Showing titles in History & Criticism

After more than two decades of research and travels, Christophe Lebold, who befriended the poet and spent time with him in Los Angeles, delivers a stimulating analysis of Cohen’s life and art. Gracefully blending biography and essay, he interrogates the mission Cohen set out for himself: to show us that darkness is just the flip side of light.

Blacksound explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncover how the popular music industry and popular entertainment in general in the United States arose out of slavery and blackface.

In One Last Song, Ayers invites thirty musicians to consider what song they would each want to accompany them to those pearly white gates. Weaving together their explanations with evocative illustrations and poignant interludes-what your song to die to says about you, what songs famous people have died to, and more. The book offers insight into the minds of famous artists and provides an entry point for considering how integral music is to our own personal narratives.

Was haben so unterschiedliche Künstler wie Alexandra, GG Allin und Michael Hutchence gemeinsam? Sie sind alle tot. Und niemand von ihnen starb an Altersschwäche. Was die Menschheit bei einem selbst – in hoffentlich erst vielen Jahren – achselzuckend zur Kenntnis nehmen wird, erschüttert im Falle der Popstars Millionen: Der Tod. Ehrliche Trauer mischt sich mit Sensationslust, der Kontrast zwischen der (mehr oder weniger) fröhlichen, lebensbejahenden, glamourösen Welt der Popmusik und dem unwiderruflichen Ende könnte größer nicht sein.

In the 1930s, composers and musicians began to flee Hitler's Germany to make new lives across the globe. The process of exile was complex: although some of their works were celebrated, these composers had lost their familiar cultures and were forced to navigate xenophobia as well as entirely different creative terrain. Others, far less fortunate, were in a kind of internal exile-composing under a ruthless dictatorship or in concentration camps and ghettos.

After twenty years on the road, Eric Krasno has spent time sharing stories with countless artists — and these conversations have become some of his most cherished memories. In Eric Krasno Plus One, the audience is invited to join moments like these in podcast form—topics range from early inspirations to discussions about the state of the music industry, to the challenges of life on the road, backstage shenanigans, and much more.

After twenty years on the road, Eric Krasno has spent time sharing stories with countless artists — and these conversations have become some of his most cherished memories. In Eric Krasno Plus One, the audience is invited to join moments like these in podcast form—topics range from early inspirations to discussions about the state of the music industry, to the challenges of life on the road, backstage shenanigans, and much more.

Eric Krasno Plus One is an interview-style series that brings listeners backstage and deep into the lives of incredible musicians. After twenty years on the road, Eric Krasno has spent time sharing stories with countless artists—and these conversations have become some of his most cherished memories. In Eric Krasno Plus One, the audience is invited to join moments like these in podcast form—topics range from early inspirations to discussions about the state of the music industry, to the challenges of life on the road, backstage shenanigans, and much more.

Eric Krasno Plus One is an interview-style series that brings listeners backstage and deep into the lives of incredible musicians. After twenty years on the road, Eric Krasno has spent time sharing stories with countless artists—and these conversations have become some of his most cherished memories. In Eric Krasno Plus One, the audience is invited to join moments like these in podcast form—topics range from early inspirations to discussions about the state of the music industry, to the challenges of life on the road, backstage shenanigans, and much more.

The definitive history of the rise and heyday of the revolutionary Greenwich Village music scene, based on new research and first-hand interviews with many of its legendary performers Although Greenwich Village encompasses less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise...

After 20 years on the road, Eric Krasno has spent time sharing stories with countless artists — and these conversations have become some of his most cherished memories. In Eric Krasno Plus One, the audience is invited to join in and hang out with these old friends. Topics range from early inspirations to discussions about the state of the music industry, to the challenges of life on the road, backstage shenanigans, and much more.

In 1992, the Screaming Trees were expected to become the next big band to come out of the Seattle music scene during the heyday of grunge. Except it never happened. It wasn't because the band didn't have great songs—indeed, the Trees were revered for their ability to write a great song that was both artistically original and commercially viable, which is no easy task. Other Seattle bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden were fans of the Screaming Trees, playing shows with them and collaborating on albums, long before their own bands broke through into the mainstream.

L’uguaglianza, la fine delle guerre, la solidarietà, il rispetto per l’ambiente non sono soltanto i temi di cui ogni giorno, e con sempre più forza, si impara ora a discutere, ma anche ciò in cui Edoardo Bennato crede con forza e i valori che da sempre, con le sue canzoni, porta avanti. La sua discografia, infatti, può essere letta come un’antologia di spirito civico e un manuale di teoria e pratica della rivoluzione: attraverso il filtro giocoso e ironico delle sue storie, i suoi singoli più famosi.

In The Master of Drums, biographer Elizabeth J. Rosenthal crafts a celebratory, honest, and exhaustively researched portrait of a twentieth-century music legend. When he died, Gene Krupa may have left behind a world of grieving friends, colleagues, fans, students, and progeny, but as The Master of Drums proves, his dynamic musical and cultural influences live on.

From the storied ache of mbube harmonies of the ‘40s to the electronic boom of kwaito and the amapiano and house explosion of the ‘00s, this book explores vignettes taken from across South Africa’s popular music history. There are moments in time where music can be a mighty weapon in the fight for freedom. Disguised in a danceable hook or shouted for the world to hear, artists have used songs to deliver important truths and bring listeners together in the face of a segregated reality.

Welcome to 2090 – where sound no longer just fills the room, it fills your soul. In this Arabic audio edition, visionary cultural ambassador Birgit Maria Kemphues takes You on a magical journey through the soundscapes of the future – deeply rooted in the traditions of the Emirates. From AI-composed oud melodies to quantum-enhanced palm trees that sing at sunrise – this is no ordinary audiobook. This is an immersive tribute to the UAE, its people, its vision, and its rhythm.

This book explores the historical and cultural conditions of the genre as it appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s and then again in the early 2000s, and illuminates what is at stake in delineating dance-punk as a genre. Looking at bands such as Gang of Four, ESG, Public Image Ltd., LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, and Le Tigre, this book examines the tensions between and blurring of the rhetoric and emotion in dance music and the cynical and ironic intellectualizing associated with post-punk.

Folk music of the 1960s and 1970s was a genre that was always shifting and expanding, yet somehow never found room for so many. In the sounds of soul-folk, Black artists like Terry Callier and Linda Lewis began to reclaim their space in the genre, and use it to bring their own traditions to light— the jazz, the blues, the field hollers, the spirituals— and creating something wholly new, wholly theirs, wholly ours.

Teen pop is a sub-genre of popular music marketed to tweens and teens. Its melodic yearning and veneer of sincerity appeal to an emerging romantic eroticism and autonomy. But tweens and teens buy music that isn’t primarily marketed to them, too. Teen pop encompasses several kinds of musical styles, not limiting itself to just one—teen pop wants to play. Although it’s very difficult to attain and maintain social progress and play it forward—there are so many tragedies—'70s Teen Pop examines how liberation and a true counterculture can be possible through music.

Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), or “German New Wave,” was made extraordinarily popular in the 1970s and 1980s by the likes of Nena's "99 Luftballons" and Trio's "Da Da Da"—and then left as quickly as it came. Conventional wisdom among artists dictates that it’s better to burn out than fade away, but this doesn’t tell the full story of NDW—the reason for its rapid rise and fall, the historical context that necessitated the genre, and where the energy of the NDW movement went after its end.