Photography is clearly not a mirror of daily life: that images are constructions is especially obvious in19th-century studio portrait photography.
Since the mid-nineteenth century photography has played a central role in cultural encounters within and between migrant communities in the United States.
How to account for the peculiar attraction of certain photos? How to deal with the specific use of images in particular contexts? Monika Schwärzler presents a variety of photographic case studies exploring visual phenomena from the point of view of media analysis as well as from sociological, aesthetic, and psychoanalytic perspectives.
An examination of the use of digital badges as a reward for both casual online music evaluators and professional musicians. Professional and amateur musicians alike use social media as a platform for showcasing and promoting their music. Social media evaluation practices—rating, ranking, voting, “liking,” and “friending” by ordinary users, peers, and critics—have become essential pr…
This classic ethnomusicological survey provides as a valuable guide to African music. The essays review a broad swath of genres and topics, including court songs and music history, musical instruments in different traditions, and the connection between Islam and African music. Contributors are Lois Ann Anderson, John Blacking, Philip J. C. Dark, David M. Dixon, Akin Euba, John D. Fage, Matthew …
The richness, variety, and complexity of the culture of the Hausa city-states are illustrated in microcosm in Glossary of Hausa Music and Its Social Contexts, in which several hundred Hausa terms for music are collected. David W. Ames and Anthony V. King concentrate on the kingdoms of Zaria and Katsina, but include historically noteworthy terms from other areas. This compilation not only presen…
Hardworking actor, playwright, and stage manager Harry Watkins (1825–94) was also a prolific diarist. For fifteen years Watkins regularly recorded the plays he saw, the roles he performed, the books he read, and his impressions of current events. Performing across the U.S., Watkins collaborated with preeminent performers and producers, recording his successes and failures as well as his encou…
Containing details of 390 L.P. and E.P. recordings, African Music on LP: An Annotated Discography contributed to the scholarship of African music at a time when very little had been written. Organized by record label and arranged in alphabetical order, Allen P. Merriam assesses the stylistic characteristics of each recording, providing new insights on the subject and the recording industry at t…
The central aim of this book is to present a new approach to “the field of musical improvisation” (FMI), a theory which understands improvisation as a nonlinear dynamic and complex system. The study provocatively argues that during an improvisation more actants are “at work” than musicians alone: space, acoustics, instruments, audience, technicians, musical and socio-cultural background…
In the 1970s, especially after Franco’s death in 1975, Spanish cinema was bursting at the seams. Numerous film directors broke free from the ancient taboos which had reigned under the dictatorship. They introduced characters who, through their bodies, transgress the traditional borders of social, cultural and sexual identities. Post- Franco cinema exhibits women, homosexuals, transsexuals, an…