How black electronic dance music makes it possible to reorganize life within the contemporary city. Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski argues that Black electronic dance music produces sonic ecologies of Blackness that expose and reorder the contemporary racialization of the urban--ecologies that can never simply be reduced to their geographical and racial context. Dhanveer Singh Brar makes the case for Black electronic dance music as the cutting-edge aesthetic project of the diaspora, which due to the music's class character makes it possible to reorganize life within the contemporary city. Closely analysing the Footwork scene in South and West Chicago, the Grime scene in East London, and the output of the South London producer Actress, Brar pays attention to the way each of these critically acclaimed musical projects experiment with aesthetic form through an experimentation of the social. Through explicitly theoretical means, Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski foregrounds the sonic specificity of 12" records, EPs, albums, radio broadcasts, and recorded performances to make the case that Footwork, Grime, and Actress dissolve racialized spatial constraints that are thought to surround Black social life. Pushing the critical debates concerning the phonic materiality of blackness, undercommons, and aesthetic sociality in new directions, Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski rethinks these concepts through concrete examples of contemporary black electronic dance music production that allows for a theorization of the way Footwork, Grime, and Actress have--through their experiments in blackness--generated genuine alternatives to the functioning of the city under financialized racial capitalism.

Ubiquitous music is an interdisciplinary area of research that lies at the intersection of music and computer science. Initially evolving from the related concept of ubiquitous computing, today ubiquitous music offers a paradigm for understanding how the everyday presence of computers has led to highly diverse music practices. As we move from desktop computers to mobile and internet-based multi-platform systems, new ways to participate in creative musical activities have radically changed the cultural and social landscape of music composition and performance. This volume explores how these new systems interact and how they may transform our musical experiences. Emerging out of the work of the Ubiquitous Music Group, an international research network established in 2007, this volume provides a snapshot of the ecologically grounded perspectives on ubiquitous music that share the concept of ecosystem as a central theme. Covering theory, software and hardware design, and applications in educational and artistic settings, each chapter features in-depth descriptions of exploratory and cutting-edge creative practices that expand our understanding of music making by means of digital and analogue technologies.

This is the first monograph dedicated to this interdisciplinary research area, combining the views of music, computer science, education, creativity studies, psychology, and engineering. The contributions include introductions to ubiquitous music research, featuring theory, applications, and technological development, and descriptions of permanent community initiatives such as virtual forums, multi-institutional research projects, and collaborative publications. The book will be of value to researchers and educators in all domains engaged with creativity, computing, music, and digital arts.

Musical imagination and creativity are amongst the most abstract and complex aspects of musical behaviour. This book is a wide ranging, multidisciplinary review of the latest theory and research on musical creativity, performance and perception by some of the most eminent scholars in their respective disciplines.

The Handbook of Musical Identities explores three features of psychological approaches to musical identities and four real-life contexts in which musical identities have been investigated. The multidisciplinary breadth of the Handbook reflects the changes that are taking place in music, in digital technology, and in their role in society.

Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking^ Rexplores a diverse range of Christian musical activity through the conceptual lens of resonance, a concept rooted in the physical, vibrational, and sonic realm that carries with it an expansive ability to simultaneously describe personal, social, and spiritual realities. In this book, Mark Porter proposes that attention to patterns of back-and-forth interaction that exist in and alongside sonic activity can help to understand the dynamics of religious musicking in new ways and, at the same time, can provide a means for bringing diverse traditions into conversation. The book focuses on different questions arising out of human experience in the moment of worship. What happens if we take the entry point of a human being experiencing certain patterns of (more than) sonic interaction with the world around them as a focus for exploration? What different ecologies of interaction can be encountered? What kinds of patterns can be traced through different Christian worshiping environments? And how do these operate across multiple dimensions of experience? Chapters covering ascetic sounding, noisy congregations, and Internet live-streaming, among others, serve to highlight the diverse ecologies of resonance that surround Christian musicking, suggesting the potential to develop new perspectives on devotional musical activity that focus not primarily on compositions or theological ideals but on changing patterns of interaction across multiple dimensions between individuals, spaces, communities, and God.

Does it make sense to refer to bird song—a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully calculated to woo a mate—as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as “the art of possibly animate things,” Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature—approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change—Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music’s structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music’s physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music’s formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share.

The field of research dedicated to the design, creation, use, and evaluation of new sound and music technologies supporting health and well-being is rapidly growing. This research is often conducted in multidisciplinary contexts, with teams working at the intersection of health, psychology, computer science, musical communication and multimodal interaction. As such, the work bridges areas such as universal design, accessibility, music therapy, music technology, Sonic Interaction Design (SID), and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This Research Topic explores such intersections within music technology research aimed at promoting health and well-being, investigating how new methods, technologies, interfaces, and applications can enable everyone to enjoy the positive benefits of music.

Why is music so important to most of us? How does music help us both in our everyday lives, and in the more specialist context of music therapy? This book suggests a new way of approaching these topical questions, drawing from Ansdell's long experience as a music therapist, and from the latest thinking on music in everyday life. Vibrant and moving examples from music therapy situations are twinned with the stories of 'ordinary' people who describe how music helps them within their everyday lives. Together this complementary material leads Ansdell to present a new interdisciplinary framework showing how musical experiences can help all of us build and negotiate identities, make intimate non-verbal relationships, belong together in community, and find moments of transcendence and meaning. How Music Helps is not just a book about music therapy. It has the more ambitious aim to promote (from a music therapist's perspective) a better understanding of 'music and change' in our personal and social life. Ansdell's theoretical synthesis links the tradition of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy and its recent developments in Community Music Therapy to contemporary music sociology and music studies. This book will be relevant to practitioners, academics, and researchers looking for a broad-based theoretical perspective to guide further study and policy in music, well-being, and health.

General Music: Dimensions of Practice is a practical guide for music teachers and teaching artists who strive to teach music holistically. The book begins by framing general music as a holistic music education that is comprehensive, meaningful, and relevant to diverse learners in school and community settings. It is followed by chapters that are organized into one of four dimensions of music practice: performing, connecting, creating, and responding. Chapter authors share creative and innovative teaching ideas, for both elementary and secondary school students, that focus on a wide range of topics, including: songwriting, composing, improvising, singing, moving, playing, listening, analyzing, contextualizing, and connecting. Each chapter provides (a) a rationale for a given area of music study, establishing its importance and relevance; (b) a research or theoretical background, to inform and guide practice; and (c) a pedagogical model or framework illustrated through lesson ideas, curriculum units, or vignettes. The ideas in this book seek to inspire and guide teachers as they build comprehensive music programs that are informed by students and communities.