Britta Sweers
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195174786
- eISBN:
- 9780199864348
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195174786.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
In order to discuss modern revival and fusion processes from a broader perspective, this chapter presents the case study of the New St. George, an American English electric folk band. The interview ...
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In order to discuss modern revival and fusion processes from a broader perspective, this chapter presents the case study of the New St. George, an American English electric folk band. The interview with band leader Jennifer Cutting adds a relativizing angle to the specific situation of a hybrid music band, such as the musical selection process, the performance situation, and the business side. As the specifically marginal situation of American English bands reveals, hybrid bands often have to work with compromises much stronger than the dominant “Celtic” scenes, which can fall back on a much broader local and global network. While thus appearing as a highly specific genre, English electric folk is nevertheless also being revealed as a highly influential genre — be it with regard to the more successful “Celtic” branch — yet also with regard to folk rock approaches in neighboring countries like Scandinavia.Less
In order to discuss modern revival and fusion processes from a broader perspective, this chapter presents the case study of the New St. George, an American English electric folk band. The interview with band leader Jennifer Cutting adds a relativizing angle to the specific situation of a hybrid music band, such as the musical selection process, the performance situation, and the business side. As the specifically marginal situation of American English bands reveals, hybrid bands often have to work with compromises much stronger than the dominant “Celtic” scenes, which can fall back on a much broader local and global network. While thus appearing as a highly specific genre, English electric folk is nevertheless also being revealed as a highly influential genre — be it with regard to the more successful “Celtic” branch — yet also with regard to folk rock approaches in neighboring countries like Scandinavia.
Michael Tenzer
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195177893
- eISBN:
- 9780199864843
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177893.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This introductory chapter provides an overview of music analysis and theory in universal and cross-cultural contexts, including: Analysis: Definitions and Perspectives; Choosing Perspectives for this ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of music analysis and theory in universal and cross-cultural contexts, including: Analysis: Definitions and Perspectives; Choosing Perspectives for this Book; World Music as a Context for New Music; Categorizing Music; Periodicity and the Composer's Toolbox; Qualities of Periodicity; and Universals and a Future Music Theory.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of music analysis and theory in universal and cross-cultural contexts, including: Analysis: Definitions and Perspectives; Choosing Perspectives for this Book; World Music as a Context for New Music; Categorizing Music; Periodicity and the Composer's Toolbox; Qualities of Periodicity; and Universals and a Future Music Theory.
Britta Sweers
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195174786
- eISBN:
- 9780199864348
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195174786.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
As a re-evaluation of Bob Dylan's folk rock performance at Newport highlights, one central controversy of fusion music has been centered on the relationship between traditional and popular music. ...
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As a re-evaluation of Bob Dylan's folk rock performance at Newport highlights, one central controversy of fusion music has been centered on the relationship between traditional and popular music. This discourse becomes especially apparent in the broader historical background of the partly strongly interrelated folk music revivals. The subsequent historical overview thus sketches the different Folk Revivals in America (1930s-1965) and American Folk Rock (1965-1970) and the Second British Folk Revival (1950s/60s), including the Skiffle Craze and the development of the folk club scene, which has strongly shaped the discourses regarding electric folk. As the focus of this study is set on electric folk from its emergence in the mid-1960s until its disappearance in the late 1970s, later developments after the re-emergence in the 1980s are only briefly sketched.Less
As a re-evaluation of Bob Dylan's folk rock performance at Newport highlights, one central controversy of fusion music has been centered on the relationship between traditional and popular music. This discourse becomes especially apparent in the broader historical background of the partly strongly interrelated folk music revivals. The subsequent historical overview thus sketches the different Folk Revivals in America (1930s-1965) and American Folk Rock (1965-1970) and the Second British Folk Revival (1950s/60s), including the Skiffle Craze and the development of the folk club scene, which has strongly shaped the discourses regarding electric folk. As the focus of this study is set on electric folk from its emergence in the mid-1960s until its disappearance in the late 1970s, later developments after the re-emergence in the 1980s are only briefly sketched.
Niko Higgins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199928835
- eISBN:
- 9780199369751
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199928835.003.0013
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, Popular
How does popular music reveal some of the tensions of urban 21st- century India? In Chennai, musicians combine elements of Western jazz, rock, and classical music with South Indian classical and film ...
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How does popular music reveal some of the tensions of urban 21st- century India? In Chennai, musicians combine elements of Western jazz, rock, and classical music with South Indian classical and film music. Musicians and audiences refer to this practice as “fusion,” which highlights the intentional mixing of musical genres. As a result, fusion is complexly situated between a series of politicized genre boundaries because it is at once popular, classical, Indian, and Western. It is therefore a contested musical practice with some champions and many naysayers, and presents a unique opportunity to learn how music-making and contemporary urban South India are linked through a relationship of irresolution. This chapter describes some of the tensions that characterize the practice of fusion in order to show how musicians synthesize omnipresent categories of Western and Indian music. I address the contemporary relevance of fusion by focusing on a single performance of fusion in Chennai in 2007. Bringing together ethnographic description with literature about cosmopolitanism and studies of the new Indian middle class, I highlight the ways fusion is contested by showing how music sounds the tensions that constitute debates about globalization. Overall, I show how the practice of fusion in Chennai reveals a transitional moment in Indian history that uses new materials to express old desires: Musicians use a range of musical sounds to expand and maintain Indian tradition, as well as celebrate distinctive local Indian identity, while also displaying a global, cosmopolitan savvy.Less
How does popular music reveal some of the tensions of urban 21st- century India? In Chennai, musicians combine elements of Western jazz, rock, and classical music with South Indian classical and film music. Musicians and audiences refer to this practice as “fusion,” which highlights the intentional mixing of musical genres. As a result, fusion is complexly situated between a series of politicized genre boundaries because it is at once popular, classical, Indian, and Western. It is therefore a contested musical practice with some champions and many naysayers, and presents a unique opportunity to learn how music-making and contemporary urban South India are linked through a relationship of irresolution. This chapter describes some of the tensions that characterize the practice of fusion in order to show how musicians synthesize omnipresent categories of Western and Indian music. I address the contemporary relevance of fusion by focusing on a single performance of fusion in Chennai in 2007. Bringing together ethnographic description with literature about cosmopolitanism and studies of the new Indian middle class, I highlight the ways fusion is contested by showing how music sounds the tensions that constitute debates about globalization. Overall, I show how the practice of fusion in Chennai reveals a transitional moment in Indian history that uses new materials to express old desires: Musicians use a range of musical sounds to expand and maintain Indian tradition, as well as celebrate distinctive local Indian identity, while also displaying a global, cosmopolitan savvy.
Britta Sweers
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195174786
- eISBN:
- 9780199864348
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195174786.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
In the 1960s and 1970s, British musicians rediscovered traditional folk ballads, fusing the old melodies with rock, jazz, and blues styles to create a new genre dubbed “electric folk” or “British ...
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In the 1960s and 1970s, British musicians rediscovered traditional folk ballads, fusing the old melodies with rock, jazz, and blues styles to create a new genre dubbed “electric folk” or “British folk rock.” This revival featured groups such as Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, and Pentangle, and individual performers like Richard Thompson and Shirley Collins. While working in multiple styles, all were making music based on traditional English song and dance material. After reasonable commercial success, electric folk disappeared from mainstream notice in the late 1970s, yet performers continue to create it today. This multi-layered analysis explores electric folk as a cultural phenomenon, commercial entity, and performance style. Drawing on rare historical sources, contemporary music journalism, and first-hand interviews, the book argues that electric folk resulted from both the American folk revival of the early 1960s and a reaction against the dominance of American pop music abroad. In this process, the musicians turned to traditional musical material as a means of asserting their British cultural identity. Yet, they were less interested in the “purity” of folk ballads than in the music's potential for lively interaction with modern styles, instruments, and media. This book also delves into the impact of the movement on mainstream pop, American rock music, and neighboring European countries.Less
In the 1960s and 1970s, British musicians rediscovered traditional folk ballads, fusing the old melodies with rock, jazz, and blues styles to create a new genre dubbed “electric folk” or “British folk rock.” This revival featured groups such as Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, and Pentangle, and individual performers like Richard Thompson and Shirley Collins. While working in multiple styles, all were making music based on traditional English song and dance material. After reasonable commercial success, electric folk disappeared from mainstream notice in the late 1970s, yet performers continue to create it today. This multi-layered analysis explores electric folk as a cultural phenomenon, commercial entity, and performance style. Drawing on rare historical sources, contemporary music journalism, and first-hand interviews, the book argues that electric folk resulted from both the American folk revival of the early 1960s and a reaction against the dominance of American pop music abroad. In this process, the musicians turned to traditional musical material as a means of asserting their British cultural identity. Yet, they were less interested in the “purity” of folk ballads than in the music's potential for lively interaction with modern styles, instruments, and media. This book also delves into the impact of the movement on mainstream pop, American rock music, and neighboring European countries.
Gregory D. Booth
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195327632
- eISBN:
- 9780199852055
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327632.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Beginning in the 1930s, men, and a handful of women, came from India's many communities — Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others — to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in ...
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Beginning in the 1930s, men, and a handful of women, came from India's many communities — Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others — to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, “the original fusion music”. They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name “Bollywood,” but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, “behind the curtain” — the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. This book offers an account of the Bollywood film-music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In an insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, the author explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film-music industry. On the basis of a set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creators and performers. The author also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s–90s, as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India.Less
Beginning in the 1930s, men, and a handful of women, came from India's many communities — Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others — to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, “the original fusion music”. They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name “Bollywood,” but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, “behind the curtain” — the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. This book offers an account of the Bollywood film-music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In an insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, the author explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film-music industry. On the basis of a set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creators and performers. The author also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s–90s, as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India.
Walter Zev Feldman
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190244514
- eISBN:
- 9780190244545
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190244514.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
The Introduction presents the defining features of klezmer music as a professional and functional music of the transnational Ashkenazic Jewish ethnos of Eastern Europe. It brings up briefly the issue ...
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The Introduction presents the defining features of klezmer music as a professional and functional music of the transnational Ashkenazic Jewish ethnos of Eastern Europe. It brings up briefly the issue of gestural expression in Jewish language and dance, and referring to Max Weinreich’s understanding of Yiddish as a fusion language, presents a definition of klezmer music as a “fusion music.” It defines the five stocks out of which determinants were chosen as components in the klezmer fusion to be: 1) Renaissance dance music, 2) Baroque music of various genres, 3) Ashkenazic liturgy, 4) Greco-Ottoman dance and processional music, 5) Moldavian instrumental music.Less
The Introduction presents the defining features of klezmer music as a professional and functional music of the transnational Ashkenazic Jewish ethnos of Eastern Europe. It brings up briefly the issue of gestural expression in Jewish language and dance, and referring to Max Weinreich’s understanding of Yiddish as a fusion language, presents a definition of klezmer music as a “fusion music.” It defines the five stocks out of which determinants were chosen as components in the klezmer fusion to be: 1) Renaissance dance music, 2) Baroque music of various genres, 3) Ashkenazic liturgy, 4) Greco-Ottoman dance and processional music, 5) Moldavian instrumental music.
Davis Quintet
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780195393835
- eISBN:
- 9780190268046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195393835.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter discusses the legacy of the Miles Davis Quintet to jazz music. It describes how the members' longevity in the music industry helped make the quintet's compositions a part of the jazz ...
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This chapter discusses the legacy of the Miles Davis Quintet to jazz music. It describes how the members' longevity in the music industry helped make the quintet's compositions a part of the jazz standard repertory. It explores how Miles Davis and the other members who formed their own groups were essential to the development of fusion music in the 1960s and 1970s, with their use of electronic instruments, funk and rock rhythms, extended pedal point and ostinato figures, and sparer harmonic textures. It also considers the quintet's influence in the hard bop resurgence of 1980s, where groups that were indebted to the improvisational approaches of the quintet emerged.Less
This chapter discusses the legacy of the Miles Davis Quintet to jazz music. It describes how the members' longevity in the music industry helped make the quintet's compositions a part of the jazz standard repertory. It explores how Miles Davis and the other members who formed their own groups were essential to the development of fusion music in the 1960s and 1970s, with their use of electronic instruments, funk and rock rhythms, extended pedal point and ostinato figures, and sparer harmonic textures. It also considers the quintet's influence in the hard bop resurgence of 1980s, where groups that were indebted to the improvisational approaches of the quintet emerged.