The Fabulous Phonograph, 1877-1977

The Fabulous Phonograph, 1877-1977

Author: Roland Gelatt

Publisher: New York : Macmillan

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

History of the phonograph in text and photographs covering the technology advances and the business enterprises that promoted phonographs and sound recording.


Record Cultures

Record Cultures

Author: Kyle Barnett

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2021-07-26

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 047203877X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Tracing the cultural, technological, and economic shifts that shaped the transformation of the recording industry


The Triumph of Music

The Triumph of Music

Author: Tim Blanning

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-11-15

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 0674417275

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A distinguished historian chronicles the rise of music and musicians in the West from lowly balladeers to masters employed by fickle patrons, to the great composers of genius, to today’s rock stars. How, he asks, did music progress from subordinate status to its present position of supremacy among the creative arts? Mozart was literally booted out of the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg “with a kick to my arse,” as he expressed it. Yet, less than a hundred years later, Europe’s most powerful ruler—Emperor William I of Germany—paid homage to Wagner by traveling to Bayreuth to attend the debut of The Ring. Today Bono, who was touted as the next president of the World Bank in 2006, travels the world, advising politicians—and they seem to listen. The path to fame and independence began when new instruments allowed musicians to showcase their creativity, and music publishing allowed masterworks to be performed widely in concert halls erected to accommodate growing public interest. No longer merely an instrument to celebrate the greater glory of a reigning sovereign or Supreme Being, music was, by the nineteenth century, to be worshipped in its own right. In the twentieth century, new technological, social, and spatial forces combined to make music ever more popular and ubiquitous. In a concluding chapter, Tim Blanning considers music in conjunction with nationalism, race, and sex. Although not always in step, music, society, and politics, he shows, march in the same direction.


Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World

Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World

Author:

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2003-01-30

Total Pages: 833

ISBN-13: 0826463215

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

‘This is an extraordinary achievement and it will become an absolutely vital and trusted resource for everyone working in the field of popular music studies. Even more broadly, anyone interested in popular music or popular music culture more generally will enjoy - and find many uses for - the wealth of information and insight captured in this volume.' Lawrence Grossberg, Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The first comprehensive reference work on popular music of the world Contributors are the world's leading popular music scholars Includes extensive bibliographies, discographies, sheet music listings and filmographies. Popular music has been a major force in the world since the nineteenth century. With the advent of electronic and advanced technology it has become ubiquitous. This is the first volume in a series of encyclopedic works covering popular music of the world. Consisting of some 500 entries by 130 contributors from around the world. Entries range between 250 and 5000 words, and is arranged in two Parts: Part 1: Social and Cultural Dimensions, covering the social phenomena of relevance to the practice of popular music. Part II: The Industry, covers all aspects of the popular music industry, such as copyright, instrumental manufacture, management and marketing, record corporations, studios, companies, and labels. Entries include bibliographies, discographies and filmographies, and an extensive index is provided. For more information visit the website at: www.continuumpopmusic.com


The Cambridge Companion to the Drum Kit

The Cambridge Companion to the Drum Kit

Author: Matt Brennan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-06-17

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1108803385

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The drum kit is ubiquitous in global popular music and culture, and modern kit drumming profoundly defined the sound of twentieth-century popular music. The Cambridge Companion to the Drum Kit highlights emerging scholarship on the drum kit, drummers and key debates related to the instrument and its players. Interdisciplinary in scope, this volume draws on research from across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences to showcase the drum kit, a relatively recent historical phenomenon, as a site worthy of analysis, critique, and reflection. Providing readers with an array of perspectives on the social, material, and performative dimensions of the instrument, this book will be a valuable resource for students, drum kit studies scholars, and all those who want a deeper understanding of the drum kit, drummers, and drumming.


Phonographies

Phonographies

Author: Alexander Ghedi Weheliye

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2005-05-20

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0822386933

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Phonographies explores the numerous links and relays between twentieth-century black cultural production and sound technologies from the phonograph to the Walkman. Highlighting how black authors, filmmakers, and musicians have actively engaged with recorded sound in their work, Alexander G. Weheliye contends that the interplay between sound technologies and black music and speech enabled the emergence of modern black culture, of what he terms “sonic Afro-modernity.” He shows that by separating music and speech from their human sources, sound-recording technologies beginning with the phonograph generated new modes of thinking, being, and becoming. Black artists used these new possibilities to revamp key notions of modernity—among these, ideas of subjectivity, temporality, and community. Phonographies is a powerful argument that sound technologies are integral to black culture, which is, in turn, fundamental to Western modernity. Weheliye surveys literature, film, and music to focus on engagements with recorded sound. He offers substantial new readings of canonical texts by W. E. B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison, establishing dialogues between these writers and popular music and film ranging from Louis Armstrong’s voice to DJ mixing techniques to Darnell Martin’s 1994 movie I Like It Like That. Looking at how questions of diasporic belonging are articulated in contemporary black musical practices, Weheliye analyzes three contemporary Afro-diasporic musical acts: the Haitian and African American rap group the Fugees, the Afro- and Italian-German rap collective Advanced Chemistry, and black British artist Tricky and his partner Martina. Phonographies imagines the African diaspora as a virtual sounding space, one that is marked, in the twentieth century and twenty-first, by the circulation of culture via technological reproductions—records and tapes, dubbing and mixing, and more.


Designed for Dancing

Designed for Dancing

Author: Janet Borgerson

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-10-19

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 0262044331

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When Americans mamboed in the kitchen, waltzed in the living room, polkaed in the pavilion, and tangoed at the club; with glorious, full-color record cover art. In midcentury America, eager dancers mamboed in the kitchen, waltzed in the living room, Watusied at the nightclub, and polkaed in the pavilion, instructed (and inspired) by dance records. Glorious, full-color record covers encouraged them: Let’s Cha Cha Cha, Dance and Stay Young, Dancing in the Street!, Limbo Party, High Society Twist. In Designed for Dancing, vinyl record aficionados and collectors Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder examine dance records of the 1950s and 1960s as expressions of midcentury culture, identity, fantasy, and desire. Borgerson and Schroeder begin with the record covers—memorable and striking, but largely designed and created by now-forgotten photographers, scenographers, and illustrators—which were central to the way records were conceived, produced, and promoted. Dancing allowed people to sample aspirational lifestyles, whether at the Plaza or in a smoky Parisian café, and to affirm ancestral identities with Irish, Polish, or Greek folk dancing. Dance records featuring ethnic music of variable authenticity and appropriateness invited consumers to dance in the footsteps of the Other with “hot” Latin music, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and Hawaiian hulas. Bought at a local supermarket, department store, or record shop, and listened to in the privacy of home, midcentury dance records offered instruction in how to dance, how to dress, how to date, and how to discover cool new music—lessons for harmonizing with the rest of postwar America.


Off the Record

Off the Record

Author: Neal Peres Da Costa

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2012-05-16

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0195386914

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Off the Record, author and pianist Neal Peres Da Costa explores Romantic-era performance practices through a range of early sound recordings--acoustic, piano roll and electric--that capture a generation of highly-esteemed pianists trained as far back as the mid-nineteenth-century.


Century of the Leisured Masses

Century of the Leisured Masses

Author: David George Surdam

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0190211563

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

American living standards improved considerably between 1900 and 2000. While most observers focus on gains in per-capita income as a measure of economic well-being, economists have used other measures of well-being: height, weight, and longevity. The increased amount of leisure time per week and across people's lifetimes, however, has been an unsung aspect of the improved standard of living in America. In Century of the Leisured Masses, David George Surdam explores the growing presence of leisure activities in Americans' lives and how this development came out throughout the twentieth century. Most Americans have gone from working fifty-five or more hours per week to working fewer than forty, although many Americans at the top rungs of the economic ladder continue to work long hours. Not only do more Americans have more time to devote to other activities, they are able to enjoy higher-quality leisure. New forms of leisure have given Americans more choices, better quality, and greater convenience. For instance, in addition to producing music themselves, they can now listen to the most talented musicians when and where they want. Television began as black and white on small screens; within fifty years, Americans had a cast of dozens of channels to choose from. They could also purchase favorite shows and movies to watch at their convenience. Even Americans with low incomes enjoyed television and other new forms of leisure. This growth of leisure resulted from a combination of growing productivity, better health, and technology. American workers became more productive and chose to spend their improved productivity and higher wages by consuming more, taking more time off, and enjoying better working conditions. By century's end, relatively few Americans were engaged in arduous, dangerous, and stultifying occupations. The reign of tyranny on the shop floor, in retail shops, and in offices was mitigated; many Americans could even enjoy leisure activities during work hours. Failure to consider the gains in leisure time and leisure consumption understates the gains in American living standards. With Century of the Leisured Masses, Surdam has comprehensively documented and examined the developments in this important marker of well-being throughout the past century.