Music in Cinema by
Michel Chion is renowned for his explorations of the significance of frequently overlooked elements of cinema, particularly the role of sound. In this inventive and inviting book, Chion considers how cinema has deployed music. He shows how music and film not only complement but also transform each other. The first section of the book examines film music in historical perspective, and the second section addresses the theoretical implications of the crossover between art forms. Chion discusses a vast variety of films across eras, genres, and continents, embracing all the different genres of music that filmmakers have used to tell their stories. Beginning with live accompaniment of silent films in early movie houses, the book analyzes Al Jolson's performance in The Jazz Singer, the zither in The Third Man, Godard's patchwork sound editing, the synthesizer welcoming the flying saucer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Kinshasa orchestra in Felicité, among many more. Chion considers both original scores and incorporation of preexisting works, including the use and reuse of particular composers across cinematic traditions, the introduction of popular music such as jazz and rock, and directors' attraction to atonal and dissonant music as well as musique concrète, of which he is a composer. Wide-ranging and original, Music in Cinema offers a welcoming overview for students and general readers as well as refreshingly new and valuable perspectives for film scholars.
Why You Like It by
From the chief architect of the Pandora Radio's Music Genome Project comes a definitive and groundbreaking examination of why we respond to music the way we do. Everyone loves music. But what is it that makes music so universally beloved and have such a powerful effect on us? In this sweeping and authoritative book, Dr. Nolan Gasser--a composer, pianist, and musicologist, and the chief architect of the Music Genome Project, which powers Pandora Radio--breaks down what musical taste is, where it comes from, and what our favorite songs say about us. Dr. Gasser delves into the science, psychology, and sociology that explains why humans love music so much; how our brains process music; and why you may love Queen but your best friend loves Kiss. He sheds light on why babies can clap along to rhythmic patterns and reveals the reason behind why different cultures around the globe identify the same kinds of music as happy, sad, or scary. Using easy-to-follow notated musical scores, Dr. Gasser teaches music fans how to become engaged listeners and provides them with the tools to enhance their musical preferences. He takes readers under the hood of their favorite genres--pop, rock, jazz, hip hop, electronica, world music, and classical--and covers songs from Taylor Swift to Led Zeppelin to Kendrick Lamar to Bill Evans to Beethoven, and through their work, Dr. Gasser introduces the musical concepts behind why you hum along, tap your foot, and feel deeply. Why You Like It will teach you how to follow the musical discourse happening within a song and thereby empower your musical taste, so you will never hear music the same way again.
Frank Sinatra by
Frank Sinatra's 45-year recording career and the songs he recorded: his professional biography as a recording artist; the evolution of his vocal technique and performance style; sources and variety of songs recorded; his 12 most-recorded composers and lyricists (20 others are discussed briefly); his interaction with his six major sources of orchestration; his recording sessions; a review of all albums referenced; and the technical and commercial side of his career. Supporting the research are a master song list (approximately 1,250 recordings), songs by publication date, composer and lyricist indexes, every arrangers work (listing each conductor and orchestra), a detailed list of recording sessions--in order--plus radio, television and film work, and three album lists, showing contents, order of first releases, label sequence and producers.
She Bop by
'It will make you want to form a band, it will make you angry, it will make you laugh, and it will educate you.'GINA BIRCH 'This book is a joy on many levels: O'Brien enthuses about music so elegantly that one immediately has to seek out the records she describes, and she forces you to reassess the exploitative images of female songwriters and musicians that were, and still are, being used every day.' CAITLIN MORAN 'Dip in anywhere and you'll instantly find yourself drawn into the rich world of female artists and their creative experience, personal struggles, and wide-ranging opinions. What unites us and what divides us.' MIKI BERENYI 'In the beginning there was She Bop: the comprehensive and entertaining music herstory. This new edition of Lucy O'Brien's essential book includes explorations of gender identity that have bubbled to the surface in recent times. Every music fan needs this book.' HELEN MCCOOKERYBOOK 'Anybody who has shoved a bulging sock down their pants before picking up a guitar should read this book. Prick is something that will happen to your finger if you practice enough.' TORI AMOS Drawing on more than 270 original interviews with female artists and women working behind the scenes in A&R, marketing, music publishing, and production, She Bop presents a feminist history of women in popular music, from 1920s blues to the present day. Talking to iconic artists from Eartha Kitt and Nina Simone to Debbie Harry and Beyonce, acclaimed author Lucy O'Brien charts how women have negotiated 'old boy' power networks to be seen and to get their music heard. This revised edition updates that story through many fresh interviews and new perspectives. Since She Bop was first published in 1995, digital downloading has transformed the music landscape. But has the issue of gender inequality changed too? In a new introduction and closing chapter, O'Brien celebrates the rise of unique women such as Lizzo and Billie Eilish, who are bursting through and creating new possibilities for female artists, while also looking at the struggles of artists like Kesha, and wondering whether the pop industry has had its #MeToo moment yet. Published to celebrate the original book's 25th anniversary - and in a year that also marks 50 years of Women's Liberation - this new She Bop will appeal to a huge cross-section of readers, from music fans to the LGBT audience and women of all generations.
Unbinding Gentility by
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2022 Hearing southern women in the pauses of history Southern women of all classes, races, and walks of life practiced music during and after the Civil War. Candace L. Bailey examines the history of southern women through the lens of these musical pursuits, uncovering the ways that music's transmission, education, circulation, and repertory help us understand its meaning in the women's culture of the time. Bailey pays particular attention to the space between music as an ideal accomplishment--part of how people expected women to perform gentility--and a real practice--what women actually did. At the same time, her ethnographic reading of binder's volumes, letters and diaries, and a wealth of other archival material informs new and vital interpretations of women's place in southern culture. A fascinating collective portrait of women's artistic and personal lives, Unbinding Gentility challenges entrenched assumptions about nineteenth century music and the experiences of the southern women who made it.
Improvising the Score by
On December 4, 1957, Miles Davis revolutionized film soundtrack production, improvising the score for Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. A cinematic harbinger of the French New Wave, Ascenseur challenged mainstream filmmaking conventions, emphasizing experimentation and creative collaboration. It was in this environment during the late 1950s to 1960s, a brief "golden age" for jazz in film, that many independent filmmakers valued improvisational techniques, featuring soundtracks from such seminal figures as John Lewis, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington. But what of jazz in film today?  Improvising the Score: Rethinking Modern Film Music through Jazz provides an original, vivid investigation of innovative collaborations between renowned contemporary jazz artists and prominent independent filmmakers. The book explores how these integrative jazz-film productions challenge us to rethink the possibilities of cinematic music production. In-depth case studies include collaborations between Terence Blanchard and Spike Lee (Malcolm X, When the Levees Broke), Dick Hyman and Woody Allen (Hannah and Her Sisters), Antonio Sanchez and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman), and Mark Isham and Alan Rudolph (Afterglow).  The first book of its kind, this study examines jazz artists' work in film from a sociological perspective, offering rich, behind-the-scenes analyses of their unique collaborative relationships with filmmakers. It investigates how jazz artists negotiate their own "creative labor," examining the tensions between improvisation and the conventionally highly regulated structures, hierarchies, and expectations of filmmaking. Grounded in personal interviews and detailed film production analysis, Improvising the Score illustrates the dynamic possibilities of integrative artistic collaborations between jazz, film, and other contemporary media, exemplifying its ripeness for shaping and invigorating twenty-first-century arts, media, and culture.
A Strange Loop by
Usher is a Black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a Black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical. Michael R. Jackson's blistering musical follows a young artist at war with a host of demons - not least of which are the punishing thoughts in his own head - in an attempt to understand his own strange loop. A Strange Loop received its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in New York in the summer of 2019. It went on to win the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical at the 2022 Tony Awards. 'A metafictional musical that tracks the creative process of an artist transforming issues of identity, race, and sexuality that once pushed him to the margins of the cultural mainstream into a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities' Pulitzer Prize Committee
The Cambridge Companion to Women in Music Since 1900 by
This Companion explores women's work in music since 1900 across a broad range of musical genres and professions, including the classical tradition, popular music, and music technology. The crucial contribution of women to music education and the music industries features alongside their activity as composers and performers. The book considers the gendered nature of the musical profession, in areas including access to training, gendered criticism, sexualization, and notions of 'gender appropriate' roles or instruments. It covers a wide range of women musicians, such as Marin Alsop, Grace Williams, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell and Adele. Each thematic section concludes with a contribution from a practitioner in her own words, reflecting upon the impact of gender on her own career. Chapters include suggestions for further reading on each of the topics covered, providing an invaluable resource for students of Feminist Musicology, Women in Music, and Music and Gender.
My Melancholy Baby by
Ten songs, from ""Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home"" (1902) to ""You Made Me Love You"" (1913), ignited the development of the classic pop ballad. In this exploration of how the style of the Great American Songbook evolved, Michael G. Garber unveils the complicated, often-hidden origins of these enduring, pioneering works. He riffs on colorful stories that amplify the rising of an American folk art composed by innovators both famous and obscure. Songwriters, and also the publishers, arrangers, and performers, achieved together a collective genius that moved hearts worldwide to song. These classic ballads originated all over the nation-Louisiana, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan-and then the Tin Pan Alley industry, centered in New York, made the tunes unforgettable sensations. From ragtime to bop, cabaret to radio, new styles of music and modes for its dissemination invented and reinvented the intimate, personal American love ballad, creating something both swinging and tender. Rendered by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and a host of others, recordings and movies carried these songs across the globe. Using previously underexamined sources, Garber demonstrates how these songs shaped the music industry and the lives of ordinary Americans. Besides covering famous composers like Irving Berlin, this history also introduces such little-known figures as Maybelle Watson, who had to sue to get credit and royalties for creating the central content of the lyric for ""My Melancholy Baby."" African American Frank Williams contributed to the seminal ""Some of These Days"" but was forgotten for decades. The ten ballads explored here permanently transformed American popular song.
