front cover of Acting in Concert
Acting in Concert
Music, Community, and Political Action
Mattern, Mark
Rutgers University Press, 1998
In this lively account of politics and popular music, Mark Mattern develops the concept of "acting in concert," a metaphor for community-based political action through music. Through three detailed case studies of Chilean, Cajun, and American Indian popular music, Mattern explores the way popular muisicians forge community and lead members of their communities in several distinct kinds of political action that would be difficult or impossible among individuals who are not linked by communal ties.

More than just entertainment, Mattern argues that popular music can serve as a social glue for bringing together a multitude of voices that might otherwise remain silent, and that political action through music can increase the potential for relatively marginalized people to choose and determine their own fate.
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American Popular Music
New Approaches to the Twentieth Century
Rachel Rubin
University of Massachusetts Press, 2001
Designed as a broad introductory survey, and written by experts in the field, this book examines the rise of American music over the past hundred years — the period in which that music came into its own and achieved unprecedented popularity. Beginning with a look at music as a business, eleven essays explore a variety of popular musical genres, including Tin Pan Alley, blues, jazz, country, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, folk, rap, and Mexican American corridos. Reading these essays, we come to see that the forms created by one group often appeal to, and are in turn influenced by, other groups — across lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, region, and age. The chapters speak to one another, arguing for the primacy of such concepts as minstrelsy, urbanization, hybridity, and crossover as the most powerful tools for understanding American popular music. Moving beyond outdated music-industry categories and misleading genre labels, while acknowledging the complexities of the market, the book recovers and reinforces the essential blackness of much popular music—even a presumably white form like country and western. In addition to Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey Melnick, contributors include Reebee Garofalo, Geoffrey Jacques, Kip Lornell, Mark Anthony Neal, Millie Rahn, David Sanjek, James Smethurst, Elijah Wald, and Gail Hilson Woldu.
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American Popular Music
Readings From the Popular Press Volume 2: The Age of Rock
Timothy E. Scheurer
University of Wisconsin Press, 1989
Beginning with the emergence of commercial American music in the nineteenth century, Volume 1 includes essays on the major performers, composers, media, and movements that shaped our musical culture before rock and roll. Articles explore the theoretical dimensions of popular music studies; the music of the nineteenth century; and the role of black Americans in the evolution of popular music. Also included—the music of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, swing, the blues, the influences of W. S. Gilbert and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and changes in lyric writing styles from the nineteenth century to the rock era.
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American Popular Music
Readings From the Popular Press Volume I: The Nineteenth-Century Tin Pan Alley
Timothy E. Scheurer
University of Wisconsin Press, 1989
Beginning with the emergence of commercial American music in the nineteenth century, Volume 1 includes essays on the major performers, composers, media, and movements that shaped our musical culture before rock and roll. Articles explore the theoretical dimensions of popular music studies; the music of the nineteenth century; and the role of black Americans in the evolution of popular music. Also included—the music of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, swing, the blues, the influences of W. S. Gilbert and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and changes in lyric writing styles from the nineteenth century to the rock era.
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Are We Not New Wave?
Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s
Theo Cateforis
University of Michigan Press, 2011

“Are We Not New Wave? is destined to become the definitive study of new wave music.”
—Mark Spicer, coeditor of Sounding Out Pop

New wave emerged at the turn of the 1980s as a pop music movement cast in the image of punk rock’s sneering demeanor, yet rendered more accessible and sophisticated. Artists such as the Cars, Devo, the Talking Heads, and the Human League leapt into the Top 40 with a novel sound that broke with the staid rock clichés of the 1970s and pointed the way to a more modern pop style.

In Are We Not New Wave? Theo Cateforis provides the first musical and cultural history of the new wave movement, charting its rise out of mid-1970s punk to its ubiquitous early 1980s MTV presence and downfall in the mid-1980s. The book also explores the meanings behind the music’s distinctive traits—its characteristic whiteness and nervousness; its playful irony, electronic melodies, and crossover experimentations. Cateforis traces new wave’s modern sensibilities back to the space-age consumer culture of the late 1950s/early 1960s.

Three decades after its rise and fall, new wave’s influence looms large over the contemporary pop scene, recycled and celebrated not only in reunion tours,  VH1 nostalgia specials, and “80s night” dance clubs but in the music of artists as diverse as Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and the Killers.

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Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music
David F. García
Temple University Press, 2006
Arsenio Rodríguez was one of the most important Cuban musicians of the twentieth century. In this first scholarly study, ethnomusicologist David F. García examines Rodríguez's life, including the conjunto musical combo he led and the highly influential son montuno style of music he created in the 1940s. García recounts Rodríguez's battle for recognition at the height of "mambo mania" in New York City and the significance of his music in the development of salsa. With firsthand accounts from relatives and fellow musicians, Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music follows Rodríguez's fortunes on several continents, speculating on why he never enjoyed wide commercial success despite the importance of his music. García focuses on the roles that race, identity, and politics played in shaping Rodríguez's music and the trajectory of his musical career. His transnational perspective has important implications for Latin American and popular music studies.
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Awakening Spaces
French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music, and Culture
Brenda F. Berrian
University of Chicago Press, 2000
The fast-paced zouk of Kassav', the romantic biguine of Malavoi, the jazz of Fal Frett, the ballads of Mona, and reggae of Kali and Pôglo are all part of the burgeoning popular music scene in the French Caribbean. In this lively book, Brenda F. Berrian chronicles the rise of this music, which has captivated the minds and bodies of the Francophone world and elsewhere.

Based on personal interviews and discussions of song texts, Berrian shows how these musicians express their feelings about current and past events, about themselves, their islands, and the French. Through their lyrical themes, these songs create metaphorical "spaces" that evoke narratives of desire, exile, subversion, and Creole identity and experiences. Berrian opens up these spaces to reveal how the artists not only engage their listeners and effect social change, but also empower and identify themselves. She also explores the music as it relates to the art of drumming, and to genres such as African American and Latin jazz and reggae. With Awakening Spaces, Berrian adds fresh insight into the historical struggles and arts of the French Caribbean.
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