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Listen but Don't Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar across the TransPacific
by Kevin FellezsPerformed on an acoustic steel-string guitar with open tunings and a finger-picking technique, Hawaiian slack key guitar music emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. Though performed on a non-Hawaiian instrument, it is widely considered to be an authentic Hawaiian tradition grounded in Hawaiian aesthetics and cultural values. In Listen But Don&’t Ask Question Kevin Fellezs listens to Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and non-Hawaiian slack key guitarists in Hawai&‘i, California, and Japan, attentive to the ways in which notions of Kanaka Maoli belonging and authenticity are negotiated and articulated in all three locations. In Hawai&‘i, slack key guitar functions as a sign of Kanaka Maoli cultural renewal, resilience, and resistance in the face of appropriation and occupation, while in Japan it nurtures a merged Japanese-Hawaiian artistic and cultural sensibility. For diasporic Hawaiians in California, it provides a way to claim Hawaiian identity. By demonstrating how slack key guitar is a site for the articulation of Hawaiian values, Fellezs illuminates how slack key guitarists are reconfiguring notions of Hawaiian belonging, aesthetics, and politics throughout the transPacific.
Listen (Eighth Edition)
by Joseph Kerman Vivian Kerman Gary TomlinsonA classic music-appreciation text made fresh for today's students. Listen makes music accessible to all with its concise historical and cultural context, compelling composer biographies, and clear Listening Charts. The redesigned Eighth Edition incorporates new perspectives on music since 1900, new repertory, and illuminating discussions to help students synthesize the important concepts of classical music and develop the listening skills to explore it further.
Listen: How Pete Seeger Got America Singing
by Leda SchubertListen.There was nobody like Pete Seeger.Wherever he went, he got people singing. With his head thrown backand his Adam’s apple bouncing,picking his long-necked banjoor strumming his twelve-string guitar,Pete sang old songs,new songs,new words to old songs,and songs he made up.In this gorgeously written and illustrated tribute to legendary musician and activist Pete Seeger, author Leda Schubert highlights major musical events in Mr. Seeger's life as well important moments of his fight against social injustice. From singing sold-out concerts to courageously standing against the McCarthy-era finger-pointing, Pete Seeger's life is celebrated in this bold book for young readers with gorgeous illustrations by Raúl Colón.A Neal Porter BookThis title has Common Core connections.
Listen to Bob Marley: The Man, the Music, the Revolution
by Bob MarleyAn inspiring collection of poems, meditations, and lyrics by one of the world&’s most revered musical legends Bob Marley&’s music defined a movement and forever changed a nation. Known worldwide for their message of peace and unity, Marley&’s songs—from &“One Love&” to &“Redemption Song&” to &“Three Little Birds&”—have touched millions of lives. This collection is the best of Bob Marley presented in three parts: &“The Man,&” giving an in-depth look into the life of Bob Marley; &“The Music,&” comprising his most memorable lyrics as well as links to many of his songs in iTunes; and &“The Revolution,&” containing his meditations on social equality and the Rastafari movement. Enriched with iconic photographs, Listen to Bob Marley provides insight into a reggae legend, the inspirational man behind the music. This ebook features an introduction by daughter Cedella Marley and an illustrated biography of Cedella including rare photographs from her personal collection.
Listen to My Trumpet! (An Elephant and Piggie Book)
by Mo WillemsMeet Elephant Gerald and Piggie winners of Theodor Seuss Geisel Medals for There is a Bird on Your Head! and Are You Ready to Play Outside? and a Geisel Honor for We Are in a Book! Gerald is careful. Piggie is not. Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can. Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to. Gerald and Piggie are best friends. In Listen to My Trumpet! Piggie can't wait to play her new instrument for Gerald! But is she ready to listen to his reaction?
Listen to This: Miles Davis and Bitches Brew (American Made Music Series)
by Victor SvorinichListen to This stands out as the first book exclusively dedicated to Davis's watershed 1969 album, Bitches Brew. Victor Svorinich traces its incarnations and inspirations for ten-plus years before its release. The album arrived as the jazz scene waned beneath the rise of rock-and-roll and as Davis (1926–1991) faced large changes in social conditions affecting the African American consciousness. This new climate served as a catalyst for an experiment that many considered a major departure. Davis's new music projected rock-and-roll sensibilities, the experimental essence of 1960s' counterculture, yet also harsh dissonances of African American reality. Many listeners embraced it, while others misunderstood and rejected the concoction. Listen to This is not just the story of Bitches Brew. It reveals much of the legend of Miles Davis—his attitude and will, his grace under pressure, his bands, his relationship to the masses, his business and personal etiquette, and his response to extraordinary social conditions seemingly aligned to bring him down. Svorinich revisits the mystery and skepticism surrounding the album and places it into both a historical and musical context using new interviews, original analysis, recently found recordings, unearthed session data sheets, memoranda, letters, musical transcriptions, scores, and a wealth of other material. Additionally, Listen to This encompasses a thorough examination of producer Teo Macero's archives and Bitches Brew's original session reels in order to provide the only complete day-to-day account of the sessions.
Listen to This Third Edition
by Mark Evan BondsThe book provides readers with the tools to listen to music, hear the elements, and ultimately expand their musical horizons.
A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation
by John CorbettImprovisation rattles some listeners. Maybe they're even suspicious of it. John Coltrane's saxophonic flights of fancy, Jimi Hendrix's feedback drenched guitar solos, Ravi Shankar's sitar extrapolations--all these sounds seem like so much noodling or jamming, indulgent self-expression. "Just" improvising, as is sometimes said. For these music fans, it seems natural that music is meant to be composed. In the first book of its kind, John Corbett's A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation provides a how-to manual for the most extreme example of spontaneous improvising: music with no pre-planned material at all. Drawing on over three decades of writing about, presenting, playing, teaching, and studying freely improvised music, Corbett offers an enriching set of tools that show any curious listener how to really listen, and he encourages them to enjoy the human impulse-- found all around the world-- to make up music on the spot. Corbett equips his reader for a journey into a difficult musical landscape, where there is no steady beat, no pre-ordained format, no overarching melodic or harmonic framework, and where tones can ring with the sharpest of burrs. In "Fundamentals," he explores key areas of interest, such as how the musicians interact, the malleability of time, overcoming impatience, and watching out for changes and transitions; he grounds these observations in concrete listening exercises, a veritable training regime for musical attentiveness. Then he takes readers deeper in "Advanced Techniques," plumbing the philosophical conundrums at the heart of free improvisation, including topics such as the influence of the audience and the counterintuitive challenge of listening while asleep. Scattered throughout are helpful and accessible lists of essential resources--recordings, books, videos-- and a registry of major practicing free improvisors from Noël Akchoté to John Zorn, particularly essential because this music is best experienced live. The result is a concise, humorous, and inspiring guide, a unique book that will help transform one of the world's most notoriously unapproachable artforms into a rewarding and enjoyable experience.
A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation
by John CorbettImprovisation rattles some listeners. Maybe they’re even suspicious of it. John Coltrane’s saxophonic flights of fancy, Jimi Hendrix’s feedback drenched guitar solos, Ravi Shankar’s sitar extrapolations—all these sounds seem like so much noodling or jamming, indulgent self-expression. “Just” improvising, as is sometimes said. For these music fans, it seems natural that music is meant to be composed. In the first book of its kind, John Corbett’s A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation provides a how-to manual for the most extreme example of spontaneous improvising: music with no pre-planned material at all. Drawing on over three decades of writing about, presenting, playing, teaching, and studying freely improvised music, Corbett offers an enriching set of tools that show any curious listener how to really listen, and he encourages them to enjoy the human impulse— found all around the world— to make up music on the spot. Corbett equips his reader for a journey into a difficult musical landscape, where there is no steady beat, no pre-ordained format, no overarching melodic or harmonic framework, and where tones can ring with the sharpest of burrs. In “Fundamentals,” he explores key areas of interest, such as how the musicians interact, the malleability of time, overcoming impatience, and watching out for changes and transitions; he grounds these observations in concrete listening exercises, a veritable training regime for musical attentiveness. Then he takes readers deeper in “Advanced Techniques,” plumbing the philosophical conundrums at the heart of free improvisation, including topics such as the influence of the audience and the counterintuitive challenge of listening while asleep. Scattered throughout are helpful and accessible lists of essential resources—recordings, books, videos— and a registry of major practicing free improvisors from Noël Akchoté to John Zorn, particularly essential because this music is best experienced live. The result is a concise, humorous, and inspiring guide, a unique book that will help transform one of the world’s most notoriously unapproachable artforms into a rewarding and enjoyable experience.
Listening: A History Of Our Ears (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
by Charlotte Mandell Jean-Luc NancyIn this lyrical meditation on listening, Jean-Luc Nancy examines sound in relation to the human body. How is listening different from hearing? What does listening entail? How does what is heard differ from what is seen? Can philosophy even address listening, écouter, as opposed to entendre, which means both hearing and understanding? Unlike the visual arts, sound produces effects that persist long after it has stopped. The body, Nancy says, is itself like an echo chamber, responding to music by inner vibrations as well as outer attentiveness. Since “the ear has no eyelid” (Quignard), sound cannot be blocked out or ignored: our whole being is involved in listening, just as it is involved in interpreting what it hears. The mystery of music and of its effects on the listener is subtly examined. Nancy’s skill as a philosopher is to bring the reader companionably along with him as he examines these fresh and vital questions; by the end of the book the reader feels as if listening very carefully to a person talking quietly, close to the ear.
Listening Across Borders: Musicology in the Global Classroom (Modern Musicology and the College Classroom)
by James A. DavisListening Across Borders: Musicology in the Global Classroom provides readers with the tools and techniques for integrating a global approach to music history—within the framework of the roots, challenges, and benefits of internationalization—into the modern music curriculum. Contributors from around the world offer strategies for empowering students to critique the economic, ideological, and political structures that propagate global challenges. Applicable in a variety of classroom settings, the internationalized teaching methods collected here suggest fruitful ways forward in a global age, in three parts: Creating Global Citizens Teaching with Case Studies of Intercultural Encounters Challenges and Opportunities In reevaluating the role of higher education in a cosmopolitan world, modern educators have come to question the limits of geographically defined canons, traditional curricular content, and other longstanding teaching approaches. Listening Across Borders places the music history classroom at the center of the conversation about internationalization in higher education, embracing pedagogies that develop the skillsets to become global citizens in a world where international cooperation is increasingly essential.
Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum (Music Culture)
by Daniel CavicchiListening and Longing explores the emergence of music listening in the United States, from its early stages in the antebellum era, when entrepreneurs first packaged and sold the experience of hearing musical performance, to the Gilded Age, when genteel critics began to successfully redefine the cultural value of listening to music. In a series of interconnected stories, American studies scholar Daniel Cavicchi focuses on the impact of industrialization, urbanization, and commercialization in shaping practices of music audiences in America. Grounding our contemporary culture of listening in its seminal historical moment--before the iPod, stereo system, or phonograph--Cavicchi offers a fresh understanding of the role of listening in the history of music.
Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy
by Andrew Dell’antonioThe early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far-reaching consequences--such as tonal music--began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the displacement of aristocratic music-makers by a new professional class of performers. In this book, Andrew Dell'Antonio looks at a related phenomenon: the rise of a cultivated audience whose skill involved listening rather than playing or singing. Drawing from contemporaneous discourses and other commentaries on music, the visual arts, and Church doctrine, Dell'Antonio links the new ideas about cultivated listening with other intellectual trends of the period: humanistic learning, contemplative listening (or watching) as an active spiritual practice, and musical mysticism as an ideal promoted by the Church as part of the Catholic Reformation.
The Listening Book
by W. A. MathieuThe Listening Book is about rediscovering the power of listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal transformation. By exploring our capacity for listening to sounds and for making music, we can awaken and release our full creative powers. Mathieu offers suggestions and encouragement on many aspects of music-making, and provides playful exercises to help readers appreciate the connection between sound, music, and everyday life.
Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music's African Origins
by David F. GarcíaIn Listening for Africa David F. Garcia explores how a diverse group of musicians, dancers, academics, and activists engaged with the idea of black music and dance’s African origins between the 1930s and 1950s. Garcia examines the work of figures ranging from Melville J. Herskovits, Katherine Dunham, and Asadata Dafora to Duke Ellington, Dámaso Pérez Prado, and others who believed that linking black music and dance with Africa and nature would help realize modernity’s promises of freedom in the face of fascism and racism in Europe and the Americas, colonialism in Africa, and the nuclear threat at the start of the Cold War. In analyzing their work, Garcia traces how such attempts to link black music and dance to Africa unintentionally reinforced the binary relationships between the West and Africa, white and black, the modern and the primitive, science and magic, and rural and urban. It was, Garcia demonstrates, modernity’s determinations of unraced, heteronormative, and productive bodies, and of scientific truth that helped defer the realization of individual and political freedom in the world.
Listening for America: Inside The Great American Songbook From Gershwin To Sondheim
by Rob Kapilow“Not since the late Leonard Bernstein has classical music had a combination salesman-teacher as irresistible as Kapilow.” —Kansas City Star Few people in recent memory have dedicated themselves as devotedly to the story of twentieth- century American music as Rob Kapilow, the composer, conductor, and host of the hit NPR music radio program, What Makes It Great? Now, in Listening for America, he turns his keen ear to the Great American Songbook, bringing many of our favorite classics to life through the songs and stories of eight of the twentieth century’s most treasured American composers—Kern, Porter, Gershwin, Arlen, Berlin, Rodgers, Bernstein, and Sondheim. Hardly confi ning himself to celebrating what makes these catchy melodies so unforgettable, Kapilow delves deeply into how issues of race, immigration, sexuality, and appropriation intertwine in masterpieces like Show Boat and West Side Story. A book not just about musical theater but about America itself, Listening for America is equally for the devotee, the singer, the music student, or for anyone intrigued by how popular music has shaped the larger culture, and promises to be the ideal gift book for years to come.
Listening for the Secret: The Grateful Dead and the Politics of Improvisation
by Ulf OlssonListening for the Secret is a critical assessment of the Grateful Dead and the distinct culture that grew out of the group’s music, politics, and performance. With roots in popular music traditions, improvisation, and the avant-garde, the Grateful Dead provides a unique lens through which we can better understand the meaning and creation of the counterculture community. Marshaling the critical and aesthetic theories of Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault and others, Ulf Olsson places the music group within discourses of the political, specifically the band’s capacity to create a unique social environment. Analyzing the Grateful Dead’s music as well as the forms of subjectivity and practices that the band generated, Olsson examines the wider significance and impact of its politics of improvisation. Ultimately, Listening for the Secret is about how the Grateful Dead Phenomenon was possible in the first place, what its social and aesthetic conditions of possibility were, and its results. This is the first book in a new series, Studies and Texts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon.
Listening in Action: Teaching Music in the Digital Age (SEMPRE Studies in The Psychology of Music)
by Rebecca M RinsemaIn an age when students come to class with more varied music listening preferences and experiences than ever before, music educators can find themselves at a loss for how to connect with their students. Listening in Action provides the beginnings of a solution to this problem by characterizing students’ contemporary music listening experiences as they are mediated by digital technologies. Several components of contemporary music listening experiences are described, including: the relationship between music listening experiences and listener engagements with other activities; listener agency in creating playlists and listening experiences as a whole; and the development of adolescent identities as related to the agency afforded by music listening devices. The book provides an accessible introduction to scholarship on music listening across the disciplines of musicology, ethnomusicology, sociology of music, psychology of music, and music education. By reading Listening in Action, music educators can gain an understanding of recent theories of music listening in everyday life and how those theories might be applied to bridge the gap between music pedagogies and students who encounter music in a heavily mediated, postperformance world.
Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music
by Vazquez Alexandra T.Listening in Detail is an original and impassioned take on the intellectual and sensory bounty of Cuban music as it circulates between the island, the United States, and other locations. It is also a powerful critique of efforts to define "Cuban music" for ethnographic examination or market consumption. Contending that the music is not a knowable entity but a spectrum of dynamic practices that elude definition, Alexandra T. Vazquez models a new way of writing about music and the meanings assigned to it. "Listening in detail" is a method invested in opening up, rather than pinning down, experiences of Cuban music. Critiques of imperialism, nationalism, race, and gender emerge in fragments and moments, and in gestures and sounds through Vazquez's engagement with Alfredo Rodríguez's album Cuba Linda (1996), the seventy-year career of the vocalist Graciela Pérez, the signature grunt of the "Mambo King" Dámaso Pérez Prado, Cuban music documentaries of the 1960s, and late-twentieth-century concert ephemera.
Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Studies on the History of Society and Culture #21)
by James H. JohnsonBeginning with the simple question, "Why did audiences grow silent?" Listening in Paris gives a spectator's-eye view of opera and concert life from the Old Regime to the Romantic era, describing the transformation in musical experience from social event to profound aesthetic encounter. James H. Johnson recreates the experience of audiences during these rich decades with brio and wit. Woven into the narrative is an analysis of the political, musical, and aesthetic factors that produced more engaged listening. Johnson shows the gradual pacification of audiences from loud and unruly listeners to the attentive public we know today.Drawing from a wide range of sources—novels, memoirs, police files, personal correspondence, newspaper reviews, architectural plans, and the like—Johnson brings the performances to life: the hubbub of eighteenth-century opera, the exuberance of Revolutionary audiences, Napoleon's musical authoritarianism, the bourgeoisie's polite consideration. He singles out the music of Gluck, Haydn, Rossini, and Beethoven as especially important in forging new ways of hearing. This book's theoretical edge will appeal to cultural and intellectual historians in many fields and periods.
The Listening Party: Artists, Bands and Fans Reflect on 100 Favorite Albums
by Tim BurgessThe Charlatans&’ Tim Burgess invites you to the greatest listening party of all time. In 2020 when the world was forced to hit pause on live in-person gigs, Tim Burgess found an ingenious way to bring people together by inviting artists and bands, from Paul McCartney and New Order to Michael Kiwanuka and Kylie, to host real-time album playbacks via Twitter. Relive 100 of the most memorable listening parties here with stories from bands and fans, rarely seen backstage images, and unique insider info from those who created these iconic albums. "Hey Twitter, let's all say a big thanks to Tim for these brilliant events this year! We really needed them. So much great music being talked about.'" - Sir Paul McCartney "Twitter being used for something really positive." - Mary Beard
Listening Subjects: Music, Psychoanalysis, Culture
by David SchwarzIn Listening Subjects, David Schwarz uses psychoanalytic techniques to probe the visceral experiences of music listeners. Using classical, popular, and avant-garde music as texts, Schwarz addresses intriguing questions: why do bodies develop goose bumps when listening to music and why does music sound so good when heard "all around?" By concentrating on music as cultural artifact, Listening Subjects shows how the historical conditions under which music is created affect the listening experience.Schwarz applies the ideas of post-Lacanian psychoanalytic theorists Slavoj Zizek, Julia Kristeva, and Kaja Silverman to an analysis of diverse works. In a discussion of John Adams's opera Nixon in China, he presents music listening as a fantasy of being enclosed in a second skin of enveloping sound. He looks at the song cycles of Franz Schubert as an examination and expression of epistemological doubts at the advent of modernism, and traverses fantasy "space" in his exploration of the white noise at the end of the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." Schwarz also considers the psychosexual undercurrent in Peter Gabriel's "Intruder" and the textual and ideological structures of German Oi Musik. Concluding with a reading of two compositions by Diamanda Galás, he reveals how some performances can simultaneously produce terror and awe, abjection and rage, pleasure and displeasure. This multilayered study transcends other interventions in the field of musicology, particularly in its groundbreaking application of literary theory to popular and classical music.
Listening to Bob Dylan (Music in American Life)
by Larry StarrVenerated for his lyrics, Bob Dylan in fact is a songwriting musician with a unique mastery of merging his words with music and performance. Larry Starr cuts through pretention and myth to provide a refreshingly holistic appreciation of Dylan's music. Ranging from celebrated classics to less familiar compositions, Starr invites readers to reinvigorate their listening experiences by sharing his own—sometimes approaching a song from a fresh perspective, sometimes reeling in surprise at discoveries found in well-known favorites. Starr breaks down often-overlooked aspects of the works, from Dylan's many vocal styles to his evocative harmonica playing to his choices as a composer. The result is a guide that allows listeners to follow their own passionate love of music into hearing these songs—and personal favorites—in new ways. Reader-friendly and revealing, Listening to Bob Dylan encourages hardcore fans and Dylan-curious seekers alike to rediscover the music legend.
Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter, 1770-1839 (New Material Histories of Music)
by Thomas IrvineFrom bell ringing to fireworks, gongs to cannon salutes, a dazzling variety of sounds and soundscapes marked the China encountered by the West around 1800. These sounds were gathered by diplomats, trade officials, missionaries, and other travelers and transmitted back to Europe, where they were reconstructed in the imaginations of writers, philosophers, and music historians such as Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, and Charles Burney. Thomas Irvine gathers these stories in Listening to China, exploring how the sonic encounter with China shaped perceptions of Europe’s own musical development. Through these stories, Irvine not only investigates how the Sino-Western encounter sounded, but also traces the West’s shifting response to China. As the trading relationships between China and the West broke down, travelers and music theorists abandoned the vision of shared musical approaches, focusing instead on China’s noisiness and sonic disorder and finding less to like in its music. At the same time, Irvine reconsiders the idea of a specifically Western music history, revealing that it was comparison with China, the great “other,” that helped this idea emerge. Ultimately, Irvine draws attention to the ways Western ears were implicated in the colonial and imperial project in China, as well as to China’s importance to the construction of musical knowledge during and after the European Enlightenment. Timely and original, Listening to China is a must-read for music scholars and historians of China alike.
Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter, 1770-1839 (New Material Histories of Music)
by Thomas IrvineFrom bell ringing to fireworks, gongs to cannon salutes, a dazzling variety of sounds and soundscapes marked the China encountered by the West around 1800. These sounds were gathered by diplomats, trade officials, missionaries, and other travelers and transmitted back to Europe, where they were reconstructed in the imaginations of writers, philosophers, and music historians such as Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, and Charles Burney. Thomas Irvine gathers these stories in Listening to China, exploring how the sonic encounter with China shaped perceptions of Europe’s own musical development. Through these stories, Irvine not only investigates how the Sino-Western encounter sounded, but also traces the West’s shifting response to China. As the trading relationships between China and the West broke down, travelers and music theorists abandoned the vision of shared musical approaches, focusing instead on China’s noisiness and sonic disorder and finding less to like in its music. At the same time, Irvine reconsiders the idea of a specifically Western music history, revealing that it was comparison with China, the great “other,” that helped this idea emerge. Ultimately, Irvine draws attention to the ways Western ears were implicated in the colonial and imperial project in China, as well as to China’s importance to the construction of musical knowledge during and after the European Enlightenment. Timely and original, Listening to China is a must-read for music scholars and historians of China alike.