What the Music Said

What the Music Said

Author: Mark Anthony Neal

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780415920711

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Mark Anthony Neal reads the story of black communities through the black tradition in popular music. His history challenges the view that hip-hop was the first black cultural movement to speak truth to power.


Music at the Limits

Music at the Limits

Author: Edward Said

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-05-09

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1408845873

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_______________ 'Edward Said had a lifelong passion for music, and possessed the rare ability to write about it for the general reader with a lucid and penetrating intelligence' - TLS 'There are few whose command of words is sufficient not only to illuminate music, but to help music illuminate the world of those who make and listen to it. Said was one' - Daily Telegraph 'The sheer eloquence of Said's writings reminds us that with his untimely death we have lost one of our most distinguished music critics.' - Maynard Solomon, The Julliard School _______________ WITH A FOREWORD BY DANIEL BARENBOIM Music at the Limits brings together three decades of Edward W. Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a wide variety of composers and performers, Said analyses music's social and political contexts, and provides rich and often surprising assessments. He reflects on the censorship of Wagner in Israel; the relationship between music and feminism; and the works of Beethoven, Bruckner, Rossini, Schumann, Stravinsky and others. Always eloquent and often surprising, Music at the Limits reinforces Said's reputation as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. _______________ 'This fine collection by one of the most perceptive music critics of the last half-century is highly recommended' - Library Journal


On Late Style

On Late Style

Author: Edward Said

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-07-08

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 140884625X

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_______________ 'A series of dazzling case studies exploring the idea of lateness in a range of composers, writers and artists' - London Review of Books 'Gracefully unquiet, probing and wise ... Said's own elegiac masterpiece of late style' - Financial Times 'What Said stands for - critical intelligence, high art and the preservation of the language - must be at the centre of our lives. This book is a fine monument to his life and work' - Hanif Kureishi 'His own late style, if it is acceptable to call it that, mixes an easy mastery of material with an unquenched desire to preserve difficulties' - Guardian _______________ On Late Style examines the work produced by great artists -Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Jean Genet among them - at the end of their lives. Said makes it clear that, rather than the resolution of a lifetime's artistic endeavour, most of the late works discussed are rife with contradiction and almost impenetrable complexity. He helps us see how, though these works often stood in direct contrast to the tastes of society, they were, just as often, announcements of what was to come in the artist's discipline - works of true artistic genius.


The Beautiful Ones

The Beautiful Ones

Author: Prince

Publisher: One World

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0399589651

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time, in his own words—featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death NAMED ONE OF THE BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE GUARDIAN • NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and acclaimed musicians of our time. He was a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of “Uptown” to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of “Paisley Park.” But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, one of the greatest pop stars of any era. The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince—a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is the memoir Prince was writing before his tragic death, pages that bring us into his childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us through Prince’s early years as a musician, before his first album was released, via an evocative scrapbook of writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince’s evolution through candid images that go up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book’s fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain—the final stage in Prince’s self-creation, where he retells the autobiography of the first three parts as a heroic journey. The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring’s riveting and moving introduction about his profound collaboration with Prince in his final months—a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated—and annotations that provide context to the book’s images. This work is not just a tribute to an icon, but an original and energizing literary work in its own right, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image—his undying gift to the world.


The Art of Sampling, 2nd Edition

The Art of Sampling, 2nd Edition

Author: Amir Said

Publisher: Superchamp Books

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9780974970417

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The art of sampling -- one of the most innovative music processes to emerge in the late-twentieth century -- stands today as both a celebrated art form and a cultural activity within the hip hop/rap music tradition and beyond. 'The Art of Sampling' (Amir Said, author of 'The BeatTips Manual'), examines this complex and controversial music process, and presents a study that illuminates the history, creative mechanics, and philosophy of sampling, while also exploring the implications that it holds for copyright law. Divided into three primary parts, including an in-depth History part, a robust Instruction (how-to) part, and a highly comprehensive Copyright Law part, 'The Art of Sampling' is detailed, sharply informative, and engaging. Astute and intensely thought-provoking, it's the definitive book on sampling in the hip hop/rap music tradition and copyright law, and one of the most striking and poignant music studies to come along in years.


Of Course I Said Yes!

Of Course I Said Yes!

Author: Arthur William Barrow

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-03-29

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9781522979838

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Arthur Barrow shares stories of his life as a performer, composer, studio musician, and producer. He vividly describes his work with a wide range of artists including Frank Zappa, Giorgio Moroder, Robby Krieger of The Doors, Joe Cocker, Diana Ross, and many others. Zappa fans will be thrilled to have a look into Frank's creative process by someone who was actually there, and see the enormous effort made by his musicians to perform his astonishing and challenging music.


The Sounds of Place

The Sounds of Place

Author: Denise Von Glahn

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 569

ISBN-13: 0252052951

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Composers like Charles Ives, Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich created works that indelibly commemorated American places. Denise Von Glahn analyzes the soundscapes of fourteen figures whose "place pieces" tell us much about the nation's search for its own voice and about its ever-changing sense of self. She connects each composer's feelings about the United States and their reasons for creating a piece to the music, while analyzing their compositional techniques, tunes, and styles. Approaching the compositions in chronological order, Von Glahn reveals how works that celebrated the wilderness gave way to music engaged with humanity's influence--benign and otherwise--on the landscape, before environmentalism inspired a return to nature themes in the late twentieth century. Wide-ranging and astute, The Sounds of Place explores high art music's role in the making of national myth and memory.


Culture and Imperialism

Culture and Imperialism

Author: Edward W. Said

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-10-24

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0307829650

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A landmark work from the author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from Mansfield Park to Heart of Darkness and Aida. Yet most cultural critics continue to see these phenomena as separate. Edward Said looks at these works alongside those of such writers as W. B. Yeats, Chinua Achebe, and Salman Rushdie to show how subject peoples produced their own vigorous cultures of opposition and resistance. Vast in scope and stunning in its erudition, Culture and Imperialism reopens the dialogue between literature and the life of its time.


What the Dormouse Said

What the Dormouse Said

Author: John Markoff

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2005-04-21

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 1101201088

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“This makes entertaining reading. Many accounts of the birth of personal computing have been written, but this is the first close look at the drug habits of the earliest pioneers.” —New York Times Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture being counter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’s a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and ’70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.


The One

The One

Author: RJ Smith

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2012-03-15

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 1101561106

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The definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our time Playing 350 shows a year at his peak, with more than forty Billboard hits, James Brown was a dazzling showman who transformed American music. His life offstage was just as vibrant, and until now no biographer has delivered a complete profile. The One draws on interviews with more than 100 people who knew Brown personally or played with him professionally. Using these sources, award-winning writer RJ Smith draws a portrait of a man whose twisted and amazing life helps us to understand the music he made. The One delves deeply into the story of a man who was raised in abject-almost medieval-poverty in the segregated South but grew up to earn (and lose) several fortunes. Covering everything from Brown's unconventional childhood (his aunt ran a bordello), to his role in the Black Power movement, which used "Say It Loud (I'm Black and Proud)" as its anthem, to his high-profile friendships, to his complicated family life, Smith's meticulous research and sparkling prose blend biography with a cultural history of a pivotal era. At the heart of The One is Brown's musical genius. He had crucial influence as an artist during at least three decades; he inspires pity, awe, and revulsion. As Smith traces the legend's reinvention of funk, soul, R&B, and pop, he gives this history a melody all its own.