Podcasts by New Books in Music
Interviews with Scholars of Music about their New Books
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Making Meaning Episode 8: Gifts of Belonging from 2023-02-11T09:00
In music, Kimbra found a way to create and share gifts. And through that gifting, she provides space for others to find deep connection and belonging. But music also offers something more mysteriou...
ListenMaking Meaning Episode 8: Gifts of Belonging from 2023-02-11T09:00
In music, Kimbra found a way to create and share gifts. And through that gifting, she provides space for others to find deep connection and belonging. But music also offers something more mysteriou...
ListenNicholas Harkness, “Songs of Seoul” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea (University of California Press, 2013), Nicholas Harkness explores the human voice as an instrument, and object, and ...
ListenKristin Lieb “Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It is a challenge for all musicians to find success in the modern music industry, but women face unique challenges. Cultural narratives shape how female artists get sold to the public and those nar...
ListenMarc Myers “Why Jazz Happened” (University of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did jazz take shape? Why does jazz have so many styles? Why do jazz songs get longer as the twentieth century proceeds? Marc Myers, in his fascinating book Why Jazz Happened (University of Cali...
ListenDerrick Bang, “Vince Guaraldi at the Piano” (McFarland Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Vince Guaraldi at the Piano (McFarland Press, 2012),Derrick Bang chronicles San Francisco jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi’s sojourns into the world of jazz from the late 1940s to his untimely death ...
ListenSteve Miller, “Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in America’s Loudest City” (Da Capo Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today Detroit is down for the count, but as Steve Miller reveals inDetroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in America’s Loudest City (Da Capo Press, 2013), his comprehensive oral...
ListenMarcia Alesan Dawkins, “Eminem: The Real Slim Shady” (Praeger, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who is Eminem? Is he a violent misogynist, another “white” performer imitating African American musical styles, or is he something else entirely? In her provocative bookEminem: The Real Slim Shady(...
ListenKeith Waters, “The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet, 1965-1968” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“…when people were hearing us, they were hearing the avant-garde on the one hand, and they were hearing the history of jazz that led up to it on the other hand – because Miles was that history.” -H...
ListenErica Cusi Wortham, “Indigenous Media in Mexico: Culture, Community, and the State” (Duke University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Videography is a powerful tool for recording and representing aspects of human society and culture, and anthropologists have long used – and debated the use of – video as a tool to study indigenous...
ListenMichael Walker, “What You Want is in the Limo” (Spiegel and Grau, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Conventional wisdom holds that the birth of the rock star came in 1956 with the ascendance of Elvis Presley. Not so, says author Michael Walker, who argues in his page-turning What You Want is in t...
ListenD.X. Ferris, “Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff and Dave Years” (6623 Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
2013 has been an annus horribilis for thrash metal legends Slayer. In February, Slayer parted ways with longtime drummer Dave Lombardo for the third and likely final time. In May, guitarist Jeff Ha...
ListenDavid Novak, “Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thinking about “Noise” in the history and practice of music means thinking in opposites. Noise is both a musical genre, and is not. It both produces a global circulation and emerges from it. It has...
ListenAndrea S. Goldman, “Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing 1770-1900” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Before the twentieth century, opera was a kind of cultural glue: it was both a medium of mass-communication, and a powerful shaper and reflector of the popular imagination in the way TV and film ar...
ListenThomas Bey William Bailey, “Unofficial Release: Self-Released and Handmade Audio in Post-Industrial Society” (Belsona Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Thomas Bey William Bailey is the author of Unofficial Release: Self-Released and Handmade Audio in Post-Industrial Society (Belsona Books, 2012). He is a psycho-acoustic sound artist and writer on ...
ListenGreg Hainge, “Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is noise? In his new book Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), Greg Hainge, Reader in French at University of Queensland, Australia, explores this question...
ListenJonathan Sterne, “MP3: The Meaning of a Format” (Duke UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke University Press, 2012) is a fascinating study of the MP3 as a historical, cultural, conceptual, and social phenomenon. In the course of an account of the MP3 tha...
ListenJames Greene Jr., “This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits” (Scarecrow Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
New Jersey. Home to Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Yo La Tango. . .and the Misfits, a hardcore metal horror rock band from Lodi. In This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of the Misfits (Scarec...
ListenRichie Unterberger, “Won’t Get Fooled Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia” (Jawbone, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Between 1969 and 1973, the Who hit their commercial and creative peak. The legendary English quartet produced three Billboard Top Ten albums, including two double LP “rock operas,” Tommy (1969) and...
ListenWilliam J. Bush, “Greenback Dollar: The Incredible Rise of the Kingston Trio” (The Scarecrow Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After the huge success of Elvis Presley there was a moment when it looked as if rock ‘n’ roll might, indeed, be nothing more than a fad. Its successor in the world of popular music would be folk mu...
ListenBrian Harker, “Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“The public don’t understand jazz music as we musicians do. A diminished seventh don’t mean a thing to them, but they go for high notes. After all, the public is paying. If musicians depended on mu...
ListenMichael J. Kramer, “The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Michael J. Kramer, author of The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), spoke with Ray Haberski about the way rock music be...
ListenDan LeRoy, “Paul’s Boutique” (Continuum, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After spending millions to steal superstar Brooklyn-based rappers the Beastie Boys away from Def Jam Records in 1988, Capitol Records had high hopes for the act’s follow up effort. And why not? Lic...
ListenSteve Bergsman, “The Death of Johnny Ace” (Dancing Traveler Publishing, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s Christmas Eve at the Houston City Auditorium, 1954, and Big Mama Thornton is belting out “Hound Dog,” her hit from the previous year. It’s the years just before Elvis, before rock and roll, wh...
ListenMichael Streissguth, “Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville” (It Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late 1960s, Nashville’s recording industry was a hit-making machine. A small clique of writers, producers, engineers and session musicians gave sonic shape to the pop-friendly “Nashville Sou...
ListenD.X. Ferris, “Reign in Blood” (Continuum, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
By the fall of 1986, the Los Angeles heavy metal band Slayer had two solid but unspectacular records, 1984’s Haunting the Chapel and 1985’s Hell Awaits, to their name. Meanwhile, producer Rick Rubi...
ListenGreg Kot, “Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music” (Scribner, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the dawn of the twenty first century, the music business looked forward to its sixth decade of monopolistic dominance of the sale and manufacture of recorded music. An industry that once had doz...
ListenHoward Marshall, “Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri” (University of Missouri Press, 2012)) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What’s the difference between a fiddle and a violin? What about the difference between a hornpipe and a reel, a hoedown and a breakdown? The answer to the former, of course, is that you don’t spill...
ListenSteve Waksman, “This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk” (University of California Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I was a teenager growing up in the early 80s, I took it as an article of faith that punk rock and heavy metal were definably different genres. To be sure, punk and metal bands both played heav...
ListenMonica R. Miller, “Religion and Hip Hop” (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The relationship between music and religion is a site of increasing interest to scholars within Religious Studies. Monica Miller, Assistant Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Lehigh Univ...
ListenDon McLeese, “Dwight Yoakam: A Thousand Miles from Nowhere” (University of Texas Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Born in Kentucky, raised in Ohio, apprenticed in Los Angeles, Dwight Yoakam is not your typical mainstream country music star. Indeed, his honky-tonk style of country has always been a throwback to...
ListenStevie Chick, “Spray Paint the Walls: The Black Flag Story” (Omnibus, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Scholars commonly trace the rise of the punk rock movement of the mid-1970s to two cities and two bands, New York’s Ramones and London’s The Sex Pistols. In Spray Paint the Walls: The Black Flag St...
ListenSteven Roby and Brad Schreiber, “Becoming Jimi Hendrix” (Da Capo, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After his incendiary performance at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, Jimi Hendrix almost immediately went from obscure musician to pop superstar in America. But as Steven Roby and Brad...
ListenAlexandra Hui, “The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910” (MIT Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910 (MIT Press, 2013), Alexandra Hui explores a fascinating chapter of that history in a period when musical aesthetics an...
ListenAmanda Weidman, “Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of Music in South India” (Duke UP, 2006) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of Music in South India (Duke University Press, 2006) ) Amanda Weidman (scroll down to see her profile) explores how the colo...
ListenLaina Dawes, “What are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal” (Bazillion Points, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Extreme metal, punk, and hardcore. Slayer. Sick of it All. Cro-Mags. Decapitated. Behemoth. Musically aggressive rock bands with growling vocals and lyrics about annihilation, death, and dismemberm...
ListenErica Fox Brindley, “Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China” (SUNY Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Erica Fox Brindley‘s recent book explores the centrality of music to early Chinese thought. Making broad use of both received and newly excavated texts, Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmon...
ListenMatt Rahaim, “Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindustani Music” (Wesleyan UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Have you seen North Indian vocalists improvise? Their hands and voices move together to trace intricate melodic patterns. If we think that music is just made of sequences of notes, then this motion...
ListenNathan Hesselink, “SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture” (University of Chicago Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The name of the group is deceptively simple: Samul (“four objects”) + Nori (“folk entertainment”) = SamulNori. Nathan Hesselink‘s new book traces the transformations of this complex contemporary Ko...
ListenCatherine Tackley, “Benny Goodman’s Famous 1939 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Feed: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Comic: “Practice!” When I first began to build a jazz record library back in the early 1960s, one particular album stood out. A rare “double-album,” Benny G...
ListenPeter Benjaminson, “Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar” (Chicago Review Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who is Motown’s first real star? The answer, of course, is Mary Wells, singer of such classics as “My Guy,” “Bye Bye Baby,” “The One Who Really Loves You,” “You Beat Me to the Punch,” and “Two Love...
ListenReiland Rabaka, “Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement” (Lexington Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement (Lexington Books, 2012), the second installment of his hip hop trilogy, Reiland Rabaka again dis...
ListenPreston Lauterbach, “The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll” (W. W. Norton, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Where does rock ‘n’ roll begin? In The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll (W. W. Norton, 2011), Preston Lauterbach makes a strong case for its beginnings in the backwoods and small-tow...
ListenJesse Jarnow, “Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock” (Gotham Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the ball fields and barrooms of Hoboken to your turntable, uh, CD player, uhm, MP3 player comes Yo La Tango, uh, Tengo, and with them alternative, uhm, indie rock. In Big Day Coming: Yo La Ten...
ListenDave Gluck, “Rhythms of the Game: The Link Between Musical and Athletic Performance” (Hal Leonard, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Around 380 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in the Republic about the idealized society as having a “united influence of music and sport” where its people “mingle music with sport in the fair...
ListenGreg Prato, “Too High to Die: Meet the Meat Puppets” (Lulu, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Disclosure: I am a Meathead, an avid fan of Meat Puppets. I have been since 1986 when I first heard their version of “Good Golly Miss Molly” from Out My Way. I’m even writing a book about the band....
ListenShawn Bender, “Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since the “taiko boom” of the closing decades of the 20thcentury, taiko drumming has arguably become Japan’s most globally successful performance medium. Shawn Bender‘s recent book takes us through...
ListenDavid Kirby, “Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Continuum, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a-lop-bam-boom!”And so rock and roll was born. And so American culture changed forever. So says David Kirby in Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Continuum, 2009). “T...
ListenStuart Henderson, “Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s” (University of Toronto Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
You’ve probably heard of Telegraph Avenue (Berkeley), Harvard Square, The Village, and Haight-Ashbury. That’s where “the scene” was in the late 1960s, right? But have you heard of Yorkville? I hadn...
ListenBen Cawthra, “Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography in Jazz” (University of Chicago Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ben Cawthra‘s Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz (University of Chicago, 2011) discusses the way images of jazz and the musicians who played it both reflected and influenced our ra...
ListenReiland Rabaka, “Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Feminist Movement” (Lexington Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Cultural movements don’t exist in vacuums. Consciously or not, all movements borrow from, and sometimes reject, those that came before. In Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the ...
ListenAndrew S. Berish, “Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s” (University of Chicago, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
American history is all about movement: geographical, cultural, ideological. Economic depression and war make the 1930s and ’40s a dramatic example of this movement. In Lonesome Roads and Streets o...
ListenDave Oliphant, “KD: A Jazz Biography” (Wings Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Texas poet/author/historian Dave Oliphant‘s KD: A Jazz Biography (Wings Press, 2012) is a poetic tribute to the life of Jazz trumpeter and one of the original Jazz Messengers, Kenny Dorham. Dorham,...
ListenSara Marcus, “Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution” (Harper Perennial, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Harkening out of the United State’s Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, Bikini Kill and Bratmobile made a big enough splash that their names and songs are still recognized by many rock fans. And ...
ListenKathy Sloane, “Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club” (Indiana UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kathy Sloane‘s Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club (Indiana UP, 2011) captures a time and place in San Francisco in the 70s and early 80s that we may never see again. Owner/impresario/musician...
ListenBob Riesman, “I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy” (University of Chicago Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Big Bill Broonzy was a master storyteller. From his name, he was born Lee Conly Bradley, to his age, he typically added a decade, to the facts of his growing up in the pre-civil rights segregated S...
ListenKevin Whitehead, “Why Jazz? A Concise Guide” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kevin Whitehead‘s highly readable, informative and entertaining Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (Oxford University Press, 2011) is bookshelf “must have” for anyone who loves jazz – and he does it in a qu...
ListenBilly Coleman, "Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
CAN you hear the people sing? Political music is often understood as the property of the common people, used as a potent (and noisy) weapon against the interests of the powerful. This is particular...
ListenBarry Kernfeld, “Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929” (University of Chicago Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Have you ever illegally downloaded a song from the internet? How about illicitly burned copies of a CD? Made a “party tape?” Bought a bootleg album? You may have done these things, but have you pur...
ListenEmily J. Lordi, "The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Soul is one of those concepts that is often evoked, but rarely satisfactorily defined. In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s (Duke University Press 2020), Emily J. Lord...
ListenMatthew Delmont, “The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, 2012) weaves a fascinating nar...
ListenBonny H. Miller, "Augusta Browne: Composer and Woman of Letters in Nineteenth-Century America" (U Rochester Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Born around 1820, Augusta Browne was a pianist, organist, composer, music pedagogue, entrepreneur, music critic, and writer. In Augusta Browne: Composer and Woman of Letters in Nineteenth-Century A...
ListenWill Hermes, “Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever” (Faber and Faber, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“New York City tends to erase its history, endlessly reinventing itself: that is its way, ” writes Will Hermes on the final page of his book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York t...
ListenFelicia Angeja Viator, "To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1985, Greg Mack, a DJ working for Los Angeles radio station KDAY, played a song that sounded like nothing else on West Coast airwaves: Toddy Tee’s “The Batteram,” a hip hop track that reflected ...
ListenRobert Pielke, “Rock Music in American Culture: The Sounds of Revolution” (2nd Edition; McFarland, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If, as John Lennon reportedly stated, “Before Elvis there was nothing,” then after Elvis there had to be something, right? That something, argues Robert Pielke in Rock Music in American Culture: Th...
ListenSimone C. Drake, "Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Simone C. Drake and Dwan K. Henderson's Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Duke UP, 2020) is an engaging and interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary blac...
ListenCarolyn Burke, “No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf” (Knopf, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Edith Piaf’s story is rife with drama. The daughter of an acrobat and a singer, she was the first French superstar and sang with wild abandon in a voice that rivaled Judy Garland’s. And yet, so of...
ListenJoel Miller, "Memoir of a Roadie: Axl Said I made a Great Cup of Tea…" (2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Memoir of a Roadie: Axl said I made a great Cup of Tea…Scott Weiland liked The Carpenters…and Ozzy Drinks Rosé (2020) Joel Miller recounts his time in the early 2000s as a road for...
ListenAndy Neill, “Had Me a Real Good Time: Faces Before, During, and After” (Omnibus, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Had Me a Real Good Time: Faces Before, During, and After (Omnibus 2011) Andy Neill provides a detailed account of Faces, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed groups of the early seve...
ListenDave O’Brien, "Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries" (Manchester UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It would be hard to overstate the importance of culture. It teaches us, heals us, rips us apart and puts us back together in new and surprising ways. Given its fundamental importance to the human e...
ListenKevin Avery, “Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson” (Fantagraphics, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Nelson, the Rolling Stone writer and Mercury Records A & R guy who signed the New York Dolls, is quoted in Kevin Avery‘s Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson (Fa...
ListenWilliam P. Seeley, "Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory of the Arts" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do we distinguish art from non-art artifacts, and what does cognitive science have to do with it? In Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory of the Arts (Oxford University Press, 2020), Willia...
ListenAlice Bag, “Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story” (Feral House, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I saw “The Decline of Western Civilization,” Penelope Spheeris’s film documenting the late seventies punk scene in Los Angeles, when it was first released in 1981/82. Performances by the “popular” ...
ListenFarzaneh Hemmasi, "Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Farzaneh Hemmasi is the author of Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music (Duke UP, 2020). The title obviously refers the song "California Dreamin'...
ListenRoberto Avant-Mier, “Rock the Nation: Latin/o Identites and the Latin Rock Diaspora” (Continuum, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Rock the Nation: Latin/o Identites and the Latin Rock Diaspora (Continuum, 2010), Roberto Avant-Mier challenges the traditional historical notion of rock and roll and rock being the result of th...
ListenFabian Holt, "Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions (University of Chicago Press), Fabian In Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions (University of Chicago Pr...
ListenSean Wilentz, “Bob Dylan in America” (Doubleday, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From carrier of the folk torch to electric rebel, lyrical genius to literary thief, white-faced minstrel to born-again Christian-Jewish singer of Christmas carols, Bob Dylan is an enigmatic giant o...
ListenBethany Klein, "Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the music industry work in the modern world? In Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2020), Bethany Klein, a Professor of Media and Communication at the University...
ListenLester K. Spence, “Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Hip-hop has, within a short time span, moved from a free-flowing expression of urban youth to a global–and highly marketable–musical genre. Its influence in culture, fashion, film, and music is ubi...
ListenJulia Sneeringer, "A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69" (Bloomsbury, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg ...
ListenKevin Fellezs, “Birds of a Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk, and the Creation of Fusion” (Duke UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
To introduce his book Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk, and the Creation of Fusion (Duke, 2011),Kevin Fellezs quotes Jeff Beck: “For Christ’s sake, I wish somebody would make up a name for this kind...
ListenGlenda Goodman, "Cultivated by Hand: Amateur Musicians in the Early American Republic" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven were all working in Europe during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, so perhaps it is no surprise that musicologists have diligently studied these men and thei...
ListenHeather Augustyn, “Ska: An Oral History” (McFarland, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Before reggae there was rock steady, and before that, ska,” writes Cedella Marley in the foreword to Heather Augustyn’s 2010 book Ska: An Oral History (McFarland, 2010). By way of interviews with ...
ListenStooges Brass Band, "Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game" (U Mississippi Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game (University of Mississippi Press, 2020) is a collaboration between musician and ethnomusicologist Kyle DeCoste and more than a dozen ...
ListenKimbrew McLeod and Peter DiCola, “Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling” (Duke University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One hallmark of important art, in any medium, is a thoughtful relation with artistic precursors. Every artist reckons with heroes and rivals, influences and nemeses, and the old work becomes a part...
ListenJoanna Stingray, "Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground" (Doppelhouse Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground (Doppelhouse Press, 2020) is Joanna Stingray’s autobiographical account of her time on the underground music scene in the USSR and Russia in th...
ListenEric C. Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I arrived at college in the early 1980s, drugs were cool, music was cool, and drug-music was especially cool. The coolest of the cool drug-music bands was The Velvet Underground. They were fro...
ListenM. Hinds and J. Silverman, "Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black" (U Iowa Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black (University of Iowa Press, 2020), Michael Hinds and Jonathan Silverman examine transnational and translocal fandoms and the lega...
ListenSheree Homer, “Catch that Rockabilly Fever: Personal Stories of Life on the Road and in the Studio” (McFarland, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“On July 5, 1954, Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black forever changed musical history,” writes Sheree Homer in Catch that Rockabilly Fever: Personal Stories of Life on the Road and in the S...
ListenSteven C. Smith, "Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to ...
ListenPeter Filichia, “Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season 1959-2009” (Applause, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Speaking to long time theater critic Peter Filichia, one is reminded of listening to an old-time sportwriter talk about baseball. The Broadway he describes is full of colorful personalities, anecdo...
ListenLauren Michele Jackson, "White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation" (Beacon, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation (Beacon, 2019), Lauren Michele Jackson analyzes Christina Aguilera, high fashion, the conceptual poetr...
ListenJoe Carducci, “Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That…” (Redoubt Press, 2007) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
SST Records was a seminal label in Los Angeles’s independent music scene of the 1980’s. Founded in 1978 by Greg Ginn, SST released records by a slew of influential bands such as Black Flag, Minutem...
ListenRae Linda Brown, "Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1933, the Chicago Symphony performed the Symphony in E Minor by Florence B. Price. It was the first time a major American orchestra played a composition by an African American woman. Despite her...
ListenSimon Morrison, “The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years” (Oxford UP, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the Soviet Union, artists lived lives that were at once charmed and cursed. Though relatively poor, the USSR poured resources into the arts. The Party created a large, well-funded cultural elite...
ListenKyle Barnett, "Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry" (U Michigan Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020), Kyle Barnett tells the story of the smaller U.S. record labels in the 1920s that created ...
ListenMack Hagood, "Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How have we used twentieth- and twenty-first-century sound technologies to carve out sonic space out of the hustle and bustle of contemporary life? In search for an answer, in this episode I speak ...
ListenKaren Patel, "The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour: Arts, Work and Inequalities" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How has social media changed inequality in the cultural industries? In The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour: Arts, Work and Inequalities (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Karen Patel, AHRC Le...
ListenCaridad Svich, "Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (Routledge, 2019 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Routledge, 2019) is Caridad Svich’s love letter to the 1998 musical that introduced the world to its favorite East German ex-pat genderqueer rock sta...
ListenGabriel Dattatreyan, "The Globally Familiar: Digital Hip-Hop, Masculinity, and Urban Space in Delhi" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book The Globally Familiar: Digital Hip-Hop, Masculinity, and Urban Space in Delhi (Duke University Press, 2020), Gabriel Dattatreyan departs from the existing literature on masculinity in I...
ListenMartin James, "State of Base: The Origins of Jungle/Drum and Bass" (Velocity Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The reissue and revision of Martin James’ State of Bass: The Origins of Jungle/Drum & Bass (Velocity Press, 2020) examines the origins and progression of British Junglism in the 1990s. Rave culture...
ListenSunny Stalter-Pace, "Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffman’s Life in Vaudeville and Dance" (Northwestern UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gertrude Hoffman is one of many entertainers who were big stars in vaudeville before World War I, but whose celebrity faded as the American public was seduced by radio and film after the Great War....
ListenJunior Tomlin, "Junior Tomlin: Flyer and Cover Art" (Velocity Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Junior Tomlin: Flyer & Cover Art (Velocity Press, 2020) showcases the artwork of Junior Tomlin. Featuring flyers and record covers Tomlin has created for the rave scene starting in the late 1980s, ...
ListenManuel Betancourt, "Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), Manuel Betancourt explores what makes Judy Garland’s landmark album great, and why it holds such a central place in queer cultur...
ListenMarianna Ritchey, "Composing Capital: Classical Music in the Neoliberal Era" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the place of classical music in contemporary society? In Composing Capital: Classical Music in the Neoliberal Era (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Marianna Ritchey, an?assistant profess...
ListenRachel Mundy, "Animal Musicalities: Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening" (Wesleyan UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“What makes song sparrows, Verdi, medieval monks, and minstrelsy part of the same taxonomy?” So asks—and answers—Rachel Mundy, who is Assistant Professor of Music at Rutgers University–Newark. In h...
ListenKendra Preston Leonard, "Music for the Kingdom of Shadows: Cinema Accompaniment in the Age of Spiritualism" (Humanities Commons, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We might call movies made before the advent of the talkies in 1927 silent films—but for the audience, they were certainly not silent. Live orchestras and solo instrumentalists accompanied early mov...
ListenGrace Elizabeth Hale, "Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture (University of North Carolina Press), Grace Elizabeth Hale tells the epic story of the Athens, Georgia mus...
ListenShana Redmond, "Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke University Press, 2020), Shana Redmond explores the ways in which Paul Robeson, silenced by state repression in his lifetime, still sp...
ListenR. Farrugia and K. D. Hay, "Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay of Oakland University on their new book Women Rapping Revolution.(University of California P...
ListenKenneth Womack, "Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and The End of The Beatles" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
To what degree did each of The Beatles exhibit emotional intelligence in the band’s final year? You'll find out in the discussion I had with Kenneth Womack about his new book Solid State: The Story...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenDale Cockrell, "Everybody’s Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most books about American music ask how it sounded, who wrote it, or who performed it. In his new book, Everybody’s Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917 (Norton, 2019), Dale Cockr...
ListenStacy Wolf, "Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Stacy Wolf of Princeton University about her book Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America (Oxford University Pr...
ListenNick Prior, "Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society" (SAGE, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nick Prior—Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Edinburgh—discusses his new book, Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society (SAGE Publications, 2018). The book explores the soci...
ListenPaul Harkins, "Digital Sampling: The Design and Use of Music Technologies" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does technology shape music? In Digital Sampling: The Design and Use of Music Technologies (Routledge, 2019), Paul Harkins, a lecturer in music at Edinburgh Napier University, looks at the rela...
ListenForrest Stuart, "Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do young men use drill music and social media to gain power? In his new book, Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy (Princeton University Press, 2020), Forres...
ListenTyler Bickford, "Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, Tween Pop: Children’s Music and Public Culture (Duke University Press, 2020), Tyler Bickford explores how the tween music market rose during the mid to late 2000s. Bickford address...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenPeter La Chapelle, "I’d Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historians, musicologists, and sociologists have long studied the relationship between politics and music. Peter La Chapelle’s new book, I’d Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbi...
ListenCaspar Melville, "It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City" (Manchester UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does music help us to understand the contemporary city? In It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City (Manchester UP, 2019), Caspar Melville, co-chair of the ...
ListenJacki Apple, "Performance / Media / Art / Culture: Selected Essays 1983-2018" (Intellect Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Performance / Media / Art / Culture: Selected Essays 1983-2018 (Intellect Books, 2019) collects more than thirty years of critical writing by artist and writer Jacki Apple. These essays trace impor...
ListenThor Magnusson, "Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), Thor Magnusson—musician, Professor of Future Music, and member of the Experimental Music T...
ListenRichard M. Gamble, "A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
America’s most famous hymn was created in very unusual circumstances. Julia Ward Howe had travelled close to the front line and had witnessed a skirmish between Union and Confederate troops. Return...
ListenAnna Bull, "Class, Control, and Classical Music" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the relationship between inequality and classical music? In Class, Control, and Classical Music (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anna Bull, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University ...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenKunio Hara, "Joe Hisaishi's Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A beloved Japanese anime move released in 1988, My Neighbor Totoro tells the story of two sisters, Satsuki and Mei, as they deal with the separation from their mother who is in the hospital, and th...
ListenNick Crossley, "Connecting Sounds: The Social Life of Music" (Manchester UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What does music tell us about society? In Connecting Sounds: The Social Life of Music (Manchester University Press, 2020), Nick Crossley, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, int...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenRyan Weber, "Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Circles in Music and Literature" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Musicologists have long tried to understand how cosmopolitanism and nationalism affected classical music. Ryan Weber takes on this task in his book, Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Circles in Mus...
ListenKyle Devine, "Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the human and environmental cost of music? In Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music (MIT Press, 2019),Kyle Devine, an Associate Professor in the Department of Musicology at the Univers...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenMark Katz, "Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In April 2014, a cohort of twenty-five hip hop artists assembled in Washington, D.C. for the first orientation meeting of a new cultural diplomacy program sponsored by the United States State Depar...
ListenJane D. Hatter, "Composing Community in Late Medieval Music: Self-Reference, Pedagogy, and Practice" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are a handful of pieces from the Medieval and Renaissance periods that most music students learn about in their introductory history courses; among them are Guillaume Du Fay’s, Ave regina cel...
ListenAlberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...
ListenLaura K. T. Stokes, "Fanny Hensel: A Research and Information Guide" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nineteenth-century composer Fanny Hensel is the subject of more published research than any other woman of the period, with the possible exception of Clara Schumann. A prolific composer, salon host...
ListenRichard F. Thomas, "Why Bob Dylan Matters" (Dey Street, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could the world’s most prestigious book prize be ...
ListenLincoln A. Mitchell, "San Francisco Year Zero" (Rutgers UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
1978 was the year that changed San Francisco forever, writes Lincoln A. Mitchell in San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team (Rutgers University Press,...
ListenNina Sun Eidsheim, "The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre and Vocality in African American Music" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2018, Nicolle R. Holliday and Daniel Villarreal published the results of a study they conducted asking people to rank how “black” President Obama sounded when given four different examples of hi...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenMark Burford, "Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mahalia Jackson, the great mid-twentieth century gospel singer, thought of herself as an embodiment of the history of African Americans in the United States. She understood that her family’s backgr...
ListenJennifer C. Lena, "Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts" ( Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How did American elites change the meaning of Art? In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts (Princeton University Press, 2019), Jennifer C. Lena, associate professor of arts...
ListenWilliam Gibbons, "Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Video games are a significant part of popular entertainment in the twenty-first century. From Words with Friends to Grand Theft Auto, most people spend at least some of their leisure time with vide...
ListenAnn Powers, "Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music" (Dey St. Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music (Dey St. Books, HarperCollins, 2017), Ann Powers explores the rich and, at times, unexpected intersections of love, sex...
ListenCandace L. Bailey, "Charleston Belles Abroad: The Music Collections of Harriet Lowndes, Henrietta Aiken, and Louisa Rebecca McCord" (U South Carolina Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Microhistories are an important method of investigating an historical moment with a fine-grain focus that can puncture holes in the generalizations that historians sometimes make. In her new book, ...
ListenStephen R. Duncan, "The Rebel Café: Sex, Race, and Politics in Cold War America’s Nightclub Underground" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The art and antics of rebellious figures in 1950s American nightlife?from the Beat Generation to eccentric jazz musicians and comedians?have long fascinated fans and scholars alike. In The Rebel Ca...
ListenE. Douglas Bomberger, "Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There has been a recent trend in books that explore one year in detail: 1914, 1927, and 1968 have all received this treatment. E. Douglas Bomberger’s new book Making Music American: 1917 and the Tr...
ListenBryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of Communication at Louisiana State University--on a ...
ListenFernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan, "Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Music has always been integral to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, with songs such as Kendrick Lamar’s "Alright," J. Cole’s "Be Free," D’Angelo and the Vanguard's "The Charade,...
ListenVivi Lachs, "Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London, 1884-1914" (Wayne State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London, 1884-1914 (Wayne State University Press, 2018), Vivi Lachs, social and cultural historian, Yiddishist, performer, and ...
ListenRené Weis, "The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis" (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though she died in 1847 at a young age, Marie Duplessis inspired one of the greatest operas ever composed. In The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis (Oxford University Press, 2015), René We...
ListenRandall Stephens, "The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock n’ Roll" (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I was immediately drawn to the book The Devil’s Music by Dr. Randall Stephens, Associate Professor of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo. Dr. Stephens and I came across one anot...
ListenSu'ad Abdul Khabeer, “Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Islam in American has been profoundly shaped by the Black Muslim experience. However, Black Muslims are often marginalized both within their own religious communities and in public discourse about ...
ListenNancy Yunhwa Rao, "Chinatown Opera Theater in North America" (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The story of popular entertainment in American immigrant communities is only just beginning to be told. Chinatown Opera Theater in North America by Nancy Yunhwa Rao from University of Illinois Pres...
ListenLevi S. Gibbs, "Song King: Connecting People, Places and Past in Contemporary China" (U Hawaii Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does music link people across time and space? How do singers modulate their repertoires to forge links with audiences both within and across local, regional and national borders? What are the c...
ListenJules Evans, "The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience" (Canongate Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
People have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishin...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...
ListenSuk-Young Kim, "K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Given its expanding multimedia presence in Asia and around the world for many years now, K-pop is a phenomenon that is hard to ignore. This “animal that thrives on excess,” as Suk-Young Kim puts it...
ListenJennifer Ronyak, "Intimacy, Performance, and the Lied in the Early Nineteenth Century" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Lied is one of the most important genres of nineteenth-century Romantic music, and one of the most intriguing. Balanced between public and private performance, an expression of both poetic and ...
ListenNick Soulsby, "Sacrifice and Transcendence: The Oral History of Swans" (Jawbone Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nick Soulsby's most recent book, Sacrifice and Transcendence: The Oral History of Swans was published in 2018 by Jawbone Press and is a collection of extensive and revealing interviews regarding th...
ListenRobin Wallace, "Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery" (UChicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Music lovers and researchers alike have long been fascinated by the story of Ludwig van Beethoven who became profoundly deaf as an adult and could not hear some of his most famous compositions incl...
ListenTim Mohr, "Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall" (Algonquin Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Algonquin Books, 2018), Tim Mohr examines East Germany punk rock and its role in the collapse of the East German di...
ListenKatherine K. Preston, "Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Katherine Preston’s new book, Opera for the People: English-Language Opera & Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2017) is the first complete overview of the repert...
ListenPatrick B. Mullen, "Right to the Juke Joint: A Personal History of American Music" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On its back cover, Patrick B. Mullen’s Right to the Juke Joint: A Personal History of American Music(University of Illinois Press, 2018) is aptly described as “part scholar's musings and part fan's...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenJohn C. Hajduk, "Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960" (Lexington Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960(Lexington Books, 2018), John C. Hajduk examines the emergence of a “rock and roll cultu...
ListenTracy Fessenden, “Religion Around Billie Holiday” (Penn State UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Billie Holiday is one of the most iconic jazz performers of all time. Her voice is certainly unmistakable but for many her religious sensibilities may be invisible. In Religion Around Billie Holida...
ListenLee Bidgood, “Czech Bluegrass: Notes from the Heart of Europe” (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Although bluegrass music is typically associated with the bluegrass state of Kentucky and Appalachia, the genre is actually played in many pockets all around the world. In Czech Bluegrass: Notes f...
ListenR. C. Romano and C. B. Potter, “Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past” (Rutgers UP, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (Rutgers University Press, 2018), edited by Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, is a collection of essays about Lin...
ListenZachary Lechner, “The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of White Southernness, 1960–1980” (U Georgia Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When talking about the American South in the second half of the twentieth century, popular discourse tended to fall into one of three camps (on occasion, two might coexist simultaneously): the “Vic...
ListenRobert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark, “The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music (Oxford University Press, 2018), editors Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark curate a wide-ranging collection of essays abou...
ListenTala Jarjour, “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Religious music can be a source of comfort and release, but also a remembrance of sadness and loss. In Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Oxford University Press, 2018), Tala Jarjour analyz...
ListenStephen Lee Naish, “Riffs & Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy” (Headpress, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Riffs & Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy (Headpress, 2018), Stephen Lee Naish tells the story of Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers’ 2001 album Know Your Enemy. The record...
ListenDavid García, “Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins (Duke University Press, 2017), David García reminds us that how culture is understood and interpreted not...
ListenJames P. Leary, “Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946” (U Wisconsin Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946 (University of Wisconsin Press) first appeared in 2015 when it comprised of a hardback book, five CDs, and one DVD. ...
ListenNaomi André, “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Naomi André’s innovative new book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is an example of a concept she calls “engaged musicology.” Positioning herself within...
ListenBen Blackwell, “The Blue Series: The Story Behind the Color” (Third Man Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Blue Series: The Story Behind the Color (Third Man Books, 2017), Ben Blackwell invites readers behind the scenes for the making of Third Man Records’ 7-inch single Blue Series. Founded in 20...
ListenEli Maor, “Music by the Numbers: From Pythagoras to Schoenberg” (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most of us have heard of the math-music connection, but Eli Maor’s Music by the Numbers: From Pythagoras to Schoenberg (Princeton University Press, 2018) is THE book that explains what that connect...
ListenDavid Novak and Matt Sakakeeny, “Keywords in Sound” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Featuring twenty entries on subjects such as music, voice, noise, shape and the body Keywords in Sound (Duke, 2015) pushes at the boundaries of ‘sound studies’ through its intellectual overviews an...
ListenRebekah J. Buchanan, “Writing a Riot: Riot Grrrl Zines and Feminist Rhetorics” (Peter Lang, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1989, Time magazine pronounced “Feminism is dead.” It seemed to mainstream culture that the conservative era, marked by Regan and Thatcher, had killed the lingering energy that began with the ri...
ListenM. L. Liebler, “Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond” (Wayne State UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond (Wayne State University Press, 2016), M. L. Liebler curates an exhaustive collection of essays about Detroit music by a diverse group of music...
ListenDenise Von Glahn, “Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life” (U Illinois Press, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There are few living American classical composers for whom an academic biography has been published, but Libby Larsen deserves this type of study. At the opening of her book, Libby Larsen: Composin...
ListenSandra Jean Graham, “Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What happened in popular entertainment when African Americans could access the stage after the Civil War? In Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry (University of Illinois Press...
ListenJames Cook, “Memory Songs: A Personal Journey into the Music that Shaped the 90s” (Unbound, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today on the New Books in Music podcast James Cook discuses his book, Memory Songs: A Personal Journey into the Music that Shaped the 90s (Unbound, 2018). The book details the author’s own adolesce...
ListenCharles Hughes, “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As America changed in the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the Southern music industry was changing as well. The music studios of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals–known as the “country-soul ...
ListenChristina Scharff, “Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work: The Classical Music Profession” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What sort of inequalities characterize classical music today? In Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work: The Classical Music Profession (Routledge, 2018), Christina Scharff, a senior lecturer in c...
ListenMichael Ramirez, “Destined for Greatness: Passions, Dreams, and Aspirations in a College Music Town” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The pursuit of a musical career crosses the mind of most children. But, for most, a vocation is nothing more than a farfetched fantasy that will never come true. Music is often considered more appr...
ListenGillian M. Rodger, “Just One of the Boys: Female-to-Male Cross-Dressing on the American Variety Stage” (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the 1870s, one of the most popular forms of entertainment attended by American working-class men was variety—a succession of unrelated bawdy acts that preceded its tamer later nineteenth-century...
ListenJohn Gennari, “Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the intersectionalities between African American and I...
ListenImani Perry, “May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem in August 2016 prior to a preseason game reopened a national conversation about public performances of patriotism. What does a national a...
ListenMarc Hertzman, “Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2013), Marc Hertzman revisits the history of Brazil’s quintessential music and dance genre to explore the links be...
ListenEmily Petermann, “The Musical Novel: Imitation of Musical Structure, Performance, and Reception in Contemporary Fiction” (Camden House, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Musical Novel: Imitation of Musical Structure, Performance, and Reception in Contemporary Fiction (Camden House, 2014; a new paperback edition has recently come out (Boydell and Brewer, 2018)) ...
ListenKimberly A. Francis, “Teaching Stravinsky: Nadia Boulanger and the Consecration of a Modernist Icon” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Pedagogue, composer, and conductor Nadia Boulanger was a central figure in Igor Stravinsky’s life during the middle part of his career, providing him with support, advice, and a discerning analytic...
ListenMarian Wilson Kimber, “The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word” (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Although largely forgotten today, elocution was a popular form of domestic and professional entertainment from the late nineteenth century until around World War II. Elocution is the dramatic readi...
ListenJean R. Freedman, “Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics” (U Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When folklorist Jean Freedman first met Peggy Seeger in 1979, Freedman was an undergraduate on her junior year abroad in London, while her American compatriot had been living in the UK for two deca...
ListenSterling Murray, “The Career of an Eighteenth-Century Kapellmeister: The Life and Music of Antonio Rosetti” (U Rochester Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though he never enjoyed the fame of his contemporaries Mozart and Haydn, Antonio Rosetti was a successful composer whose works received a wide audience. In his book, The Career of an Eighteenth-Cen...
ListenC. Grant and H. Schippers, “Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2016), a multi-authored volume co-edited by Catherine Grant and Huib Schippers, examines a range of music...
ListenLarry Wolff, “The Singing Turk” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon (Stanford University Press, 2016), Larry Wolff takes us into that dist...
ListenClinton Walker, “Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women and Australian Music” (NewSouth Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women and Australian Music (NewSouth Books, 2018), Australian writer Clinton Walker presents a group biography of the black women who made Australian music. Through his...
ListenDouglas W. Shadle, “Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
One of the most neglected areas of musicological research is art music written by nineteenth-century American composers, thus Douglas Shadle‘s book Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century ...
ListenKevin Bartig, “Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kevin Bartig’s new book Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky (Oxford University Press, 2017) explores multiple facets of one of the most famous film scores of the twentieth century, as well as the ...
ListenBenjamin Teitelbaum, “Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Music is frequently connected to leftist politics and seen as the soundtrack to social protest movements, most notably the civil rights movement. But the far right groups use music too. Benjamin Te...
ListenFranz Rickaby, et al., “Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era” (U Wisconsin Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gretchen Dykstra‘s career to date has been both impressive and wide-ranging. She was the founding President of the Times Square Alliance, the former Commissioner of the NYC Department of Consumer A...
ListenJonathan R. Wynn, “Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport” (U of Chicago, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A city in its original state is arbitrary and has no meaning. The act of placemaking is a multifaceted process in the planning, designing, and management of public spaces. The social construction o...
ListenRebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, “Personal Stereo” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow‘s book, Personal Stereo (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) , which is part of the Object Lessons series, offers a compelling and expertly researched study of the Sony Walkman, taking ...
ListenMark Fleischman, “Inside Studio 54” (Rare Bird Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Studio 54 opened its doors 40 years ago and since that time it has held a place in American popular culture. Studio 54 was the place to go dancing to great music, mingle with celebrities and beauti...
ListenJenny Natasha and Tom Boniface-Webb, “I Was Britpopped: The A-Z of Britpop” (Valley Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I Was Britpopped: The A-Z of Britpop (Valley Press, 2017) is a comprehensive guide to the people, the bands, the places, and the events that shaped British music in the mid-to-late 1990s. Taking on...
ListenRichard Power Sayeed, “1997: The Future that Never Happened (Zed Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Richard Power Sayeed’s book, 1997: The Future that Never Happened (Zed Books, 2017), is a brilliant and exhaustively researched account of the late 1990s. The subject matter covered is broad. From...
ListenDaniel Kane, “Do You Have a Band?”: Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Often, poetry and punk rock are seen as distinct activities that occur in different locations with separate audiences. Many would also ascribe to them varying levels of cultural and political capit...
ListenJoel Dinerstein, “The Origins of Cool in Postwar America” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, The Origins of Cool in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Cultural Studies scholar Joel Dinerstein explores the cultural history of cool and the codes that define...
ListenRebecca Mitchell, “Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics, and the Twilight of the Russian Empire” (Yale UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the close of the nineteenth century, Europe was teeming with apocalyptic dreams of destruction and renewal. In Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics, and the Twilight of the Russian Empire (Ya...
ListenRosemary Lucy Hill, “Gender, Metal and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music” (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do women experience and participate in Metal? This question forms the core of Gender, Metal and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), the new bo...
ListenJohari Jabir, “Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Civil War’s ‘Gospel Army'” (Ohio State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the labor for Black soldiers of the regiment? That is the question Johari Jabir asks in his book Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Civil War’s “Gospel Army” (Ohio State Univer...
ListenKarmen MacKendrick, “The Matter of Voice: Sensual Soundings” (Fordham UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Philosophers have long tried to silence the physical musicality of voice in favor of the purity of ideas without matter, souls without bodies. But voices resonate among bodies and texts; they are s...
ListenJennifer Fleeger, “Mismatched Women: The Siren’s Song Through the Machine” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jennifer Fleeger‘s Mismatched Women: The Siren’s Song Through the Machine (Oxford University Press, 2014) tells the story of women in film and their representation as aberrations, but also as momen...
ListenFranz Nicolay, “The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar” (The New Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the punk music scene like in Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, or Mongolia? Who listens to punk in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans? What kind of venues host punk shows? Punk mus...
ListenPaul C. Jasen, “Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience” (Bloomsbury, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As audio technology has advanced, so has our love-affair with deep bass. Dr. Paul Jasen‘s book, Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2016), probes the m...
ListenDanny Goldberg, “In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea” (Akashic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In his new book, In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea (Akashic Books, 2017), Danny Goldberg explores the political, social, and cultural influences of 1967–a pivotal year in Americ...
ListenAndre Sirois, “Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology: Cultural Exchange, Innovation, and Democratization” (Peter Lang, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the role of the deejay in shaping hip-hop? Did deejays shape the technology that is used to create the music or were they simply consumers of mixers, faders, and microphones? What is the re...
ListenPaul Youngquist, “A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism” (U. Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The legendary band leader Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on Earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the d...
ListenJames A. Cosby, “Devil’s Music, Holy Rollers and Hillbillies: How America Gave Birth to Rock and Roll” (McFarland, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Do you love Rock and Roll or is Rock and Roll music dead? Are you old enough to have put any money in a jukebox to hear your favorite song, watched American Bandstand, or spent any hours viewing mu...
ListenPetra R. Rivera-Rideau, “Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Puerto Rico is often depicted as a “racial democracy” in which a history of race mixture has produced a racially harmonious society. In Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto R...
ListenAnna Harwell Celenza, “Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book, Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Anna Harwell Celenza examines the arrival of jazz in Italy afte...
ListenTyina Steptoe, “Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City” (U. California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do you know about Houston, Texas? That Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States? That Houston was the home of the 2016 NCAA Final Four in basketball and the home of the NFL’s Su...
ListenMelissa Hidalgo, “Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands” (Headpress, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands (Headpress, 2016), Melissa Hidalgo examines the world of Morrissey fandom in US-Mexico borderlands. As the frontman of The Smiths, Morrissey is rega...
ListenBen Westhhoff, “Original Gangtas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap” (Hachette, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The real story behind the origin of gangsta rap is difficult to discern. Between the bombastic rhetoric and imagery, the larger-than-life characters, and the subsequent success of many of the indiv...
ListenDavid W. Stowe, “Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On today’s program we will be speaking with David W. Stowe about his recent book Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137 (Oxford University Press, 2016). Song of Exile weaves together the ...
ListenJack Hamilton, “Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2016), Jack Hamilton examines major American and British recording artists of the 1960s to explain what ...
ListenAlisa Solomon, “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof” (Metropolitan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (Metropolitan, 2013), Alisa Solomon, Director of the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program at Columbia University’s Gradua...
ListenDavid Ensminger, “The Politics of Punk: Protest and Revolt from the Streets” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Punk has long been viewed as a subculture of anger, disruption, and alternative political and lifestyle choices. In The Politics of Punk: Protest and Revolt from the Streets (Rowman and Littlefield...
ListenAndrew Schulman, “Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul (Picador 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do the musical compositions of Bach, Gershwin, and the Beatles all have in common? Besides being great pieces of music, according to Andrew Schulman, they promote healing in intensive care (IC...
ListenMichelle Cruz Gonzales, “The Spitboy Rule: Tales of Xicana in a Female Punk Band” (PM Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her new book The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band (PM Press, 2016), Michelle Cruz Gonzales tells her story as a member of a feminist hardcore punk band. The band, Spitboy, e...
ListenPaul Roquet, “Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul Roquet’s wonderful new book begins with an offering of jellyfish and proceeds to teach us how to read the air. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)...
ListenNoriko Manabe, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Noriko Manabe’s new book is a compelling analysis of the content, performance style, and role of music in social movements in contemporary Japan. Paying special attention to the constraints that li...
ListenEd Berlin, “King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Few composers dominate a genre of music as completely as did Scott Joplin. From the publication of his iconic Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 onward his ragtime compositions came to serve as the soundtrack ...
ListenLaurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and economic effects of music. Laurent Dubois‘ new b...
ListenJason Bivins, “Spirits Rejoice! Jazz and American Religion” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jazz is often dubbed the greatest American original art form. This claim might be difficult to contend. But a close exploration of the folks who created, listened, and participated in jazz environm...
ListenDoug Bradley and Craig Werner, “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War” (U of Massachusetts Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the “Ballad of the Green Berets” to “Bad Moon Rising,” the music of the Vietnam War is woven through every vets memories. Vietnam vet Doug Bradley and his fellow University of Wisconsin profes...
ListenRoshanak Kheshti, “Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The origins of world music can be found in early ethnographic recordings as anthropologists and ethnomusicologists sought to record the songs of lost or dying cultures. In Modernity’s Ear: Listenin...
ListenLisa McCormick, “Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The competition seems to be a crucial part of the classical music world. In Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Lisa McCormick...
ListenGeoffrey Baker, “El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
El Sistema, the massive Venezuelan youth orchestra program, has been hailed in some quarters as the next big idea in music education (if not as the savior of classical music itself). Any who have f...
ListenGeorge Cotkin, “Feast of Excess: A Cultural History of the New Sensibility” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
George Cotkin is an emeritus professor of history at California Polytechnic State University. In his book Feast of Excess: A Cultural History of the New Sensibility (Oxford University Press, 2015) ...
ListenJennifer Bain, “Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of Medieval Composer” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Hildegard of Bingen was many things: a religious leader, a prolific letter-writer, a visionary prophet, possibly a compiler of medical lore, and certainly one of the most important composers of the...
ListenAisha Durham, “Home With Hip Hop Feminism” (Peter Lang, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is hip hop defined by its artists or by its audience? In Home With Hip Hop Feminism, Aisha Durham returns hip hop scholarship to its roots by engaging in an ethnographic and autoethnographic approa...
ListenGuntis Smidchens, “The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution” (University of Washington Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the late 1980s, the Baltic Soviet Social Republics seemed to explode into song as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national movements challenged Soviet rule. The leaders of each of these movemen...
ListenPhil Ford, “Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is hip? Can a piece of music be hip? Or is hipness primarily a way of engaging with music which recognizes the hip potential of the music? Or primarily a manner of being, which allows the hip ...
ListenGrace Wang, “Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race Through Musical Performance” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many people assume that music, especially classical music, is a universal language that transcends racial and class boundaries. At the same time, many musicians, fans, and scholars praise music’s a...
ListenJonathyne Briggs, “Sounds French: Globalization, Cultural Communities, and Pop Music, 1958-1980” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Pop pop pop pop musik” -M Jonathyne Briggs‘ new book, Sounds French: Globalization, Cultural Communities, and Pop Music, 1958-1980(Oxford University Press, 2015) makes music the historical focus ...
ListenJohn McMillian, “Beatles vs. Stones” (Simon and Schuster, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
John McMillian‘s Beatles vs. Stones (Simon and Schuster, 2013) presents a compelling composite biography of the two seminal bands of the 1960s, examining both the myth-making and reality behind the...
ListenDeborah R. Vargas, “Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda” (U of Minnesota Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her transformative text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua referred to the U.S.-Mexico border region as “una herida abierta (an open wound) where the Third World grates ag...
ListenPatty Farmer, “Playboy Swings! How Hugh Hefner and Playboy Changed the Face of Music” (Beaufort Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What do Aretha Franklin, Rodney Dangerfield, and desegregation in New Orleans have in common? Perhaps, surprisingly, the answer is Playboy. Playboy magazine served as a guidebook for young people i...
ListenPreston Lauterbach, “Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis” (Norton, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Following the Civil War, Memphis emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment, after a period of turmoil. Preston Lauterbach joins host Jonathan Judaken for an in-depth discus...
ListenAmber R. Clifford-Napoleone “Queerness in Heavy Metal Music: Metal Bent” (Routledge 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Much of the scholarship on heavy metal has assumed that the primary audience is straight white males, who are likely sexist and homophobic. In her new book, Queerness in Heavy Metal Music: Metal Be...
ListenChris O’Leary, “Rebel Rebel” (Zero Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who is David Bowie? Fans and critics have debated this question throughout his lengthy and storied career. Chris O’Leary, in his new book Rebel Rebel (Zero Books, 2015) meticulously examines Bowie’...
ListenFelicia McCarren, “French Moves: The Cultural Politics of le hip hop” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Felicia McCarren‘s latest book, French Moves: The Cultural Politics of le hip hop (Oxford University Press, 2013) explores the fascinating evolution of this urban dance form in the French context. ...
ListenRobin James, “Resistance and Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism and Neo-Liberalism” (Zero Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How are contemporary pop culture ideas about resilience used by Neoliberal capitalism? Robin James addresses this question using philosophy of music (and by doing philosophy through music) in her n...
ListenAlex Ogg, “Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables: The Early Years” (PM Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Discussions of punk tend to focus on groups, like the Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, and the punk scenes of New York, London, and Los Angeles. Punk, however, was a broader musical cultural moveme...
ListenNick Crossley, “Networks of Sound, Style, and Subversion” (Manchester UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Can sociology explain punk? In a new book, Networks of Sound, Style, and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool, and Sheffield, 1975-80 (Manchester University Pr...
ListenAna Marcia Ochoa Gautier, “Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia” (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Beyond what people say, what their voices sound like matters. Voice, as Ana Marcia Ochoa Gautier argues in this marvelous new book Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Colombia(D...
ListenChristina Dunbar-Hester, “Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism” (MIT Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For the past few decades a major focus has been how the Internet, and Internet associated new media, allows for greater social and political participation globally. There is no disputing that the I...
ListenAlexander R. Galloway, “Laruelle: Against the Digital” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“The chief aim of [philosopher Francois Laruelle’s] life’s work is to consider philosophy without resorting to philosophy in order to do so.” What is non-philosophy, what would it look like to pra...
ListenDonald Deardorff, “Bruce Springsteen: American Poet and Prophet” (Scarecrow Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Bruce Springsteen is an American icon, known to his fans as “Bruce” and the “Boss.” Springsteen burst onto the American music scene in 1975 with the release of his classic album, Born To Run. His c...
ListenKutter Callaway, “Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience” (Baylor UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For many people, filmgoing is a moment to submerge themselves in a new world of meaning and experience a different reality. While film is prominently defined by its ‘moving images’ these alone are ...
ListenHeather Augustyn, “Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation” (Scarecrow, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is Ska music? This is a deceptively complicated question. In this podcast Heather Augustyn, the author of Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation(Scarecrow Press, 2013) discusses ska’s journey from a l...
ListenS. Duncan Reid, “Cal Tjader: The Life and Recordings of the Man Who Revolutionized Latin Jazz” (McFarland, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
S. Duncan Reid has written a meticulously researched and detailed account of the performances and recording career of Bay Area-raised and small group Latin-jazz innovator and vibraphonist Cal Tjade...
ListenRachel Clare Donaldson, “I Hear America Singing: Folk Music and National Identity” (Temple UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The last few decades has seen a turn toward traditional forms of American music; call it Americana, alternative country, or a new folk revival. In “I Hear America Singing”: Folk Music and National ...
ListenNadine Hubbs, “Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music” (University of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Academics don’t pay enough attention to class. And when we do, too often we only magnify the tendency for working class subjects to be defined according to middle class norms; and according to thos...
ListenRandal Doane, “Stealing All Transmissions: A Secret History of the Clash” (PM Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Who are the Clash? How did they become the “only band that matters”? In this podcast, Randal Doane, the author of Stealing All Transmissions: A Secret History of the Clash (PM Press, 2014), discuss...
ListenAdrienne Trier-Bieniek, “Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos” (The Scarecrow Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What are female fans of popular music seeking and hearing when they listen to music and attend concerts? In an innovative and fascinating study entitled Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and...
ListenGabriel Solis, “Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On November 29, 1957, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holliday, Zoot Sims, Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, and a multi-talented young R&B player who played jazz that night, Ray Charles, and others played a bene...
ListenTim Anderson, “Popular Music in a Digital Music Economy” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Since the 1990s, the music industry has been going through a massive transformation. After World War II, the primary way audiences participated in the music business in the period between 1945 and ...
ListenLorena Turner, “The Michael Jacksons” (Little Moth Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
During his lifetime, Michael Jackson became a global icon. Michael Jackson was beloved by millions; his journey began as he became a boy star with The Jackson Five and it culminated with his being ...
ListenDavid Hesmondhalgh, “Why Music Matters” (Wiley Blackwell, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the value of music and why does it matter? These are the core questions in David Hesmondhalgh‘s new book Why Music Matters (Wiley Blackwell, 2014). The book attempts a critical defence of...
ListenIsaac Weiner, “Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism” (NYU Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 2004, the traditionally Polish-Catholic community of Hamtramck Michigan became the site of a debate over the Muslim call to prayer. Members of the Hamtramck community engaged in a contest about...
ListenMark Prado, “Living Colour: Beyond the Cult of Personality” (CreateSpace, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The New York-based rock band Living Colour exploded into national consciousness in 1988 after their video for the thunderous “Cult of Personality” went into heavy rotation on MTV. Their album, Vivi...
ListenSimon Morrison, “The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years” (Oxford UP, 2009) from 2009-02-20T21:45:13
In the Soviet Union, artists lived lives that were at once charmed and cursed. Though relatively poor, the USSR poured resources into the arts. The Party created a large, well-funded cultural elite...
ListenSimon Morrison, “The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years” (Oxford UP, 2009) from 2009-02-20T21:45:13
In the Soviet Union, artists lived lives that were at once charmed and cursed. Though relatively poor, the USSR poured resources into the arts. The Party created a large, well-funded cultural elite...
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