Live Music in America
Live Music in America

Author: Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor of Music Steve Waksman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 705

ISBN-13: 0197570534

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When the Swedish concert singer Jenny Lind toured the U.S. in 1850, she became the prototype for the modern pop star. Meanwhile, her manager, P.T. Barnum, became the prototype for another figure of enduring significance: the pop culture impresario. Starting with Lind's fabled U.S. tour and winding all the way into the twenty-first century, Live Music in America surveys the ongoing impact and changing conditions of live music performance in the U.S. It covers a range of historic performances, from the Fisk Jubilee Singers expanding the sphere of African American music in the 1870s, to Benny Goodman bringing swing to Carnegie Hall in 1938, to 1952's Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland - arguably the first rock and roll concert - to Beyoncé's boundary-shattering performance at the 2018 Coachella festival. More than that, the book details the roles played by performers, audiences, media commentators, and a variety of live music producers (promoters, agents, sound and stage technicians) in shaping what live music means and how it has evolved. Live Music in America connects what occurs behind the scenes to what takes place on stage to highlight the ways in which live music is very deliberately produced and does not just spontaneously materialize. Along the way, author Steve Waksman uses previously unstudied archival materials to shed new light on the origins of jazz, the emergence of rock 'n' roll, and the rise of the modern music festival.

Classical Music In America
Classical Music In America

Author: Joseph Horowitz

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2005-03-15

Total Pages: 664

ISBN-13: 9780393057171

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An award-winning scholar and leading authority on American symphonic culture argues that classical music in the United States is peculiarly performance-driven, and he traces a musical trajectory rising to its peak at the close of the 19th century and receding after World War I.

Music in America
Music in America

Author: Adelaida Reyes

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13:

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Music in America is one of several case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present. America's music is a perennial work in progress. Music in America looks at both the roots of American musical identity and its many manifestations, seeking to answer the complex question: "What does American music sound like?" Focusing on three themes--identity, diversity, and unity--it explores where America's music comes from, who makes it, and for what purpose. Rather than chronologically tracing America's musical history, author Adelaida Reyes considers how musical culture is shaped by space and time, by geography and history, by social, economic, and political factors, and by people who use music to express themselves within a community. Introducing the diversity that dominates the contemporary American musical landscape, Reyes draws on a dazzling range of musical styles--from ethnic and popular music idioms to contemporary art music--to highlight the ways in which sounds from various cultural origins come to share a national identity. Packaged with a 65-minute CD containing examples of the music discussed in the book, Music in America features guided listening and hands-on activities that allow readers to become active participants in the music.

America, the Band
America, the Band

Author: Jude Warne

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1538120968

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As if recovering from a raucous dream of the 1960s, Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek arrived on 1970s American radio with a sound that echoed disenchanted hearts of young people everywhere. The three American boys had named their band after a country they’d watched and dreamt of from their London childhood Air Force base homes. What was this country? This new band? Classic and timeless, America embodied the dreams of a nation desperate to emerge from the desert and finally give their horse a name. Celebrating the band’s fiftieth anniversary, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell share stories of growing up, growing together, and growing older. Journalist Jude Warne weaves original interviews with Beckley, Bunnell, and many others into a dynamic cultural history of America, the band, and America, the nation. Reliving hits like “Ventura Highway,” “Tin Man,” and of course, “A Horse with No Name” from their 19 studio albums and incomparable live recordings, this book offers readers a new appreciation of what makes some music unforgettable and timeless. As America’s music stays in rhythm with the heartbeats of its millions of fans, new fans feel the draw of a familiar emotion. They’ve felt it before in their hearts and thanks to America, they can now hear it, share it, and sing along.

Bring Music Home
Bring Music Home

Author: Amber Mundinger

Publisher:

Published: 2021-01-07

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 9781736356906

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BRING MUSIC HOME aims to capture iconic music venues and the personalities behind them through a combined photography and film project. The resulting coffee table book and film archive, supported by a robust marketing campaign, will raise funds for these venues and the people and artists who sustain them. In the face of COVID-19, music venues across the country have been forced to shutter. At this unprecedented moment in music's history-a time when live performances ceased everywhere- we have the rare opportunity to document this collective experience.

A Passion for Polka
A Passion for Polka

Author: Victor Greene

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-12-22

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 0520911725

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Not so long ago, songs by the Andrews Sisters and Lawrence Welk blasted from phonographs, lilted over the radio, and dazzled television viewers across the country. Lending star quality to the ethnic music of Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Jews, and Scandinavians, luminaries like Frankie Yankovic, the Polka King, and "Whoopee John" Wilfart became household names to millions of Americans. In this vivid and engaging book, Victor Greene uncovers a wonderful corner of American social history as he traces the popularization of old-time ethnic music from the turn of the century to the 1960s. Drawing on newspaper clippings, private collections, ethnic societies, photographs, recordings, and interviews with musicians and promoters, Greene chronicles the emergence of a new mass culture that drew heavily on the vivid color, music, and dance of ethnic communities. In this story of American ethnic music, with its countless entertainers performing never-forgotten tunes in hundreds of small cities around the country, Greene revises our notion of how many Americans experienced cultural life. In the polka belt, extending from Connecticut to Nebraska and from Texas up to Minnesota and the Dakotas, not only were polkas, laendlers, schottisches, and waltzes a musical passion, but they shone a scintillating new light on the American cultural landscape. Greene follows the fortunes of groups like the Gold Chain Bohemians, illuminating the development of an important segment of American popular music that fed the craze for international dance music. And even though old-time music declined in the 1960s, overtaken by rock and roll, a new Grammy for the polka was initiated in 1986. In its ebullience and vitality, the genre endures.

Songs of America
Songs of America

Author: Jon Meacham

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2019-06-11

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0593132963

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw “Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics but also by our music—by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones. From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take readers on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw reflects on them as an artist and performer. Their perspectives combine to create a unique view of the role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation. Beginning with the battle hymns of the revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the fight for women’s suffrage, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations, and the cultural and political climates that produced them. Readers will discover the power of music in the lives of figures such as Harriet Tubman, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and will learn more about some of our most beloved musicians and performers, including Marian Anderson, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, and more. Songs of America explores both famous songs and lesser-known ones, expanding our understanding of the scope of American music and lending deeper meaning to the historical context of such songs as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Over There,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” As Quincy Jones says, Meacham and McGraw have “convened a concert in Songs of America,” one that reminds us of who we are, where we’ve been, and what we, at our best, can be.

Music and Musicians in Early America
Music and Musicians in Early America

Author: Irving Lowens

Publisher: New York : W. W. Norton

Published: 1964

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780393097436

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Aspects of the history of music in early America and the history of early American music.

Where the Wild Gigs Were
Where the Wild Gigs Were

Author: Tim Hinely

Publisher:

Published: 2021-08

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781735998527

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A collection of essays celebrating the history of underground American music venues.

Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy
Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy

Author: Danielle Fosler-Lussier

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0520284135

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"During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department's Cultural Presentations program. Using archival documents and newly collected oral histories, this study illuminates the reception of these musical events, for the practice of musical diplomacy on the ground sometimes differed substantially from what the department's planners envisioned. Performances of music in many styles--classical, rock 'n' roll, folk, blues, and jazz--were meant to compete with traveling Soviet and Chinese artists, enhancing the reputation of American culture. These concerts offered large audiences evidence of America's improving race relations, excellent musicianship, and generosity toward other peoples. Most important, these performances also built meaningful connections with people in other lands. Through personal contacts and the media, musical diplomacy created subtle musical, social, and political relationships on a global scale. Although these tours were sometimes conceived as propaganda ventures, their most important function was the building of imagined and real relationships, which constitute the essence of soft power"--Provided by publisher.