Reshaping American Music


Book Description




Shaping and Reshaping Chinese American Identity


Book Description

Shaping and Reshaping Chinese American Identity: New York's Chinese in the Years of the Depression and World War II explores the role played by Chinese Americans in New York in the 1930's who laid the foundation for future generations to fight for civil rights as American citizens. The stories of Chinese Americans during the Depression years and World War II are under-represented in the existing literature that has been confined to the early days of the settlement of Chinese Americans on the west coast of the United States. They were usually depicted as passive victims of exclusion as a result of Chinese Exclusion Laws. This book focuses on the active participation of the Chinese American in New York City in mainstream political, economic, and social life that helped them to forge new identity as Chinese Americans. Their active participation in federal and local elections as a means of claiming their rights as American citizens demonstrated their growing political consciousness. Chinese New Yorkers' support of both China and United States during the war reflected their dual identity as both Chinese and Americans. Their contributions to the war front and to the home front after Pearl Harbor eventually forced the reconsideration of the Chinese Exclusion Laws. The book concludes by relating the active participation of the Chinese in New York during the war years to the national movement for racial equality that resulted in new federal civil rights legislation.




The Emergence of Rock and Roll


Book Description

Rock and roll music evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and 1950s, as a combination of African American blues, country, pop, and gospel music produced a new musical genre. Even as it captured the ears of the nation, rock and roll was the subject of controversy and contention. The music intertwined with the social, political, and economic changes reshaping America and contributed to the rise of the youth culture that remains a potent cultural force today. A comprehensive understanding of post-World War II U.S. history would be incomplete without a basic knowledge of this cultural phenomenon and its widespread impact. In this short book, bolstered by primary source documents, Mitchell K. Hall explores the change in musical style represented by rock and roll, changes in technology and business practices, regional and racial implications of this new music, and the global influences of the music. The Emergence of Rock and Roll explains the huge influence that one cultural moment can have in the history of a nation.




Hail Columbia!


Book Description

Following the Revolutionary War, Americans were obsessed with politics and the newspapers that reported it. Music made front page news and brought men to blows. Hail Columbia! is the compelling story of of how Americans ranging from presidents to craftsmen cultivated music to fuel heatedpartisan debates over the future of the young republic during this a crucial period in the nation's history. Through music, they debated the meaning of liberty, the nature of the republic, and Americans' proper place within it. Using music for both propaganda and protest, they called for allegianceto a new federal government, spread utopian visions of worldwide revolution, blasted infringements on American freedoms, and spun compelling myths of national military might.In Hail Columbia!, author Laura Lohman uncovers hundreds of songs circulated in newspapers, broadsides, song collections, sheet music, manuscripts, and scrapbooks to fill a major gap in our understanding of American music between the Revolutionary and antebellum eras. Making extensive use ofnewspapers as a primary musical source and treating contrafact as a topic worthy of serious musical scholarship, Lohman traces how Americans as diverse as elite lawyers, immigrant actresses, humble craftsmen, and African American abolitionists used music for specific political purposes. Unpackingthe partisan and propagandist uses of songs commonly thought to be patriotic or national, she traces how Americans put well-known tunes like "Yankee Doodle" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" to disparate political ends when giving them new lyrics. As Lohman shows, such songs were a staple ofelectioneering, tavern gatherings, presidential encomia, street theatre, and community celebrations on occasions like July 4. Through song, Americans called their neighbors and fellow citizens to hail the nation, a nation defined in partisan terms.




Rethinking American Music


Book Description

In Rethinking American Music, Tara Browner and Thomas L. Riis curate essays that offer an eclectic survey of current music scholarship. Ranging from Tin Pan Alley to Thelonious Monk to hip hop, the contributors go beyond repertory and biography to explore four critical yet overlooked areas: the impact of performance; patronage's role in creating music and finding a place to play it; personal identity; and the ways cultural and ethnographic circumstances determine the music that emerges from the creative process. Many of the articles also look at how a piece of music becomes initially popular and then exerts a lasting influence in the larger global culture. The result is an insightful state-of-the-field examination that doubles as an engaging short course on our complex, multifaceted musical heritage. Contributors: Karen Ahlquist, Amy C. Beal, Mark Clagu,. Esther R. Crookshank, Todd Decker, Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett, Joshua S. Duchan, Mark Katz, Jeffrey Magee, Sterling E. Murray, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., David Warren Steel, Jeffrey Taylor, and Mark Tucker




Extreme Exoticism


Book Description

To what extent can music be employed to shape one culture's understanding of another? In the American imagination, Japan has represented the "most alien" nation for over 150 years. This perceived difference has inspired fantasies--of both desire and repulsion--through which Japanese culture has profoundly impacted the arts and industry of the U.S. While the influence of Japan on American and European painting, architecture, design, theater, and literature has been celebrated in numerous books and exhibitions, the role of music has been virtually ignored until now. W. Anthony Sheppard's Extreme Exoticism offers a detailed documentation and wide-ranging investigation of music's role in shaping American perceptions of the Japanese, the influence of Japanese music on American composers, and the place of Japanese Americans in American musical life. Presenting numerous American encounters with and representations of Japanese music and Japan, this book reveals how music functions in exotic representation across a variety of genres and media, and how Japanese music has at various times served as a sign of modernist experimentation, a sounding board for defining American music, and a tool for reshaping conceptions of race and gender. From the Tin Pan Alley songs of the Russo-Japanese war period to Weezer's Pinkerton album, music has continued to inscribe Japan as the land of extreme exoticism.




A New America


Book Description

The long-anticipated companion book to the groundbreaking HBO documentary The Latin Explosion by renowned music producer Tommy Mottola. Legendary music mogul, entertainment impresario, and New York Times bestselling author Tommy Mottola explores and expounds on his lifelong love of Latin music, its influence on his life and career, and its ever-growing influence in America. Tommy Mottola discovered a passion for Latin music when he was a small child on the streets of the Bronx, where he fell in love with the energy and rhythm of the legendary Tito Puente. It is a love he carries with him to this day. In A New America, Mottola explores the societal and cultural impact the Latino community and its music has had on America by sharing behind-the-scenes stories from his own life and his connection to the Latin sound throughout the decades—from his initial fascination with Latin music, which started with Puente, to the mainstream success of Ritchie Valens, to the groove-laden guitar wizardry of Carlos Santana. Along the way, Mottola reveals heartfelt accounts of his longtime collaboration and friendship with Gloria Estefan and her husband, Emilio, the meteoric rise and tragic end of Selena, and his orchestration of the Latin Explosion of the 1990s, which launched megastars such as Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, Shakira, and Jennifer Lopez. But A New America is more than a story about music and musicians. It is the story of a culture that continues to grow and influence America in all its aspects and an irresistible sound that continues to move and inspire the nation.




Orpheus in Manhattan


Book Description

Orpheus in Manhattan is the first comprehensive biography of Schuman that draws heavily upon his writings and on other archival materials. Filled with new discoveries and revisions of the received historical narrative, Orpheus in Manhattan repositions Schuman as a major figure in America's musical life.




Extreme Exoticism


Book Description

To what extent can music be employed to shape one culture's understanding of another? In the American imagination, Japan has represented the "most alien" nation for over 150 years. This perceived difference has inspired fantasies--of both desire and repulsion--through which Japanese culture has profoundly impacted the arts and industry of the U.S. While the influence of Japan on American and European painting, architecture, design, theater, and literature has been celebrated in numerous books and exhibitions, the role of music has been virtually ignored until now. W. Anthony Sheppard's Extreme Exoticism offers a detailed documentation and wide-ranging investigation of music's role in shaping American perceptions of the Japanese, the influence of Japanese music on American composers, and the place of Japanese Americans in American musical life. Presenting numerous American encounters with and representations of Japanese music and Japan, this book reveals how music functions in exotic representation across a variety of genres and media, and how Japanese music has at various times served as a sign of modernist experimentation, a sounding board for defining American music, and a tool for reshaping conceptions of race and gender. From the Tin Pan Alley songs of the Russo-Japanese war period to Weezer's Pinkerton album, music has continued to inscribe Japan as the land of extreme exoticism.




Make It New


Book Description

As jazz enters its second century it is reasserting itself as dynamic and relevant. Boston Globe jazz writer and Emerson College professor Bill Beuttler reveals new ways in which jazz is engaging with society through the vivid biographies and music of Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, The Bad Plus, Miguel Zenón, Anat Cohen, Robert Glasper, and Esperanza Spalding. These musicians are freely incorporating other genres of music into jazz—from classical (both western and Indian) to popular (hip-hop, R&B, rock, bluegrass, klezmer, Brazilian choro)—and other art forms as well (literature, film, photography, and other visual arts). This new generation of jazz is increasingly more international and is becoming more open to women as instrumentalists and bandleaders. Contemporary jazz is reasserting itself as a force for social change, prompted by developments such as the Black Lives Matter, #MeToo movements, and the election of Donald Trump.