White Boy Singin' the Blues is both a musical history of Memphis, the city which gave birth to rock'n'roll, and an examination of the ways in which white and black musics have interacted. In this work, Michael Bane examines the whole history of the music, from the black roots of spirituals and blues, through the beginnings of rock'n'roll, and its evolution through the Twist, the British Invasion, Motown, funk, Southern boogie, and disco. The result is an idiosyncratic history of rock, and a culturally penetrating account of this hybrid music.

White Boy Singin' the Blues is both a musical history of Memphis, the city which gave birth to rock'n'roll, and an examination of the ways in which white and black musics have interacted. In this work, Michael Bane examines the whole history of the music, from the black roots of spirituals and blues, through the beginnings of rock'n'roll, and its evolution through the Twist, the British Invasion, Motown, funk, Southern boogie, and disco. The result is an idiosyncratic history of rock, and a culturally penetrating account of this hybrid music.

Amid the recent increase in scholarly attention to rock music, Understanding Rock stands out as one of the first books that subjects diverse aspects of the music itself to close and sophisticated analytical scrutiny. Written by some of the best young scholars in musicology and music theory, the essays in this volume use harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, formal, and textual approaches in order to show how and why rock music works as music. Topics of discussion include the adaptation of blues and other styles to rock; the craft of songwriting; techniques and strategies of improvisation; the reinterpretation of older songs; and the use of the recording studio as a compositional tool. A broad range of styles and groups is covered, including Yes, the Beach Boys, Cream, k.d. lang, Paul Simon, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead.

In late twentieth-century America, the black middle class has occupied a unique position. It greatly influenced the way African Americans were perceived and presented to the greater society, and it set roles and guidelines for the nation's black masses. Though historically a small group, it has attempted to be a model for inspiration and uplift. As a key force in the "Africanizing" of American culture, the black middle class has been both a shaper and a mirror during the past three decades. This study of that era shows that the fruits of integration have been at once sweet and bitter. This history of a pivotal group in American society will cause reflection, discussion, and debate.

This is a comprehensive guide to popular music literature, first published in 1986. Its main focus is on American and British works, but it includes significant works from other countries, making it truly international in scope.

The year 2019 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain, an artist whose music, words, and images continue to move millions of fans worldwide. As the first academic study that provides a literary analysis of Cobain’s creative writings, Arthur Flannigan Saint-Aubin’s The Pleasures of Death: Kurt Cobain’s Masochistic and Melancholic Persona approaches the journals and songs crafted by Nirvana’s iconic front man from the perspective of cultural theory and psychoanalytic aesthetics. Drawing on critiques and reformulations of psychoanalytic theory by feminist, queer, and antiracist scholars, Saint-Aubin considers the literary means by which Cobain creates the persona of a young, white, heterosexual man who expresses masochistic and melancholic behaviors. On the one hand, this individual welcomes pain and humiliation as atonement for unpardonable sins; on the other, he experiences a profound sense of loss and grief, seeking death as the ultimate act of pleasure. The first-person narrators and characters that populate Cobain’s texts underscore the political and aesthetic repercussions of his art. Cobain’s distinctive version of grunge, understood as a subculture, a literary genre, and a cultural practice, represents a specific performance of race and gender, one that facilitates an understanding of the self as part of a larger social order. Saint-Aubin approaches Cobain’s writings independently of the artist’s biography, positioning these texts within the tradition of postmodern representations of masculinity in twentieth-century American fiction, while also suggesting connections to European Romantic traditions from the nineteenth century that postulate a relation between melancholy (or depression) and creativity. In turn, through Saint-Aubin’s elegant analysis, Cobain’s creative writings illuminate contradictions and inconsistencies within psychoanalytic theory itself concerning the intersection of masculinity, masochism, melancholy, and the death drive. By foregrounding Cobain’s ability to challenge coextensive links between gender, sexuality, and race, The Pleasures of Death reveals how the cultural politics and aesthetics of this tragic icon’s works align with feminist strategies, invite queer readings, and perform antiracist critiques of American culture.

This book offers a major exploration of the social and cultural importance of popular music to contemporary celebrations of Britishness. Rather than providing a history of popular music or an itemization of indigenous musical qualities, it exposes the influential cultural and nationalist rhetoric around popular music and the dissemination of that rhetoric in various forms. Since the 1960s, popular music has surpassed literature to become the dominant signifier of modern British culture and identity. This position has been enforced in popular culture, literature, news and music media, political rhetoric -- and in much popular music itself, which has become increasingly self-conscious about the expectation that music both articulate and manifest the inherent values and identity of the modern nation. This study examines the implications of such practices and the various social and cultural values they construct and enforce. It identifies two dominant, conflicting constructions around popular music: music as the voice of an indigenous English ‘folk’, and music as the voice of a re-emergent British Empire. These constructions are not only contradictory but also exclusive, prescribing a social and musical identity for the nation that ignores its greater creative, national, and cultural diversity. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive critique of an extremely powerful discourse in England that today informs dominant formulations of English and British national identity, history, and culture.

From “Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)?” to a list of all song titles containing the word “werewolf,” Rock Music in American Popular Culture II: More Rock ’n’Roll Resources continues where 1995’s Volume I left off. Using references and illustrations drawn from contemporary lyrics and supported by historical and sociological research on popular cultural subjects, this collection of insightful essays and reviews assesses the involvement of musical imagery in personal issues, in social and political matters, and in key socialization activities. From marriage and sex to public schools and youth culture, readers discover how popular culture can be used to explore American values. As Authors B. Lee Cooper and Wayne S. Haney prove that integrated popular culture is the product of commercial interaction with public interest and values rather than a random phenomena, they entertainingly and knowledgeably cover such topics as: answer songs--interchanges involving social events and lyrical commentaries as explored in response recordings horror films--translations and transformations of literary images and motion picture figures into popular song characters and tales public schools--images of formal educational practices and informal learning processes in popular song lyrics sex--suggestive tales and censorship challenges within the popular music realm war--examinations of persistent military and home front themes featured in wartime recordings Rock Music in American Popular Culture II: More Rock ‘n’Roll Resources is nontechnical, written in a clear and concise fashion, and explores each topic thoroughly, with ample discographic and bibliographic resources provided for additional research. Arranged alphabetically for quick and easy reference to specific topics, the book is equally enjoyable to read straight through. Rock music fans, teachers, popular culture professors, music instructors, public librarians, sound recording archivists, sociologists, social critics, and journalists can all learn something, as the book shows them the cross-pollination of music and social life in the United States.

Popular music may be viewed as primary documents of society, and America's Musical Pulse documents the American experience as recorded in popular sound. Whether jazz, blues, swing, country, or rock, the music, the impulse behind it, and the reaction to it reveal the attitudes of an era or generation. Always a major preoccupation of students, music is often ignored by teaching professionals, who might profitably channel this interest to further understandings of American social history and such diverse fields as sociology, political science, literature, communications, and business as well as music. In this interdisciplinary collection, scholars, educators, and writers from a variety of fields and perspectives relate topics concerning twentieth-century popular music to issues of politics, class, economics, race, gender, and the social context. The focus throughout is to place music in societal perspective and encourage investigation of the complex issues behind the popular tunes, rhythms, and lyrics.