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This book explores how, and why, the blues became a central component of English popular music in the 1960s. It is commonly known that many 'British invasion' rock bands were heavily influenced by Chicago and Delta blues styles. But how, exactly, did Britain get the blues? Blues records by African American artists were released in the United States in substantial numbers between 1920 and the late 1930s, but were sold primarily to black consumers in large urban centres and the rural south. How, then, in an era before globalization, when multinational record releases were rare, did English teenagers in the early 1960s encounter the music of Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller, Memphis Minnie, and...
Contributions from Christopher G. Bakriges, Sean Creighton, Jeffrey Green, Leighton Grist, Bob Groom, Rainer E. Lotz, Paul Oliver, Catherine Parsonage, Iris Schmeisser, Roberta Freund Schwartz, Robert Springer, Rupert Till, Guido van Rijn, David Webster, Jen Wilson, and Neil A. Wynn This unique collection of essays examines the flow of African American music and musicians across the Atlantic to Europe from the time of slavery to the twentieth century. In a sweeping examination of different musical forms--spirituals, blues, jazz, skiffle, and orchestral music--the contributors consider the reception and influence of black music on a number of different European audiences, particularly in Brit...
The Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs, edited by Tess Knighton, offers a major new study that deepens and enriches our understanding of the forms and functions of music that flourished in late medieval Spanish society. The fifteen essays, written by leading authorities in the field, present a synthesis based on recently discovered material that throws new light on different aspects of musical life during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel (1474-1516): sacred and secular music-making in royal and aristocratic circles; the cathedral music environment; liturgy and power; musical connections with Rome, Portugal and the New World; theoretical and unwritten musical practices; women as patrons and performers; and the legacy of Jewish musical tradition. Contributors are Mercedes Castillo Ferreira, Giuseppe Fiorentino, Roberta Freund Schwartz, Eleazar Gutwirth, Tess Knighton, Kenneth Kreitner, Javier Marín López, Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita, Bernadette Nelson, Pilar Ramos López, Emilio Ros-Fábregas, Juan Ruiz Jiménez, Richard Sherr, Ronald Surtz, and Jane Whetnall.
As the composer/lyricist for Godspell, Pippin, Wicked, and other musicals, Stephen Schwartz has enjoyed one of the mostsignificant careers in American musical theater for more than four decades. Schwartz has also achieved success on the big screen, contributing to such films as Enchanted, The Prince of Egypt, and Pocahontas. For his work, he has received six Tony nominations, three Grammys, and three Academy Awards. The Musical Theater of Stephen Schwartz: From Godspell to Wicked and Beyond is a detailed examination of Schwartz’s various projects throughout his career. Musicologist Paul R. Laird discusses at length Schwartz’s major shows and also considers his other ventures, such as the...
This book presents a collection of essays on the debates about origins, authenticity, and identity in folk and blues music. The essays had their origins in an international conference on the Transatlantic routes of American roots music, out of which emerged common themes and questions of origins and authenticity in folk music, black and white, American and British. The central theme is musical influences, but issues of identity—national, local, and racial—are also recurring subjects. The extent to which these identities were invented, imagined, or constructed by the performers, or by those who recorded their work for posterity, is also a prominent concern and questions of racial identity...
An exciting new examination of how African-American blues music was emulated and used by white British musicians in the late 1950s and early 1960s
Examines the role of black American music abroad in the post-WWII era through the lens of one of the period's most prolific and influential blues scholars, Paul Oliver
The British National Daily Press and Popular Music c.1956–1975 constitutes a reappraisal of the reactions of the national daily press to forms of music popular with young people in Britain from the mid-1950s to the 1970s (including rock ‘n’ roll, skiffle, ‘beat group’ and rock music). Conventional histories of popular music in Britain frequently accuse the newspapers of generating ‘moral panic’ with regard to these musical genres and of helping to shape negative attitudes to the music within the wider society. This book questions such charges and considers whether alternative perspectives on press attitudes towards popular music may be discerned. In doing so, it also challenges the tendency to perceive evidence from newspapers straightforwardly as a mere illustration of wider social trends and considers the manner in which the post-war newspaper industry, as a sociocultural entity in its own right, responded to developments in youth culture as it faced distinctive challenges and pressures amid changing times.
Winner of the 2016 Living Blues Award for Blues Book of the Year Since the early 1900s, blues and the guitar have traveled side by side. This book tells the story of their pairing from the first reported sightings of blues musicians, to the rise of nationally known stars, to the onset of the Great Depression, when blues recording virtually came to a halt. Like the best music documentaries, Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar interweaves musical history, quotes from celebrated musicians (B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Ry Cooder, and Johnny Winter, to name a few), and a spellbinding array of life stories to illustrate the early days of blues guitar in rich and resounding detail. In these...