Defining Waka Musically

This book considers how music, musicality, and ideologies of musicality are working within the specific construction of waka on the theme of male love in Kitamura Kigin’s Iwatsutsuji (1676) and Ihara Saikaku’s Nanshoku ōkagami (1687) by using a modified generative theory of music. This modified theory seeks to get at the interdependent meanings that may exist among the music, image, and the text of the waka in question. In all, this study guides the reader through five waka on the theme of male love and demonstrates not only how each waka is inherently musical but how the image and text may interdependently relate to the ways in which premodern Japanese song poets may not only have thought in and with sound but may have also utilized a diverse array of musical gestures to construct new objects of knowledge. In the case of this study, these new objects of knowledge seem to have aided in situating a changing musicopoetics that aligned with changing constructions of male desire.

This volume explores the nature, philosophies and genres of indigenous African popular music, focusing on how indigenous African popular music artistes are seen as prophets and philosophers, and how indigenous African popular music depicts the world. Indigenous African popular music has long been under-appreciated in communication scholarship. However, understanding the nature and philosophies of indigenous African popular music reveals an untapped diversity which only be unraveled by knowledge of the myriad cultural backgrounds from which its genres originate. Indigenous African popular musicians have become repositories of indigenous cultural traditions and cosmologies.With a particular focus on scholarship from Nigeria, Zimbabwe and South Africa, this volume explores the work of these pioneering artists and their protégés who are resiliently sustaining, recreating and popularising indigenous popular music in their respective African communities, and at the same time propagating the communal views about African philosophies and the temporal and spiritual worlds in which they exist. ​

For years Rap artists have met with mixed reception--acclaimed by fans yet largely overlooked by scholars. Focusing on 135 tracks from 56 artists, this survey appraises the artistry of the genre with updates to the traditional methods and measures of musicology. Rap synthesizes rhythmic vocals with complex beats, intonational systems, song structures, orchestration and instrumentalism. The author advances a rethinking of musical notation and challenges the conventional understanding of Rap through analysis of such artists as Eminem, Kanye West and Jean Grae.

This anthology addresses the modern musical culture of interwar Osaka and its surrounding Hanshin region. Modernity as experienced in this locale, with its particular historical, geographic and demographic character, and its established traditions of music and performance, gave rise to configurations of the new, the traditional and the hybrid that were distinct from their Tokyo counterparts. The Taisho and early Showa periods, from 1912 to the early 1940s, saw profound changes in Japanese musical life. Consumption of both traditional Japanese and Western music was transformed as public concert performances, music journalism, and music marketing permeated daily life. The new bourgeoisie saw Western music, particularly the piano and its repertoire, as the symbol of a desirable and increasingly affordable modernity. Orchestras and opera troupes were established, which in turn created a need for professional conductors, and both jazz and a range of hybrid popular music styles became viable bases for musical livelihood. Recording technology proliferated; by the early 1930s, record players and SP discs were no longer luxury commodities, radio broadcasts reached all levels of society, and ’talkies’ with music soundtracks were avidly consumed. With the perceived need for music that suited 'modern life', the seeds for the pre-eminent position of Euro-American music in post-Second-World war Japan were sown. At the same time many indigenous musical genres continued to thrive, but were hardly immune to the effects of modernization; in exploring new musical media and techniques drawn from Western music, performer-composers initiated profound changes in composition and performance practice within traditional genres. This volume is the first to draw together research on the interwar musical culture of the Osaka region and addresses comprehensively both Western and non-Western musical practices and genres, questions the common perception of their being wholly separate domains

This is a study of vocal expressions in the borderland between speech and song, based on performances from cultural contexts where oral transmission dominates. Approaches drawn from perspectives belonging to both ethnomusicology and linguistics are integrated in the analysis. As the idea of the performance template is employed as an analytical tool, the focus is on those techniques that make performance possible. The result is an increased understanding of what performers actually do when they employ variation or improvisation, and sometimes composition as well. The transmission of these culture-specific techniques is essential for the continuation of this form of human communication and interaction with the spirit world. By comparative study of other research, the result of the analysis is viewed in relation to ongoing processes in society.

Critical frameworks for considering pop stars - Female popular music stars as brands - The modern music industry - The lifecycle for female popular music stars - The lifecycle model continued - Theoretical foundations for the lifecycle.

This ground-breaking book examines the multifaceted dynamics between copyright law and music borrowing within a rich diversity of music genres from across the world. It evaluates how copyright laws under different generic conventions may influence, or are influenced by, time-honoured creative borrowing practices. Leading experts from around the world scrutinise a carefully selected range of musical genres, including pop, hip-hop, jazz, blues, electronic and dance music, as well as a diversity of region-specific genres, such as Jamaican music, River Plate Tango, Irish folk music, Hungarian folk music, Flamenco, Indian traditional music, Australian indigenous music, Maori music and many others. This genre-conscious analysis builds on a theoretical section in which musicologists and lawyers offer their insights into fundamental issues concerning music genre categorisation, the typology of music borrowing and copyright law's ontological struggle with musical borrowing in theory and practice. The chapters are threaded together by a central theme, ie, that the cumulative nature of music creativity is the result of collective bargaining processes among many 'musicking' parties that have socially constructed creative music authorship under a rich mix of generic conventions.

The new edition of The Child as Musician: A Handbook of Musical Development celebrates the richness and diversity of the many different ways in which children can engage in and interact with music. It presents theory - both cutting edge and classic - in an accessible way for readers by surveying research concerned with the development and acquisition of musical skills. The focus is on musical development from conception to late adolescences, although the bulk of the coverage concentrates on the period when children are able to begin formal music instruction (from around age 3) until the final year of formal schooling (around age 18). There are many conceptions of how musical development might take place, just as there are for other disciplines and areas of human potential. Consequently, the publication highlights the diversity in current literature dealing with how we think about and conceptualise children's musical development. Each of the authors has searched for a better and more effective way to explain in their own words and according to their own perspective, the remarkable ways in which children engage with music. In the field of educational psychology there are a number of publications that survey the issues surrounding child and adolescent development. Some of the more innovative present research and theories, and their educational implications, in a style that stresses the fundamental interplay among the biological, environmental, social and cultural influences at each stage of a child's development. Until now, no similar overview has existed for child and adolescent development in the field of music. The Child as Musician addresses this imbalance, and is essential for those in the fields of child development, music education, and music cognition.