Yard 12 Drug Crazed Teens: Flaming Lips 14 Music That Passes the Acid Test 15 New Kids in the ‘90s: A Decade in the Life 18 Radiohead, The Bends 19 Walking into Spiderwebs: The Ultimate Band List 20 Talking World War III Blues 23 2. Alternative to What Bombast in the Blood: Bad Religion 29 Conscience of Some Conservatives: The Ramones 32 Punk's First Family Grow Old Together: The Ramones 35 Howls from the Heartland: The Untamed Midwest 42 An Indie Rises Above: SST Records 48 Slime is Money (Bastard) 52 Big Black Give You a Headache 56 Nirvana, “all Apologies” 62 Wrong is Right: Marilyn Manson 64 Live: Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, 18 February 1997 68 City of Dreams: Rock in Mexico 69 Chumbawamba at the Piss Factory 76 Mr. and Mrs. Used To Be: The White Stripes Find a Little Place to Fight ‘em Off 79 3. Umlauts from Heck Five Great Beats-Per-Minute 89 Seduce, Seduce 92 Agnostic Front, Beyond Possession, Dr. Know, Helstar, Raw Power 94 Top 40 That Radio Won‘t Touch: Metallica 98 Welcome Home (Sanitarium): Metallica Seek Psychiatric Help 104 Mentors, Up The Dose 106 Robert Plant, Technobilly 108 Def Leppard's Magic and Loss 116 AC/DC‘s Aged Currencies 124 White Wizzard Escape Each Other 137 4. To the Beat Y‘all Mantronix: Strange Loops 143 Spoonie Gee: Unreformed 144 Just-Ice: Rap With Teeth 147 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1989: N.W.A. 149 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1992: Arrested Development 149 Sir Mix-A-Lot: Chief Boot Knocka 149 From Taco Bell to Pachalbel: Coolio 150 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1997: Erykah Badu and B-Rock & The Bizz 152 Timbaland, Magoo, and Ma$e, As the World Turns 153 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 2001: Jay-Z 157 Licks: Bone Crusher, Turk, Crunk & Disorderly 158 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 2003 160 5. Race-Mixing Emmett Miller: The Minstrel Man from Georgia 167 Mississippi Sheiks vs. Utah Saints 168 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1984 170 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1985 170 Boogie Down Productions: Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip-Hop 172 Yothu Yindi: Tribal Voice 175 Living Colour: Biscuits EP 175 3rd Bass: Cactus Love 176 Teena Marie in Wonderland 178 Shake Your Love: Gillette 180 The Iceman Cometh Back: Vanilla Ice 183 Motor Suburb Madhouse: Kid Rock and Eminem 184 The Daddy Shady Show: Eminem‘s Family Values 196 Spaghetti Eastern: The Lordz of Brooklyn 206 6. Country Discomfort Yippie Tie One On: Rural Roots and Muddy Boots 217 John Cougar Mellencamp: Life Goes On 222 K.T. Oslin: Greatest Hits: Songs from an Aging Sex Bomb 224 The Temptations of Mindy McCready 226 CMT 228 Banda, Si, Por Qué No 229 Big & Rich Boogaloo Down Broadway 233 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 2004: Montgomery Gentry and Chely Wright 235 Please Stop Belittling Toby Keith 236 Brad Paisley is Ready to Make Nice 240 7. Pop Muzik Cutting It as a Bay City Roller in 1989 247 People Pleasers: The Village People 249 Arrivedérci, Bay-BEE: Nocera and Fun Fun 251 Debbie Gibson: Angel Baby 253 It Was In The Cards 255 Pet Shop Boys‘ Mad Behavior 256 Gimme Back My Bullets: Will to Power Shoot for Disco Valhalla 263 Michael Jackson Loves the Sound of Breaking Glass 267 If It Ain‘t Baroque, Don‘t Fix It: Michael Jackson and Faithless 273 They Know What They Really Really Want and They Know How to Get It: Spice Girls and Gina G 277 Pazz & Jop Ballot Excerpt 1998 281 8. Singles Again and Again Sucking in the ‘70s: Have A Nice Day, Volumes 1–10 287 Zager and Evans: “In The Year 2525” 289 Radio ‘86: Dead Air 292 Radio On reviews 298 Ten Cents a Watusi 304 Singles Again: Tangled Up in Blue 309 Singles Again: Paranoia Jumps Deep 313 Singles Jukebox reviews 316 The Year of Too Much Consensus 322 The End? 325 Index 329

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Book SynopsisJazz musicians, scholars, and journalists emphasize how the political consciousness that infused jazz in the 1960s and 1970s has continued to animate the avant-garde, Free Jazz, fusion, and other forms of this lively, always-evolving music.Trade Review"If you thought jazz was dead, think again. As this remarkable collection of essays makes crystal clear, jazz is alive, loud, messy, sprawling, old and wise, born again, and playful. People Get Ready makes an essential contribution to jazz studies, cultural studies, and our increasingly global understanding of modern music. And it demonstrates what discerning readers and listeners already know: that 'hip' is both an adjective and a verb."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original"Reader Get Ready! This lovely collection blasts past pessimism and uncertainty to showcase the resonant vibrancy of jazz today. From history to technology and from improvisation to politics, People Get Ready constitutes mandatory reading for anyone with a serious interest in answering Marvin Gaye's perennial question—'What's Going On?'"—Daniel Widener, author of Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles“This collection of thought-provoking essays is as much about inclusion, looking at jazz as a genre relevant to all, as it is futurism. Evolved from the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, the publication is like a breath of fresh air in the scholarship pertaining to the music, first and foremost because it looks at it from new angles, and, perhaps more importantly, provides a platform for artists who simply have not been lionised according to their full worth.” -- Kevin L Gendre * Jazzwise *“A diverse array of knowledgeable improvisers riffing on the musical practice and community that has inspired them.” -- Alex W. Rodriguez * Ethnomusicology Review *"...an excellent companion, presenting a diverse range of voices on the various aesthetic, social, and economic contexts bearing on improvised music currently and fleshing out how jazz and its aesthetic corollaries negotiate with these material factors through an ongoing stylistic restlessness and capacity for exchange." -- Michael Borshuk * English Studies in Canada *"[T]he clearly situated specificity and well-grounded interdisciplinarity ... make[s] the conversations in People Get Ready so compelling." -- A. Scott Currie * Ethnomusicology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. "People Get Ready": The Future of Jazz is Now! / Ajay Heble and Rob Wallace 1 Part I. Beyond Categories: Histories and Mysteries 1. "Now is the Time": Voicing against the Grain of Orality / Aldon Lynn Nielsen 31 2. The Antiquity of the Avant-Garde: A Meditation on a Comment by Duke Ellington / John Szwed 44 3. Listening Trust: The Everyday Politics of George Lewis's "Dream Team" / Julie Dawn Smith and Ellen Waterman 59 4. Jeanne Lee's Voice / Eric Porter 88 5. Kick Out the Jazz! / Rob Wallace 111 Part II. Crisis in New Music? Vanishing Venues and the Future of Experimentation 6. Days of Breads and Roses / Marc Ribot 141 7. Subsidy, Advocacy, Theory: Experimental Music in the Academy, in New York City, and Beyond / Tamar Barzel 153 8. Subsidizing the Experimental Muse:Rereading Ribot / John Brackett 166 9. One Musician Writes about Creative-Music Venues in Toronto / Scott Thomson 175 10. Somewhere There: Contemporary Music, Performance Spaces, and Cultural Policy / Alan Stanbridge 184 Part III. Sound Check The Jazz Photography of Thomas King 197 Part IV. Get Ready: Jazz Futures 11. Black Jazz in the Digital Age / Greg Tate 217 12. Improvising Digital Culture / DJ Spooky and Vijay Iyer 225 13. Ancient to the Future: Celebrating Forty Years of the AACM / Douglas Ewart, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Famoudou Don Moye, Matana Roberts, Jaribu Shahid, Wadada Leo Smith, and Corey Wilkes 244 14. People, Don't Get Ready: Improvisation, Democracy, and Hope / Tracy McMullen 265 Works Cited 281 Contributors 295 Index 301

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Book SynopsisThe Fierce Urgency of Now offers an impassioned call to take the practices of musical improvisation often associated with jazz performance as a model for social-justice activism.Trade Review"The Fierce Urgency of Now is a groundbreaking and, in many instances, breathtaking book. Its focus on the ways that musicians from many backgrounds and genres think about and enact improvisation as linked to issues of human rights, community, and freedom is innovative, and the argument that human rights are expanded and valuably reconceptualized by improvisational practices is even more inventive and generative. This book should be read by scholars and students working on social justice and the political, social, and visionary importance of expressive cultures all over the world."—Tricia Rose, Professor, Brown University, and author of The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—and Why It Matters“This is a book which deserves to be widely read.” -- Lou Glandfield * TLS *“A rather important book that seeks for the first time—or the first time with quite this level of intellectual rigor—to make clear the defining connections between improvisation and rights, and to suggest that improvisation’s basic heuristic, which is the capacity to discern potentials in any given situation, has a powerful social function.” -- Brian Morton * The Wire *“The Fierce Urgency of Now is both a testament to the veracity of the rapidly growing field of improvisation studies, but also an impassioned, far-reaching, interdisciplinary investigation into ways that musical improvisation can activate new perspectives on rights discourses.” -- Jason Robinson * Journal of Popular Music Studies *"[This] collaborative effort offers not just a rigorous articulation of improvised music’s ethical potential but also a manifesto about how that potential’s realization should take place." -- Michael Borshuk * English Studies in Canada *"The Fierce Urgency of Now clearly stands out as a powerful and profoundly inspiring manifesto of great potential interest to ethnomusicologists seeking to engage issues of social justice through their scholarly practice." -- A. Scott Currie * Ethnomusicology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Prelude. "The Fierce Urgency of Now"; Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation xi Introduction. Dissolving Dogma: Improvisation, Rights, and Difference 1 1. Sounding Truth to Power: Improvisation, Black Mobility, and Resources for Hope 33 2. Improvisation and Encounter: Rights in the Key of Rifference 57 3. Improvising Community: Rights and Improvisation as Encounter Narratives 99 4. Improvisation, Social Movements, and Rights in New Orleans 141 5. Art to Find the Pulse of the People: We Know This Place 171 6. "The Fierce Urgency of Now": Improvisation, Social Practice, and Togetherness-in-Difference 189 Coda 231 Notes 245 Works Cited 263 Index 281

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Book SynopsisSoundtracks of Asian America explores how Asian Americans use music to construct narratives of self, race, class, and belonging in national and transnational spaces by considering the experiences of Asians and Asian Americans in Western classical music, U.S. popular music, and Mandopop (Mandarin-language popular music).Trade Review“Soundtracks of Asian America is an extremely articulate, insightful investigation of racial imagination as it relates to Asian Americans and Asian diasporas. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” -- A. C. Shahriari * Choice *"[Soundtracks of Asian America] is an engaging and thought-provoking addition to cultural studies that uses music-making as a microcosm to draw out difficult racial themes." -- Felicity Clark * Popular Music *"In following stereotypes across different social domains, Wang opens up some broader questions about Asian American musical geographies and practices of community formation. Future research on these issues will greatly profit from close readings of Soundtracks of Asian America." -- Timothy Laurie * Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music *"[Wang] is restrained in her deployment of a reflexive voice, yet her previous experiences as a U.S.-trained violinist who performed a stint with Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra (p. 5) clearly give her rich personal insight into the subject at hand. The book will find warm welcome in a range of disciplinary settings, from Asian and Asian American studies to musicology and media studies. Incisively and engagingly written, it will also serve as an invaluable resource for students and scholars seeking insight into topics as diverse as transnational stardom, the cultural politics of online media, music pedagogy, and the anthropology of the conservatory." -- Meredith Schweig * Notes *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Soundtracks of Asian America 1 1. Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture: "Music Moms" and the Performance of Asian Difference 28 2. "This Is No Monkey Show": Racializing Musical Performance 64 3. A Love Song to YouTube: Celebrity and Fandom Online 101 4. Finding Sonic Belonging Abroad: Reimagining Chinese American Subjectivities through Diaspora 143 Epilogue. Enter the "Tiger Mother" 186 Acknowledgments 193 Notes 195 Bibliography 245 Index 257

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Book SynopsisMicrogroove continues John Corbett's exploration of diverse musics, with essays, interviews, and musician profiles that focus on jazz, improvised music, contemporary classical, rock, folk, blues, post-punk, and cartoon music, as well as painting, design, dance, and poetry.Trade Review"Corbett has just published a terrific new anthology of his writing called Microgroove, the long-delayed follow-up to his 1994 book Extended Play. . . . There's a lot of great stuff in the new book—which went through multiple iterations over the years, scrapped and revisited several times—but in his introduction to a piece called 'Twenty-Seven Enthusiasms: A Spontaneous Listening Session,' Corbett expresses a major part of what makes his work so special. 'Show-and-tell was always my favorite part of school,' he writes, eventually explaining that 'you accumulate things not to own them, but to share them.' It's what he's done as a writer, a music presenter, and, in recent years, a gallerist, at Corbett vs. Dempsey." -- Peter Margasak * Chicago Reader *"One of the more interesting features of Microgroove is the inclusion of multiple pieces on some of the artists. This allows Corbett to consider them from different angles or over time, providing a fuller picture of their art in the process. That, combined with the eclectic scope of Corbett’s interests, makes of Microgroove a rich, multifaceted survey of some of the more challenging artists of the last two decades." -- Daniel Barbiero * Avant Music News *"The far-ranging scope of the 53 essays and interviews collected in these nearly 500 pages, dating from 1993 to just last year, reminds us that even within music’s commercially neglected fringes complex gradations of sub-genre exist, separating the hardcore avant-garde devotee from one who thinks they’re down because they own a copy of Space Is the Place. ... But first and foremost [Corbett] is a devotee of challenging and outré sounds, and his essays are most compelling when he dives headfirst into his chronicles with a fan’s enthusiasm and verve. ...These pieces beautifully balance serious musical scholarship and critical analysis with the kind of collar-grabbing, “give-this-a-listen” excitement that draws us all to music in the first place." -- Matt R. Lohr * JazzTimes *"Corbett, like the best kind of record store crate digger, pinpoints the association between acknowledged innovators and the achievements of lesser-known figures. . .. [T]he book’s key achievement is how Corbett’s psychiatrist-like probing questions elicit the most definitive and/or instructive statements about their art from certain musicians." -- Ken Waxman * MusicWorks *"John Corbett is a smart guy who really, really loves music, and his intelligence and enthusiasm come through in every one of the essays and articles in this volume of his collected writings.... Anyone interested in what was happening on the cutting edge of music during the years these articles appeared needs to read this anthology of John Corbett’s writing." -- Ed Hazell * ARSC Journal *"John Corbett's singular critical voice is wildly alive in his latest book, a compendium of previous writings, sober reflections, clever visuals, idiosyncratic interviews, and post-genre insights into the thriving ecology of knowledge that is the contemporary music scene. At once this is a book that takes its place alongside other distinctive voices in the pell-mell topography of recent musical criticism, from Greg Tate and Lester Bangs to Nat Hentoff and Nate Chinen, and the work of an itinerant witness bearing testimony marked by a vast respect and love for improvised musicking and musical diversity.... Microgroove is an eloquent, readable, playful testimony to the otherness of music as an allegory for creative freedom and as a generative social practice that refuses limitations." -- Daniel T. Fischlin * Journal of Popular Music Studies *Table of ContentsPreface: Tympanum of the Other Frog xv Acknowledgments xix Introduction 1 One. On The Road, Into The Cul-De-Sac Joe Harriott and Bernie McGann: Flying without Ornette 15 Michael Hurley: Jocko's Lament 21 Mayo Thompson: Genre of One 33 John Stevens: Unpopular Populists 36 Peter Brötzmann Tentet: Freeways 40 Steve Lacy: Sojourner Saxophone 49 David Grubbs: Postcards from the Edge 57 Voice Crack: From Nothing to Everything 67 Two. Exigeneses Of Creative Music Milford Graves: Pulseology 71 Out of Nowhere: Deleuze, Gräwe, Cadence 79 Carla Bley and Steve Swallow: Feeding Quarters to the Nonstop Mental Jukebox 85 Misha Mengelberg: No Simple Calculations for Life 93 Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink: Natural Inbuilt Contrapuncto 109 Form Follows Faction? Ethnicity and Creative Music 116 Anthony Braxton: Ism vs. Is 123 Anthony Braxton: Bildungsmusik—Thoughts on Composition 171 129 Paul Lowens: Lo Our Lo 132 Clark Coolidge: The Improvised Line 136 Nathaniel Mackey: Steep Incumbencies 142 Sun Ra: From the Windy City to the Omniverse—Chicago Life as a Street Priest of D.I.Y. Jazz 153 Fred Anderson: The House That Fred Built 162 Three. Ululations And Other Vocal Stimulants Sun Ra: Queer Voice 169 Jaap Blonk: Uncommon Tongue 170 PJ Harvey: Mother's Tongue 179 Aural Sex: The Female Orgasm in Popular Sound (coauthored with Terri Kapsalis) 182 Liz Phair and Lou Barlow: On Music, Sex, TV, and Beyond 194 Liz Phair and Kim Gordon: Exile in Galville? 205 Koko Taylor: The Blue Queen Cooks 212 Brion Gysin and Steve Lacy: Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permuted 217 Four. The Horn Section Ornette Coleman: Doing Is Believing 233 Roscoe Mitchell: Citizen of Sound 244 Fred Anderson and Von Freeman: Tenacity 250 George Lewis: Interactive Imagination 258 Mats Gustafsson: MG at Half-C 264 Ken Vandermark: Six Dispatches from the Memory Bank 270 Ken Vandermark and Joe McPhee: Mutual Admiration Society 278 Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker: Bring Something to the Table 285 Five. Track Marks Oncology of the Record Album 297 Discaholic or Vinyl Freak? Mats Gustafsson Interrogates John Corbett 301 Twenty-Seven Enthusiasms: A Spontaneous Listening Session 308 A Very Visual Kind of Music: The Cartoon Soundtrack beyond the Screen 313 R. L. Burnside and Jon Spencer: Fattening Frogs for Snake Drive 322 Before and After Punk: The Comp as Teaching Tool 331 Raymond Scott: Cradle of Electronica 336 Six. Melodic Line and Tone Color Peter Brötzmann: Graphic Equalizer 343 Albert Oehlen: Bionic Painting 347 Albert Oehlen: Mangy—A Conversation and a Playlist 352 Christopher Wool: Impropositions—Improvisation, Dub Painting 359 Christopher Wool: Into the Woods—Six Meditations on the Interdisciplinary 366 Sun Ra: An Afro-Space-Jazz Imaginary—The Printed Record of El Saturn 371 Seven. The Texture Of Refusal Helmut Lachenmann: Hellhörig, or the Intricacies of Perceptiveness 379 Guillermo Gregorio: Madi Music 387 Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others 391 Afterword: A Concise History of Music 417 Grooving On: Selected Listening 423 Credits 443 Index 447

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Book SynopsisAllison McCracken charts the rise and fall of crooners between 1925 and 1934, showing how the backlash against crooners' perceived sexual and gender deviance created stylistically masculine norms for white male pop singers that continue to exist today.Trade Review"[A] rich, intriguing account of how microphone-assisted heartthrobs won over American ears in the early 20th century." -- Ann Powers * NPR Book Concierge *"A painstakingly researched book, sure in its thesis and apt in its presentation, this versatile study is of immediate appeal to those interested in music but will also be a valuable resource for those in gender studies, African American studies, American studies, and all concentrations of history. Highly recommended. All readers." -- J. Neal * Choice *"... marvelous... The author’s evidently deep research increases the pleasure of reading the book—and creates a nagging desire to stop reading it to seek out clips from the movies and songs she discusses." -- Art Blake * Journal of Popular Music Studies *“As befits an academic author, McCracken is primarily concerned with the social aspects of the phenomenon, especially the sexual implications as the style developed in the late 1920s. … Recommended for readers interested in American social history, popular culture, popular music, and gender studies.” -- Bruce R. Schueneman * Library Journal *"Real Men Don’t Sing: Crooning in American Culture is an excellent book. Those looking for ways to blend modern theory, historical context, and popular culture (in this case music and film) would do well to use McCracken’s work as a model. She tackles many complex issues, from queer theory to technology and its impact, in a way that’s readable and succinct." -- Kenneth J. Bindas * American Historical Review *"[A] stunning account of crooning and the development of American pop." -- Charles L. Hughes * American Quarterly *"Real Men Don’t Sing is a forcefully argued and thoroughly engaging book that would be an ideal text in courses on popular culture or gender and the body." -- Maxine Leeds Craig * Men and Masculinities *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Putting Over a Song: Crooning, Performance, and Audience in the Acoustic Era, 1880–1920 37 2. Crooning Goes Electric: Microphone Crooning and the Invention of the Intimate Singing Aesthetic, 1921–1928 74 3. Falling in Love with a Voice: Rudy Vallée and His First Radio Fans, 1928 126 4. "The Mouth of the Machine": The Creation of the Crooning Idol, 1929 160 5. "A Supine Sinking into the Primeval Ooze": Crooning and Its Discontents, 1929–1933 208 6. "The Kind of Natural That Worked": The Crooner Redefined, 1932–1934 (and Beyond) 264 Conclusion 311 Notes 333 Bibliography 375 Index 411

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Book SynopsisAllison McCracken charts the rise and fall of crooners between 1925 and 1934, showing how the backlash against crooners' perceived sexual and gender deviance created stylistically masculine norms for white male pop singers that continue to exist today.Trade Review"[A] rich, intriguing account of how microphone-assisted heartthrobs won over American ears in the early 20th century." -- Ann Powers * NPR Book Concierge *"A painstakingly researched book, sure in its thesis and apt in its presentation, this versatile study is of immediate appeal to those interested in music but will also be a valuable resource for those in gender studies, African American studies, American studies, and all concentrations of history. Highly recommended. All readers." -- J. Neal * Choice *"... marvelous... The author’s evidently deep research increases the pleasure of reading the book—and creates a nagging desire to stop reading it to seek out clips from the movies and songs she discusses." -- Art Blake * Journal of Popular Music Studies *“As befits an academic author, McCracken is primarily concerned with the social aspects of the phenomenon, especially the sexual implications as the style developed in the late 1920s. … Recommended for readers interested in American social history, popular culture, popular music, and gender studies.” -- Bruce R. Schueneman * Library Journal *"Real Men Don’t Sing: Crooning in American Culture is an excellent book. Those looking for ways to blend modern theory, historical context, and popular culture (in this case music and film) would do well to use McCracken’s work as a model. She tackles many complex issues, from queer theory to technology and its impact, in a way that’s readable and succinct." -- Kenneth J. Bindas * American Historical Review *"[A] stunning account of crooning and the development of American pop." -- Charles L. Hughes * American Quarterly *"Real Men Don’t Sing is a forcefully argued and thoroughly engaging book that would be an ideal text in courses on popular culture or gender and the body." -- Maxine Leeds Craig * Men and Masculinities *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Putting Over a Song: Crooning, Performance, and Audience in the Acoustic Era, 1880–1920 37 2. Crooning Goes Electric: Microphone Crooning and the Invention of the Intimate Singing Aesthetic, 1921–1928 74 3. Falling in Love with a Voice: Rudy Vallée and His First Radio Fans, 1928 126 4. "The Mouth of the Machine": The Creation of the Crooning Idol, 1929 160 5. "A Supine Sinking into the Primeval Ooze": Crooning and Its Discontents, 1929–1933 208 6. "The Kind of Natural That Worked": The Crooner Redefined, 1932–1934 (and Beyond) 264 Conclusion 311 Notes 333 Bibliography 375 Index 411

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Book SynopsisPlacing the body at the center of critical improvisation studies, the contributors to Negotiated Moments explore the challenges of negotiating subjectivity through improvisation in various forms—from jazz, Japanese taiko drumming, and Iranian classical music to sound walking and political street theater.Trade Review"Collective insights touch on a number of themes that cut to the core of critical improvisation studies. . . . The editors of Negotiated Moments have assembled an impressive and diverse array of studies." -- Joel V. Hunt * Notes *"A timely and relevant collection guiding the way for a radically inclusive approach to critical studies of improvisation. . . . One of the outstanding intellectual contributions of this book lies in its presentation of so many viable alternatives to prevailing dominant views about improvised music focused on individual genius and legitimacy of lineage." -- Miki Kaneda * Journal of the Society for American Music *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi Introduction: Improvising at the Nexus of Discursive and Material Bodies / Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman 1 1. Improvisation within a Scene of Constraint: An Interview with Judith Butler / Tracy McMullen 21 Part I. Listening, Place, and Space 2. "How Am I to Listen to You?": Soundwalking, Intimacy, and Improvised Listening / Andra McCartney 37 3. Community Sound [e]Scapes: Improvising Bodies and Site/Space/Place in New Media Audio Art / Rebecca Caines 55 Part II. Technology and Embodiment 4. Improvising Composition: How to Listen to the Time Between / Pauline Oliveros 75 5. The Networked Body: Physicality, Embodiment, and Latency in Multisite Performance / Jason Robinson 91 6. Openness from Closure: The Puzzle of Interagency in Improvised Music and a Neocybernetic Solution / David Borgo 113 7. Mediating the Improvising Body: Art Tatum's Postmortem Performance in a Posthuman World / Andrew Raffo Dewar 131 Part III. Sensibility and Subjectivity 8. Banding Encounters: Embodied Practices in Improvisation / Introduction and Conclusion by Tomie Hahn; Essays by Louise Campbell, Lindsay Vogt, Simon Rose, George Blake, Catherine Lee, Sherrie Tucker, François Mouillot, Jovana Milovic, and Pete Williams 9. Learning to Go with the Flow: David Rokeby's Very Nervous System and the Improvising Body / Jesse Stewart 169 10. Stretched Boundaries: Improvising across Abilities / Introduction and Conclusion by Sherrie Tucker; Essays by Pauline Oliveros, Neil Rolnick, Christine Sun Kim, Clara Tomaz, David Whalen, Leif Miller, and Jaclyn Heyen 181 Part IV. Gender, Trauma, and Memory 11. The Erotics of Improvisation in Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees / Gillian Sidall 201 12. Corregidora: Corporeal Archaeology, Embodied Memory, Improvisation / Nina Sun Eidsheim and Mandy-Suzanne Wong 13. Theorizing the Saxophonic Scream in Free Jazz Improvisation / Zachary Wallmark 233 14. Extemporaneous Genomics: Nicole Mitchell, Octavia Butler, and Xenogenesis / Kevin McNeilly and Julie Dawn Smith 245 Part V. Representation and Identity 15. Faster and Louder: Heterosexist Improvisation in North American Taiko / Deborah Wong 265 16. Improvisation and the Audibility of Difference: Safa, Canadian Multiculturalism, and the Politics of Recognition / Ellen Waterman 281 17. Performing the National Body Politic in Twenty-First-Century Argentina / Illa Carrillo Rodríguez and Berenice Corti 307 Discography 327 References 329 Contributors 351 Index 355

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Book SynopsisPlacing the body at the center of critical improvisation studies, the contributors to Negotiated Moments explore the challenges of negotiating subjectivity through improvisation in various forms—from jazz, Japanese taiko drumming, and Iranian classical music to sound walking and political street theater.Trade Review"Collective insights touch on a number of themes that cut to the core of critical improvisation studies. . . . The editors of Negotiated Moments have assembled an impressive and diverse array of studies." -- Joel V. Hunt * Notes *"A timely and relevant collection guiding the way for a radically inclusive approach to critical studies of improvisation. . . . One of the outstanding intellectual contributions of this book lies in its presentation of so many viable alternatives to prevailing dominant views about improvised music focused on individual genius and legitimacy of lineage." -- Miki Kaneda * Journal of the Society for American Music *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi Introduction: Improvising at the Nexus of Discursive and Material Bodies / Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman 1 1. Improvisation within a Scene of Constraint: An Interview with Judith Butler / Tracy McMullen 21 Part I. Listening, Place, and Space 2. "How Am I to Listen to You?": Soundwalking, Intimacy, and Improvised Listening / Andra McCartney 37 3. Community Sound [e]Scapes: Improvising Bodies and Site/Space/Place in New Media Audio Art / Rebecca Caines 55 Part II. Technology and Embodiment 4. Improvising Composition: How to Listen to the Time Between / Pauline Oliveros 75 5. The Networked Body: Physicality, Embodiment, and Latency in Multisite Performance / Jason Robinson 91 6. Openness from Closure: The Puzzle of Interagency in Improvised Music and a Neocybernetic Solution / David Borgo 113 7. Mediating the Improvising Body: Art Tatum's Postmortem Performance in a Posthuman World / Andrew Raffo Dewar 131 Part III. Sensibility and Subjectivity 8. Banding Encounters: Embodied Practices in Improvisation / Introduction and Conclusion by Tomie Hahn; Essays by Louise Campbell, Lindsay Vogt, Simon Rose, George Blake, Catherine Lee, Sherrie Tucker, François Mouillot, Jovana Milovic, and Pete Williams 9. Learning to Go with the Flow: David Rokeby's Very Nervous System and the Improvising Body / Jesse Stewart 169 10. Stretched Boundaries: Improvising across Abilities / Introduction and Conclusion by Sherrie Tucker; Essays by Pauline Oliveros, Neil Rolnick, Christine Sun Kim, Clara Tomaz, David Whalen, Leif Miller, and Jaclyn Heyen 181 Part IV. Gender, Trauma, and Memory 11. The Erotics of Improvisation in Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees / Gillian Sidall 201 12. Corregidora: Corporeal Archaeology, Embodied Memory, Improvisation / Nina Sun Eidsheim and Mandy-Suzanne Wong 13. Theorizing the Saxophonic Scream in Free Jazz Improvisation / Zachary Wallmark 233 14. Extemporaneous Genomics: Nicole Mitchell, Octavia Butler, and Xenogenesis / Kevin McNeilly and Julie Dawn Smith 245 Part V. Representation and Identity 15. Faster and Louder: Heterosexist Improvisation in North American Taiko / Deborah Wong 265 16. Improvisation and the Audibility of Difference: Safa, Canadian Multiculturalism, and the Politics of Recognition / Ellen Waterman 281 17. Performing the National Body Politic in Twenty-First-Century Argentina / Illa Carrillo Rodríguez and Berenice Corti 307 Discography 327 References 329 Contributors 351 Index 355

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Book SynopsisFlyboy 2 provides a panoramic view of the last thirty years of Greg Tate's influential cultural criticism of contemporary Black music, art, literature, film, and politics. These essays, interviews, and reviews cover everything from Miles Davis, Ice Cube, and Suzan Lori Parks to Afro-futurism, Kara Walker, and Amiri Baraka.Trade Review"Tate has been an important if underread critic for the past several decades, and this collection will allow more readers to discover him. Not a fast or simple read, but a worthwhile one for fans of music and culture." -- Craig L. Shufelt * Library Journal *"Flyboy 2 will be like no other collection of writing you will read this year, and probably this decade. Refer back to the original Flyboy book to whet your palate, and to note and compare the evolution of Tate’s voice and his perception of the world and music around him. Take comfort in knowing that there is a Black writer who has no choice but to be real, poised and dignified, denying all pressures to bastardize the class and power of Black arts criticism and literary excellence." -- Jordannah Elizabeth * Amsterdam News *"Whether you are new to his work or a longtime reader, the universe of Black magic lovingly curated in Flyboy 2 will do your soul good." -- Steven W. Thrasher * The Guardian *"Flyboy 2 is an immersive, fluid, and genre-bending collection of commentary, essays, and exposition of the self, a beautiful text solidly grounded in the critical theories of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century academia." -- Patty Comeau * ForeWord Reviews *"What Flyboy 1 and 2 show is that Tate has come a long way in the study of this, the feared black planet and, in so doing, came out a more skilful, more humble man. What his style won’t let me forget is this: we are simultaneously in command of this world, and others." -- Kwanele Sosibo * Mail & Guardian *"What made Tate’s criticism special was his ability to theorize outward from his encounters with genius and his brushes with banality—to telescope between moments of artistic inspiration and the giant structures within which those moments were produced. . . . Tate has a keen sense for the way that both artists and communities discern where they fit in the world, and what is expected of them, and then either go along for the ride or carefully plot their escapes." -- Hua Hsu * The New Yorker *"[T]hought-provoking. . . . There's lots to unpack in Tate's writing, challenging us to come along for the ride--if we're up to it." -- David Hershkovits * Paper Magazine *"A Rolling Stone contributor, Greg Tate's ferocious, slang-tinged salvos and deep-rooted historical analysis have inspired readers and intimidated colleagues for decades. This sequel to the 1992 collection Flyboy in the Buttermilk felt particularly acute in the context of 2016's nonstop stream of racial horror, whether Tate is delineating visual artist Kara Walker's unflinching slavery-era silhouettes or eulogizing Richard Pryor and Michael Jackson. . . ." -- Michaelangelo Matos * Rolling Stone *"Greg Tate has been responsible for some of the most erudite and energetic cultural criticism of the past thirty years. . . . The book stands as a testimony to the richness and variety of contemporary Black artistic production, and to Tate’s restless curiosity and learning." -- Michael Lapointe * TLS *“Like all of Greg Tate's work, this is required reading for anyone interested in the last several decades of life and culture in the United States.” -- Charles L. Hughes * Journal of Popular Music Studies *"Flyboy 2 collects more pieces that prove Tate, a Rolling Stone contributor, hasn't lost a step, with riffs on young artists like Azealia Banks ('a freaky-geeky, speed-rapping succubus') and forebears such as Jimi Hendrix ('one of our most agile and adept freedom fighters'). It's a dive into what Tate calls 'Black Cognition,' a cornerstone of the American mind." -- Will Hermes * Rolling Stone *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Lust, of All Things (Black) 1 1. The Black Male Show Amiri Baraka 9 Wayne Shorter 16 Jimi Hendrix 24 John Coltrane 41 Gone Fishing: Remembering Lester Bowie 44 The Black Artists' Group 50 Butch Morris 55 Charles Edward Anderson Berry and the History of Our Future 57 Lonnie Holley 68 Marion Brown (1931–2010) and Djinji Brown 71 Dark Angels of Dust: David Hammons and the Art of Streetwise Trancendentalism 73 Bill T. Jones: Combative Moves 78 Garry Simmons: Conceptual Bomber 81 The Persistence of Vision: Storyboard P 83 Ice Cube 91 Wynton Marsalis: Jazz Crusader 102 Thonton Dail: Free, Black, and Brightening Up the Darkness of the World 110 Kehinde Wiley 124 Rammellzee: The Ikonoklast Samurai 127 Richard Pryor: Pryor Lives 136 Richard Pryor 146 Gil Scott-Heron 149 The Man in Our Mirror: Michael Jackson 152 Miles Davis 158 2. She Laughing Mean and Impressive Too Born to Dyke: I Love My Sister Laughing and Then Again When She's Looking Mean, Queer, and Impressive 167 Joni Mitchell: Black and Blond 175 Azealia Banks 177 Sade: Black Magic Woman 180 All the Things You Could Be by Now If Iames Brown Was a Feminist 186 Itabari Njeri 193 Kara Walker 196 Women at the Edge of Space, Time, and Art: Ruminations on Candida Romero's Little Girls 202 Ellen Gallagher 208 To Bid a Poet Black and Abstract 210 "The Gikuyu Mythos versus the Cullud Grrrl from Outta Space": A Wangechi Mutu Feature 213 Come Join the Hieroglyphic Zombie Parade: Deborah Grant 219 Björk's Second Act 223 Thelma Golden 228 3. Hello Darknuss My Old Meme Top Ten Reasons Why So Few Black Women Were Down to Occupy Wall Street Plus Four More 235 What Is Hip-Hop? 239 Intelligence Data: Bob Dylan 242 Hip-Hop Turns Thirty 246 Love and Crunk: Outkast 252 White Freedom: Eminem 254 Wu-Dunit: Wu-Tang Clan 256 Unlocking the Truth vs. John Cage 260 4. Screenings Spike Lee's Bamboozled 265 It's A Mack Thing 270 Sex and Negrocity: John Singleton's Baby Boy 272 Lincoln in Whiteface: Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle in Susan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog 275The Black Power Mixtape 278 5. Race, Sex, Politricks and Belle Lettres Clarence Major 285 The Atlantic Sound: Caryl Phillips's The Atlantic Sound 288 Acocalypse Now: Patricia Hill Collins's Black Sexual Politics; Thomas Shevory's Notorious H.I.V.; Jacob Levenson's The Secret Epidemic 290 Blood and Bridges 292 Nigger-'Tude 296 Triple Threat: Jerry Gafio Watts's Amiri Baraka; Hazel Rowley's Richard Wright; David Macey's Frantz Fanon 299 Bottom Feeders: Natsuo Kirino's Out 306 Scaling the Heights: Maryse Condé's Windward Heights 307 Fear of a Mongrel Planet: Zadie Smith's White Teeth 310 Adventures in the Skin Trade: Lisa Teasley's Glow in the Dark 313 Generous Hexed: Jeffery Renard Allen's Rails under My Back 315 Going Underground: Gayl Jones's Mosquito 317 Judgment Day: Toni Morrison's Love and Edward P. Jones's The Known World 320 Black Modernity and Laughter, or How It Came to Be That N*g*as Got Jokes 322 Kalahari Hopscotch, or Notes toward a Twenty-Volume Afrocentric Futurist Manifesto 330 Sources 343 Index 347

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Book SynopsisMusic writer, curator, and collector John Corbett burrows deep inside the record collector's mind, documenting and reflecting on his decades-long love affair with vinyl. Discussing more than 200 rare and out-of-print LPs, Corbett combines memoir and criticism to explain what makes vinyl special and what drives collectors everywhere.Trade Review"Vinyl Freak could have easily been a stale trip down memory lane by a record collector. Yet Corbett takes an almost philosophical look at how music passes through listening mediums and what that means for listeners. As a result, the text will appeal to both vinyl freaks and non-freaks as it speaks to the transience of pop culture and its intersection with everyday lives." -- Amanda McCorquodale * Foreword Reviews *"... since the discussion is at least as much about the music being collected as the vinyl package, there is also a lot of intriguing music in the book. Much (but not all) of it jazz, and all of it worth seeking out: it comes with Corbett's highest recommendation." -- Mark Sullivan * All About Jazz *"[A] fascinating look at a subculture og hard-core collectors and a gold mine of information about various kinds of music and recording esoterica.... The illustrations of the record covers under review are fascinating and the author's musical savvy is daunting. This lively book could appeal to a wide range of readers." -- David Keymer * Library Journal *"... one of the most readable books about the arcane magic of hunting down and listening to rare and unusual albums, or even rediscovering them from your own collection." -- Jon Newey * Jazzwise *"As a person who is not quite an over-the-top Sun Ra aficionado but is certainly more than a casual fan, I am forever grateful for Corbett’s obsession. As a person who is always interested in discovering new and obscure music, I am also forever grateful for Corbett and his publisher compiling this collection of reviews. Although I read several of them in their original incarnation in Downbeat, this little book is now my reference guide for music I need to check out. Thanks again, John Corbett." -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *"[Corbett's] new book digs deep into the culture of the vinyl lover and digs even deeper into his personal record collection. In the process, he exposes a beautiful and dusty world largely forgotten but kept alive by that dead medium known as the vinyl record." -- Christopher Laird * PopMatters *"Corbett really is an 'equal opportunity ear filler' and is willing to acquire the music he really enjoys in any format. With Vinyl Freak John Corbett invites us to join him in the pleasure of discovering new sounds to indulge our ears. So what are you waiting for? You’ve been invited. Highly Recommended!" -- Chris De Chiara * Avant Music News *"Corbett still has an obscene record collection, but he's realized that his greatest mission is to share and educate—to arrange things so that others can experience the joy that he does. As much as anything I've read by him, Vinyl Freak does precisely that." -- Peter Margasak * Chicago Reader *"John Corbett is one of my favourite music writers. This book gathers up his elegaic and highly informative columns for Vinyl Freak magazine along with a series of mediations or essays on his love of music, an engaging mix of autobiography, reflection and storytelling. There are lots of colour pictures of record sleeves too." -- Rupert Loydell * International Times *"Corbett's deep knowledge in his chosen fields yields many valuable insights about records you may never have even heard of, let alone heard. Sure, he appreciates the classics, but he favours outliers. Admirably, he wants to broaden the canon (it would behoove readers to keep a notebook handy to tabulate all the records for which they should search).... And that is the motor of Vinyl Freak: an insatiable desire for the next revelatory recording, offering a thrilling portal to discover a hidden facet of your identity through a work of art. And if it impresses your mates or seduces a potential lover, so much the better." -- Dave Segal * The Wire *"John Corbett revels in the knowledge he's gained from a life spent rooting round shops and chats with like-minded souls. It's the final section that will resonate with most, detailing his experience unearthing an entire house-worth of Sun Ra memorabilia, it is so vividly written that you can almost sense his pulse racing as he ecstatically rifles through priceless artefacts." * Record Collector *"Corbett writes with both enthusiasm and a keen ear, the upshot of which is that high-dollar rarities and cheapies that shred get near-equal attention." -- Clifford Allen * New York City Jazz Record *"John Corbett shows how vinyl collecting serves archival and perhaps even societal purposes. By actively reanimating obscure and hard to find vinyl, he demonstrates that 'vinyl freaks' make worlds available that otherwise might be lost. Vinyl Freak opens up a world of vinyl, revealing recordings, musicians, as well as cultural history, that remain written in the grooves of decades-old records." -- Janet Borgerson & Jonathan Schroeder * Popular Music and Society *“Vinyl Freak is a good read, a well-written collection that helps with the fun and overwhelming project of trying to come to grips with the huge amount of music preserved in the LP era. I cannot imagine even casual collectors making it through Vinyl Freak without adding several items to their wants lists.” -- Carlos Peña * ARSC Journal *"The spirit of this book, it’s generosity and enthusiasm all work to support John’s preferred status as a 'Freak' not a 'Snob.' I love records. I love books. A beautiful book about crazy rare and out-of-print records?! Heaven." -- Jeff Tweedy * Amazon Book Review *Table of ContentsTrack One / Formation of a Freak 1 Track Two / "News of My Death, Greatly Exaggerated," Quoth the Record 5 Column One / 2000–2003 Philly Joe Jones, Philly Joe Jones 15 Paul Gonsalves, Cookin' 16 Takashi Furuya with the Freshmen, Fanky Drivin' 18 Carsten Meinert Kvartet, To You 20 Melvin Jackson, Funky Skull 21 Gloria Coleman Quartet featuring Pola Roberts, Soul Sisters 23 Elmo Hope Ensemble, Sounds from Rikers Island 24 Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Brotherhood 26Morris Grants Presents J.U.N.K. 28 Tom Stewart, Sexette / Quintette 30 Kenny Graham and His Satellites, Moondog and Suncat Suites 31 John Coltrane, Cosmic Music 33 André Hodeir, Jazz et Jazz: Jazz Experiments; Triple Play Stereo, Pop+Jazz=Swing; Bill Russo Orchestra, Stereophony 35 George Davis Sextet, various acetates 37 Staffan Harde, Staffan Harde 39 Art Pepper, Chile Pepper 42 Jack Wilson, The Jazz Organs 43 Craig Harris, Tributes 45 Quintet Moderne, The Strange and the Commonplace 46 A. K. Salim, Afro-Soul / Drum Orgy 48 Tristan Meinecke, home recordings, 1939–43 50 Chico Hamilton Quintet, Sweet Smell of Success 52 Lehn-Strid, Here There; Klapper-Küchen, Irregular 54 Bill Leslie, Diggin' the Chicks; Thornel Schwartz with Bill Leslie, Soul Cookin' 55 Tony Scott and His Buddies, Gypsy 57 Herbie Mann, Great Ideas of Western Mann 58 Track Three / Freek, Not Snob 61 Column Two . 2004–2006 Afreaka!, Demon Fuzz 69 Contemporary Sound Series 70 Beaver Harris / Don Pullen 360-Degree Experience, A Well-Kept Secret 72 Mike Osborne Trio, Border Crossing 73 The Three Souls, Dangerous Dan Express 75 Steve Lacy, Raps 77 Halki Collective, Halki Collective 79 The Amran-Barrow Quartet, The Eastern Scene 80 Charlie Parke acetates 82 Tommy "Madman" Jones, A Different Sound and Just Friends 84 New York Art Quartet, Mohawk 86 Paul Gonsalves / Tubby Hayes, Just Friends; Paul Gonsalves All Stars Featuring Tubby Hayes, Change of Setting 88 Anthony Braxton, New York, Fall 1974 90 Herbie Fields Sextet, A Night at Kitty's 91 Air, 80° Below '82 93 Guy Warren with Red Saunders Orchestra, Africa Speaks—American Answers! 94 Barry Altschul, Another Time, Another Place 96 The Korean Black Eyes, "Higher" 97 Rufus Jones, Five on Eight 99 Johnny Shacklett Trio, At the Hoffman House 100 The Mad-Hatters, The Mad-Hatters at Midnight 102 Klaus Doldinger, Doldinger Goes On 103 Max Roach, Solos 105 Dick Johnson, Most Likely . . . 106 Phil Seaman, The Phil Seamen Story 108 Paul Smoker Trio, QB 109 Khan Jamal, Drumdance to the Motherland; Franz Koglmann, For Franz / Opium 111 Track Four / Brand New Secondhand: Record Collector Subcultures 113 Column Three / 2006–2012 Walt Dunn, seven-inch singles 123 Leonard Feather, The Night Blooming Jazzmen 125 Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Modern Jazz Expressions 126 Archie Shepp, Plays the Music of James Brown; Cozy Eggleston, Grand Slam 128 Black Grass, Black Grass 129 Yoke & Yohs seven-inch 45 The Bill Dixon Orchestra, Intents and Purposes 132 Orchestre Régional de Mopti, Orchestre Régional de Mopti 134 The Jihad, Black & Beautiful . . . Soul & Madness 136 Milford Graves / Don Pullen, Milford Graves & Don Pullen at Yale University 137 Heikki Sarmanto Sextet, Flowers in the Water; G.L. Unit, Orangutang! 139 Ernie and Emilio Caceres, Ernie & Emilio Caceres 141 Maarten Altena, Papa Oewa 142 London Experimental Jazz Quartet, Invisible Roots 144 Sunny Murray, Big Chief; Solidarity Unit, Inc., Red, Black, and Green 146 Dick Wetmore, Dick Wetmore 147 United Front, Path with a Heart 149 Joseph Scianni, Man Running 150 The Residents, The Beatles Play the Residents and the Residents Play the Beatles 152 John Carter / Bobby Bradford Quartet, Flight for Four and Self Determination Music 153 Johnny Lytle Trio, Blue Vibes 155 Orchid Spangiafora, Flee Pasts Ape Elf 156 Noah Howard, Space Dimension 158 Baikida Carroll, The Spoken Word 159 Randy Weston, Blues 161 Charles Bobo Shaw Human Arts Ensemble Çonceré Ntasiah 163 Lee "Scratch" Perry, Double-7 164 Eddie Shu / Joe Roland / Wild Bill Davis, New Stars—New Sounds 166 Cecil Taylor / Tony Oxley, Ailanthus / Altissima 167 Unidentified Kenyan Highlife Band, seven-inch test pressing 169 Track Five / Specialty of the House 173 Track Six / Anything Can Happen Day: Sun Ra, Alton Abraham, and the Taming of the Freak 221 Column Four / 2016 Le Sun-Ra and his Arkistra, "Saturn" seven-inch single; Tom Prehn Quartet, Axiom 243 Track Seven / Run-Off Groove 247 Acknowledgements 249

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Book SynopsisRaymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century, showing how the existence of camp in Haydn and American music offer ways of reassessing Haydn's oeuvre.Trade Review“Making Light will surely spark many fruitful and interesting discussions, and lead to ever clearer and more meaningful ways of looking at performance.” -- Michael E. Ruhling * Haydn *“As a writer and thinker, Raymond Knapp is a congenial musicologist—eschewing the obscurities of hard theoretical labor and preferring colorful insights. Highly recommended.” -- M. Dineen * Choice *"I recommend Making Light strongly; it is provocative, stimulating and overflowing in original and insightful argument. [Knapp] moves the study of Haydn in a new direction, while developing new ways of understanding how idealistic perspectives on music have shaped the values attached to different forms of music-making." -- Derek B. Scott * Popular Music *"A rich and timely study. . . . Readers interested in fresh approaches to Haydn’s catalogue or camp in American musical culture will find Making Light an intriguing study of marginalized musical features across canonic boundaries." -- Jon Churchill * Current Musicology *

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Book SynopsisRaymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century, showing how the existence of camp in Haydn and American music offer ways of reassessing Haydn's oeuvre.Trade Review“Making Light will surely spark many fruitful and interesting discussions, and lead to ever clearer and more meaningful ways of looking at performance.” -- Michael E. Ruhling * Haydn *“As a writer and thinker, Raymond Knapp is a congenial musicologist—eschewing the obscurities of hard theoretical labor and preferring colorful insights. Highly recommended.” -- M. Dineen * Choice *"I recommend Making Light strongly; it is provocative, stimulating and overflowing in original and insightful argument. [Knapp] moves the study of Haydn in a new direction, while developing new ways of understanding how idealistic perspectives on music have shaped the values attached to different forms of music-making." -- Derek B. Scott * Popular Music *"A rich and timely study. . . . Readers interested in fresh approaches to Haydn’s catalogue or camp in American musical culture will find Making Light an intriguing study of marginalized musical features across canonic boundaries." -- Jon Churchill * Current Musicology *

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Book SynopsisJason Borge traces how jazz helped forge modern identities and national imaginaries in Latin America during the mid-twentieth century, showing how throughout the region, jazz functioned as a conduit through which debates about race, sexuality, nation, technology, and modernity raged in newspapers, magazines, literature, and film.Trade Review"A superb history of Latin American jazz's artistic and societal evolution." -- Kevin Canfield * New York City Jazz Record *“Tropical Riffs offers a wonderful introduction to jazz in Latin America in the early- to late mid-twentieth century, tracing and following jazz in Latin America, and Latin jazz in the U.S. as an evolving hybrid art of musical expressions." -- Moshe Morad * EIAL *"With Tropical Riffs, Borge has provided an extremely helpful survey that unites and expands upon scholarship that was, until now, largely contained in isolated country studies. The author convincingly shows how jazz figured prominently in the driving political and cultural debates of twentieth-century Latin America." -- Victoria Broadus * The Latin Americanist *"Perhaps the book’s most important contribution is the detailed look into emerging discourses of national identity and its entanglements with complex, and sometimes contradictory ideologies of racial inclusion. Throughout the entire book, Borge’s narrative brings to the fore the many connections between black musicians across the hemisphere that were made possible through jazz." -- Marcelo Boccato Kuyumjian * Journal of the Society for American Music *"Tropical Riffs offers a thought-provoking insight into the impact of jazz in Latin America, not only on musical styles and discussions but also on political and cultural debates throughout the region during the twentieth century. In examining how jazz music provided Latin American intellectuals with resources with which to negotiate changing attitudes toward race, sexuality, national identity, US influence, and mass con-sumption, Borge provides a well-written and informative study of a much-neglected topic." -- Hazel Marsh * Bulletin of Latin American Research *“Jason Borge has managed to synthesize large and diverse bodies of literature to produce a thoughtful, well-written monograph.... It is a pleasure to enthusiastically recommend it for any collection supporting research in ethnomusicology, jazz studies, or twentieth-century Latin American culture and history.” -- Carlos E. Peña * Notes *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Kindred Sounds and Latin Cats 1 1. La Civilizada Selva: Latin America and the Jazz Age 13 2. Dark Pursuits: Argentina, Race, and Jazz 51 3. The Anxiety of Americanization: Jazz, Samba, and Bossa Nova 89 4. The Hazards of Hybridity: Afro-Cuban Jazz, Mambo, and Revolution 131 5. Liberation, Disenchantment, and the Afterlives of Jazz 163 Conclusion. The Cruelty of Jazz 195 Notes 201 Bibliography 237 Index 261

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Book SynopsisA caustic wit and the knack for great pop, this is Costello's classic mixture of soul and new wave. Features Accidents Will Happen, Oliver's Army and What's So Funny 'bout Peace Love and Understanding.Trade Review"'A brilliant idea' The Times; 'Neat' Nick Hornby; 'Pocket-size books about favourite albums is a nice idea, akin to TV's Classic Albums and with an equal amount of care and attention.' The Guardian (Friday Review)"

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Book SynopsisSince its release, "Sell Out", though still not the best selling release in "The Who's" catalog, has been embraced by a growing number of fans. As much as it is an expression of the band's expanding sonic palette, this work also functions as a critique of the rock and roll lifestyle.Trade ReviewDougan provides detailed dissection of not just the music and the minutiae, but the unique British cultural milieu that spawned Sell Out (for example, he spends a good time chronicling the rise and fall of the pirate stations). His love for the album and the band consistently shines through, but he never lets that get in the way of cogent analysis, and he additionally brings to the fore a dry wit perfectly suited to his subject. -- Fred Mills * Blurt Magazine *

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Book SynopsisUses the Seven Deadly Sins as a structuring device to look at the album, "The Gilded Palace of Sin", that plays as fast and loose with its religious images as it does with its genre-borrowing.Trade Review"It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch... The series, which now comprises 29 titles with more in the words, is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration--The New York Times Book Review Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just aren't enough - Rolling Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet - Bookslut These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerds. - Vice A brilliant series...each one a word of real love - NME (UK)"

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Book SynopsisIsrael Kamakawiwo'ole was without a doubt the most popular and beloved singer in Hawai'i. His popularity stemmed not only from his music but from his outspokenness on issues of native Hawaiian sovereignty. This book presents an account of the life and music of this most legendary figures in contemporary Hawaiian culture.Table of ContentsPrologue: Honolulu, 1988 PART ONE Chapter One: Drive With Aloha Chapter Two: Local Chapter Three: Makaha Brothers PART TWO Chapter Four: Ongoing Friction Kamakawiwo'ole Chapter Five: Young Street and Palehua Chapter Six: The Introduction THE SONGS OF FACING FUTURE Hapa Haole Songs Hawaiian Songs PART THREE Chapter Seven: Royalty Chapter Eight: Hits Chapter Nine: The Beach and the Condominium Chapter Ten: Bruddahood Glossary of Hawaiian and Pidgin Terms

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Book SynopsisOffers an account of how the Bomb Squad produced a singular-sounding record - the engineering, sampling, scratching, constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing. This title delves into the original songs that were sampled and recontextualized. It shows which of the four Bomb Squad members had the most personal relationship with each sample.Table of Contents1. "Yes....The Rhythm, The Rebel" 2. "This Is A Sampling Sport" 3. "Back...Caught You Looking For The Same Thing" 4. "Beat Is The Father Of Your Rock'n'Roll" 5. "Consider Yourselves Warned" 6. "All In, We're Gonna Win" 7. "Def Jam Tells You Who I Am" 8. "Here We Go Again" Works Cited

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Book SynopsisPresents an examination of the classic "Pavement" album, including interviews with band members and record label staff. This book pays attention to Malkmus' growth as a musician and songwriter, both of which are evident everywhere on Wowee Zowee.Trade ReviewCharles puts himself in the center of the book—we read about his aimless college years in Michigan and his discovery of Pavement, whose songs initially seem half hearted, even bratty, but actually contain an undertow of emotion that's hard to articulate. Charles' writing is the same way. He succinctly captures the flavor of being in one's late teens and early 20s without going into unnecessary detail. Finishing school, he undergoes that arduous, interminable crisis of figuring out what to do with life, discovering that one of the only things that still makes sense is Pavement. Charles returns to the band time and again, the music weaving a thread through his life. The book includes unvarnished interviews with members of the band, providing an honest, first-person account of the making of the record. But the heart of the book isn't Pavement; it's Charles, and novelist or no, he has turned in one of the best pieces of rock journalism in recent memory—a no-bullshit, heartfelt manifesto of fandom. * The Portland Mercury *At the core of every 33 1/3 book is the question of roping in readers who may be unfamiliar with the band or album, but Charles is able to resituate Pavement as the everyman band they were during the 90s payday. From tales of major label flirtations (which the band is quick to dismiss as nothing more than random dalliances with the powers-that-be) to the band's reputation as slackers (which finds Stephen Malkmus tossing aside by pointing out the band's relentless touring schedule), Charles covers much more than the time period of Wowee Zowee without abandoning the album's specific importance in their catalog. Part history lesson, part fanzine love letter, Bryan Charles has written a book that is as ambitious and yet as untethered as his subject matter. * Tiny Mix Tapes *[Charles has written] an oral history about the genesis and recording of Pavement's Wowee Zowee album that is infused with his own personal fandom of the band. Charles paints a vivid picture of the band as it wrote and recorded the album through interviews with band members and the creatives who surrounded the production of the album, all the while sharing his own experiences with the album and as a Pavement fan.Mixing the album's history with Charles' own works exceedingly well, and captures not only the essence of Pavement when they recorded Wowee Zowee, but also the indie rock culture of the time. * Largehearted Boy *Pavement’s third album isn’t the most obvious choice for a 33 1/3 book … But the series is more concerned with telling new stories than in re-telling old ones, and Bryan Charles relishes the opportunity to argue for a personal favorite. Wowee Zowee may have been a flop (he even admits a ‘lack of excitement’ when he first heard it), but he shows how the album has gradually revealed a new cohesiveness governing its scattershot aesthetic over the last two decades and how it is now revered by the same listeners who initially shrugged their shoulders. -- Stephen M. Deusner * Pitchfork *

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Book SynopsisA singer once said His pitch was right on the nose: his word enunciation letter perfect: his understanding of a song thorough. He will be missed very much, not only by myself, but by his fans all over the world. The singer was the legendary Frank Sinatra, the man he spoke about: Matt Monro.  Matt Monro: The Singer''s Singer, is the highly-anticipated story of one of Britain''s most iconic singers, tracing Matt Monro''s life from his poverty stricken upbringing in post-war Britain to his day job as London bus driver to the steady rise to fame that saw the singer battling the highs and lows of the entertainment industry to become one of Britain''s best-loved entertainers. This is the man behind the image, the man who rubbed shoulders with some of the most famous names in the business, who recorded the very first James Bond theme song (From Russia with Love) and the international hits Softly as I Leave You, Born Free, Walk Away aTrade Review"If I had to choose three of the finest male vocalists in the singing business, Matt would be one of them." (Frank Sinatra)"

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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