Australians have been transported to an imaginary Spain from at least the 1830s, when cachuchas were first danced on the Sydney stage. In Take Me to Spain John Whiteoak explores the rich tapestry of Australians’ fascination with all thing Spanish, from the voluptuous sensuality of Lola Montez to operas featuring señoritas, toreadors and Gypsies, and from evocative silent and later Spain-themed Hollywood movies to the dazzlingly creative artistry of the flamenco dancers and guitarists who toured Australia in the 1960s and ’70s. Examining the diverse ways that Spanish music and dance have been mediated or hybridised to cater for Australian popular taste, this landmark study reveals how Hispanic traditions have become integral to the cultural history of the nation.

The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies recognizes the proliferation of jazz as global music in the 21st century. It illustrates the multi-vocality of contemporary jazz studies, combining local narratives, global histories, and cultural criticism. It rests on the argument that diasporic jazz is not a passive, second-hand reflection of music originating in the US, but possesses its own integrity, vitality, and distinctive range of identities. This companion reveals the contradictions of cultural globalization from which diasporic jazz cultures emerge, through 45 chapters within seven thematic parts: • What is Diasporic Jazz? • Histories and Counter-Narratives • Making, Disseminating, and Consuming Diasporic Jazz • Culture, Politics, and Ideology • Communities and Distinctions • Presenting and Representing Diasporic Jazz • Challenges and New Directions The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies traces how cultural dynamics related to "race", coloniality, gender, and politics traverse and shape jazz. Employing a cross section of approaches to the study of diasporic jazz as eloquently showcased by the entries, this book seeks to challenge the dominant jazz narratives through championing a more all-encompassing, multi-paradigmatic alternative. Bringing together contributions from authors all over the world, this volume is a vital resource for scholars of jazz, as well as professionals in the music industries and those interested in learning about the cultural and historical origins of jazz.

The islands of Chiloé, in southern Chile, have developed a distinct culture over several centuries, blending indigenous traditions and Spanish settler heritage to create a vibrant pattern of folklore, music, dance, and related creative practices. This cultural heritage has become an important aspect of the islands’ identity and is key to their successful marketing as a tourist destination. However, these elements exist in tension with new developments, most particularly the introduction of salmon aquaculture, which has disrupted traditional livelihood patterns and polluted the region’s marine environment. This volume analyzes the development of the islands’ distinct culture with a particular focus on music and dance. Key topics include the relation of tradition and modernity, the impact of tourism on cultural practice, and the relationship between social activism and music culture. The authors complement this focus with a discussion of their own creative engagements with the region through the production of the music album Viaje a Chiloé (2018) and through the work of the audiovisual ensemble The Moviolas (in 2015–2018).

Shares the author's experiences after leaving her retail job in Australia to travel to Spain and learn flamenco dance, detailing her lessons in Seville, and her eventual move to Madrid.

Georges Bizet's Carmen and its staging of an exoticized Spain was progressively reimagined between its 1875 Paris premiere and 1915. This book explores Carmen's dynamic interaction with Spanishness in this cosmopolitan age of spectacle, across operatic productions, parodies, and theatrical adaptations from Spain to Paris, London, and New York.

From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, comes Sourdough, "a perfect parable for our times" (San Francisco Magazine): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers quickly close up shop. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it. Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day. Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market—and a whole new world opens up.

How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.

What happens when a former Zen Buddhist monk and his feminist wife experience an apparition of the Virgin Mary? “This book could not have come at a more auspicious time, and the message is mystical perfection, not to mention a courageous one. I adore this book.”—Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit Before a vision of a mysterious “Lady” invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, they were not only uninterested in becoming Catholic but finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. Instead, she spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, and revealed the secrets she had hidden within the rosary’s prayers and mysteries—secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove rose garlands for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn: The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one with that body. What cause could there be for fear? Weaving together their own remarkable story of how they came to the rosary, their discoveries about the eco-feminist wisdom at the heart of this ancient devotion, and the life-changing revelations of the Lady herself, the authors reveal an ancestral path—available to everyone, religious or not—that returns us to the powerful healing rhythms of the natural world.

The Hmong are among Australia's newest immigrant populations. They came as refugees from Laos after the communist revolution of 1975 ended their life there as highland shifting cultivators. The Hmong originate from southern China where many still remain, and others live in Vietnam, Thailand and Burma. Hmong refugees are now also settled in the USA,