In the weeks leading up to The White Stripes' tenth-anniversary show, the band embarked on an adventurous and unprecedented tour that took them to every province and territory in Canada - from ocean to permafrost-playing unusual venues to crowds of all sizes, and culminating with the anniversary show. Photographer Autumn de Wilde traveled with the band into town and over tundra, capturing the beauty of the landscape, the exhilarating power of the live shows, the band's intense connection with th...
Billie Holiday singing at the New Orleans Swing Club. Dexter Gordon hanging out at Bop City. Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane all swinging through for gigs. Was this slice of jazz history in New York or perhaps New Orleans? No, this was San Francisco's Fillmore District in its heyday. The Fillmore in the 1940's and 1950's was an eclectic, integrated and hopping neighborhood of streets full of restaurants, pool halls, theaters and stores - many minority-owned - and b...
The acclaimed company behind the Olivier Award nominated ('Best New Opera, 2018') production of La boheme present a radical reimagining of Verdi's incendiary tale of sex, class and power, La Traviata. England, 2018. Violetta earns her crust dancing for the rich and powerful at an exclusive gentleman's club until a chance meeting with naive and idealistic Elijah changes everything. The powerful collide with the powerless, with earth shattering consequences for all involved. Combining Verdi's brea...
Forty years of rock 'n' roll and rebellion, it's all here: the music the mud and the memories. "Join Together! Forty Years of the Rock Festival" takes us behind the scenes of the major rock festivals such as Monterey Pop, Woodstock, Isle of Wight, Live Aid, Lollapalooza, Ozzfest, Live 8, the US Festivals, Vans Warped Tour, SARSstock, Woodstock '99, Coachella Bonnaroo, and dozens of other international events. Over 90 artists contribute their unique memories and perspectives on the music festival...
Together Let Us Sweetly Live offers a rare look at the unique grassroots African American religious institutions called the Singing and Praying Bands. This folksong and ring shout tradition began in Chesapeake Bay country in the early nineteenth century, with a fusion of Methodist prayer meeting worship and African religious, danced song traditions. Although scholars have assumed ring shouts died out long ago, Jonathan C. David shows otherwise, ushering us inside tidewater communities of Marylan...
Brian May and his father Harold started to hand-build an electric guitar in 1963. Brian dreamed of a guitar that would outperform any of the existing commercially-made electric guitars; his father had the technical knowledge and skills to help make the dream come true. Brian has played his guitar on every Queen album and in Queen's live shows around the world, from the roof of Buckingham Palace to the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. "My dad and I decided to make an electric g...
In this persuasive study, Tracy McMullen draws on philosophy, psychology, musicology, performance studies, and popular music studies in order to analyze the rise of obsessively precise live musical reenactments in the United States at the turn of the millennium. She investigates this practice, what she terms, Replay, in popular music, jazz, and performance art arguing that it is a symptom of deep-seated fears of the fleeting nature of identity. Musical Replay claims a type of authenticity that i...
The intertribal pow-wow is the most widespread venue for traditional Indian music and dance in North America. Heartbeat of the People is an insider's journey into the dances and music, the traditions and regalia, and the functions and significance of these vital cultural events. Tara Browner focuses on the Northern pow-wow of the northern Great Plains and Great Lakes to investigate the underlying tribal and regional frameworks that reinforce personal tribal affiliations. Interviews with dancers...
Listening for the Secret (Studies in the Grateful Dead, #1)
by Ulf Olsson
Listening for the Secret is a critical assessment of the Grateful Dead and the distinct culture that grew out of the group's music, politics, and performance. With roots in popular music traditions, improvisation, and the avant-garde, the Grateful Dead provides a unique lens through which we can better understand the meaning and creation of the counterculture community. Marshaling the critical and aesthetic theories of Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault and others, Ulf Olsson places the music group with...