New Books In Music

Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story.  The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth (Bloomsbury, 2021) takes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages - from Bach to BTS and back - to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, looking at music in our everyday lives; music in world history; and music in evolution, from insects to apes, humans to AI. Through this journey we begin to understand how music is central to the distinctly human experiences of cognition, feeling and even biology, both widening and closing the evolutionary gaps between ourselves and animals in surprising ways. The Musical Human boldly puts the case that music is the most i

From the BBC Proms to Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, initiatives to promote classical music have been a pervasive feature of twentieth-century musical life. The goal of these initiatives was rarely just to reach a larger and more diverse audience but to teach a particular way of listening that would help the public "appreciate" music. In The Art of Appreciation: Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain (University of California Press, 2021), Dr. Kate Guthrie examines for the first time how and why music appreciation has had such a defining and long-lasting impact—well beyond its roots in late-Victorian liberalism. Dr. Guthrie traces the networks of music educators, philanthropists, policy makers, critics, composers, and musicians who, rather than resisting new mass media, sought to harness their pedagogic potential. The book explores how listening became embroiled in a nexus of modern problems around citizenship, leisure, and education. In so doing, it ultimately reveals how a new cultural milieu—

West Coast hip hop means much more than LA, argues Dr. Daudi Abe, a professor of humanities at Seattle Central College. In Emerald Street: A History of Hip Hop in Seattle (University of Washington Press, 2020), Abe argues that Seattle deserves an honored spot in the cultural geography of hip hop in the United States. Although less well known than Los Angeles, New York, or even Atlanta and New Orleans, Seattle has spawned two Grammy-award winning artists (Sir Mix-a-Lot and Macklemore) and has had an active hip hop, graffiti, and breaking scene since the early 1980s. Hip Hop, as Abe argues in the book, is all about making yourself known and representing where you're from as a means of communicating to others what it's like being from that place. In that regard, Seattle has consistently been a loud and proud voice in that regard, with the city's hip hop sitting alongside grunge and indie rock as parts of the musical landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile is a writer, musician, broadcaster, and curator from the Aran Islands. Working bilingually in Irish and English, she is drawn to voices, contemporary and historical, especially those that have been marginalized, and to what they have to say or sing. She read Music at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, and worked at the University of Notre Dame and the Library of Congress. Deirdre is currently curating an exhibition for Roinn na Gaeilge at NUI Galway on the first professor of Irish there, Tomás Ó Máille, and also preparing an anthology of over fifty traditional songs composed in the Aran Islands from the nineteenth century to the present day. In this interview, she discusses her new book Collecting Music in the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice (U Wisconsin Press, 2021), which uses interlocking case-studies of traditional music collection to investigate questions of preservation, curation and marginalization. Collecting Music in the Aran Islands, a critical historiographical study

Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Weird Al Yankovic’s fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than comedic music's reputation suggests. In this book, for the first time, the parodies, original compositions, and polka medleys of the Weird Al universe finally receive their due respect. In Weird Al, Seriously, musicologist Lily Hirsch weaves together original interviews with the prince of parody himself, creating a fresh take on comedy and music’s complicated romance. She reveals that Yankovic’s jests have always had a deeper meaning, addressing such topics as bullying, celebrity, and racial and gender stereotypes. Weird Al is undeterred by those who say funny music is nothing but a low-brow pastime. And thank goodness. With his good-guy grace still intact, Yankovic remains unapologetically and unmistakably himself. Reveling in the mischief and wisdom of Yankovic’s forty-year career, this book is an Al-expense-paid tour of a true comedic and musical genius. Franz

For a brief moment in the summer of 1900, Robert Charles was arguably the most infamous black man in the United States. After an altercation with police on a New Orleans street, Charles killed two police officers and fled. During a manhunt that extended for days, violent white mobs roamed the city, assaulting African Americans and killing at least half a dozen. When authorities located Charles, he held off a crowd of thousands for hours before being shot to death. The notorious episode was reported nationwide; years later, fabled jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton recalled memorializing Charles in song. Yet today, Charles is almost entirely invisible in the traditional historical record. So who was Robert Charles, really? An outlaw? A black freedom fighter? And how can we reconstruct his story? In The Ballad of Robert Charles: Searching for the New Orleans Riot Of 1900 (UNC Press, 2021), K. Stephen Prince sheds fresh light on both the history of the Robert Charles riots and the practice of history-writing itself.

Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool (Genesis Publications, 2021), brings together all of his finest work including a wealth of previously unseen photographs and treasured drawings. McCartney takes us from his very first photograph, taken with the family Kodak Brownie box camera, to experimenting with his Rollei Magic camera and finding a love in surrealism, through to capturing the Merseybeat scene in Liverpool. The venues that were at the heart of the city are all featured, including the Casbah Club, the Jacaranda Club, Hope Hall, the Tower Ballroom and the legendary Cavern Club. This signed, limited edition book reveals the secrets of the Sixties and Seventies Liverpool through McCartney's photography, illustrations, and commentary.  In a commentary that is honest, revealing and often humorous, McCartney describes growing up in a post-war Liverpool and the cultural sensation that followed. McCartney shares his love of satire, poetry and music, and his experience of being there to photograph the talent that cam

The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at the mercy of modernizing and technological forces that are driving universities towards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show in Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age (U Chicago Press, 2021), this crisis isn’t new—in fact, it’s as old as the humanities themselves. Today’s humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are strikingly similar to their nineteenth-century German counterparts. The humanities came into their own as scholars framed their work as a unique resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. The self-understanding of the modern humanities didn’t merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis; it also made crisis a core part of its project. Through this critica

During the Cold War, over 500 songs were written about nuclear weapons, fear of the Soviet Union, civil defense, bomb shelters, McCarthyism, uranium mining, the space race, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and glasnost. This music uncovers aspects of these world-changing events that documentaries and history books cannot. In Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music (Indiana University Press, 2021), Tim and Joanna Smolko explore everything from the serious to the comical, the morbid to the crude, showing the widespread concern among musicians coping with the effect of communism on American society and the threat of a nuclear conflict of global proportions. Atomic Tunes presents a musical history of the Cold War, analyzing the songs that capture the fear of those who lived under the shadow of Stalin, Sputnik, mushroom clouds, and missiles. Joanna Smolko holds a PhD in Musicology and is Adjunct Professor of Music at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia. Tim Smolko hold

Uwe Schütte's Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany (Penguin, 2021) is not your typical rock star biography. Eschewing gossipy interpersonal details, Schütte instead contextualizes Kraftwerk within contemporaneous debates about German cultural identity in the wake of Nazi atrocities. Kraftwerk's intellectual and artistic debts to Weimar era movements like Bauhaus and early Soviet experimentation in constructivism and futurism are fully elucidated, showing how Kraftwerk's futuristic electro-pop was actually deeply rooted in pan-European avant-garde movements. Schütte also provides in-depth analysis of each of Kraftwerk's albums, including now-disowned early recordings and the most recent Kraftwerk studio release, 2003's Tour de France. With this book, Schütte makes a compelling case for Kraftwerk as a major artist in 20th century pop music, as influential in its own way as The Beatles or Elvis Presley. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia Uni

Singing the same song is a central part of the worship practice for members for the Cherubim and Seraphim Christian Church in Lagos, Nigeria. Vicki L. Brennan reveals that by singing together, church members create one spiritual mind and become unified around a shared set of values. She follows parishioners as they attend choir rehearsals, use musical media—hymn books and cassette tapes—and perform the music and rituals that connect them through religious experience. Brennan asserts that church members believe that singing together makes them part of a larger imagined social collective, one that allows them to achieve health, joy, happiness, wealth, and success in an ethical way. Brennan discovers how this particular Yoruba church articulates and embodies the moral attitudes necessary to be a good Christian in Nigeria today. Singing Yoruba Christianity: Music, Media, and Morality (Indiana UP, 2018) makes an important contribution to understanding the complex religious landscape of Lagos, which includes variou

James Lapine's Putting it Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George" (FSG, 2021)  is a fascinating behind the scenes look at the creation of a modern masterpiece. Through personal recollections and interviews with nearly all his surviving collaborators, Lapine gives us an intimate look at the fights, feuds, and deadline-defying compositions that went into this beloved musical. The result is a dramatic and entertaining book that deserves a place on every musical theatre lover's shelf next to Finishing the Hat. It will also appeal to instructors in musical theatre book-writing and directing. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Poet and jazz band musician Sun Ra, born in 1914, is one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his band “Arkestra” appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, this keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology and that the planet Saturn was his true home. In his book, Sun Ra’s Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Dr. William Sites contextualizes this visionary musician in his home on earth—specifically in Chicago’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 Sun Ra lived and relaunched his career. The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then still known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, r

With The Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork (Indiana University Press, 2019), Lisa Gilman and John Fenn offer a comprehensive review of the ethnographic process for developing a project, implementing the plan, and completing and preserving the data collected. Throughout, readers will find a detailed methodology for conducting different types of fieldwork such as digital ethnography or episodic research, tips and tricks for key elements like budgeting and funding, and practical advice and examples gleaned from the authors' own fieldwork experiences. This handbook also helps fieldworkers fully grasp and understand the ways in which power, gender, ethnicity, and other identity categories are ever-present in fieldwork and guides students to think through these dynamics at each stage of research. Written accessibly for lay researchers working in different mediums and on projects of varying sizes, this step-by-step manual will prepare the reader for the excitement, challenges, and rewards of ethnog

“This is America”: Race Gender and Politics in America’s Musical Landscape by Katie Rios (Lexington Books, 2021) examines an eclectic mix of different artists and cultural products, from Laurie Anderson and Childish Gambino to Hamilton. The artists Rios studies confront problems of race and gender that have deep roots in American history, often by championing social movements that have recently swept the nation such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. While a musicologist by training, Rios is concerned with more than the sonic signifiers of political dissent and resistance. She finds a shared language of cultural and political critique in a wide array of music, videos, dance, visual arts, and theater. Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on race and class in American popular entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium

It’s time for The Blues! In Bitten by the Blues: The Alligator Records Story (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Alligator Records president and founder Bruce Iglauer and his co-author, Patrick Roberts of Northern Illinois University, tell the tale of fifty years of Chicago Blues. From Delta-born guitar expressionists like Hound Dog Taylor to modern vocalists like Shemekia Copeland, from the South Side to the Norway fjords, Alligator Records has seen it all. David Hamilton Golland is professor of history and immediate past president of the faculty senate at Governors State University in Chicago's southland. @DHGolland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Dr. White’s journey to earn a PhD in tuba The Baltimore School for the Arts The importance of having a village The hidden curriculum Why teaching and mentoring are equally important for educators to do A discussion of the book I’m Possible: A Story of Survival, A Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream Today’s book is: I'm Possible: A Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream (Flatiron Books, 2021), a memoir by Dr. Richard Antoine White. When he and his mother didn’t have a key to a room or a house, they had each other. Richard believed he could look after his mother, even as she struggled with alcoholism and sometimes disappeared, sending Richard into loops of visiting familiar spots until he could find her again. One night, when he almost died searching for her in the snow, he was taken in by his adoptive grandparents. When Richard joined the school band, he discovered a talent and a sense of purpose. He was ac

Johnny Cash famously declared himself to be “The Man in Black”. He sang that he dressed in a “somber tone” for “the poor and the beaten down, livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town” and for “the prisoner who is long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a victim of the times”. He famously performed for inmates of Folsom, San Quintin, and a number of other less well-known prisons. Cash publicly supported Native American activists and invited prominent African American guests on his prime-time television show. Yet, he initially supported Richard Nixon, shared the stage with the arch-conservative preacher Billy Graham, and recorded songs that glorified the South’s Lost Cause mythology. How do we make sense of these seemingly contradictory political acts and messages? In Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash, Michael Stewart Foley argues that Cash embodied a “politics of empathy” in which the singer always supported the underdog. This book makes the case that Johnny Cash deserves

In PUNK! Las Americas Editions (Intellect Books, 2021), editors Olga Rodrguez-Ulloa, Rodrigo Quijano, and Shane Greene have compiled a collection of academic essays and punk paraphernalia (including interviews, zines, poetry, and visual segments) exploring punk life. Part of the Global Punk Series, the volume is a collective challenge to the global hegemonic vision of punk. The book interrogates the dominant vision of punk--particularly its white masculine protagonists and deep Anglocentrism--by analyzing punk as a critical lens into the disputed territories of "America," a term that hides the heterogeneous struggles, global histories, hopes, and despairs of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century experience. The book explores punk life through its multiple registers: vivid musical dialogues, excessive visual displays, and underground literary expression. Check out the Book Trailer on YouTube or Instagram.  Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Weste

Today I talked to Vivian Kirkfield about her book Making Their Voices Heard: The Inspiring Friendship of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe (Little Bee Books, 2020). Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. On the outside, you couldn't find two girls who looked more different. But on the inside, they were alike--full of hopes and dreams and plans of what might be. Ella Fitzgerald's velvety tones and shube-doobie-doos captivated audiences. Jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington couldn't wait to share the stage with her, but still, Ella could not book a performance at one of the biggest clubs in town--one she knew would give her career its biggest break yet. Marilyn Monroe dazzled on the silver screen with her baby blue eyes and breathy boo-boo-be-doos. But when she asked for better scripts, a choice in who she worked with, and a higher salary, studio bosses refused. Two women whose voices weren't being heard. Two women chasing after their dreams and each helping the other to achieve them. This is the i