- Table View
- List View
Woody Guthrie: A Life
by Joe KleinBiography of the singer, songmaker and restless spirit who defined the American character for a generation.
Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life
by Gustavus StadlerDismantles the Woody Guthrie we have been taught--the rough-and-ready ramblin' man--to reveal an artist who discovered how intimacy is crucial for political struggleWoody Guthrie is often mythologized as the classic American "ramblin' man," a real-life Steinbeckian folk hero who fought for working-class interests and inspired Bob Dylan. Biographers and fans frame him as a foe of fascism and focus on his politically charged folk songs. What's left unexamined is how the bulk of Guthrie's work--most of which is unpublished or little known--delves into the importance of intimacy in his personal and political life. Featuring an insert with personal photos of Guthrie's family and previously unknown paintings, Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life is a fresh and contemporary analysis of the overlapping influences of sexuality, politics, and disability on the art and mind of an American folk icon.Part biography, part cultural history of the Left, Woody Guthrie offers a stunning revelation about America's quintessential folk legend, who serves as a guiding light for leftist movements today. In his close relationship with dancer Marjorie Mazia, Guthrie discovered a restorative way of thinking about the body, which provided a salve for the trauma of his childhood and the slowly debilitating effects of Huntington's disease. Rejecting bodily shame and embracing the power of sexuality, he came to believe that intimacy was the linchpin for political struggle. By closely connecting to others, society could combat the customary emotional states of capitalist cultures: loneliness and isolation. Using intimacy as one's weapon, Guthrie believed we could fight fascism's seductive call.
Woof, There It Is: Woof, There It Is (The Cheetah Girls #5)
by Deborah GregoryThe hip, contemporary paperback series for black girls continues, featuring a singing group of five feisty teens.
Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art: The Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in Different Arts
by Hanns-Werner Heister Hanjo Polk Bernhard RusamThis book offers a truly interdisciplinary discussion on the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental in music and other arts and in everyday communication alike. Presenting an in-depth systematical and historical analysis of the evolution of word and gesture art, it gives extensive information on the anthropological, biological, and physiological influences and interactions in music and beyond. The book gives a unique definition of the genuinely vocal and instrumental from their generative deep structure: They derive from and are determined in their production by the duality of voice and hands, and in terms of product as the tone or ‘tonal’ on the one hand, and the percussive, that is noise plus rhythm, on the other. This book succeeds in bringing together perspectives from art, and from natural and social sciences, merging them to offer new explanations about the relationship between the vocal and instrumental, and eventually about the origins of music, arts, and language. It offers new perspectives on the intertwining between the vocal and the instrumental, specifically in the context of the expressions of human languages. At the same time, this book aims at clarifying and explaining the role of words and gestures in different contexts, such as society and communication, education, and arts.
Words and Songs of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone: Sound Motion, Blues Spirit, and African Memory (Studies in African American History and Culture)
by Melanie E. BratcherThis book explores the relationship between three African American women's dance-art-music sensibilities within the context of a Pan African aesthetic. Its purpose is three-fold: to show commonalities between Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone's lives and original compositions; to codify, examine and evaluate their selected song performances in accordance with the Pan African aesthetic "Nzuri theory/model;" and to illuminate the vast sources of transformational values that aesthetic analysis of African American song performance can foster. Following concordant procedures and principles of Afrocentricity, the study focuses on Smith, Holiday and Simone's performances as part of a whole African artistic and cultural value system. The goal of the Afrocentric methodological structure is to locate relevant African dynamics in songs and to promote knowledge for cultural transformation and continuity. Its use in this study provides meta-criteria for analyzing African American music, which the author has used to uniquely argue connections between African cultural memory and African-derived cultural expression.
Words, Music, and the Popular: Global Perspectives on Intermedial Relations (Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature)
by Susan Winnett Thomas GurkeWords, Music, and the Popular: Global Perspectives on Intermedial Relations opens up the notion of the popular, drawing useful links between wide-ranging aspects of popular culture, through the lens of the interaction between words and music. This collection of essays explores the relation of words and music to issues of the popular. It asks: What is popularity or ‘the’ popular and what role(s) does music play in it? What is the function of the popular, and is ‘pop’ a system? How can popularity be explained in certain historical and political contexts? How do class, gender, race, and ethnicity contribute to and complicate an understanding of the ‘popular’? What of the popularity of verbal art forms? How do they interact with music at particular times and throughout different media?
Words of a Goat Princess
by Jessie ReyezA moving poetic debut from a talented artist, Words of a Goat Princess is everything you love about singer/songwriter Jessie Reyez—her rawness, her love affair with the ugly truths of humanity, and so much more.Words of a Goat Princess is the debut poetry collection about life’s struggle and triumphs from Grammy-nominated and JUNO-award winning songwriter Jessie Reyez.With the authenticity and heartbreaking relatability that her fans know and love her for, Reyez brings the breadth of her lived experience to the page as few recording artists can. At times ethereal and visceral, these 43 poems are carefully painted moments that expertly explore love, loss, and identity with an artistry that leaps off the page with every turn.Through this collection of poems and stories, Jessie Reyez shows that she is more than a pop performer, she is a true artist whose star knows no limits.
Words of Our Mouth, Meditations of Our Heart: Pioneering Musicians of Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae, and Dancehall (Music / Interview Ser.)
by Kenneth BilbyThis is the first book devoted to the studio musicians who were central to Jamaica's popular-music explosion. With color portraits and interview excerpts, over 100 musical pioneers--such as Prince Buster, Robbie Shakespeare, Sly Dunbar, Lee "Scratch" Perry, and many of Bob Marley's early musical collaborators--provide new insights into the birth of Jamaican popular music in the recording studios of Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Includes a listening guide of selected songs.
Words on Music
by Ernst BaconA deep and thoughtful contemplation on music by and acclaimed expert.“Ernst Bacon, composer, pianist, and conductor, was born on May 26, 1898. He was the son of Maria von Rosthorn Bacon, a Viennese-trained musician, and Dr. Charles S. Bacon. He studied at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, and also privately with Alexander Raab, Glenn Dillard Gunn, Ernest Bloch, and Karl Weigl. Among the numerous awards and grants he received are the Bispham Award, commissions from the Ditson Fund and the League of Composers, a Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship in Music, three Guggenheim Fellowships.A multi-faceted musician, Bacon composed and conducted symphonies, operas, piano concertos, musical theater pieces, ensemble and solo instrumental pieces, and vocal works. In addition, he performed as a pianist in Europe and America, and he conducted the WPA orchestra in California from 1935 to 1937. He taught and was an administrator at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester (1926-27), Syracuse University’s music department (1945-47), and Converse College in South Carolina (1938-45).He distinguished himself as a writer with such works as Notes on the Piano, The Honor of Music, and Words on Music. In Our Musical Idioms, Bacon presented a new theory of scale models derived from diatonic scales. He was also music critic for The Argonaut, the weekly publication of Converse College. Ernst Bacon was respected as a philosopher by a close circle of friends who were fortunate enough to see his unpublished writings, [e.g. Imaginary Dialogues and his many poems]. He was a highly opinionated man, a fact evident from his large volume of letters to the editors of several major and not so major serials.Ernst Bacon married four times and had six children. He died on March 16, 1990 in Orinda, California.”—Library of Congress
Words Will Break Cement
by Masha GessenThe heroic story of Pussy Riot, who resurrected the power of truth in a society built on lies On February 21, 2012, five young women entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. In neon-colored dresses, tights, and balaclavas, they performed a "punk prayer" beseeching the "Mother of God" to "get rid of Putin." They were quickly shut down by security, and in the weeks and months that followed, three of the women were arrested and tried, and two were sentenced to a remote prison colony. But the incident captured international headlines, and footage of it went viral. People across the globe recognized not only a fierce act of political confrontation but also an inspired work of art that, in a time and place saturated with lies, found a new way to speak the truth. Masha Gessen's riveting account tells how such a phenomenon came about. Drawing on her exclusive, extensive access to the members of Pussy Riot and their families and associates, she reconstructs the fascinating personal journeys that transformed a group of young women into artists with a shared vision, gave them the courage and imagination to express it unforgettably, and endowed them with the strength to endure the devastating loneliness and isolation that have been the price of their triumph.
Words Without Music: A Memoir
by Philip GlassThe long-awaited memoir by "the most prolific and popular of all contemporary composers" (New York Times). A world-renowned composer of symphonies, operas, and film scores, Philip Glass has, almost single-handedly, crafted the dominant sound of late-twentieth-century classical music. Yet here in Words Without Music, he creates an entirely new and unexpected voice, that of a born storyteller and an acutely insightful chronicler, whose behind-the-scenes recollections allow readers to experience those moments of creative fusion when life so magically merged with art. "If you go to New York City to study music, you'll end up like your uncle Henry," Glass's mother warned her incautious and curious nineteen-year-old son. It was the early summer of 1956, and Ida Glass was concerned that her precocious Philip, already a graduate of the University of Chicago, would end up an itinerant musician, playing in vaudeville houses and dance halls all over the country, just like his cigar-smoking, bantamweight uncle. One could hardly blame Mrs. Glass for worrying that her teenage son would end up as a musical vagabond after initially failing to get into Juilliard. Yet, the transformation of a young man from budding musical prodigy to world-renowned composer is the story of this commanding memoir. From his childhood in post-World War II Baltimore to his student days in Chicago, at Juilliard, and his first journey to Paris, where he studied under the formidable Nadia Boulanger, Glass movingly recalls his early mentors, while reconstructing the places that helped shape his artistic consciousness. From a life-changing trip to India, where he met with gurus and first learned of Gandhi's Salt March, to the gritty streets of New York in the 1970s, where the composer returned, working day jobs as a furniture mover, cabbie, and an unlicensed plumber, Glass leads the life of a Parisian bohemian artist, only now transported to late-twentieth-century America. Yet even after Glass's talent was first widely recognized with the sensational premiere of Einstein on the Beach in 1976, even after he stopped renewing his hack license and gained international recognition for operatic works like Satyagraha, Orphée, and Akhnaten, the son of a Baltimore record store owner never abandoned his earliest universal ideals throughout his memorable collaborations with Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar, Robert Wilson, Doris Lessing, Martin Scorsese, and many others, all of the highest artistic order. Few major composers are celebrated as writers, but Philip Glass, in this loving and slyly humorous autobiography, breaks across genres and re-creates, here in words, the thrill that results from artistic creation. Words Without Music ultimately affirms the power of music to change the world.
The Work of Music Theory: Selected Essays (Ashgate Contemporary Thinkers On Critical Musicology Ser.)
by Thomas ChristensenThis collection brings together an anthology of articles by Thomas Christensen, one of the leading historians of music theory active today. Published over the span of the past 25 years, the selected articles provide a historical conspectus about a range of vital topics in the history of music theory, focusing in particular upon writings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Christensen examines a variety of theorists and their arguments within the intellectual and musical contexts of their time, in the process highlighting the diverse and idiosyncratic nature of the discipline of music theory itself. In the first section of the book Christensen offers general reflections on the meaning and interpretation of historical music theories, with especial attention paid to their value for music theorists today. The second section of the book contains a number of articles that consider the catalytic role of the thorough bass in the development of harmonic theory during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the final two sections of the anthology, focus turns to the writings of several individual music theorists, including Marin Mersenne, Seth Calvisius, Johann Mattheson, Johann Nicolaus Bach, Denis Diderot and Johann Nichelmann. The volume includes essays from hard-to-find publications as well as newly-translated material and the articles are prefaced by a new, wide-ranging autobiographical essay by the author that offers a broad re-assessment of his historical project. This book is essential reading for music theorists and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century musicologists.
Work Songs
by Ted GioiaAll societies have relied on music to transform the experience of work. Song accompanied the farmer's labors, calmed the herder's flock, and set in motion the spinner's wheel. Today this tradition continues. Music blares on the shop floor; song accompanies transactions in the retail store; the radio keeps the trucker going on the long-distance haul. Now Ted Gioia, author of several acclaimed books on the history of jazz, tells the story of work songs from prehistoric times to the present. Vocation by vocation, Gioia focuses attention on the rhythms and melodies that have attended tasks such as the cultivation of crops, the raising and lowering of sails, the swinging of hammers, the felling of trees. In an engaging, conversational writing style, he synthesizes a breathtaking amount of material, not only from songbooks and recordings but also from travel literature, historical accounts, slave narratives, folklore, labor union writings, and more. He draws on all of these to describe how workers in societies around the world have used music to increase efficiency, measure time, relay commands, maintain focus, and alleviate drudgery. At the same time, Gioia emphasizes how work songs often soar beyond utilitarian functions. The heart-wringing laments of the prison chain gang, the sailor's shanties, the lumberjack's ballads, the field hollers and corn-shucking songs of the American South, the pearl-diving songs of the Persian Gulf, the rich mbube a cappella singing of South African miners: Who can listen to these and other songs borne of toil and hard labor without feeling their sweep and power? Ultimately, Work Songs, like its companion volume Healing Songs, is an impassioned tribute to the extraordinary capacity of music to enter into day-to-day lives, to address humanity's deepest concerns and most heartfelt needs.
Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle in Song: A Songbook
by Mat CallahanWorking-Class Heroes is an organic melding of history, music, and politics that demonstrates with colorful evidence that workers everywhere will struggle to improve their conditions of life. And among them will be workers who share an insight: in order to better our lot, we must act collectively to change the world. This profusely illustrated treasury of song sheets, lyrics, photographs, histories, and biographical sketches explores the notion that our best hope lies in the capacity of ordinary working people to emancipate ourselves and all of humanity. Featuring more than a dozen songwriters, from Joe Hill to Aunt Molly Jackson, Working-Class Heroes delivers a lyrical deathblow to the myth that so-called political songs of the 20th century were being written by intellectuals in New York. The songs collected here have a striking relevance to current affairs and invite us to explore the historical conditions that inspired their creation: systemic crisis, advancing fascism, and the threat of world war. These working-class songwriters showed courage and heroism that is immortal, and such heroes and their work should be celebrated still today. The heroes featured in this collection include Sarah Ogan Gunning, Ralph Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, Ella May Wiggins, Joe Hill, Paul Robeson, John Handcox, Aunt Molly Jackson, Jim Garland, Alfred Hayes, and Joseph Brandon.
Working Class Mystic
by Gary TilleryJohn Lennon called himself a working class hero. George Harrison was a working class mystic. Born in Liverpool as the son of a bus conductor and a shop assistant, for the first six years of his life he lived in a house with no indoor bathroom. This book gives an honest, in-depth view of his personal journey from his blue-collar childhood to his role as a world-famous spiritual icon.Author Gary Tillery's approach is warmly human, free of the fawning but insolent tone of most rock biographers. He frankly discusses the role of drugs in leading Harrison to mystical insight but emphasizes that he soon renounced psychedelics as a means to the spiritual path. It was with conscious commitment that Harrison journeyed to India, studied sitar with Ravi Shankar, practiced yoga, learned meditation from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and became a devotee of Hinduism. George worked hard to subdue his own ego and to understand the truth beyond appearances. He preferred to keep a low profile, but his empathy for suffering people led him to spearhead the first rock-and-roll super event for charity. And despite his wealth and fame, he was always delighted to slip on overalls and join in manual labor on his grounds. At ease with holy men discussing the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, he was ever the bloke from Liverpool whose father drove a bus, whose brothers were tradesmen, and who had worked himself as an apprentice electrician until the day destiny called.Tillery's engaging narrative depicts Harrison as a sincere seeker who acted out of genuine care for humanity and used his celebrity to be of service in the world. Fans of all generations will treasure this book for the inspiring portrayal it gives of their beloved "quiet" Beatle.
Working Class Mystic
by Gary TilleryJohn Lennon called himself a working class hero. George Harrison was a working class mystic. Born in Liverpool as the son of a bus conductor and a shop assistant, for the first six years of his life he lived in a house with no indoor bathroom. This book gives an honest, in-depth view of his personal journey from his blue-collar childhood to his role as a world-famous spiritual icon.Author Gary Tillery's approach is warmly human, free of the fawning but insolent tone of most rock biographers. He frankly discusses the role of drugs in leading Harrison to mystical insight but emphasizes that he soon renounced psychedelics as a means to the spiritual path. It was with conscious commitment that Harrison journeyed to India, studied sitar with Ravi Shankar, practiced yoga, learned meditation from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and became a devotee of Hinduism. George worked hard to subdue his own ego and to understand the truth beyond appearances. He preferred to keep a low profile, but his empathy for suffering people led him to spearhead the first rock-and-roll super event for charity. And despite his wealth and fame, he was always delighted to slip on overalls and join in manual labor on his grounds. At ease with holy men discussing the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, he was ever the bloke from Liverpool whose father drove a bus, whose brothers were tradesmen, and who had worked himself as an apprentice electrician until the day destiny called. Tillery's engaging narrative depicts Harrison as a sincere seeker who acted out of genuine care for humanity and used his celebrity to be of service in the world. Fans of all generations will treasure this book for the inspiring portrayal it gives of their beloved "quiet" Beatle.
Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens (Music in American Life)
by Bill C Malone Hazel DickensHazel Dickens is an Appalachian singer and songwriter known for her superb musicianship, feminist country songs, union anthems, and blue-collar laments. Growing up in a West Virginia coal mining community, she drew on the mountain music and repertoire of her family and neighbors when establishing her own vibrant and powerful vocal style that is a trademark in old-time, bluegrass, and traditional country circles. Working Girl Blues presents forty original songs that Hazel Dickens wrote about coal mining, labor issues, personal relationships, and her life and family in Appalachia. Conveying sensitivity, determination, and feistiness, Dickens comments on each of her songs, explaining how she came to write them and what they meant and continue to mean to her. Bill C. Malone's introduction traces Dickens's life, musical career, and development as a songwriter, and the book features forty-one illustrations and a detailed discography of her commercial recordings.
Working In The Music Industry: How To Find An Exciting And Varied Career In The World Of Music
by Anna BrittenThe music industry is one of the most exciting, glamorous and fun places you could ever work in. It's also a fiercely competitive world, both for jobseekers and those already on the inside. But opportunities arise constantly, and are within the grasp of almost anyone with a true passion for music and a hard-working attitude. This book aims to help you take your first step into what will hopefully be a long and satisfying career in an endlessly fascinating world. Each chapter covers a field of work within the music industry - from record companies to recording studios to roadies - and is crammed with honest, realistic, practical and helpful advice. Insider secrets and individual case studies throw even more light on the subject.Contents: Acknowledgements; Foreword by Alan McGee; Preface; 1. An overview of the Music Industry; 2. Getting a Job; 3. Record Companies; 4. Music Publishing; 5. Music PR and Plugging; 6. Artist Managers; 7. Live Music: Booking Agents, Concert Promoters, Tour Managers and Roadies; 8. Music Journalism; 9. Recording Studios: Record Producers, Sound Engineers and Studio Managers; 10. Music Retail; Glossary; Useful Addresses; Further Reading; Index.
Working In The Music Industry: How To Find An Exciting And Varied Career In The World Of Music
by Anna BrittenThe music industry is one of the most exciting, glamorous and fun places you could ever work in. It's also a fiercely competitive world, both for jobseekers and those already on the inside. But opportunities arise constantly, and are within the grasp of almost anyone with a true passion for music and a hard-working attitude. This book aims to help you take your first step into what will hopefully be a long and satisfying career in an endlessly fascinating world. Each chapter covers a field of work within the music industry - from record companies to recording studios to roadies - and is crammed with honest, realistic, practical and helpful advice. Insider secrets and individual case studies throw even more light on the subject.Contents: Acknowledgements; Foreword by Alan McGee; Preface; 1. An overview of the Music Industry; 2. Getting a Job; 3. Record Companies; 4. Music Publishing; 5. Music PR and Plugging; 6. Artist Managers; 7. Live Music: Booking Agents, Concert Promoters, Tour Managers and Roadies; 8. Music Journalism; 9. Recording Studios: Record Producers, Sound Engineers and Studio Managers; 10. Music Retail; Glossary; Useful Addresses; Further Reading; Index.
Working Musicians: Labor and Creativity in Film and Television Production
by Timothy D. TaylorIn Working Musicians Timothy D. Taylor offers a behind-the-scenes look at the labor of the mostly unknown composers, music editors, orchestrators, recording engineers, and other workers involved in producing music for films, television, and video games. Drawing on dozens of interviews with music workers in Los Angeles, Taylor explores the nature of their work and how they understand their roles in the entertainment business. Taylor traces how these cultural laborers have adapted to and cope with the conditions of neoliberalism as, over the last decade, their working conditions have become increasingly precarious. Digital technologies have accelerated production timelines and changed how content is delivered, while new pay schemes have emerged that have transformed composers from artists into managers and paymasters. Taylor demonstrates that as bureaucratization and commercialization affect every aspect of media, the composers, musicians, music editors, engineers, and others whose soundtracks excite, inspire, and touch millions face the same structural economic challenges that have transformed American society, concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands.
Works for Piano Four Hands and Two Pianos (Dover Music For Piano Ser.)
by Wolfgang Amadeus MozartFrom his earliest years. Mozart played piano duets with his sister, and as his musical career progressed he created a small repertoire of masterly four-hand piano compositions that are among the most admired and performed in this distinctive genre.This Dover edition presents six of these choice works, plus two compositions Mozart wrote for two pianos all reprinted from the authoritative Breitkopf & Härtel edition: Sonatas in D Major (K.381/123a), B-flat Major (K.358/186c), F Major (K.497), G Major (K.497a and 500a), and C Major (K.521) and Theme and Variations in G Major (K.501). Also for 2 pianos: Sonata in D Major (K.448/375a) and Fugue in C Minor (K.426). Duet enthusiasts will discover in these charming works the sparkling elegance, varied moods, and fluid textures that constitute the very essence of Mozart's musical personality.
The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams
by Michael KennedyThis is the authoritative account of Vaughan Williams's musical life - the story of a great composer's career, and at the same time the story of music in England over half a century and more. Kennedy considers the principal works in chronological order, outlining the main features of each and discussing details of the music's structure, often illuminating his point with a musical quotation. He also provides a good deal of biographical data, and so builds up a picture of the composer, as well as providing thumbnail sketches of many of Vaughan Williams's friends and colleagues. Kennedy's extensive knowledge of Vaughan Williams's output also enables him to refer back and forth across the works to pick out lines of development and influence. The book includes a full classified list of Vaughan Williams's works. Michael Kennedy has provided a new preface.
The World According To Noddy: Life Lessons Learned In and Out of Rock & Roll
by Noddy HolderWhat makes Noddy Holder tick? Godfather of glam, national treasure and thinking grandmother’s crumpet, Noddy has been at the epicentre of British pop culture since he stormed on to the music scene in the 1960s, and in The World According to Noddy he gives us a hilarious window on to his extraordinary life. Told in his own inimitable style, Noddy shares insider accounts of his days on the road, along with a healthy dose of celebrity gossip, and leaves no stone unturned as he expounds on some of his favourite subjects – fame, friendship and fatherhood, the perils of social media and the modern age, not to mention what it would be like if he ruled the world . . . From his early days on the West Midlands beat scene, including a stint as a roadie for Robert Plant, Noddy charts his rise from skinhead stomper to international pop-star, statesman, playboy, male model and philosopher, and of course one of the most integral parts of a Great British Christmas. Witty, wise and tremendously funny, this is Noddy Holder at his glittering best.
The World Don't Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards
by David Honeyboy EdwardsThis vivid oral snapshot of an America that planted the blues is full of rhythmic grace. From the son of a sharecropper to an itinerant bluesman, Honeyboy's stories of good friends Charlie Patton, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs, and Robert Johnson are a godsend to blues fans. History buffs will marvel at his unique perspective and firsthand accounts of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, vagrancy laws, makeshift courts in the back of seed stores, plantation life, and the Depression.
World Flutelore: Folktales, Myths, and Other Stories of Magical Flute Power
by Dale A. OlsenIn many places around the world, flutes and the sounds of flutes are powerful magical forces for seduction and love, protection, vegetal and human fertility, birth and death, and other aspects of human and non-human behavior. This book explores the cultural significance of flutes, flute playing, and flute players from around the world as interpreted from folktales, myths, and other stories--in a word, "flutelore." A scholarly yet readable study, World Flutelore: Folktales, Myths, and Other Stories of Magical Flute Power draws upon a range of sources in folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and literary analysis. Describing and interpreting many examples of flutes as they are found in mythology, poetry, lyrics, and other narrative and literary sources from around the world, veteran ethnomusicologist Dale Olsen seeks to determine what is singularly distinct or unique about flutes, flute playing, and flute players in a global context. He shows how and why world flutes are important for personal, communal, religious, spiritual, and secular expression and even, perhaps, existence. This is a book for students, scholars, and any reader interested in the cultural power of flutes.