The ethnomusicologist Frederick Moehn introduces a generation of Rio-based musicians who build on the música popular brasileira (MPB) of previous decades, but who have yet to receive scholarly attention. This generation, the "children of the dictatorship," reinvigorated Brazilian genres such as samba and maracatu through juxtaposition with international influences, including rock, techno, and funk. Moehn offers vivid depictions of Rio musicians as they creatively combine and reconcile local realities with global trends and exigencies.
Introduction : measuring the economy of the arts -- Museums in flux -- The exhibitionary complex -- Art and the global marketplace -- Conclusion : non-profits and artist collectives as market alternatives
During the Cold War, state-sponsored musical performances were central to the diplomatic agendas of the United States and the Soviet Union. But states on the periphery of the conflict also used state-funded performances to articulate their positions in the polarized global network. In Albania in particular, the postwar government invested heavily in public performances at home, effectively creating a new genre of popular music: the wildly popular light music. In Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania, author Nicholas Tochka traces an aural history of Albania's government through a close examination of the development and reception of light music at Radio-Television Albania's Festival of Song. Drawing on a wide range of archival resources and over forty interviews with composers, lyricists, singers, and bureaucrats, Tochka describes how popular music became integral to governmental projects to improve society--and a major concern for both state-socialist and postsocialist regimes between 1945 and the present. Tochka's narrative begins in the immediate postwar period, arguing that state officials saw light music as a means to cultivate a modern population under socialism. As the Cold War ended, postsocialist officials turned again to light music, now hoping that these musicians could help shape Albania into a capitalist, "European" state. Interweaving archival research with ethnographic interviews, Audible States demonstrates that modern political orders do not simply render social life visible, but also audible. Incorporating insights from ethnomusicology, governmentality studies, and post-socialist studies, Audible States presents an original perspective on music and government that reveals the fluid, pervasive, but ultimately limited nature of state power in the modern world. A remarkably researched and engagingly written study, Audible States is a foundational text in the growing literature on popular music and culture in post-socialist Europe and will be of great interest for readers interested in popular music, sound studies, and the politics of the Cold War.
An innovative resource which shatters tango stereotypes to account for the genre's impact on arts, culture, and society around the world. Twenty chapters by North and South American, European, and Asian contributors, some publishing in English for the first time, collectively cover tango's history, culture, and performance practice.
In New York City during the first decades of the new millennium, over two hundred professional musicians play music that combines jazz with Brazilian genres. Blending American and Brazilian music, these musicians continue the legacies of bossa nova, samba jazz, and other styles, while expanding their skills, cultural understandings, and identities. SamBop NYC explores Brazilian jazz in New York City--the music, musicians, cultural issues, and jazz industry. It draws on interviews with over fifty musicians active between the years 2000 and 2020, featuring experts like Eliane Elias, Dom Salvador, Eumir Deodato, Maúcha Adnet, Vinícius Cantuária, Luciana Souza, Duduka Da Fonseca, Romero Lubambo, Anat Cohen, and Cidinho Teixeira. The book provides a new framework to interpret the mutual developments of musicianship, intercultural competencies, and affinities with Brazil and the U.S. To understand the imbalanced demographic diversity among musicians, the book analyses nationality, race, class, and gender among the musicians, as well as their instrumentation and professional dynamics. Navigating these social, cultural, and capitalist forces, the musicians in this book have applied their natural talents, determination, family support, and decades of hard work to pursue their artistic interests and career goals, to audience delight.
Brazil changed drastically in the 21st century’s second decade. In 2010, the country’s outgoing president Lula left office with almost 90% approval. As the presidency passed to his Workers' Party successor, Dilma Rousseff, many across the world hailed Brazil as a model of progressive governance in the Global South. Yet, by 2019, those progressive gains were being dismantled as the far right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of a bitterly divided country. Digging beneath this pendulum swing of policy and politics, and drawing on rich ethnographic portraits, Precarious Democracy shows how these transformations were made and experienced by Brazilians far from the halls of power. Bringing together powerful and intimate stories and portraits from Brazil's megacities to rural Amazonia, this volume demonstrates the necessity of ethnography for understanding social and political change, and provides crucial insights on one of the most epochal periods of change in Brazilian history.
In this history of black thought and racial activism in twentieth-century Brazil, Paulina Alberto demonstrates that black intellectuals, and not just elite white Brazilians, shaped discourses about race relations and the cultural and political terms of in
"The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music is a comprehensive, smartly-conceived volume that can take its place as the new standard reference in popular music. The editors have shown great care in covering classic debates while moving the field into new, exciting areas of scholarship. International in its focus and pleasantly wide-ranging across historical periods, the Handbook is accessible to students but full of material of interest to those teaching and researching in the field." - Will Straw, McGill University "Celebrating the maturation of popular music studies and recognizing the immense changes that have recently taken place in the conditions of popular music production, The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music features contributions from many of the leading scholars in the field. Every chapter is well defined and to the point, with bibliographies that capture the history of the field. Authoritative, expertly organized and absolutely up-to-date, this collection will instantly become the backbone of teaching and research across the Anglophone world and is certain to be cited for years to come." - Barry Shank, author of ′The Political Force of Musical Beauty′ (2014) The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music provides a highly comprehensive and accessible summary of the key aspects of popular music studies. The text is divided into 9 sections: Theory and Method The Business of Popular Music Popular Music History The Global and the Local The Star System Body and Identity Media Technology Digital Economies Each section has been chosen to reflect both established aspects of popular music studies as well as more recently emerging sub-fields. The handbook constitutes a timely and important contribution to popular music studies during a significant period of theoretical and empirical growth and innovation in the field. This is a benchmark work which will be essential reading for educators and students in popular music studies, musicology, cultural studies, media studies and cultural sociology.
Why do Japanese people love tango? Starting with this question, which the author frequently received while working as a tango violinist in Argentina, Tango in Japan reveals histories and ethnographies of tango in Japan dating back to its first introduction in the 1910s to the present day. While initially brought to Yokohama by North American tango dancers in 1914, tango’s immediate popularity in Japan quickly compelled many Japanese performers and writers to travel to Argentina in search of tango’s “origin” beginning in the 1920s. Many Japanese musicians, dancers, aficionados, and the wider public have, since then, approached tango as a new vehicle of expression, entertainment, and academic pursuit. The sounds of tango provided comfort and a sense of hope to many during the most turbulent years of the twentieth century, carving out distinctive characteristics of contemporary Japanese tango culture. Bypassing the West-East axis of understanding cultural transmission, Tango in Japan uncovers the processes of attraction, rejection, and self-transformation, illuminating the tension of cosmopolitan endeavors away from the Euro-American West. Based on Asaba’s field and archival work undertaken in both Japanese and Spanish languages in Japan and Argentina across two decades, and drawing on her own background as a tango violinist who performed as a member of tango orchestras in both countries, the discussions move between historical and ethnographic narratives, offering a comprehensive account of tango culture as it emerged in the history of a Japan-Argentina connection. Serving as the first in-depth work on the Japan-Argentina musical relationship, Tango in Japan tells a story that reflects the modern transformations of Japan and Argentina, and the global historical backdrops surrounding both countries.
The Postcolonial World presents an overview of the field and extends critical debate in exciting new directions. It provides an important and timely reappraisal of postcolonialism as an aesthetic, political, and historical movement, and of postcolonial studies as a multidisciplinary, transcultural field. Essays map the terrain of the postcolonial as a global phenomenon at the intersection of several disciplinary inquiries. Framed by an introductory chapter and a concluding essay, the eight sections examine: Affective, Postcolonial Histories Postcolonial Desires Religious Imaginings Postcolonial Geographies and Spatial Practices Human Rights and Postcolonial Conflicts Postcolonial Cultures and Digital Humanities Ecocritical Inquiries in Postcolonial Studies Postcolonialism versus Neoliberalism The Postcolonial World looks afresh at re-emerging conditions of postcoloniality in the twenty-first century and draws on a wide range of representational strategies, cultural practices, material forms, and affective affiliations. The volume is an essential reading for scholars and students of postcolonialism.
