Popular music
This page contains selected resources relevant for the study of popular music. Introductory texts on the basic research principles of ethnomusicology and popular music scholarship are included. To find journal articles use databases such as Proquest which has a music specific database, Music periodicals database, and EBSCOhost which includes RILM Abstracts.
Bloomsbury Popular Music provides access to scholarly coverage of modern popular music worldwide, covering the mid-20th century to the present day, through the Bloomsbury Enyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, and an expanding range of scholarly books. reference content, scholarship,
If you are seeking a particular kind of resource, please contact your librarian.
Global Pop: world music, world markets by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 1997Global Pop examines the rise of "world musics" and "world beat", and some of the musicians associated with recent genres. Drawing on a wide range of sources - academic, popular, cyber, interviews, and the music itself, Global Pop presents issues and contradictions surrounding the contemporary movement of people and musics worldwide and examines the range of discourses employed in and around world music, demonstrating how the central concept of authenticity is wielded by musicians, fans, and other listeners, and looks at some of these musics in detail, examining ways they are caught up in forms of domination and resistance.
Ethnomusicology: a Very Short Introduction by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2013Ethnomusicology, an academic discipline founded in 1950, has been defined as the study of the music of others. For ethnomusicologists, music creates community when performed; it embodies and in some cases creates cultural values and social norms; it constructs individual identities; it expresses large-scale economic and political structures that press upon particular local communities. Ethnomusicologists generally believe that music is an aspect of culture coherent with, or contributing to, any number of ideas and practices in such fields as religion, ethics, cosmology, plastic arts, dance, cooking, social identity, and the definition of the self. This book looks cross-culturally at some of the many themes that demonstrate the way music is embedded in, reflects, and contributes to broader cultural patterns, themes such as culturally specific beliefs about the nature of music; the social status of musicians; music and emotion;music's role in religion and ritual; the economics of music; music and the construction of individual and social identity, including gender and sexuality; and music in societies under stress from war, violence, conflict, or disease. Timothy Rice describes how ethnomusicologists conduct fieldwork, examining some results of these research methods as well as some of the issues that have arisen from using them..
The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2017Why is gender inseparable from pop songs? What can gender representations in musical performances mean? Why are there strong links between gender, sexuality and popular music? The sound of the voice, the mix, the arrangement, the lyrics and images, all link our impressions of gender to music. Numerous scholars writing about gender in popular music to date are concerned with the music industry's impact on fans, and how tastes and preferences become associated with gender. This is the first collection of its kind to develop and present new theories and methods in the analysis of popular music and gender. The contributors are drawn from a range of disciplines including musicology, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, and media studies, providing new reference points for studies in this interdisciplinary field. Stan Hawkins's introduction sets out to situate a variety of debates that prompts ways of thinking and working, where the focus falls primarily on gender roles.
In addition to the keywords hip-hop and gansgsta rap indicated in your assigned topic, you may have also noted useful terms from your lectures and readings. Try these in library search or databases such as Proquest or Ebsco.
The Hip Hop Generation by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2002Young blacks born between 1965 and 1984 belong to the first generation to have grown up in post-segregation America. Their historical significance is tremendous, but until now there has been no in-depth study of the African American youth who are making this important chapter in our nation's history. Bakari Kitwana, one of black America's sharpest young cultural critics, offers a sobering look at his generation's disproportionate incarceration and unemployment rates, as well as the collapse of its gender relations, and gives his own provocative social and political analysis. He finds the pain of his generation buried in tough, slick gangsta movies, and their voice in the lyrics of rap music, "the black person's CNN." By turns scathing, funny, and analytic, The Hip Hop Generation will stand as the testament of black youth culture at the turn of the century. With extraordinary insight and understanding, Bakari Kitwana has combined the culture and politics of his generation into a pivotal work in American studies.
The Values of Independent Hip-Hop in the Post-Golden Era by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2019Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, this book uncovers the historical trajectory of U.S. independent hip-hop in the post-golden era, seeking to understand its complex relationship to mainstream hip-hop culture and U.S. culture more generally. Christopher Vito analyzes the lyrics of indie hip-hop albums from 2000-2013 to uncover the dominant ideologies of independent artists regarding race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and social change. These analyses inform interviews with members of the indie hip-hop community to explore the meanings that they associate with the culture today, how technological and media changes impact the boundaries between independent and major, and whether and how this shapes their engagement with oppositional consciousness. Ultimately, this book aims to understand the complex and contradictory cultural politics of independent hip-hop in the contemporary age.
Chicago Hustle and Flow: Gangs, Gangsta Rap, and Social Class by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2014On September 4, 2012, Joseph Coleman, an eighteen-year-old aspiring gangsta rapper, was gunned down in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Police immediately began investigating the connections between Coleman's murder and an online war of words and music he was having with another Chicago rapper in a rival gang. This book takes readers into the heart of gangsta rap culture in Chicago. A music genre obsessed with authenticity, gangsta rap promised those from crime-infested neighborhoods a ticket out of poverty. But while firsthand experiences with gangs and crime gave rappers a leg up, it also meant carrying weapons and traveling collectively for protection. Street gangs serve as a fan base and provide protection to rappers who bring in income and help to recruit for the gang. In examining this symbiotic relationship, Chicago Hustle and Flow ultimately illustrates how class stratification creates and maintains inequalities, even at the level of a local rap-music scene.
Thug Life by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2011Hip-hop has come a long way from its origins in the Bronx in the 1970s, when rapping and DJing were just part of a lively, decidedly local scene that also venerated b-boying and graffiti. Now hip-hop is a global phenomenon and, in the United States, a massively successful corporate enterprise predominantly controlled and consumed by whites while the most prominent performers are black. Michael Jeffrries finds answers to questions that have dogged hip-hop for decades, by interviewing everyday people. He focuses on the music's fans--young men, both black and white--and the resulting account avoids romanticism, offering an unbiased examination of how hip-hop works in people's daily lives. We are able to understand hip-hop as a tool listeners use to make sense of themselves and society as well as a rich, self-contained world containing politics and pleasure, virtue and vice.
To Live and Defy in La by Call Number: Ebook on orderPublication Date: 2020How gangsta rap shocked America, made millions, and pulled back the curtain on an urban crisis. How is it that gangsta rap--so dystopian that it struck aspiring Brooklyn rapper and future superstar Jay-Z as "over the top"--was born in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, surf, and sun? In the Reagan era, hip-hop was understood to be the music of the inner city and, with rare exception, of New York. Rap was considered the poetry of the street, and it was thought to breed in close quarters, the product of dilapidated tenements, crime-infested housing projects, and graffiti-covered subway cars. To many in the industry, LA was certainly not hard-edged and urban enough to generate authentic hip-hop; a new brand of black rebel music could never come from La-La Land. But it did. In To Live and Defy in LA, Felicia Viator tells the story of the young black men who built gangsta rap and changed LA and the world.
Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2007Winner of the ARSC's Award for Best Research (History) in Folk, Ethnic, or World Music (2008) When Jamaican recording engineers Osbourne "King Tubby" Ruddock, Errol Thompson, and Lee "Scratch" Perry began crafting "dub" music in the early 1970s, they were initiating a musical revolution that continues to have worldwide influence. Dub is a sub-genre of Jamaican reggae that flourished during reggae's "golden age" of the late 1960s through the early 1980s. Dub involves remixing existing recordings--electronically improvising sound effects and altering vocal tracks--to create its unique sound. Just as hip-hop turned phonograph turntables into musical instruments, dub turned the mixing and sound processing technologies of the recording studio into instruments of composition and real-time improvisation. In addition to chronicling dub's development and offering the first thorough analysis of the music itself, author Michael Veal examines dub's social significance in Jamaican culture.
Time and Memory in Reggae Music by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2010On the basis of a body of reggae songs from the 1970s and late 1990s, this book offers a sociological analysis of memory, hope and redemption in reggae music. From Dennis Brown to Sizzla, the way in which reggae music constructs a musical, religious and socio-political memory in rupture with dominant models is vividly illustrated by the lyrics themselves. How is the past remembered in the present? How does remembering the past allow for imagining the future? How does collective memory participate in the historical grounding of collective identity? What is the relationship between tradition and revolution, between the recollection of the past and the imagination of the future, between passivity and action? Ultimately, this case study of 'memory at work' opens up a theoretical problem: the conceptualization of time and its relationship with memory.
Reggae from Yaad by Call Number: Ebook on orderPublication Date: 2015Reggae from Yaad offers contemporary interpretations of the history, culture, significance and social dynamics of Jamaican Popular Music from varying geographical and disciplinary locations. From Alan 'Skill' Cole's lively and frank account of the Bob Marley he knew and David Katz's conversation with veteran music producers Bunny 'Striker' Lee, King Jammy and Bobby Digital; to Heather Augustyn and Shara Rambarran who both explore the role of music in the relationship between Britain and Jamaica in the post-independence 1960s, the contributors bring a new dimension to the discussion on the impact of Jamaican music and offer insights into meaning behind the music and the cultural and social developments that inform Jamaican Popular Music.
Caribbean Currents: Caribbean music from rumba to reggae by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2006Presenting a panorama of the musics of the Caribbean region, this book covers various recent developments, such as the emergence of reggaeton and timba, and includes a study of Jamaican dancehall."
Dubwise: Reasoning from the Reggae Underground. by Publication Date: 2006In Dubwise, Klive Walker looks at the global impact of the Caribbean diaspora and takes a new look at the careers of international icons like Bob Marley in the wider context of Carribean culture. While acknowledging Bob Marley's international stature, Klive Walker also looks at the work of other Jamaican personalities like hand-drummer Oswald 'Count Ossie' Williams, jazz saxophonist Joe Harriott, ska trombonist Don Drummond, and poet Louise Bennett. Essays on Bennett and Drummond show the influence of each on the development of reggae and the aesthetic of Bob Marley. Dubwise also assesses the career of vocalist Dennis Brown, whose impact on reggae singing is unparalleled. The history of reggae women, ignored for far too long, is addressed in a groundbreaking essay. Walker considers the impact of figures like producer Sonia Pottinger and singer-songwriters Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt. 'Dubwise' is more than just a history of reggae. The book also illustrates the importance of ska, Jamaica's first popular music, and shows how its influence is just as widespread. Two essays not only link roots reggae and ska, but also discuss its history, reconnecting ska to its origins in the history of jazz in Jamaica and in nyabinghi hand drumming. Walker investigates the international legacy of Jamaican ska and jazz up to the present time. Finally, Dubwise takes its organic approach to its logical conclusion by assessing the symbiotic relationship between reggae and hip-hop.
Made in Brazil by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2016Made in Brazil: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of twentieth-century Brazilian popular music. The volume consists of essays by scholars of Brazilian music, and covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Brazil. Each essay provides context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance to Brazilian popular music. After a general description of the history and background of popular music in Brazil, essays are organized into thematic sections: Samba and Choro; History, Memory, and Representations; Scenes and Artists; and Music, Market and New Media.
The Mystery of Samba by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2000Samba is Brazil's "national rhythm," the foremost symbol of its culture and nationhood. To the outsider, samba and the famous pre-Lenten carnival of which it is the centerpiece seem to showcase the country's African heritage. Within Brazil, however, samba symbolizes the racial and cultural mixture that, since the 1930s, most Brazilians have come to believe defines their unique national identity. But how did Brazil become "the Kingdom of Samba" only a few decades after abolishing slavery in 1888? Typically, samba is represented as having changed spontaneously, mysteriously, from a "repressed" music of the marginal and impoverished to a national symbol cherished by all Brazilians. Here, however, Hermano Vianna shows that the nationalization of samba actually rested on a long history of relations between different social groups--poor and rich, weak and powerful--often working at cross-purposes to one another.The Mystery of Samba is an excellent introduction to Brazil's ongoing conversation on race, popular culture, and national identity.
Making Samba: a new history of race and music in Brazil by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2013In November 1916, a young Afro-Brazilian musician named Donga registered sheet music for the song "Pelo telefone" ("On the Telephone") at the National Library in Rio de Janeiro. This apparently simple act--claiming ownership of a musical composition--set in motion a series of events that would shake Brazil's cultural landscape. Before the debut of "Pelo telephone," samba was a somewhat obscure term, but by the late 1920s, the wildly popular song had helped to make it synonymous with Brazilian national music. The success of "Pelo telephone" embroiled Donga in controversy. A group of musicians claimed that he had stolen their work, and a prominent journalist accused him of selling out his people in pursuit of profit and fame. Within this single episode are many of the concerns that animate Making Samba, including intellectual property claims, the Brazilian state, popular music, race, gender, national identity, and the history of Afro-Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro. By tracing the careers of Rio's pioneering black musicians from the late nineteenth century until the 1970s, Marc A. Hertzman revises the histories of samba and of Brazilian national culture.
Brazilian Jive by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2013As Brazil grows in stature as a global power, more and more people are discovering the country's fascinating culture, especially the striking exuberance and inventiveness of Brazilian popular music. In Brazilian Jive, David Treece uncovers the genius of Brazilian song, both as a sophisticated, articulate art form crafted out of the dialogue between music and language and as a powerfully eloquent expression of the country's social and political history. Focusing on the cultural struggles of making music in Brazil, Treece traces the rise of samba through the bossa nova revolution of the late 1950s to the emergence of rap in the 1990s. He describes how Brazilian music grew out of the pain and dispossession of slavery and, inspired by African traditions, how it celebrates new ways of moving freely in time and space. Redolent with the rhythms and tones of the modern, the Brazilian soundscape also expresses the country's dissonances and contradictions, while the conversation between melody and word often signifies a larger dialogue between its artistic and political cultures. Looking below the surface of Brazilian culture, Brazilian Jive provides fresh insight into the music of this vibrant and colorful nation.
A Song for Europe by Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2007The world's largest and longest-running song competition, the Eurovision Song Contest is a significant and extremely popular media event throughout the continent and abroad. The Contest features singers who represent a participating nation with a new popular song. Viewers vote by phone for their favourite performance, though they cannot vote for their own country's entry. This process alone reveals much about national identities and identifications, as voting patterns expose deep-seated alliances and animosities among participating countries. The authors in this book explore how the contest sheds light on issues of European politics, national and European identity, race, gender and sexuality, and aesthetics. For some countries, participation in Eurovision has been simultaneously an assertion of modernity and a claim to membership in Europe and the West. Eurovision is sometimes regarded as a low-brow camp spectacle of little aesthetic or intellectual value. The essays in this collection often contradict this assumption, demonstrating that the contest has actually been a significant force and forecaster for social, cultural and political transformations in postwar Europe.
Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2018This book examines how the Eurovision Song Contest has reflected and become intertwined with the history of postwar Europe from a political perspective. Eurovision is often mocked as cultural kitsch because of its over-the-top performances and frivolous song lyrics. Yet there is no cultural medium that connects Europeans more than popular music, the development of which has always been tied to cultural, economic, political, social and technological change. The author uses Eurovision as a vehicle to address topics ranging from the Cold War, liberal democracy and communism to nationalism, European integration, economic prosperity and human rights. It analyses these subjects through their cultural, political and social relationships with Eurovision entries as expressed through lyrics and music, as well as by examining public debates that have accompanied the selection of the entries and the organisation of the contest itself. He also uses original sources, including hitherto unpublished archival documents from international broadcasting organisations.
Performing the 'New' Europe: identities, feelings and politics in the Eurovision Song Contest by Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2013This chapters in this edited book makes the case that the Eurovision Song Contest is an arena for European identification in which both national solidarity and participation in a European identity are confirmed, and a site where cultural struggles over the meanings, frontiers and limits of Europe are enacted.
Empire of Song: Europe and nation in the Eurovision Song Contest by ISBN: 9780810886995Publication Date: 2013The Eurovision Song Contest unites European people and others through music. It is a spectacle: a performative event that allegorically represents the idea of "Europe." Since its beginning in the Cold War era, the contest has functioned as a symbolic realm for the performance of European selves and the negotiation of European identities. Through the ESC, Europe is experienced, felt, and imagined in singing and dancing as the interplay of tropes of being local and/or European is enacted. In Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, contributors interpret the ESC as a musical "mediascape" and mega-event that has variously performed and performs the changing visions of the European project. Through the study of the cultural politics of the ESC, contributors discuss the ways in which music operates as a dynamic nexus for making national identities and European sensibilities, generating processes of "assimilation" or "integration," and defining the celebrated notion of the "European citizen" in a global context. For the contributing authors, song serves as a site for constituting Europe and the nation, on- and offstage. History and politics, as well as the constant production of European subjectivities, are sounded in song. Essays in Empire of Song adopt theoretical and epistemological orientations in their exploration of "popular music" within ethnomusicology and critical musicology, questioning the idea of "Europe" and the "nation" through and in music, at a time when the European self appears more fragmented, if not entirely shattered.
Understanding the Eurovision Song Contest in Multicultural Australia by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2018This book presents the first in-depth study of the Eurovision Song Contest from an Australian perspective. Using a cultural studies approach, the study draws together fan interviews and surveys with media and textual analysis of the contest itself. In doing so, it begins to answer the question of why the European song contest appeals to viewers in Australia. It explores and challenges the dominant narrative that links Eurovision fandom to post-WWII European migration, arguing that this Eurocentric narrative presents a limited view of how contemporary Australian multicultural society operates in the context of globalized culture. It concludes with a consideration of the future of the Eurovision Song Contest as Australia enters into the 'Asian century'.
Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2010Two decades after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and one decade into the twenty-first century, European music remains one of the most powerful forces for shaping nationalism. Using intensive fieldwork throughout Europe -- from participation in alpine foot pilgrimages to studies of the grandest music spectacle anywhere in the world, the Eurovision Song Contest -- Philip V. Bohlman reveals the ways in which music and nationalism intersect in the shaping of the New Europe. Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe begins with the emergence of the European nation-state in the Middle Ages and extends across long periods during which Europe's nations used music to compete for land and language, and to expand the colonial reach of Europe to the entire world. Bohlman contrasts the "national" and the "nationalist" in music, examining the ways in which their impact on society can be positive and negative -- beneficial for European cultural policy and dangerous in times when many European borders are more fragile than ever. The New Europe of the twenty-first century is more varied, more complex, and more politically volatile than ever, and its music resonates fully with these transformations.
Iranian Music and Popular Entertainment by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2015The word motreb finds its roots in the Arabic verb taraba, meaning 'to make happy.' Originally denoting all musicians in Iran, motrebi came to be associated, pejoratively, with the cheerful vulgarity of the lowbrow entertainer. In Iranian Music and Popular Entertainment, GJ Breyley and Sasan Fatemi examine the historically overlooked motrebi milieu, with its marginalized characters, from luti to gardan koloft and mashti, as well as the tenacity of motreb who continued their careers against all odds. They then turn to losanjelesi, the most pervasive form of Iranian popular music that developed as motrebi declined, and related musical forms in Iran and its diasporic popular cultural centre, Los Angeles.
Media, Culture and Society in Iran by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2007By exploring topics such as the Internet, print press, advertising, satellite television, video, rock music, literature, cinema, gender, religious intellectuals, and secularism, this unique and wide-ranging volume explains Iran as a complex society that has successfully managed to negotiate and embody the tensions of tradition and modernity, democracy and theocracy, isolation and globalization, and other such cultural-political dynamics. Featuring contributions from among the best-known and emerging scholars on Iranian media, culture, society, and politics, this volume uncovers how the existing perspectives on post-revolutionary Iranian society have failed to appreciate the complexity, the paradoxes and the contradictions that characterize life in contemporary Iran.
Cultural Revolution in Iran by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2017The Islamic Republic of Iran has entered its fourth decade, and the values and legacy of the Revolution it was founded upon continue to have profound and contradictory consequences for Iranian life. Despite the repressive power of the current regime the immense creativity of popular cultural practices, that negotiate and resist a repressive system, is a potent and dynamic force. This book draws on the expertise and experience of Iranian and international academics and activists to address diverse areas of social and cultural innovation that are driving change and progress. While religious conservatism remains the creed of the establishment, this volume uncovers an underground world of new technology, media and entertainment that speaks to women seeking a greater public role and a restless younger generation that organises and engages with global trends online.
Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2009This volume presents the first direct look at the complex relationship between music and power across a range of musical genres and countries. Discourses of power in the region centre on some of the most contested social issues, most notably in relation to nationhood, gender and religion. Individual chapters examine the ways in which music serves as a forum for playing out issues of power, ideology, resistance and subversion. In asking such questions in the context of countries such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia and Tajikistan, the book draws on a wide range of relevant theoretical and critical ideas, and many disciplines including ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, politics, Middle Eastern studies, globalization studies, gender studies and cultural and media studies
Sounding the Cape Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa by Publication Date: 2013For several centuries Cape Town has accommodated a great variety of musical genres which have usually been associated with specific population groups living in and around the city. Musical styles and genres produced in Cape Town have therefore been assigned an "identity" which is first and foremost social. This volume tries to question the relationship established between musical styles and genres, and social in this case pseudo-racial identities. In Sounding the Cape, Denis-Constant Martin recomposes and examines through the theoretical prism of creolisation the history of music in Cape Town, deploying analytical tools borrowed from the most recent studies of identity configurations. He demonstrates that musical creation in the Mother City, and in South Africa, has always been nurtured by contacts, exchanges and innovations whatever the efforts made by racist powers to separate and divide people according to their origin. Musicians interviewed at the dawn of the 21st century confirm that mixture and blending characterise all Cape Town's musics. They also emphasise the importance of a rhythmic pattern particular to Cape Town, the ghoema beat, whose origins are obviously mixed. The study of music demonstrates that the history of Cape Town, and of South Africa as a whole, undeniably fostered creole societies. Yet, twenty years after the collapse of apartheid, these societies are still divided along lines that combine economic factors and "racial" categorisations. Martin concludes that, were music given a greater importance in educational and cultural policies, it could contribute to fighting these divisions and promote the notion of a nation that, in spite of the violence of racism and apartheid, has managed to invent a unique common culture."
Kwaito's Promise by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2016In mid-1990s South Africa, apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela was elected president, and the country's urban black youth developed kwaito--a form of electronic music (redolent of North American house) that came to represent the post-struggle generation. In this book, Gavin Steingo examines kwaito as it has developed alongside the democratization of South Africa over the past two decades. Tracking the fall of South African hope into the disenchantment that often characterizes the outlook of its youth today--who face high unemployment, extreme inequality, and widespread crime--Steingo looks to kwaito as a powerful tool that paradoxically engages South Africa's crucial social and political problems by, in fact, seeming to ignore them. Politicians and cultural critics have long criticized kwaito for failing to provide any meaningful contribution to a society that desperately needs direction. As Steingo shows, however, these criticisms are built on problematic assumptions about the political function of music. Interacting with kwaito artists and fans, he shows that youth aren't escaping their social condition through kwaito but rather using it to expand their sensory realities and generate new possibilities. Resisting the truism that "music is always political," Steingo elucidates a music that thrives on its radically ambiguous relationship with politics, power, and the state.
The Hiplife in Ghana by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2012The Hiplife in Ghana explores one international site - Ghana, West Africa - where hip-hop music and culture have morphed over two decades into the hiplife genre of world music. It investigates hiplife music not merely as an imitation and adaptation of hip-hop, but as a reinvention of Ghana's century-old highlife popular music tradition. Author Halifu Osumare traces the process by which local hiplife artists have evolved a five-phased indigenization process that has facilitated a youth-driven transformation of Ghanaian society. She also reveals how Ghana's social shifts, facilitated by hiplife, have occurred within the country's 'corporate recolonization,' serving as another example of the neoliberal free market agenda as a new form of colonialism. Hiplife artists, we discover, are complicit with these global socio-economic forces even as they create counter-narratives that push aesthetic limits and challenge the neoliberal order.
Living the Hiplife by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2013Hiplife is a popular music genre in Ghana that mixes hip-hop beatmaking and rap with highlife music, proverbial speech, and Akan storytelling. In the 1990s, young Ghanaian musicians were drawn to hip-hop's dual ethos of black masculine empowerment and capitalist success. They made their underground sound mainstream by infusing carefree bravado with traditional respectful oratory and familiar Ghanaian rhythms. Living the Hiplife is an ethnographic account of hiplife in Ghana and its diaspora, based on extensive research among artists and audiences in Accra, Ghana's capital city; New York; and London. Jesse Weaver Shipley examines the production, consumption, and circulation of hiplife music, culture, and fashion in relation to broader cultural and political shifts in neoliberalizing Ghana. Shipley shows how young hiplife musicians produce and transform different kinds of value--aesthetic, moral, linguistic, economic--using music to gain social status and wealth, and to become respectable public figures. In this entrepreneurial age, youth use celebrity as a form of currency, aligning music-making with self-making and aesthetic pleasure with business success. Registering both the globalization of electronic, digital media and the changing nature of African diasporic relations to Africa, hiplife links collective Pan-Africanist visions with individualist aspiration, highlighting the potential and limits of social mobility for African youth. The author has also directed a film entitled Living the Hiplife and with two DJs produced mixtapes that feature the music in the book available for free download.
Female Highlife Performers in Ghana by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2018-07-27This book offers a detailed analysis of the history of female musicians in the Highlife music tradition of the Republic of Ghana, particularly the challenges and constraints these women faced and overcame. Highlife - a form of West African music infusing Ghana's traditional Akan dance rhythms and melodies with European instruments and harmonies - grew in popularity throughout the 20th century and hit its peak in the 1970s and 1980s. Although women played significant roles in the evolution and survival of the genre, few of their contributions have been thoroughly explored or documented. Despite being disregarded and ignored in many spheres, female Highlife musicians thrived and became trailblazers in the Ghanaian music industry, making particularly vibrant contributions to Highlife music in the 1970s. This book presents the voices of female Highlife artists and documents the ideological transformations expressed through their musical works, exploring the challenges they confronted throughout their musical careers and their contributions to music and culture in Ghana.
Hip Hop Africa by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2012Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. Eric Charry and an international group of contributors look carefully at youth culture and the explosion of hip hop in Africa, the embrace of other contemporary genres, including reggae, ragga, and gospel music, and the continued vitality of drumming. Covering Senegal, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa, this volume offers unique perspectives on the presence and development of hip hop and other music in Africa and their place in global music culture.
Music, Performance and African Identities by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2011Cutting across countries, genres, and time periods, this volume explores topics ranging from hip hop's influence on Maasai identity in current day Tanzania to jazz in Bulawayo during the interwar years, using music to tell a larger story about the cultures and societies of Africa.
Bollywood Sounds by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2014Bollywood Sounds focuses on the songs of Indian films in their historical, social, commercial, and cinematic contexts. Author Jayson Beaster-Jones takes readers through the highly collaborative compositional process, highlighting the contributions of film directors, music directors(composers), lyricists, musicians, and singers in song production. Through close musical and multimedia analysis of more than twenty landmark compositions, Bollywood Sounds illustrates how the producers of Indian film songs have long mediated a variety of musical styles, instruments, and performancepractices to create a uniquely cosmopolitan music genre. As an exploration of the music of seventy years of Hindi films, Bollywood Sounds provides long-term historical insights into film songs and their musical and cinematic conventions in ways that will appeal both to scholars and to newcomers toIndian cinema.
Global Bollywood by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2008Bollywood movies and their signature song-and-dance spectacles are an aesthetic familiar to people around the world, and Bollywood music now provides the rhythm for ads marketing goods such as computers and a beat for remixes and underground bands. These musical numbers have inspired scenes in Western films such as Vanity Fair" and Moulin Rouge. " a" Global Bollywood "shows how this currency in popular culture and among diasporic communities marks only the latest phase of the genreOCOs world travels. This interdisciplinary collection describes the many roots and routes of the Bollywood song-and-dance spectacle. Examining the reception of Bollywood music in places as diverse as Indonesia and Israel, the essays offer a stimulating redefinition of globalization, highlighting the cultural influence of Hindi film music from its origins early in the twentieth century to today. a Contributors: Walter Armbrust, Oxford U; Anustup Basu, U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Nilanjana Bhattacharjya, Colorado College; Edward K. Chan, Kennesaw State U; Bettina David, Hamburg U; Rajinder Dudrah, U of Manchester; Shanti Kumar, U of Texas, Austin; Monika Mehta, Binghamton U; Anna Morcom, Royal Holloway College; Ronie Parciack, Tel Aviv U; Biswarup Sen, U of Oregon; Sangita Shrestova; Richard Zumkhawala-Cook, Shippensburg U. a Sangita Gopal is assistant professor of English at the University of Oregon. Sujata Moorti is professor of womenOCOs and gender studies at Middlebury College."
Pop Empires by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2019At the start of the twenty-first century challenges to the global hegemony of U.S. culture are more apparent than ever. Two of the contenders vying for the hearts, minds, bandwidths, and pocketbooks of the world's consumers of culture (principally, popular culture) are India and South Korea. "Bollywood" and "Hallyu" are increasingly competing with "Hollywood"--either replacing it or filling a void in places where it never held sway. This critical multidisciplinary anthology places the mediascapes of India (the site of Bollywood), South Korea (fountainhead of Hallyu, aka the Korean Wave), and the United States (the site of Hollywood) in comparative dialogue to explore the transnational flows of technology, capital, and labor. It asks what sorts of political and economic shifts have occurred to make India and South Korea important alternative nodes of techno-cultural production, consumption, and contestation. By adopting comparative perspectives and mobile methodologies and linking popular culture to the industries that produce it as well as the industries it supports, Pop Empires connects films, music, television serials, stardom, and fandom to nation-building, diasporic identity formation, and transnational capital and labor. Additionally, via the juxtaposition of Bollywood and Hallyu, as not only synecdoches of national affiliation but also discursive case studies, the contributors examine how popular culture intersects with race, gender, and empire in relation to the global movement of peoples, goods, and ideas.
Producing Bollywood: inside the contemporary Hindi film industry by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2012Producing Bollywood offers an unprecedented look inside the social and professional worlds of the Mumbai-based Hindi film industry and explains how it became "Bollywood," the global film phenomenon and potent symbol of India as a rising economic powerhouse. In this rich and entertaining ethnography Tejaswini Ganti examines the changes in Hindi film production from the 1990s until 2010, locating them in Hindi filmmakers' efforts to accrue symbolic capital, social respectability, and professional distinction, and to manage the commercial uncertainties of filmmaking. These efforts have been enabled by the neoliberal restructuring of the Indian state and economy since 1991. This restructuring has dramatically altered the country's media landscape, which quickly expanded to include satellite television and multiplex theaters. Ganti contends that the Hindi film industry's metamorphosis into Bollywood would not have been possible without the rise of neoliberal economic ideals in India. By describing dramatic transformations in the Hindi film industry's production culture, daily practices, and filmmaking ideologies during a decade of tremendous social and economic change in India, Ganti offers valuable new insights into the effects of neoliberalism on cultural production in a postcolonial setting.
- Music Voyager: Japan: Tokyo - Electric City and J-PopStreamed video (26 min)
Made in Japan by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2015Made in Japan serves as a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of "contemporary" Japanese popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of Japanese music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Japan and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music, followed by essays organised into thematic sections: Putting Japanese Popular Music in Perspective; Rockin' Japan; and Japanese Popular Music and Visual Arts.
Larger Than Life: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS by Call Number: 782.42164081 S553L 2020Publication Date: 2020A fully-illustrated history of boy bands -- written by culture critic and boy band fan Maria Sherman. It covers the music, the fans, the choreography, the clothes, the merchandise and the hair. Long after Beatlemania came and went, a new unstoppable boy band era emerged. Fueled by good looks and even greater hooks, the pop phenomenon that dominated the '80s, '90s, and 2000s has left a long-lasting mark on culture Larger Than Life begins with a brief history of male vocal groups, spotlighting The Beatles, the Jackson 5, and Menudo before diving into the building blocks of these beloved acts in "Boy Bands 101." She also focuses on artists like New Edition, New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, One Direction, and BTS before ending with an interrogation into the future of boy bands,
Made in Korea: studies in popular music by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2016Made in Korea: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Korean popular music. Each essay covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Korea, first presenting a general description of the history and background of popular music in Korea, followed by essays, written by leading scholars of Korean music, that are organized into thematic sections: History, Institution, Ideology; Genres and Styles; Artists; and Issues.
Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2015This book offers an in-depth study of the globalization of contemporary South Korean idol pop music, or K-Pop, visiting K-Pop and its multiple intersections with political, economic, and cultural formations and transformations. It provides detailed insights into the transformative process in and around the field of Korean pop music since the 1990s, which paved the way for the recent international rise of K-Pop and the Korean Wave. Fuhr examines the conditions and effects of transnational flows, asymmetrical power relations, and the role of the imaginary "other" in K-Pop production and consumption, relating them to the specific aesthetic dimensions and material conditions of K-Pop stars, songs, and videos. Further, the book reveals how K-Pop is deployed for strategies of national identity construction in connection with Korean cultural politics, with transnational music production circuits, and with the transnational mobility of immigrant pop idols. The volume argues that K-Pop is a highly productive cultural arena in which South Korea's globalizing and nationalizing forces and imaginations coincide, intermingle, and counteract with each other and in which the tension between both of these poles is played out musically, visually, and discursively. This book examines a vibrant example of contemporary popular music from the non-Anglophone world and provides deeper insight into the structure of popular music and the dynamics of cultural globalization through a combined set of ethnographic, musicological, and cultural analysis. Widening the regional scope of Western-dominated popular music studies and enhancing new areas of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cultural studies, this book will also be of interest to those studying East Asian popular culture, music globalization, and popular music.- Pop Empires by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2019At the start of the twenty-first century challenges to the global hegemony of U.S. culture are more apparent than ever. Two of the contenders vying for the hearts, minds, bandwidths, and pocketbooks of the world's consumers of culture (principally, popular culture) are India and South Korea. "Bollywood" and "Hallyu" are increasingly competing with "Hollywood"--either replacing it or filling a void in places where it never held sway. This critical multidisciplinary anthology places the mediascapes of India (the site of Bollywood), South Korea (fountainhead of Hallyu, aka the Korean Wave), and the United States (the site of Hollywood) in comparative dialogue to explore the transnational flows of technology, capital, and labor. It asks what sorts of political and economic shifts have occurred to make India and South Korea important alternative nodes of techno-cultural production, consumption, and contestation. By adopting comparative perspectives and mobile methodologies and linking popular culture to the industries that produce it as well as the industries it supports, Pop Empires connects films, music, television serials, stardom, and fandom to nation-building, diasporic identity formation, and transnational capital and labor. Additionally, via the juxtaposition of Bollywood and Hallyu, as not only synecdoches of national affiliation but also discursive case studies, the contributors examine how popular culture intersects with race, gender, and empire in relation to the global movement of peoples, goods, and ideas.
K-Pop - the International Rise of the Korean Music Industry by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2017K-pop, described by Time Magazine in 2012 as "South Korea's greatest export", has rapidly achieved a large worldwide audience of devoted fans largely through distribution over the Internet. This book examines the phenomenon, and discusses the reasons for its success. It considers the national and transnational conditions that have played a role in K-pop's ascendancy, and explores how they relate to post-colonial modernisation, post-Cold War politics in East Asia, connections with the Korean diaspora, and the state-initiated campaign to accumulate soft power. As it is particularly concerned with fandom and cultural agency, it analyses fan practices, discourses, and underlying psychologies within their local habitus as well as in expanding topographies of online networks. Overall, the book addresses the question of how far "Asian culture" can be global in a truly meaningful way, and how popular culture from a "marginal" nation has become a global phenomenon.
The Korean Wave by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2019Since the Korean Wave phenomenon started in 1997, Hallyu has undergone many changes. Geographically, while Asia has been the largest cultural market for the Korean cultural industries, other parts of society, including North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America have gradually admitted Korean popular culture. The components of the Korean Wave have also greatly expanded. Hallyu originally implied the exports of a few cultural products, such as television dramas, popular music, and films; however, Korea has recently developed and exported K-pop, digital games and smartphone technologies as well as relevant youth culture. Meanwhile, industrial and technological contexts of the Korean Wave have changed significantly during the last 20 years. The role of social media in the Korean Wave's transnationalization in recent years is especially intriguing because fans around the world can easily access social media to enjoy K-pop, digital games, and films. The changes in the nature and appearance of the Korean Wave, conceptual and theoretical shifts in the studies of the Korean Wave, and the influences of the development of media technologies on the Korean Wave are all very significant. This book aims to provide a better understanding of Hallyu's theoretical and institutional history on one hand, and new features of the Korean Wave on the other hand.
New Korean Wave by Call Number: EbookPublication Date: 2016The 2012 smash "Gangnam Style" by the Seoul-based rapper Psy capped the triumph of Hallyu , the Korean Wave of music, film, and other cultural forms that have become a worldwide sensation. Dal Yong Jin analyzes the social and technological trends that transformed South Korean entertainment from a mostly regional interest aimed at families into a global powerhouse geared toward tech-crazy youth. Blending analysis with insights from fans and industry insiders, Jin shows how Hallyu exploited a media landscape and dramatically changed with the 2008 emergence of smartphones and social media, designating this new Korean Wave as Hallyu 2.0. Hands-on government support, meanwhile, focused on creative industries as a significant part of the economy and turned intellectual property rights into a significant revenue source. Jin also delves into less-studied forms like animation and online games, the significance of social meaning in the development of local Korean popular culture, and the political economy of Korean popular culture and digital technologies in a global context.
The Global Impact of South Korean Popular Culture by Call Number: EbookISBN: 9781498504614Publication Date: 2016This volume fills a gap in the existing literature and proposes an interdisciplinary and multicultural comparative approach to the impact of Hallyu worldwide. The contributors analyze the spread of South Korean popular products from different perspectives (popular culture, sociology, anthropology, linguistics) and from different geographical locations (Asia, Europe, North America, and South America). The contributors come from a variety of countries (UK, Japan, Argentina, Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Indonesia, USA, Romania). The volume is divided into three sections and twelve chapters that each bring a new perspective on the main topic. This emphasizes the impact of Hallyu and draws real and imaginary maps of the export of South Korean cultural products. Starting from the theoretical backgrounds offered by the existing literature, each chapter presents the impact of Hallyu in a particular country. This applied character does not exclude transnational comparisons or critical interrogations about the future development of the phenomenon. All authors are speaking about their own, native cultures. This inside perspective adds an important value to the understanding of the impact of a different culture on the national culture of each respective country. The contributions to this volume illustrate the globalization of the cultural products of Hallyu and show the various faces of Hallyu around the world."
- B.L.A.C.K. An Aboriginal song of hip-hopThis film is a celebration and understanding of the Aboriginal voice in hip-hop. It features the story and music of Wire MC.
- Nothing Rhymes With Ngapartji*Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program contains images and voices of people who have died.
Follows the journey of acclaimed Pitjantjatjara actor, Trevor Jamieson, as he returns to his traditional country to perform his hit stage show - Ngapartji Ngapartji - to an all-Indigenous audience, in the remote Aboriginal community of Ernabella, South Australia.
- Alive & Kicking, Program 60, Excerpts from 'Reggae Boogie Talk ShowCall Number: Streamed video (20 minutes) Written & Performed by Thomas Osha Pinnock Music: Bob Marley by Bill Laswell recorded January 15, 2000 at The Kitchen, New York CityPublication Date: 2000Streamed video
"This feature-length documentary follows this group of diverse instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers as they explore the power of music to preserve tradition, shape cultural evolution and inspire hope." Kanopy. - Nigerian Music and Dance Drama: Oba KosoPublication Date: 1979Excerpts from the famous Yoruba folklore drama about a wicked man who tries to overthrow the king. Intricate dance steps, brilliantly colored costumes, Yoruba instruments and singing. Performance by The National Theater of Nigeria. Commentary and explanation by drama writer Margaret Croyden.
- Out of Afrika Cult : The Yoruba Egungun Masquerade (48 minutes)Publication Date: 2015This video documents a full 4 days of Egungun Festivities unique to AIYEDUN-EKITI, an ancient Yoruba town where the tradition dates back 4 centuries.The viewer is taken to both “spiritual” and “entertaining” masquerades, performed in authentic outfits, to traditional Yoruba music. Observe the people of the town, the king, chiefs and their roles during the festivities.
- Siaka, an African MusicianPublication Date: 2005Siaka Diabateþ is a musician at Bouakeþ, the second largest town in the Côte d'Ivoire. Through his mother's family he is Senufo, but through his father's ancestry he considers himself a Mande griot. He is a multi-talented professional musician, and for the local festivals plays five instruments: the Senufo and Maninka balafons, the kora harp, the dundun drum and the electric guitar. This film shows Siaka playing in the group led by Soungalo Coulibaly before his death in 2004, including the use of jembe drums, which we also see being made.
For further examples, try searching the following databases:
Kanopy
EduTV
Music Voyager: India: Bollywood Adventures
ArtFilms Digital
Here are examples from ArtFilms Digital:
Raga revelry: a journey through North Indian classical music
The End of the Corrugated Road about the Warumpi Band who for twenty years told the stories of Australia in their music.
Hip-Hop
Black noise: rap music and black culture in contemporary America by Call Number: 782.42164 R797B (4 copies Matheson, 1 copy Caulfield)Publication Date: 1994Tricia Rose, described by the New York Times as a "hip hop theorist," takes a comprehensive look at the lyrics, music, cultures, themes, and styles of this highly rhythmic, rhymed storytelling and grapples with the most salient issues and debates that surround it. Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and History at New York University, Tricia Rose sorts through rap's multiple voices by exploring its underlying urban cultural politics, particularly the influential New York City rap scene, and discusses rap as a unique musical form in which traditional African-based oral traditions fuse with cutting-edge music technologies. Next she takes up rap's racial politics, its sharp criticisms of the police and the government, and the responses of those institutions. Finally, she explores the complex sexual politics of rap, including questions of misogyny, sexual domination, and female rappers' critiques of men. Rose also closely examines the lyrics and videos for songs by artists such as Public Enemy, KRS-One, Salt N' Pepa, MC Lyte, and L. L. Cool J. and draws on candid interviews with Queen Latifah, music producer Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, dancer Crazy Legs, and others to paint the full range of rap's political and aesthetic spectrum.
Rap on Gangsta Rap: Who Run It?: Gangsta rap and visions of Black violence by Call Number: 782.42164 K62R (1 copy Matheson, 1 copy Caufield)Publication Date: 1994This book is a critical review of the highly explosive and widely discussed musical art form called gangsta rap. Kitwana examines the ways Black culture, male-female relationships, sexism, white supremacy (racism), and gun violence converge in this controversial music form.
Reggae
Solid Foundation: an oral history of reggae by Call Number: 781.646 K19S 2004Publication Date: 2003A groundbreaking and comprehensive history of reggae, with firsthand accounts by reggae's most prominent and popular figures. Solid Foundation: An Oral History of Reggae is an original, in-depth look at one of the most influential music genres. Through exclusive interview material and previously unpublished photographs, David Katz brings to life over one hundred of reggae's most important artists, including Toots and The Maytals, The Melodians, the Skatalites, and the Wailers Band, Augustus Pablo, Culture, Sugar Minott, Cocoa Tea, and Frankie Paul, who speak for the first time about their roles in the music's progression. From the pre-ska years of the late 1950s to the dawning of the digital age in the mid-1980s, Solid Foundation charts the evolution of ska, rock steady, traditional and untraditional reggae styles, and the sub-genres of dub, deejay, and dancehall. The book is largely drawn from conversations Katz conducted with the architects of Jamaica's popular music, and with perceptive and detailed commentary, he celebrates the creativity and individuality that have made reggae music one of the most popular contemporary styles throughout the world.
Reggae Routes by Call Number: 781.646 C456RISBN: 9781566396295Publication Date: 1997Bob Marley's recordings, some twenty years after his death, still enjoy enormous international popularity. For popular music fans in most of the world, reggae looms so large as to be Jamaica's only music and Marley its consummate musician. In this book, Jamaicans Kevin Chang and Wayne Chen offer a history of reggae, accounting for its rise and devolution. Jamaican music can be roughly divided into four eras, each with a distinctive beat - ska, rocksteady, reggae, and dancehall. Ska dates from about 1960 to mid-1966 and rocksteady from 1966 to 1968, while from 1969 to 1983 reggae was the popular beat. The reggae era had two phases, "early reggae" up to 1974 and "roots reggae" up to 1983. Since 1983 dancehall has been the prevalent the prevalent sound. The authors describe each stage in the development of the music, identifying the most popular songs and artists, highlighting the significant social, political, and economic issues as they affected the music scene. While they write from a Jamaican perspective, the intended audience is "any person, local or foreign, interested in an intelligent discussion of reggae music and Jamaica." Featuring some four hundred illustrations that range from album covers to rare photos, Reggae Routes profiles the innumerable artists, producers, and recordings that secured an international audience for Jamaican music. Artists discussed: Toots and the Maytals, the Wailers, Gaylads, Desmond Dekker, Delroy Wilson, Alton Ellis, Burning Spear, Itals, Wailing Souls, Skatalites, Heptones, and hundreds more.
Samba
Music in Brazil: experiencing music by Call Number: 781.640981 M978M 2006Publication Date: 2006Brazil is home to some of the most celebrated music in the world. Music in Brazil covers a wide spectrum of this music, including samba, bossa nova, Tropicália, and MPB (Música Popular Brasileira); regional traditional and popular music; Brazilian rock, rap, and electronica; and such genres as sertaneja (similar to country-and-western music) and brega (sentimental pop). Music in Brazil is organized around four themes: unity, diversity, cosmopolitanism, and verbal artistry. It shows how Brazilian music expresses the unity of the country's culture, discussing, for example, how samba plays a major part in annual Carnaval celebrations and provides a focus for nationalist sentiment. In contrast, the book also demonstrates how music represents the diversity of Brazilian culture, describing how each of Brazil's regions is home to unique genres of music, and how the audiences for various types of music reflect class distinctions. An accompanying CD contains examples of the music discussed in the book, many of which are taken from the author's field recordings.
The Brazilian Sound: samba, bossa nova, and the popular music of Brazil Author by Call Number: 781.640981 M146B 2009Publication Date: 2008This title includes discussions of developments in samba and other key genres, the rise of female singer-songwriters, works by established artists like Milton Nascimento and Gilberto Gil and the mixing of bossa with electronica.
- Old Time RadioThese archives contain thousands of hours recorded from Radio Shows: Drama, Comedy, Mystery and Horror, all presented in an audio format.
- The Great 78 rpm ProjectAn archive collection of 78rpm records, cylinder recordings, and other recordings from the early 20th century. These recordings were contributed to the Archive by users and community through the Open Source Audio collection. The Internet Archive has digitized many collections.
Sources for all regions from every continent
The following databases offer sources which you can search using keywords : hip-hop and gansgsta, reggae and Jamaica or samba and Brazil. There will also be sources relevant to the Expo on the Eurovision Song Contest and the pop music of East Asia, India, Iran, South Africa and West Africa.
Bloomsbury Popular Music is a database containing in-depth analysis of popular music in a global context. You can search with keywords to find sources for the essay topics and the Expo.
Contemporary World Music contains streamed sound tracks and online liner notes which offer different perspectives on your topics. You can search by Place or Genre and browse by performer or ensemble.
Smithsonian World Music is a a virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions produced in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. There are over 35,000 individual tracks of music and online liner notes which you can browse or search using controlled vocabularies or keywords to find musical instruments, geographic areas, cultural groups and genres.
Oxford Music Online (searching example)
Many comprehensive encyclopedias contain articles accompanied by extensive bibliographies which provide ideas for further sources. Try the entries for Hip-Hop, Samba, Brazil, Iran, Jamaica, South Africa and West African in Oxford Music Online. The search interface allows you to search for keywords across the full text of all articles. For example:
Link to the full Oxford Music Online (also known as Grove Music Online).
Popular sheet music collection in Special Collections
The Popular sheet music collection in Special collections includes over 20,000 popular sheet music titles. A Finding List is available.
Star dust / by Hoagy Carmichael ; piano transcription by James Matté. (New York : Mills Music, 1930, c1929). "Star Dust" began as an instrumental, "Barnyard Shuffle." The lyrics were added in 1929 by Mitchell Parish. The most widely covered song of the twentieth century, Nat King Cole’s 1957 version is perhaps the best. The song ends with the words, "My stardust melody, the memory of love’s refrain."
Most of the music dates from 1900 to 1970 but includes a substantial number of examples from the nineteenth century. It is representative of the many and varied forms of music that have been popular, including show tunes, jazz, dance, etc. from Great Britain, the United States and Australia. Much of the collection are popular songs from overseas that have been published in Australia and feature Australian stage performers' portraits on the covers.
Catalogue of the exhibition of sheet music from the Rare Books Collection, Stardust Melodies.