Sacred sound

This innovative book explores religion through music, the only art form named after a divinity and one of the most universally recognized forms of human experience.Music has been documented from prehistory to the present age in virtually all known cultures. For many, it is a vehicle for spiritual...

Last night a dj saved my life

Freshly revised and chock-full of new, vibrant stories, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life is the “lively and . . . necessary” (New York Times Book Review), and first and foremost definitive history of the musical outlaws who revolutionized the music industry: the disc jockeysTwenty-five years since i...

Ocean of sound

The classic account of ambient music, with a new foreword by Michel Faber

Audible loss

An innovative and much-needed critical work on music and memorialization in relation to AIDS, 9/11, and anti-Black violence in AmericaMusic has long served as a powerful medium for communal mourning and remembrance in times of crisis. Audible Loss examines musical responses to three major crises ...

Nuthin' but a "g" thang

In the late 1980s, gangsta rap music emerged in urban America, giving voice to—and making money for—a social group widely considered to be in crisis: young, poor, black men. From its local origins, gangsta rap went on to flood the mainstream, generating enormous popularity and profits. Yet the hi...

Maps of sorrow

This book takes readers through the polycentric world of the pre-colonial period in AfroAsia, which involved systems, processes and interactions that were interconnected through long-distance trade, slavery and migration.

Castrato phantoms

A new mapping of castrato afterlives in modern RomeAround 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive vocal training. Castrati were long mired in secrecy, obfuscations, and lies about their origin a...

Postcolonial repercussions

The anthology gathers heterogeneous approaches to emancipatory forms of ontological listening as well as pleas for critical fabulation and a practice of care. It tells us about opportunities, perspectives and the (im)possibility of decolonised listening.

Hard rain

Bob Dylan’s iconic 1962 song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” stands at the crossroads of musical and literary traditions. Alessandro Portelli explores the power and resonance of the song, considering the meanings of history and memory in folk cultures and in Dylan’s work.

Shattering biopolitics

Failures to listen or mishearings can be a matter of life and death. Shattering Biopolitics elaborates the intimate and complex relation between life and sound in philosophy, political theory, and sound-art.

The forgotten songs of the newfoundland outports

The Forgotten Songs of the Newfoundland Outports brings to light the best of the remaining unpublished material in Peacock’s 1951-1961 field collection. It aims to address the lacuna between Peacock’s massive field collection and what he eventually published in Outports.

The riot grrrl collection

The original manifestos, calls to arms, and rallying cries of the Riot Grrrl revolution, collected here for the first time.

Women in irish traditional music

Traces the position, experiences and reception of women in Irish traditional music through detailed ethnographic and statistical findings.This book is the first of its kind to engage with the larger subject of women in commercial Irish traditional music. It considers the experiences of performers...

Community music at the boundaries

Community Music at the Boundaries examines how music enhances the lives of those living in what might be considered marginalized settings. Built on foundational principles of community music, it addresses music and accessibility, health, justice and the prison system, faith, and education, by int...

Encyclopedia of political record labels

A love letter to over 750 record labels which produced political music as a medium for improving our communities and world.

The sounds of poetry viewed as music

Poets, literary critics, and lovers of poetry often speak of the “music of poetry.” This book gives substance to the metaphor by building on recent research in linguistics and music theory to propose a theory of the sounds of poetry conceived in musical terms.

The work of opera

Music at the limits

Music at the Limits is the first book to bring together three decades of Edward W. Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a variety of composers, musicians, and performers, Said carefully draws out music's social, political, and cultural contexts and, as a classically trained...

A short history of opera

When first published in 1947, A Short History of Opera immediately achieved international status as a classic in the field. Now, more than five decades later, this thoroughly revised and expanded fourth edition informs and entertains opera lovers just as its predecessors have.The fourth edition i...

Musical elaborations

Filling a significant gap in contemporary cultural studies, Musical Elaborations examines the intersection of the public and private meaning of music. Incorporating the music criticism of Adorno, musical ideas from literary works by Proust, and criticism by Benjamin and de Man into his work, note...

Dvs mindz

DVS Mindz might be the greatest rap group you’ve never heard of. Geoff Harkness takes readers on a unique two-decade journey alongside the members of DVS Mindz, chronicling their childhoods, their brush with success, and what became of them in the years that followed.

The velvet lounge

Troubled urban neighborhoods and jazz-club havens were the backdrop of Gerald Majer's life growing up in sixties and seventies Chicago. The Velvet Lounge, an original hybrid of memoir, biography, and musical description, reflects this history and pursues a sustained meditation on jazz along with ...

Experiencing music video

Music videos have ranged from simple tableaux of a band playing its instruments to multimillion dollar, high-concept extravaganzas. Born of a sudden expansion in new broadcast channels, music videos continue to exert an enormous influence on popular music. They help to create an artist's identity...

Musical practice as a form of life

How is musical practice connected with everyday life? Eva-Maria Houben shows that performing music as an activity—indeed, as playing—allows meaning to unfold in specific situations, places, and relationships.

Tuning up! the innovative potential of musikvermittlung

Various actors in the field of classical music have developed a wide range of new artistic and educational practices over the last two decades, aiming to facilitate in-depth aesthetic experiences, bond with new audiences, and encourage active cultural participation. The contributors focus on the ...

Popular music and public diplomacy

In the early years of the Cold War, Western nations increasingly adopted strategies of public diplomacy involving popular music. While the diplomatic use of popular music was initially limited to such genres as jazz, the second half of the 20th century saw a growing presence of various popular ge...

Tyranny of style

A defence of the composer’s duty to the text: not to entertain, not to soothe, but to translate meaning with precision and depth.

Music, madness, and the unworking of language

In the romantic tradition, music is consistently associated with madness, either as cause or cure. Writers as diverse as Kleist, Hoffmann, and Nietzsche articulated this theme, which in fact reaches back to classical antiquity and continues to resonate in the modern imagination. What John Hamilto...

Transfigured new york

Transfigured New York presents conversations with iconic, genre-bending artists who shaped the sounds of experimental movements like no wave, avant-jazz, and electronic music.

Afroasian musical imaginaries

This book is a collection of papers presented at a colloquium, ‘AfroAsian Musical Imaginaries’ that was organized by the IIC-IRD in collaboration with a project titled ‘RecentringAfroAsia: Musical and Human Migrations, 700-1500 AD’ that started from Cape Town in South Africa.

From vocal poetry to song

Although the song is often the subject of monographs, one of its forms remains insufficiently researched: the vocalized song, communicated to the spectator through performance. The study of the song takes one back to the study of vocal practices, from aesthetic objects to forms and to plural styl...

Xenakis – back to the roots

This book includes contributions by companions of Xenakis and renowned experts in Xenakis research with studies in philology of electroacoustic music.

Multilingual metal music

This multi-disciplinary book explores the textual analysis of heavy metal lyrics written in languages other than English including Japanese, Yiddish, Latin, Russian, Hungarian, Austrian German, and Norwegian. Topics covered include national and minority identity, politics, wordplay, parody, local...

The use and abuse of music

Using a critical criminological approach, this book analyses what is deviant and transgressive about music, focusing on three main parts; the concept of 'harmful' or deviant music; the use of music as punishment and the censorship and silencing of music.

Australian metal music

This book explores heavy metal music in Australia, engaging with the nuanced ways in which metal music, scenes and cultures are experienced. Leading metal scholars and active scene members examine the diversity of practices, histories and identities within Australian metal music, and question wha...

Medievalism and metal music studies

This edited collection investigates metal music’s enduring fascination with the medieval period from a variety of critical perspectives, exploring how metal musicians and fans use the medieval period as a fount for creativity and critique.

Heavy metal youth identities

Drawing on repeat interviews with metal youth, the book examines why they were first attracted to metal during high school; how they used metal music and identities as coping strategies; and ways that their metal affiliations took on further significance for helping them make important decisions ...

Foundations of modern harmony

First English translation of Karel Janec̆ek's Foundations of Modern Harmony, First published in 1965, it stands out among music theoretical publications with its balanced approach that combines systematics and empirical studies.

Dreams of germany

Diversity of disciplines and  author team (senior and junior; gender; national perspective). Range of iconic case studies: Bruckner and Wagner through to the Beatles and Kraftwerk. Represents the cream of upcoming scholars alongside more established scholarly voices. Revisits and...

Eleanor smith's hull house songs

Hull House Songs, newly republished with a critical commentary, recovers the hidden emancipatory possibilities of the Hull-House women's legacy.

As serious as your life

An essential masterpiece of jazz history by renowned photographer and music historian, with a new foreword by Richard Williams

Singing ideas

Singing Ideas: this is a highly original concept that echoes of A.B. Lord’s seminal work of oral theory entitled ‘The Singer of Tales’, but ultimately fuses oral theory and performance theory with social and anthropological theory which makes it very distinctive. This is the first full l...

The new percy grainger companion

A new collection with contributions from performing musicians and Grainger scholars and a detailed Catalogue of Works.In the thirty years since his Centenary in 1982 it has become even clearer that Percy Grainger [1882-1961] - composer, pianist and revolutionary - was a man born out of his time. ...