Books in the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series series

Argues for a re-assessment of guitar studies in the wake of musical, cultural and technological developments that have taken place around the instrument. This title presents guitar as an instrument of scientific investigation and part of the technology of globalization, created and disseminated through corporate culture and cottage industry.

Focuses on Jews as a racialized group in the popular music of America, Britain and Australia during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book explores race as a cultural construction and continues discussions undertaken in Jewish Studies concerning the racialization of the Jews and the stereotyping of Jews.

Presents an evaluation of the rules that define heavy metal as a musical genre. This book investigates why, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Birmingham provided the ideal location for the early development of heavy metal and hard rock. It considers how the influence of the London and Liverpool music scenes merged with the cultural climate.

Drawing on methodologies and approaches from media and cultural studies, sociology, social history and the study of popular music, this book outlines the development of the study of men and masculinities, and explores the role of cultural texts in bringing about social change. It is against this backdrop that The Beatles, as a cultural phenomenon.

Presents an examination of the ways in which popular music has been deployed in association with violence, ranging from what appears to be an incidental relationship, to one in which music is explicitly applied as an instrument of violence.

For more than three decades, a punk underground has repeatedly insisted that anyone can do it. This underground punk movement has evolved via several micro-traditions, each offering distinct and novel presentations of what punk is, isn't, or should be. This title examines the cultural history and politics of punk.

For female pop stars, whose star bodies and star performances are undisputedly the objects of a sexualized external gaze, the process of ageing in public poses particular challenges. This title focuses on British and Latina women performers and ageing. It investigates the cultural work performed by artists such as Madonna, Celia Cruz, and more.

This book traces the evolution of the recording format from its roots in the first sound recording experiments, to its survival in the world of digital technologies. Each chapter explores a different element: the groove, the disc shape, the label, vinyl itself, the album, the single, the b-side and the 12" single, the sleeve.

Invisible Now describes Bob Dylan's transformative inspiration as artist and cultural figure in the 1960s. John Hughes combines close discussions of Dylan's mercurial art with related discussions of his humour, voice, photographs, and self-presentation, as well as with the singularities of particular performances.

The term 'flow' refers to experiences where the musician moves into a consciousness in which time seems to be suspended and perception of reality is blurred by unconscious forces. An essential part of the jazz tradition.

These essays bring together the stories of 23 debut albums over a nearly fifty year span, ranging from Buddy Holly and the Crickets in 1957 to The Go! Team in 2004. In addition to biographical background and a wealth of historical information about the genesis of each album.

This book studies the working efficacy of Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah in the context of today's network culture. Especially as recorded on YouTube, k.d. lang's interpretation(s) of Cohen's Hallelujah embody, acoustically and visually/viscerally, what Nietzsche named the 'spirit of music'. Today.

This book provides a rich historical and ethnographic account of step dancing, step dancers, and Irish cultural institutions. Catherine Foley tells the story of step dance from its roots in eighteenth-century Ireland to its modern globalized appeal. Foley applies a regional focus to her examination of step dace.

The emergence of Thatcherism around 1980, which ushered in a period of neo-liberalism in British politics that still resonates today, led musicians, like other artists, to respond to their context of production. This book uses the early work of one of these musicians, Elvis Costello.

Harriet J. Manning argues that the nineteenth-century blackface minstrelsy's legacy is nowhere more evident than with Michael Jackson, in whom minstrelsy's gestures and tropes are embedded. The author further contends that minstrelsy's assumptions and uses have been fundamental to the troubles and controversies with which Jackson was beset.

Joanna Newsom, Will Oldham (AKA 'Bonnie Prince Billy'), and Devendra Banhart are perhaps the best known of a generation of independent artists who use elements of folk music in contexts which are far from traditional. New folk artists challenge our notions of 'finished product' through their recordings.

These essays investigate the relation of traditional music to Irish modernity.

'Counterculture' emerged as a term in the late 1960s and has been re-deployed in more recent decades in relation to other forms of cultural and socio-political phenomena. This volume provides an essential new academic scrutiny of the concept of 'counterculture' and a critical examination of the period and its heritage.

Vibe Merchants offers an insider's perspective on the development of Jamaican popular music. This rare perspective focuses on the actual details of music making practice, rationalised in the context of the economic and creative forces that locally drive music production. By focusing on the work of audio engineers and musicians.

Jon Stratton explores the concept of 'song careers', referring to how a song is picked up and then transformed by being revisioned by different artists and in different cultural contexts.

Explores the influence of the emergence of rock'n'roll in the early 1950s in the way it shaped the subsequent trajectory and development of popular music. It considers the history, place and time of each event, locates the performances within their social and professional contexts, and considers their immediate and long-term musical consequences.

Popular music has long understood that human rights, if attainable at all, involve a struggle without end. This title includes contributors that cover topics such as Movimento 77, Nepal's heavy metal scene, music and memory in Mozambique and Swaziland, hybrid metal in the muslim world, folksong in Latvia, Victor Jara, and more.

Explores the music, reception and cultural significance of 1960s girl singers and girl groups in the US and the UK. Using approaches from the fields of musicology, women's studies, film and media studies, and cultural studies, this volume links close musical readings with rigorous cultural analysis in the treatment of artists.

Political Rock is a comparative, cultural history of luminary figures in rock music who have played important roles in social movements. Individual chapters are devoted to The Clash and Fugazi, Billy Bragg, Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, Sinead O'Connor, Peter Gabriel, Ani DiFranco, Bruce Cockburn, Steve Earle and Kim Gordon.

Brings together a collection of original, interdisciplinary, critical essays exploring the negotiated place of gender and sexuality in heavy metal music and its culture. This book combines a broad variety of perspectives on the main topic, regarding gender in connection to: the history of the genre; the range of metal subgenres; and more.

The concept of the singer-songwriter is significant and much debated for a variety of reasons. This book intends to explore and compare the multifaceted discourses and practices of this figure within and across linguistic spaces in Europe and in dialogue with spaces beyond continental borders.

Researching popular music started off in Germany with comparable problems and a lack of institutional and general academic appreciation as it did in the rest of the world. Since music is now being considered a complex economic, aesthetic and cultural system and practice, a variety of disciplines have engaged in the field of popular music studies in the past few decades. For the first time, native popular musicologists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland focus on their own popular music. The book will show close connections between international and national popular music and diverse traditions of study, and will contribute to a better understanding of the music.