Stand Up Straight and Sing!

Stand Up Straight and Sing!

Author: Jessye Norman

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 0544003403

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One of America's most admired and decorated singers tells her inspiring life story, from the segregated south to the world's greatest stages.


Stand Up Straight!

Stand Up Straight!

Author: Sander L. Gilman

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2018-02-15

Total Pages: 590

ISBN-13: 1780239645

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Our bodies are not fixed. They expand and contract with variations in diet, exercise, and illness. They also alter as we age, changing over time to be markedly different at the end of our lives from what they were at birth. In a similar way, our attitudes to bodies, and especially posture—how people hold themselves, how they move—are fluid. We interpret stance and gait as healthy or ill, able or disabled, elegant or slovenly, beautiful or ugly. In Stand Up Straight!, Sander L. Gilman probes these shifting concepts of posture to explore how society’s response to our bodies’ appearance can illuminate how society views who we are and what we are able to do. The first comprehensive history of the upright body at rest and in movement, Stand Up Straight! stretches from Neanderthals to modern humans to show how we have used our understanding of posture to define who we are—and who we are not. Gilman traverses theology and anthropology, medicine and politics, discarded ideas of race and the most modern ideas of disability, theories of dance and concepts of national identity in his quest to set straight the meaning of bearing. Fully illustrated with an array of striking images from medical, historical, and cultural sources, Stand Up Straight! interweaves our developing knowledge of anatomy and a cultural history of posture to provide a highly original account of our changing attitudes toward stiff spines, square shoulders, and flat tummies through time.


Black Women's Yoga History

Black Women's Yoga History

Author: Stephanie Y. Evans

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2021-03-01

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 1438483651

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How have Black women elders managed stress? In Black Women's Yoga History, Stephanie Y. Evans uses primary sources to answer that question and to show how meditation and yoga from eras of enslavement, segregation, and migration to the Civil Rights, Black Power, and New Age movements have been in existence all along. Life writings by Harriet Jacobs, Sadie and Bessie Delany, Eartha Kitt, Rosa Parks, Jan Willis, and Tina Turner are only a few examples of personal case studies that are included here, illustrating how these women managed traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression. In more than fifty yoga memoirs, Black women discuss practices of reflection, exercise, movement, stretching, visualization, and chanting for self-care. By unveiling the depth of a struggle for wellness, memoirs offer lessons for those who also struggle to heal from personal, cultural, and structural violence. This intellectual history expands conceptions of yoga and defines inner peace as mental health, healing, and wellness that is both compassionate and political.


A View from the Balcony--Opera through Womanist Eyes

A View from the Balcony--Opera through Womanist Eyes

Author: Jean Derricotte-Murphy

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2024-08-23

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1666772267

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In this theological work, readers are seated in a metaphorical balcony as a counter melody is composed within America’s operatic tradition. By using imaginary opera glasses, readers are invited to critically view American society and history. The most popular folk songs of white Southerners, Western settlers, and Northern elites were composed from chords of colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, hegemony, and xenophobia—forms of anthropological poverty. These songs were, and remain, the most discordant melodies heard by indigenous and enslaved persons in America. Indicting the “church” for its complicity in these oppressions, this work offers the reader a historical glimpse at the philosophical and religious underpinnings of systemic racism. A new healing hermeneutic, the balcony hermeneutic, enables the reader to view, critique, assess, correct, and reverse the devastating consequences of anthropological poverty. By taking a “reversed gaze” of traditional Western Eurocentric systems of knowledge production, through theomusicology, this work privileges the voices of indigenous scholars—philosophers, anthropologists, theologians, and performers—to sing a new song as we correct negative narratives and lyrics through resistance operatic performances.


Raise Your Voice

Raise Your Voice

Author: Jaime Vendera

Publisher: Diana Vendera

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0974941158

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The owner's guide to the voice, this book will help you develop an understanding of the voice and how it works.


Jazzwomen

Jazzwomen

Author: Wayne Enstice

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0253344360

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Offers interviews of twenty-one women who are respected in the male-dominated world of jazz, including pianist Marilyn Crispell and singer-pianist Diana Krall.


Sing You Home

Sing You Home

Author: Jodi Picoult

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-03

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1439102724

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Ten years of infertility issues culminate in the destruction of music therapist Zoe Baxter's marriage, after which she falls in love with another woman and wants to start a family, but her ex-husband, Max, stands in the way.


The Complete Idiot's Guide to Singing

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Singing

Author: Phyllis Fulford

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9781592570867

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The human voice is the most popular musical instrument, and vocal singing is like any other musical endeavour- it takes discipline, practice (and some talent) to do it well. CIG to Singingoffers readers an easy-to-use guide to the process of becoming a singer. Readers will learn how to find their ideal singing range, how to improve their basic technique, how to stand and breathe properly, how to sing in different musical styles, and the book is filled with numerous illustrations, musical examples and singing exercises. An audio CD includes examples of different techniques and accompaniments for the exercises, letting the reader hear the way they're supposed to sound and practice along. The book also contains a glossary of terms, singer's pronunciation reference, vocal problems troubleshooting guide, and a list of resources.


The Singer's Companion

The Singer's Companion

Author: Brent Jeffrey Monahan

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9781574671506

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(Limelight). The Singer's Companion combines the author's extensive research on hundreds of professional singers' and singing teachers' books with 30 years of personal teaching experience. The book concentrates on traditional vocal and artistic development, as employed at the most renowned universities and conservatories. At the same time, the presentation is extremely practical and accessible. The language is simple, and minimal space is given to theory. As each aspect of good singing and artistry is explained, enlightening quotations from dozens of the best singers and teachers, such as Enrico Caruso, Luciano Pavarotti, Eileen Farrell, Manuel Garcia, and Emma Seiler, help the singer to grasp the concept. The building of the vocal instrument and the artist is the focus. Topics include stance, breathing, phonation, resonance, range, health, choosing a teacher, vocal exercises, musicianship, pronunciation and diction, interpretation, performance, and selecting material. Many illustrative diagrams appear in the text. The book includes exercise sheets, sample songs, and an illustrative CD. Any singer, from the would-be professional to the diligent choir member, can benefit from this easy-to-use, thorough companion.