Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations

Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations PDF Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674187083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Greil Marcus delves into three distinct episodes in the history of American commonplace song and shows how each one manages to convey the uncanny sense that it was written by no one. In these seemingly anonymous productions, we discover three different ways of talking about the United States, and three separate nations within its borders.

Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations

Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations PDF Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674187083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Greil Marcus delves into three distinct episodes in the history of American commonplace song and shows how each one manages to convey the uncanny sense that it was written by no one. In these seemingly anonymous productions, we discover three different ways of talking about the United States, and three separate nations within its borders.

Three Songs, three Singers, three Nations

Three Songs, three Singers, three Nations PDF Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Verlag Wilhelm Fink
ISBN: 3846760838
Category : Music
Languages : de
Pages : 153

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Book Description
In seinem neuesten Buch entlarvt Marcus drei "gewöhnliche" amerikanische Songs als grundlegende Dokumente amerikanischer Identität: Bascom Lamar Lunsfords "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" (1928), Geeshie Wileys "Last Kind Words Blues" (1930) und Bob Dylans "Ballad of Hollis Brown" (1964). Die Art und Weise, auf die jeder dieser Songs den unheimlichen Eindruck erweckt, er sei von niemandem geschrieben worden, erhellt unterschiedliche Aspekte der Tradition des "gewöhnlichen" Songs. Manche sind im Laufe der Zeit ohne einen identifizierbaren Urheber entstanden. Andere beziehen ihre Melodien und Motive aus obskuren Quellen, nehmen aber in den Händen eines bestimmten Künstlers eine endgültige, unvergessliche Gestalt an. Und, wie im Fall von Bob Dylans "Hollis Brown", gibt es Songs, die von einem identifizierbaren Autor stammen, aber wirken wie Folksongs, die schon seit Generationen weitergereicht worden sind. So trägt jeder dieser Songs Amerikas Geschichte, seine Menschen in sich, auch in ihrer Rolle als Zuhörer.

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor PDF Author: Thomas M. Kitts
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351266624
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
An essential part of human expression, humor plays a role in all forms of art, and humorous and comedic aspects have always been part of popular music. For the first time, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor draws together scholarship exploring how the element of humor interacts with the artistic and social aspects of the musical experience. Discussing humor in popular music across eras from Tin Pan Alley to the present, and examining the role of humor in different musical genres, case studies of artists, and media forms, this volume is a groundbreaking collection that provides a go-to reference for scholars in music, popular culture, and media studies. While most scholars, when considering humor’s place in popular music, tend to focus on more "literate" forms, the contributors in this collection seek to fill in the gaps by surveying all kinds of humor, critical theories, and popular musics. Across eight parts, the essays in this collection explore topics both highbrow and low, including: Parody and satire Humor in rock and global music Gender, sexuality, and politics The music mockumentary Novelty songs Humor has long been a fixture of the popular music soundscape, whether on stage, in performance, on record, or on film. The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor covers it all, presenting itself as the most comprehensive treatment of the topic to date.

Liner Notes for the Revolution

Liner Notes for the Revolution PDF Author: Daphne A. Brooks
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674052811
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
An award-winning Black feminist music critic takes us on an epic journey through radical sound from Bessie Smith to Beyoncé. Daphne A. Brooks explores more than a century of music archives to examine the critics, collectors, and listeners who have determined perceptions of Black women on stage and in the recording studio. How is it possible, she asks, that iconic artists such as Aretha Franklin and Beyoncé exist simultaneously at the center and on the fringe of the culture industry? Liner Notes for the Revolution offers a startling new perspective on these acclaimed figures—a perspective informed by the overlooked contributions of other Black women concerned with the work of their musical peers. Zora Neale Hurston appears as a sound archivist and a performer, Lorraine Hansberry as a queer Black feminist critic of modern culture, and Pauline Hopkins as America’s first Black female cultural commentator. Brooks tackles the complicated racial politics of blues music recording, song collecting, and rock and roll criticism. She makes lyrical forays into the blues pioneers Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith, as well as fans who became critics, like the record-label entrepreneur and writer Rosetta Reitz. In the twenty-first century, pop superstar Janelle Monae’s liner notes are recognized for their innovations, while celebrated singers Cécile McLorin Salvant, Rhiannon Giddens, and Valerie June take their place as cultural historians. With an innovative perspective on the story of Black women in popular music—and who should rightly tell it—Liner Notes for the Revolution pioneers a long overdue recognition and celebration of Black women musicians as radical intellectuals.

The Song Remains the Same

The Song Remains the Same PDF Author: Andrew Ford
Publisher: La Trobe University Press
ISBN: 1743821069
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
An illuminating history of the song for every kind of music lover Often today, the word ‘song’ is used to describe all music. A free-jazz improvisation, a Hindustani raga, a movement from a Beethoven symphony: apparently, they’re all songs. But they’re not. From Sia to Springsteen, Archie Roach to Amy Winehouse, a song is a specific musical form. It’s not so much that they all have verses and choruses – though most of them do – but that they are all relatively short and self-contained; they have beginnings, middles and ends; they often have a single point of view, message or story; and, crucially, they unite words and music. Thus, a Schubert song has more in common with a track by Joni Mitchell or Rihanna than with one of Schubert’s own symphonies. The Song Remains the Same traces these connections through seventy-five songs from different cultures and times: love songs, anthems, protest songs, lullabies, folk songs, jazz standards, lieder and pop hits; ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ to ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘Jerusalem’ to ‘Jolene’. Unpicking their inner workings makes familiar songs strange again, explaining and restoring the wonder, joy (or possibly loathing) the reader experienced on first hearing. ‘As much about singing, musicianship and recording as it is about songwriting, this eclectic ride through a unique choice of songs (everyone will argue for alternatives) is cleverly curated and littered with intriguing details about the creators and their times, filled with loving cross-references to other songs and deft musical analysis. I defy anyone not to leap online to listen to the unfamiliar, or re-listen to old favourites in light of new detail. One of the best games in this book is figuring out why one song follows the other: there’s always an intelligent, often very funny, link.’ —Robyn Archer

Songbooks

Songbooks PDF Author: Eric Weisbard
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 147802139X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
In Songbooks, critic and scholar Eric Weisbard offers a critical guide to books on American popular music from William Billings's 1770 New-England Psalm-Singer to Jay-Z's 2010 memoir Decoded. Drawing on his background editing the Village Voice music section, coediting the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and organizing the Pop Conference, Weisbard connects American music writing from memoirs, biographies, and song compilations to blues novels, magazine essays, and academic studies. The authors of these works are as diverse as the music itself: women, people of color, queer writers, self-educated scholars, poets, musicians, and elites discarding their social norms. Whether analyzing books on Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, and Madonna; the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Gayl Jones, and Jennifer Egan; or varying takes on blackface minstrelsy, Weisbard charts an alternative history of American music as told through its writing. As Weisbard demonstrates, the most enduring work pursues questions that linger across time period and genre—cultural studies in the form of notes on the fly, on sounds that never cease to change meaning.

Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music

Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music PDF Author: Ross Hair
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317123581
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Released in 1952, The Anthology of American Folk Music was the singular vision of the enigmatic artist, musicologist, and collector Harry Smith (1923–1991). A collection of eighty-four commercial recordings of American vernacular and folk music originally issued between 1927 and 1932, the Anthology featured an eclectic and idiosyncratic mixture of blues and hillbilly songs, ballads old and new, dance music, gospel, and numerous other performances less easy to classify. Where previous collections of folk music, both printed and recorded, had privileged field recordings and oral transmission, Smith purposefully shaped his collection from previously released commercial records, pointedly blurring established racial boundaries in his selection and organisation of performances. Indeed, more than just a ground-breaking collection of old recordings, the Anthology was itself a kind of performance on the part of its creator. Over the six decades of its existence, however, it has continued to exert considerable influence on generations of musicians, artists, and writers. It has been credited with inspiring the North American folk revival—"The Anthology was our bible", asserted Dave Van Ronk in 1991, "We all knew every word of every song on it"—and with profoundly influencing Bob Dylan. After its 1997 release on CD by Smithsonian Folkways, it came to be closely associated with the so-called Americana and Alt-Country movements of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following its sixtieth birthday, and now available as a digital download and rereleased on vinyl, it is once again a prominent icon in numerous musical currents and popular culture more generally. This is the first book devoted to such a vital piece of the large and complex story of American music and its enduring value in American life. Reflecting the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of Smith’s original project, this collection contains a variety of new perspectives on all aspects of the Anthology.

My Curious and Jocular Heroes

My Curious and Jocular Heroes PDF Author: Loyal Jones
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252099699
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
We were going down the road, and we came to this house. There was a little boy standing by the road just crying and crying. We stopped, and we heard the biggest racket you ever heard up in the house. œWhat TMs the matter, son? œWhy, Maw and Paw are up there fightin TM. œWho is your Paw, son? œWell, that TMs what they are fightin TM over. Brimming with ballads, stories, riddles, tall tales, and great good humor, My Curious and Jocular Heroes pays homage to four people who guided and inspired Loyal Jones TMs own study of Appalachian culture. His sharp-eyed portraits introduce a new generation to Bascom Lunsford, the pioneer behind the œmemory collections of song and story at Columbia University and the Library of Congress; the Sorbonne-educated collector and performer Josiah H. Combs; Cratis D. Williams, the legendary father of Appalachian studies; and the folklorist and master storyteller Leonard W. Roberts. Throughout, Jones highlights the tales, songs, jokes, and other collected nuggets that define the breadth of each man TMs research and repertoire.

Folk Music

Folk Music PDF Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300255314
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Acclaimed cultural critic Greil Marcus tells the story of Bob Dylan through the lens of seven penetrating songs "Marcus delivers yet another essential work of music journalism."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Further elevates Marcus to what he has always been: a supreme artist-critic."--Hilton Als "Greil Marcus is already the most important chronicler of Dylan. But here he outdoes himself."--Rachel Kushner Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the national songbook in a way that comes from his own vision and yet can feel as if it belongs to anyone who might listen. In Folk Music, Greil Marcus tells Dylan's story through seven of his most transformative songs. Marcus's point of departure is Dylan's ability to "see myself in others." Like Dylan's songs, this book is a work of implicit patriotism and creative skepticism. It illuminates Dylan's continuing presence and relevance through his empathy--his imaginative identification with other people. This is not only a deeply felt telling of the life and times of Bob Dylan, but a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they were given as Dylan sat down to write his own.

Popular Music Autobiography

Popular Music Autobiography PDF Author: Oliver Lovesey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501355848
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The 1960s saw the nexus of the revolution in popular music by a post-war generation amid demographic upheavals and seismic shifts in technology. Over the past two decades, musicians associated with this period have produced a large amount of important autobiographical writing. This book situates these works -- in the forms of formal autobiographies and memoirs, auto-fiction, songs, and self-fashioned museum exhibitions -- within the context of the recent expansion of interest in autobiography, disability, and celebrity studies. It argues that these writings express anxiety over musical originality and authenticity, and seeks to dispel their writers' celebrity status and particularly the association with a lack of seriousness. These works often constitute a meditation on the nature of postmodern fame within a celebrity-obsessed culture, and paradoxically they aim to regain the private self in a public forum.