Description
Book SynopsisOffers the first thorough accounting of collegiate a cappella music's history and reveals how the critical issues of sociability, gender, performance, and technology affect its music and experience. Just as importantly, Joshua S. Duchan provides a vital contribution to music scholarship more broadly.
Trade ReviewWell aware that few musical pleasures top the sensation of joining one's voice with others to create a meticulously blended sound, Joshua Duchan proves himself an effective writer and historian, clear thinker, and skilled musician in showing how American college students today, using contemporary pop recordings, have organized a social framework built upon the experience of vocal blending."" —Richard Crawford, University of Michigan
""The scholarship is excellent. Duchan draws on relevant researchers and theorists in sociology, anthropology, music criticism, music history, culture and communication, musicology, and ethnomusicology. The sources cited are woven with care into the text to produce a fine analytic fabric treating of a cappella in all its complexity. Most impressive."" —Robert Stebbins, University of Calgary
""Collegiate a cappella is a hundred years old and touches the lives of hundreds of thousands of students each year. Finally we have a scholarly look at this community that's thoughtful and insightful. Often treated as rock stars on their campus, many college students find a cappella to be the most powerful musical experience they will ever have, and we now have a book that explains how and why."" —Deke Sharon, Founder of the Contemporary A Cappella Society and the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella
