This 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 aesthe...

From the bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape and Turn Around Bright Eyes, "a funny, insightful look at the sublime torture of adolescence".—Entertainment WeeklyThe 1980s meant MTV and John Hughes movies, big dreams and bigger shoulder pads, and millions of teen girls who nursed crushes on the members of Duran Duran. As a solitary teenager stranded in the suburbs, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music, and himself....

The definitive oral history of the seminal rock concert, Woodstock—three days of peace and music and one of the most defining moments of the 1960s—with original interviews with Roger Daltrey, Joan Baez, David Crosby, Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, and dozens of headliners, organizers, and fans.On Friday, August 15, 1969, a crowd of 400,000—an unprecedented and unexpected number at the time—gathered on Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York for a weekend of rock ‘n’ roll...

In her nuanced, extremely perceptive book, Laina Dawes champions the liberating possibilities of metal while questioning the color-blindness of the metal world, celebrating the role of black women in creating rock music, examining the reaction of the black community to black punks and metalheads, and sorting out the gender issues that complicate sisterhood in a male-dominated sphere. Her thoughtful treatise on the power of music and identity challenges black women in the metal scene to joi...

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, you'd do best to hone your chops and avoid clichés (like the one that begins this sentence) by learning from the prime movers. How to Write About Music offers a selection of the best writers on what is perhaps our most universally beloved art form. Selections from the critically-acclaimed 33 1/3 series appear alongside new interviews and insights from authors like Lester Bangs, Chuck Klosterman, Owen Pallet, Ann Powers and...

Australia likes to celebrate its musical heritage, but there are so many stories that haven't been told.'Andrew tells us things about the songs that we might not know and things about the songs that no one should ever know. He does it with intelligence and humour, not to mention an acid wit.' - Jimmy BarnesWhich band is Australia's premier act for drunk men to hug to? Which dance floor smash owes its existence to an elderly Canadian stand-up team? How does ...

Clad in white tie and tails, dancing and scatting his way through the "Hi-de-ho" chorus of "Minnie the Moocher," Cab Calloway exuded a sly charm and sophistication that endeared him to legions of fans. In Hi-de-ho, author Alyn Shipton offers the first full-length biography of Cab Calloway, whose vocal theatrics and flamboyant stage presence made him one of the highest-earning African American bandleaders. Shipton sheds new light on Calloway's life and career, explaining how he traversed ra...

It's October 1977, and the Rolling Stones are in a Paris recording studio. They're under siege. Keith Richards's legal troubles after his arrest for heroin possession threaten the band's future, and the broad consensus among rock aficionados is that the band will never again reach the heights of Exile on Main Street.But Mick Jagger is writing lyrics inspired by the year he has just spent in New York City, where he was hanging out with the punks at CBGB and with the glitterati at St...

Tosca's première in Rome in January 1900 was nearly disrupted by a terrorist threat to blow up Italy's King Umberto. Victorien Sardou had written the melodrama for the great actress Sarah Bernhardt. Giacomo Puccini's popular opera is a tale of sadism and brutality, torture, attempted rape, murder, an execution and two suicides. 'Realism' was in vogue: Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana had been a great success, as had Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. With sharp practice, the publisher Giulio Ricordi ...

In The Drum: A History, drummer, instructor, and blogger Matt Dean details the earliest evidence of the drum from all regions of the planet, looking at cave paintings, statues, temple reliefs, and burial remains before finding existing relics of actual drums, which have survived thousands of years. Highlighting the different uses and customs associated with drumming, Dean examines how the drum developed across many cultures and over thousands of years before they became the instruments we ...

The Politics of Opera in Handel's Britain examines the involvement of Italian opera in British partisan politics in the first half of the eighteenth century, which saw Sir Robert Walpole's rise to power and George Frideric Handel's greatest period of opera production. McGeary argues that the conventional way of applying Italian opera to contemporary political events and persons by means of allegory and allusion in individual operas is mistaken; nor did partisan politics intrude into the ma...

While unappreciated and controversial during most of his life, Anton Bruckner is today regarded as the greatest symphonist between Beethoven and Gustav Mahler – in terms of originality, boldness and monumentality of his music. The image of Bruckner the man, however, is still extreme instance of the tenacious power of prejudice. No less a figure than Gustav Mahler coined the aperçu about Bruckner being «a simpleton – half genius, half imbecile». The author is out to correct that mispercepti...