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Legendary musician Annapurna Devi's life has been shrouded in mystery. Daughter of the unparalleled Allauddin Khan of Maitra and the first wife of Pandit Ravi Shankar, she conquered the summit of Indian classical music, only to later renounce public life to spend her entire life as a recluse in the confinement of her house. Until the age of sixteen, Annapurna Devi was confined to her family home at Maihar, where her father was a court musician and guru to the maharaja. During this period, she de...

A completely new edition of the definitive biography of Chopin, unavailable for many years, by one of the finest of contemporary European historians. Two centuries have passed since Chopin's birth, yet his legacy is all around us today. The quiet revolution he wrought influenced the development of Western music profoundly, and he is still probably the most widely studied and revered composer. For many, he is the object of a cult. Yet most people know little of his life, of the man, his...

A love letter to the verbal artistry of hip-hop, What's Good is a work of passionate lyrical analysis "What's Good is, among a great many other things, a byproduct of joyful obsession and immersion into both language and sound, an intersection that offers a rich and expansive land upon which to play." —Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance  " . . . an often hilarious, surprisingly moving and always joyful paean to rap’s relationship to wo...

Nik Cohn began to write this book in the late 1960s with a simple purpose: to catch the feel, the pulse of Rock. Nobody had written a serious book on the subject before, and there were no reference books or research to refer to. The result is an unruly, thrilling and definitive history of an era, from Bill Haley to Jimi Hendrix, full of guts, flash, energy and speed. In vividly describing the music and cutting through the hype, Nik Cohn engendered and perfected a new form: rock criticism.

"Formed in London in 1976 by Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, and Paul Simonon at the outset of that city's punk rock boom, The Clash went on to outlast their peers and create some of the most influential albums in rock 'n' roll--not just punk--even breaching the mainstream in 1982 and earning the title 'The Only Band That Matters' along the way. In their eight-year career, The Clash offered six CBS Records studio releases, including one double and one triple LP, and increasingly melded influences rang...

He is one of the greatest musical talents Britain has ever produced. But even as the principle songwriter and lead guitarist for The Who, it would be unjust to define Pete Townshend's life simply through his achievements with bandmates Daltrey, Moon and Entwistle. Noting that he has sold over 100 million records over a fifty-year period goes some way to quantifying his accomplishments, but numbers only scratch the surface of his contribution to popular culture. An avid student of his profession,...

Julian Cope's highly acclaimed autobiography and its long-awaited sequel in one extraordinary volume. Julian Cope shot to fame with eighties band 'Teardrop Explodes' during the punk era. Hailed as a visionary by those who recognise his genius and a madman by those who find him perplexing, he is one of the music industry's most intriguing cult figures. Head-On/Repossessed is written in Cope's own inimitable style and follows his journey through a time of incredible change -- within the music in...

All that Jazz--and more! Backed with a rich history and appreciation for the genre, and featuring nearly 50,000 vinyl albums covering some 50 years of recorded music, Goldmine Jazz Album Price Guide, 3rd Edition is the only identification and value guide on the market dedicated solely to collecting Jazz vinyl pressed in the United States. Record collectors and enthusiasts will enjoy wide-ranging artist coverage, extensive discographies, descriptions and vetted secondary market values in this...

Mix and match the tops and bottoms of your favourite celebs to create over 10,000 hilarious combinations in The Sun's Celebrity Mashup. Meet a whole new cast of A-list celebs! Like Sir Alex Middleton, the grumpy Man United boss whose wiggling rear stole the show at the Royal Wedding. Or the Archbishop of Clarkson, the venerable clergyman who decked Piers Morgan. Or Boris Gaga, the lovable London Mayor famous for outrageously revealing stage costumes.

Living Genres in Late Modernity rehears the American 1970s through the workings of its musical genres. Exploring stylistic developments from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, including soul, funk, disco, pop, the nocturne, and the concerto, Charles Kronengold treats genres as unstable constellations of works, people, practices, institutions, technologies, money, conventions, forms, ideas, and multisensory experiences. What these genres share is a significant cultural moment: they arrive ju...

The story of Lester Bangs, music critic, gutter poet, and romantic visionary of rock and roll writing. This autobiography follows his rejection of his Jehovah's Witness childhood through his indulgences in rock's excesses to his eventual treatment as a peer by such artists as Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

Described by New York Times critic John Rockwell as "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer," Ben Johnston reconceives familiar idioms--ranging from neoclassicism and serialism to jazz and southern hymnody--using just intonation. Johnston studied with Darius Milhaud, Harry Partch, and John Cage, and is best known for his String Quartet No. 4, a complex series of variations on Amazing Grace. This collection spans forty years and brings together forty-one of Johnston's mos...

In The Show I'll Never Forget, writer Sean Manning has gathered an amazing array of unforgettable concert memories from a veritable A-list of acclaimed novelists, poets, biographers, cultural critics, and songwriters. Their candid, first-person recollections reveal as much about the writers' lives at the time as they do about the venues where the shows occurred or the artists onstage. Ishmael Reed on Miles Davis Luc Sante on Public Image Ltd. Heidi Julavits on Rush Daniel Handler and Andrew Sean...

Fresh perspectives on teaching and evaluating music performance in higher education are offered in this book. One-to-one pedagogy and Western art music, once default positions of instrumental teaching, are giving way to a range of approaches that seek to engage with the challenges of the music industry and higher education sector funding models of the twenty-first century. Many of these approaches – formal, informal, semi-autonomous, notated, using improvisation or aleatory principles, incorpora...