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Charles Valentin Alkan: His Life and His Music
by WilliamAlexander EddieA 'conservative radical' is William Alexander Eddie's description of the French virtuoso composer-pianist Charles Valentin Alkan (1813-1888). Judaic culture, the French baroque and German classicism were the main influences on Alkan's musical style, with more radical musical tendencies found in many of the Esquisses op 63. This comprehensive survey takes as its focus a stylistic analysis of Alkan's compositions from the apprentice works to the later 'massed style' etudes; the latter are of considerable length and pianistic difficulty. There is also consideration of Alkan's achievements as pianist and teacher, and the sections on performance practice in Alkan will be of interest to pianists today. A full investigation of Alkan's reception history is also included and useful appendices provide a guide to further archival research. A list of works and basic discography complete this new study of an important French composer.
Charles Villiers Stanford (Music In Nineteenth-century Britain Ser.)
by Paul RodmellThe first book devoted to the composer Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) since 1935, this survey provides the fullest account of his life and the most detailed appraisal of his music to date. Renowned in his own lifetime for the rapid rate at which he produced new works, Stanford was also an important conductor and teacher. Paul Rodmell assesses these different roles and considers what Stanford's legacy to British music has been. Born and brought up in Dublin, Stanford studied at Cambridge and was later appointed Professor of Music there. His Irish lineage remained significant to him throughout his life, and this little-studied aspect of his character is examined here in detail for the first time. A man about whom no-one who met him could feel indifferent, Stanford made friends and enemies in equal numbers. Rodmell charts these relationships with people and institutions such as Richter, Parry and the Royal College of Music, and discusses how they influenced Stanford's career. Perhaps not the most popular of teachers, Stanford nevertheless coached a generation of composers who were to revitalize British music, amongst them Coleridge-Taylor, Ireland, Vaughan-Williams, Holst, Bridge and Howells. While their musical styles may not be obviously indebted to Stanford's, it is clear that, without him, British music of the first half of the twentieth century might have taken a very different course.
Charley Patton: Expanded Edition
by John FaheyThe Father of the Delta Blues, Charley Patton (1891–1934) was born and raised around Mississippi's cotton plantations. During the 1920s, he was the first of the region's great stars, performing for packed houses throughout the South and making popular recordings in New York City. His music — ranging from blues and ballads to ragtime and gospel — is distinctive for his gravelly, high-energy singing and the propulsive beat of his guitar. Patton had a lively stage presence, originating many of the guitar-playing antics now associated with Jimi Hendrix and other latter-day musicians. His influence, among both his contemporaries and subsequent blues artists, is incalculable. Noted guitarist John Fahey presents a textual and musicological examination of Patton's music. This new edition of the original 1970 publication is enhanced by Fahey's notes from the Grammy-winning, out-of-print box set Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton. Available for the first time outside the set, Fahey's reconsideration of Patton's music offers fresh perspectives and key corrections of the historical record.
Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta (American Made Music Series)
by Robert SacréBlues Book of the Year —26th Annual Living Blues Awards Contributions by Luther Allison, John Broven, Daniel Droixhe, David Evans, William Ferris, Jim O'Neal, Mike Rowe, Robert Sacré, Arnold Shaw, and Dick Shurman Fifty years after Charley Patton's death in 1934, a team of blues experts gathered five thousand miles from Dockery Farms at the University of Liege in Belgium to honor the life and music of the most influential artist of the Mississippi Delta blues. This volume brings together essays from that international symposium on Charley Patton and Mississippi blues traditions, influences, and comparisons. Originally published by Presses Universitaires de Liège in Belgium, this collection has been revised and updated with a new foreword by William Ferris, new images added, and some essays translated into English for the first time. Patton's personal life and his recorded music bear witness to how he endured and prevailed in his struggle as a black man during the early twentieth century. Within this volume, that story offers hope and wonder. Organized in two parts—“Origins and Traditions” and “Comparison with Other Regional Styles and Mutual Influence”—the essays create an invaluable resource on the life and music of this early master. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, these pieces secure the legacy of Charley Patton as the fountainhead of Mississippi Delta blues.
Charlie Parker Played Be Bop
by Christopher RaschkaIntroduces the famous saxophonist and his style of jazz known as be bop.
Charlie Parker: His Music and Life (The Michigan American Music Series)
by Carl WoideckSaxophonist Charlie Parker (1920-1955) was one of the most innovative and influential jazz musicians of any era. As one of the architects of modern jazz (often called "bebop"), Charlie Parker has had a profound effect on American music. His music reached such a high level of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic sophistication that saxophonists and other instrumentalists continue to study it as both a technical challenge and an aesthetic inspiration. This revised edition of Charlie Parker: His Music and Life has been revised throughout to account for new Charlie Parker scholarship and previously unknown Parker recordings that have emerged since the book’s initial publication. The volume opens by considering current research on Parker’s biography, laying out some of the contradictory accounts of his life, and setting the chronology straight where possible. It then focuses on Parker’s music, tracing his artistic evolution and major achievements as a jazz improviser. The musical discussions and transcribed musical examples include timecodes for easy location in recordings—a unique feature to this book.
Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts
by Paul SextonThe fully authorized and official biography of legendary Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, one of the world’s most revered and celebrated musicians of the last half century.Forewords by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.Charlie Watts was one of the most decorated musicians in the world, having joined the Rolling Stones, a few months after their formation, early in 1963.A student of jazz drumming, he was headhunted by the band after bumping into them regularly in London’s rhythm and blues clubs. Once installed at the drum seat, he didn’t miss a gig, album or tour in his 60 years in the band. He was there throughout the swinging sixties, the early shot at superstardom and the Stones' world conquest; and throughout the debauchery of the 1970s, typified by 1972's Exile on Main St., considered one of the great albums of the century. By the 1980s, Charlie was battling his own demons, but emerged unscathed to enhance his unparalleled reputation even further over the ensuing decades.Watts went through band bust-ups, bereavements and changes in personnel, managers, guitarists and rhythm sections, but remained the rock at the heart of the Rolling Stones for nearly 60 years—the thoughtful, intellectual but no less compelling counterpoint to the raucousness of his bandmates Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood. And this is his story.
Chase your dreams, Dreams come true
by Daniela Blasco«Chase your dreams, dreams come true» es el late motiv de Daniela Blasco, la bailarina y coreógrafa que está revolucionando las redes. Un poco de suerte, un mucho de esfuerzo, y de repente, todo cambió en mi vida. Soy Daniela Blasco, aprendiz de dancer. Hace un tiempo mi vida dio un giro y se llenó de experiencias fantásticas y de gente maravillosa. Me gustaría mucho compartir con todos vosotros todas esas cosas que hacen que mi «pequeño» mundo se transforme en un mundo muy grande, grandísimo, enorme. Un mundo repleto de amistad, amor, risas y, sí, también de esfuerzo, dedicación y sacrificio. ¿Listos para bailar?
Chasin the Trane
by J. C. ThomasAlways elusive, constantly moving, incessantly changing, John Coltrane stood astride the jazz world of the late ‘50s and ‘60s. He was a giant of the saxophone and a major composer. His music influenced both rock stars and classical musicians. There was a mystical quality, a profound melancholy emanating from this quiet, self-contained man that moved listeners—some of whom knew little about music but heard something beyond music’s boundaries in the sounds his saxophone created. J. C. Thomas traces John Coltrane’s life and career from his North Carolina childhood through his apprenticeship with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, to its culmination in the saxophonist’s classic quartet that played to steadily increasing audiences throughout America, Europe, and Japan. The author has drawn on the recollections of the people who knew Coltrane best—boyhood friends, band members like Elvin Jones, spiritual mentors like Ravi Shankar, and the women who loved him. Chasin’ the Trane is the story of a man who struggled against drug addiction, studied African and Eastern music and philosophy, admired both Einstein’s expanding universe and the shimmering sounds a harp makes, and left behind the enduring legacy of a master musician who was also a beautiful man.
Chasin' That Devil Music
by Gayle Dean WardlowThis book explores Mississippi blues: who created it and performed it, how it influenced other blues.
Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions
by Annik LaFargeA modern take on a classical icon: this &“luminous book&” (Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book) tells the story of when, where, and how Chopin composed his most famous work, uncovering many surprises along the way and showing how his innovative music still animates and thrives in our culture centuries later.In this widely-praised book, Annik LaFarge presents a very different Frédéric Chopin from the melancholy, sickly, Romantic figure that has predominated for so long. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent—and endlessly relevant—spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language; an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher; a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution, pandemic, and exile. One of America&’s foremost pianists, Jeremy Denk, wrote in The New York Times: &“It is almost impossible for me to imagine a world in which [Chopin&’s &“Funeral March&”] is both fresh and tragic, where its death is real. LaFarge&’s charming and loving new book attempts to recover this world…This book took me into many unexpected corners…For a book about death, it&’s bursting with life and lively research.&” In this &“entertaining dual music history and memoir&” (Publishers Weekly), a &“seamless blend of the musical and literary verve&” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) LaFarge &“brilliantly traces the footsteps of Chopin&’s life&” (Scott Yoo, host of PBS Now Hear This) during the three years, 1837–1840, when he composed the now-iconic Funeral March, using its composition story to illuminate the key themes of Chopin&’s life. As part of her research into Chopin&’s world, then and now, LaFarge visited piano makers, monuments, churches, and archives; she talked to scholars, jazz musicians, video game makers, music teachers, theater directors, and of course dozens of pianists. She has given us, says pianist, author, and New York Times columnist Michael Kimmelman, &“a tour-de-force and journey of the soul.&” It is an engrossing, &“impeccably researched&” (Library Journal) work of musical discovery and an artful portrayal of a man whose work and life continue to inspire artists and cultural innovators in astonishing ways. An acclaimed companion website, WhyChopin, presents links to each piece of music mentioned in the book, organized by chapter, along with photos, resources, and more.
Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP (Studies in Industry and Society)
by Susan Schmidt HorningHow technically enhanced studio recordings revolutionized music and the music industry.In Chasing Sound, Susan Schmidt Horning traces the cultural and technological evolution of recording studios in the United States from the first practical devices to the modern multi-track studios of the analog era. Charting the technical development of studio equipment, the professionalization of recording engineers, and the growing collaboration between artists and technicians, she shows how the earliest efforts to capture the sound of live performances eventually resulted in a trend toward studio creations that extended beyond live shows, ultimately reversing the historic relationship between live and recorded sound. Schmidt Horning draws from a wealth of original oral interviews with major labels and independent recording engineers, producers, arrangers, and musicians, as well as memoirs, technical journals, popular accounts, and sound recordings. Recording engineers and producers, she finds, influenced technological and musical change as they sought to improve the sound of records. By investigating the complex relationship between sound engineering and popular music, she reveals the increasing reliance on technological intervention in the creation as well as in the reception of music. The recording studio, she argues, is at the center of musical culture in the twentieth century.
Chasing the Light: The Cloud Cult Story
by Mark Allister&“Cloud Cult&’s grand, unkempt indie rock is at once jam band, emo, and avant-garde. Their songs, born out of personal tragedy, are otherworldly lessons in being human.&” —Pitchfork During the past decade, Minnesota-grown band Cloud Cult has become one of the most inspirational indie bands, with a deeply devoted fan base and an approach to music and the environment that is hard not to admire. Beyond a musical biography, Chasing the Light tells the story of the heartbreaking yet affirming journey of lead singer and songwriter Craig Minowa and delves into the career of the band known by music lovers as the least cynical and most idealistic band in the country.Tracing Cloud Cult&’s rise to critical acclaim, author Mark Allister details the band&’s defining moments, beginning with the death of Craig and Connie Minowa&’s two-year-old son and the hundreds of songs that grew out of the tragic loss. Allister describes the band&’s unique philosophy and principles, including how Minowa created a zero carbon footprint for the band&’s recording and touring, adopting DIY and green-sustainable practices well before the ideas became mainstream. Allister also presents a first-person account of a day in the life of a quintessential indie band and conveys the immense emotional impact of Cloud Cult&’s albums and live shows. Described by a fan in the book as &“the anthem for the soul searcher in us all,&” Cloud Cult&’s music and message are both stirring and sincere.Featuring rarely seen photos from Cloud Cult&’s history and passionate testimonials by fans, Chasing the Light is a testament to the profound influence one band&’s personal evolution can have on its followers and on indie rock aficionados in search of beauty, meaning, and redemption.
Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song
by Edward Mason AnthonyChasing the Rising Sun is the story of an American musical journey told by a prize-winning writer who traced one song in its many incarnations as it was carried across the world by some of the most famous singers of the twentieth century. Most people know the song "House of the Rising Sun" as 1960s rock by the British Invasion group the Animals, a ballad about a place in New Orleans -- a whorehouse or a prison or gambling joint that's been the ruin of many poor girls or boys. Bob Dylan did a version and Frijid Pink cut a hard-rocking rendition. But that barely scratches the surface; few songs have traveled a journey as intricate as "House of the Rising Sun. "The rise of the song in this country and the launch of its world travels can be traced to Georgia Turner, a poor, sixteen-year-old daughter of a miner living in Middlesboro, Kentucky, in 1937 when the young folk-music collector Alan Lomax, on a trip collecting field recordings, captured her voice singing "The Rising Sun Blues. " Lomax deposited the song in the Library of Congress and included it in the 1941 book Our Singing Country. In short order, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and Josh White learned the song and each recorded it. From there it began to move to the planet's farthest corners. Today, hundreds of artists have recorded "House of the Rising Sun," and it can be heard in the most diverse of places -- Chinese karaoke bars, Gatorade ads, and as a ring tone on cell phones. Anthony began his search in New Orleans, where he met Eric Burdon of the Animals. He traveled to the Appalachians -- to eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina -- to scour the mountains for the song's beginnings. He found Homer Callahan, who learned it in the mountains during a corn shucking; he discovered connections to Clarence "Tom" Ashley, who traveled as a performer in a 1920s medicine show. He went to Daisy, Kentucky, to visit the family of the late high-lonesome singer Roscoe Holcomb, and finally back to Bourbon Street to see if there really was a House of the Rising Sun. He interviewed scores of singers who performed the song. Through his own journey he discovered how American traditions survived and prospered -- and how a piece of culture moves through the modern world, propelled by technology and globalization and recorded sound.
Chasing the Sun
by Juanes"I'm doing what I believe I was brought to this world to do: to create music that raises awareness, renews hearts, and generates change. I'll continue looking to the stars and traveling the globe as God permits me. And I hope I have many years left to connect through art, to play my guitar, and to continue chasing the sun."--Juanes In Chasing the Sun, the international music icon and humanitarian shares the incredible story of his life and how music and faith guided his path. In his own un-adulterated words, and with visually arresting images throughout--some of them never before seen--Juanes imparts his defining moments from childhood to present day, reflecting on his spiritual and musical journey and the personal and professional experiences that shaped the man he is today. Born and raised in Colombia, Juanes developed his deep love of music from his family and learned to play guitar at an early age. By age sixteen, he became a founding member, lead guitarist, vocalist, and song-writer for Ekhymosis, which went on to become Colombia's leading hard-rock band. However, it was his career as a solo artist that propelled him toward international superstardom. With great honesty, Juanes reveals how his times of glory were often intersected by times of doubt and soul-searching and how remaining true to his beliefs and passionate about his art gave him the strength and foresight to reinvent himself and his career. While his role as a recording artist is well documented, the very private Juanes has never opened up in his own words--until now.
Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-hop Culture, And The Public Sphere
by Gwendolyn PoughHip-hop culture began in the early 1970s as the creative and activist expressions -- graffiti writing, dee-jaying, break dancing, and rap music -- of black and Latino youth in the depressed South Bronx, and the movement has since grown into a worldwide cultural phenomenon that permeates almost every aspect of society, from speech to dress. But although hip-hop has been assimilated and exploited in the mainstream, young black women who came of age during the hip-hop era are still fighting for equality. In this provocative study, Gwendolyn D. Pough explores the complex relationship between black women, hip-hop, and feminism. Examining a wide range of genres, including rap music, novels, spoken word poetry, hip-hop cinema, and hip-hop soul music, she traces the rhetoric of black women "bringing wreck." Pough demonstrates how influential women rappers such as Queen Latifah, Missy Elliot, and Lil' Kim are building on the legacy of earlier generations of women -- from Sojourner Truth to sisters of the black power and civil rights movements -- to disrupt and break into the dominant patriarchal public sphere. She discusses the ways in which today's young black women struggle against the stereotypical language of the past ("castrating black mother," "mammy," "sapphire") and the present ("bitch," "ho," "chickenhead"), and shows how rap provides an avenue to tell their own life stories, to construct their identities, and to dismantle historical and contemporary negative representations of black womanhood. Pough also looks at the ongoing public dialogue between male and female rappers about love and relationships, explaining how the denigrating rhetoric used by men has been appropriated by black women rappers as a means to empowerment in their own lyrics. The author concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of rap music as well as of third wave and black feminism. This fresh and thought-provoking perspective on the complexities of hip-hop urges young black women to harness the energy, vitality, and activist roots of hip-hop culture and rap music to claim a public voice for themselves and to "bring wreck" on sexism and misogyny in mainstream society.
Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-hop Junkies
by Brian ColemanA Tribe Called Quest * Beastie Boys * De La Soul * Eric B. & Rakim * The Fugees * KRS-One * Pete Rock & CL Smooth * Public Enemy * The Roots * Run-DMC * Wu-Tang Clan * and twenty-five more hip-hop immortals. It's a sad fact: hip-hop album liners have always been reduced to a list of producer and sample credits, a publicity photo or two, and some hastily composed shout-outs. That's a damn shame, because few outside the game know about the true creative forces behind influential masterpieces like PE's It Takes a Nation of Millions. . ., De La's 3 Feet High and Rising, and Wu-Tang's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). A longtime scribe for the hip-hop nation, Brian Coleman fills this void, and delivers a thrilling, knockout oral history of the albums that define this dynamic and iconoclastic art form. The format: One chapter, one artist, one album, blow-by-blow and track-by-track, delivered straight from the original sources. Performers, producers, DJs, and b-boys-including Big Daddy Kane, Muggs and B-Real, Biz Markie, RZA, Ice-T, and Wyclef-step to the mic to talk about the influences, environment, equipment, samples, beats, beefs, and surprises that went into making each classic record. Studio craft and street smarts, sonic inspiration and skate ramps, triumph, tragedy, and take-out food-all played their part in creating these essential albums of the hip-hop canon.Insightful, raucous, and addictive, Check the Technique transports you back to hip-hop's golden age with the greatest artists of the '80s and '90s. This is the book that belongs on the stacks next to your wax."Brian Coleman's writing is a lot like the albums he covers: direct, uproarious, and more than six-fifths genius." -Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop. "All producers and hip-hop fans must read this book. It really shows how these albums were made and touches the music fiend in everyone." -DJ Evil Dee of Black Moon and Da Beatminerz. "A rarity in mainstream publishing: a truly essential rap history." -Ronin Ro, author of Have Gun Will Travel.
Chen Yi (Women Composers)
by Leta E. Miller J. Michele EdwardsChen Yi is the most prominent woman among the renowned group of new wave composers who came to the US from mainland China in the early 1980s. Known for her creative output and a distinctive merging of Chinese and Western influences, Chen built a musical language that references a breathtaking range of sources and crisscrosses geographical and musical borders without eradicating them. Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards provide an accessible guide to the composer's background and her more than 150 works. Extensive interviews with Chen complement in-depth analyses of selected pieces from Chen's solos for Western or Chinese instruments, chamber works, choral and vocal pieces, and compositions scored for wind ensemble, chamber orchestra, or full orchestra. The authors highlight Chen's compositional strategies, her artistic elaborations, and the voice that links her earliest and most recent music. A concluding discussion addresses questions related to Chen's music and issues such as gender, ethnicity and nationality, transnationalism, border crossing, diaspora, exoticism, and identity.
Cher: The Memoir, Part One
by CherThe extraordinary life of Cher can be told by only one person . . . Cher herself. After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir. Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center. She is a lifelong activist and philanthropist. As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship. With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century. Cher: The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono—and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart. Cher: The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar. It is a life too immense for only one book. <br><b>New York Times Bestseller</b></br>
Cherry Ames, Private Duty Nurse (Cherry Ames #7)
by Helen WellsCherry is finally discharged from the Army and takes a job as a private duty nurse to a celebrated musician suffering from a heart condition. Caught up in a fortune-telling scam, Cherry searches to protect her delicate musician heart patient.
Chicago Blues
by Wilbert Jones Kevin JohnsonBlues was once described as the devil's music. It eventually became some of the most beloved American music that was embraced by a global audience. Originating in African American communities in the South in the late 1800s, it was inspired by gospel and spiritual music sung by field hands and sharecroppers who worked on plantations. During the Great Migration from the early 1900s to the mid-1970s, many African Americans moved north for a better quality of life. Chicago was one of America's leading industrialized cites, and manufacturing jobs were plentiful and provided better wages than sharecropping. Many blues musicians who worked as field hands and sharecroppers moved to Chicago not only for those jobs, but also to pursue their love of music. Greats such as Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red, Muddy Waters, Jimmy and Estelle Yancey, Robert Nighthawk, Elmore James, Willie Dixon, Earl Hooker, Koko Taylor, Sly Johnson, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Eddie Burns, Zora Young, Junior Wells, and a host of others came with their own styles and gave birth to Chicago blues.
Chicago House Music: Culture and Community
by Marguerite L. HarroldAn inside look at the music born, bred, and perfected in Chicago. Chicago house music originated in the city&’s Black, gay underground in the late seventies and became one of the most popular musical genres in the world by the end of the century. In Chicago House Music: Culture and Community, Marguerite Harrold tells the story of the genre&’s rise and the prolific creators who have sustained it for decades. You&’ll learn about house music&’s early innovators, like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, who transformed the social and political turmoil around them into a revolution in dance music. You&’ll also hear remembrances from contemporary figures in the house community, like DJ Lady D, Avery R. Young, Czboogie and Edgar &“Artek&” Sinio, who have forged new paths as the genre has evolved. It&’s a story about much more than music—it&’s about a community struggling for acceptance, love, liberation, and freedom, and about the creative pioneers whose resilience helped turn house music into a worldwide phenomenon. Full of interviews and first-hand accounts from the people who stood behind the turntables, carried crates of records, or danced until dawn, Chicago House Music is the history of an art form that continues to be a force for social interaction, spiritual liberation, and community today.
Chicago Hustle and Flow: Gangs, Gangsta Rap, and Social Class
by Geoff HarknessOn September 4, 2012, Joseph Coleman, an eighteen-year-old aspiring gangsta rapper, was gunned down in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Police immediately began investigating the connections between Coleman&’s murder and an online war of words and music he was having with another Chicago rapper in a rival gang. In Chicago Hustle and Flow, Geoff Harkness points out how common this type of incident can be when rap groups form as extensions of gangs. Gangs and rap music, he argues, can be a deadly combination. Set in one of the largest underground music scenes in the nation, this book takes readers into the heart of gangsta rap culture in Chicago. From the electric buzz of nightclubs to the sights and sounds of bedroom recording studios, Harkness presents gripping accounts of the lives, beliefs, and ambitions of the gang members and rappers with whom he spent six years. A music genre obsessed with authenticity, gangsta rap promised those from crime-infested neighborhoods a ticket out of poverty. But while firsthand experiences with gangs and crime gave rappers a leg up, it also meant carrying weapons and traveling collectively for protection. Street gangs serve as a fan base and provide protection to rappers who bring in income and help to recruit for the gang. In examining this symbiotic relationship, Chicago Hustle and Flow ultimately illustrates how class stratification creates and maintains inequalities, even at the level of a local rap-music scene.
Chicano Rap
by Pancho McfarlandPowered by a driving beat, clever lyrics, and assertive attitudes, rap music and hip hop culture have engrossed American youth since the mid-1980s. Although the first rappers were African Americans, rap and hip hop culture quickly spread to other ethnic groups who have added their own cultural elements to the music. Chicano Rap offers the first in-depth look at how Chicano/a youth have adopted and adapted rap music and hip hop culture to express their views on gender and violence, as well as on how Chicano/a youth fit into a globalizing world. Pancho McFarland examines over five hundred songs and seventy rap artists from all the major Chicano rap regions--San Diego, San Francisco and Northern California, Texas, and Chicago and the Midwest. He discusses the cultural, political, historical, and economic contexts in which Chicano rap has emerged and how these have shaped the violence and misogyny often expressed in Chicano rap and hip hop. In particular, he argues that the misogyny and violence of Chicano rap are direct outcomes of the "patriarchal dominance paradigm" that governs human relations in the United States. McFarland also explains how globalization, economic restructuring, and the conservative shift in national politics have affected Chicano/a youth and Chicano rap. He concludes with a look at how Xicana feminists, some Chicano rappers, and other cultural workers are striving to reach Chicano/a youth with a democratic, peaceful, empowering, and liberating message.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music
by Jack Canfield Mark Victor Hansen Randy RudderSongs tell a story, and now many of country music's most famous singers and songwriters are sharing more of the story! These artists reveal the inspiration, influence, and background, and when and why they wrote their most famous songs, in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music. Book includes great photos of the songwriters and lyrics of many of the songs. A great gift for anyone who loves country music!