Mark Katz – författare

Since 2001, the U.S. Department of State has been sending hip hop artists abroad to perform and teach as goodwill ambassadors. There are good reasons for this: hip hop is known and loved across the globe, acknowledged and appreciated as a product of American culture. Hip hop has from its beginning been a means of creating community through artistic collaboration, fostering what hip hop artists call building. A timely study of U.S. diplomacy, Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World reveals the power of art to bridge cultural divides, facilitate understanding, and express and heal trauma. Yet power is never single-edged, and the story of hip hop diplomacy is deeply fraught. Drawing from nearly 150 interviews with hip hop artists, diplomats, and others in more than 30 countries, Build explores the inescapable tensions and ambiguities in the relationship between art and the state, revealing the ethical complexities that lurk behind what might seem mere goodwill tours. Author Mark Katz makes the case that hip hop, at its best, can promote positive, productive international relations between people and nations. A U.S.-born art form that has become a voice of struggle and celebration worldwide, hip hop has the power to build global community when it is so desperately needed.

It's all about the scratch in Groove Music, award-winning music historian Mark Katz's groundbreaking book about the figure that defined hip-hop: the DJ. Today hip-hop is a global phenomenon, and the sight and sound of DJs mixing and scratching is familiar in every corner of the world. But hip-hop was born in the streets of New York in the 1970s when a handful of teenagers started experimenting with spinning vinyl records on turntables in new ways. Although rapping has become the face of hip-hop, for nearly 40 years the DJ has proven the backbone of the culture. In Groove Music, Katz (an amateur DJ himself) delves into the fascinating world of the DJ, tracing the art of the turntable from its humble beginnings in the Bronx in the 1970s to its meteoric rise to global phenomenon today. Based on extensive interviews with practicing DJs, historical research, and his own personal experience, Katz presents a history of hip-hop from the point of view of the people who invented the genre. Here, DJs step up to discuss a wide range of topics, including the transformation of the turntable from a playback device to an instrument in its own right, the highly charged competitive DJ battles, the game-changing introduction of digital technology, and the complex politics of race and gender in the DJ scene. Exhaustively researched and written with all the verve and energy of hip-hop itself, Groove Music will delight experienced or aspiring DJs, hip-hop fans, and all students or scholars of popular music and culture.

It's all about the scratch in Groove Music, award-winning music historian Mark Katz's groundbreaking book about the figure that defined hip-hop: the DJ. Today hip-hop is a global phenomenon, and the sight and sound of DJs mixing and scratching is familiar in every corner of the world. But hip-hop was born in the streets of New York in the 1970s when a handful of teenagers started experimenting with spinning vinyl records on turntables in new ways. Although rapping has become the face of hip-hop, for nearly 40 years the DJ has proven the backbone of the culture. In Groove Music, Katz (an amateur DJ himself) delves into the fascinating world of the DJ, tracing the art of the turntable from its humble beginnings in the Bronx in the 1970s to its meteoric rise to global phenomenon today. Based on extensive interviews with practicing DJs, historical research, and his own personal experience, Katz presents a history of hip-hop from the point of view of the people who invented the genre. Here, DJs step up to discuss a wide range of topics, including the transformation of the turntable from a playback device to an instrument in its own right, the highly charged competitive DJ battles, the game-changing introduction of digital technology, and the complex politics of race and gender in the DJ scene. Exhaustively researched and written with all the verve and energy of hip-hop itself, Groove Music will delight experienced or aspiring DJs, hip-hop fans, and all students or scholars of popular music and culture.

Mark Katz surveys the age-old interrelationship between music and technology, from prehistoric musical instruments to today's digital playback devices.This Very Short Introduction takes an expansive and inclusive approach meant to broaden and challenge traditional views of music and technology. In its most common use, “music technology” tends to evoke images of twentieth and twenty-first century electronic devices: synthesizers, recording equipment, music notation software, and the like. This volume, however, treats all tools used to create, store, reproduce, and transmit music--new or old, electronic or not--as technologies worthy of investigation. All musical instruments can be considered technologies. The modern piano, for example, is a marvel of keys, hammers, strings, pedals, dampers, and jacks; just the sound-producing mechanism, or action, on a piano has more than 50 different parts. In this broad view, technology in music encompasses instruments, whether acoustic, electric or electronic; engraving and printing; sound recording and playback; broadcasting; software; and much more. Mark Katz challenges the view that technology is unnatural, something external to music. It was sometimes said in the early twentieth century that so-called mechanical music (especially player pianos and phonographs) was a menace to “real” music; alternatively, technology can be freighted with utopian hopes and desires, as happens today with music streaming platforms like Spotify. Positive or negative, these views assume that technology is something that acts upon music; by contrast, this volume characterizes technology as an integral part of all musical activity and portrays traditional instruments and electronic machines as equally technological.

Drawing upon research examining life's trajectories, Mark Katz identifies sources of protection, strength, and understanding - the cards that enable some children to "beat the odds." He encourages therapists, educators, and other child caretakers to incorporate these factors into our system of care.

A number of people who failed in school currently enjoy meaningful and successful lives. These include, though by no means are limited to, those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), those with executive function challenges, those with learning disabilities, those whose learning and behavioural challenges are linked to traumatic events in their lives; even those impacted by all of the above. What’s more, they also include those who enjoyed years of access to excellent special education and mental health services. Up until recently, not much attention was paid to successful people who did poorly in school. Why not? One reason might be that few among us probably realised how many of them are actually out there. But another and even bigger reason might be that many of us doubted that it was actually possible. And those doubts are entirely understandable. After all, think of the thousands of hours parents, teachers and various healthcare professionals spent trying their hardest to help these failing children turn things around in school, sometimes with little or nothing to show for it. And if these children continued to struggle and fail in school with all this help and support, how could they ever succeed in the real world decades later without it?So what did we miss? Why were we so wrong about them? And most important perhaps, how can their life experiences help others avoid or overcome the years of school failure they endured decades ago? In his new book, Mark Katz answers these as well as other questions. Focusing on studies of five people who were considered school failures and drawing on fields such as clinical and social psychology, cognitive neuroscience and education, Katz presents new remedies to prevent learning, behavioural and emotional problems, and reduce juvenile crime, school dropout and substance abuse.

First published in 1982, this study traces the development of Soviet military thinking on the Third World and assesses its importance for the conduct of Soviet foreign policy. Changes in Soviet military thought often reflect changes in Soviet attitudes towards and expectations from involvement in Third World conflicts. This work from Dr. Katz meditates upon the changing role of the USSR in post-war Third World conflicts, with particular emphasis upon the Brezhnev era and the way in which US setbacks in the Third World impacted upon Soviet foreign policy and changing attitudes to the Third World.

First published in 1982, this study traces the development of Soviet military thinking on the Third World and assesses its importance for the conduct of Soviet foreign policy. Changes in Soviet military thought often reflect changes in Soviet attitudes towards and expectations from involvement in Third World conflicts. This work from Dr. Katz meditates upon the changing role of the USSR in post-war Third World conflicts, with particular emphasis upon the Brezhnev era and the way in which US setbacks in the Third World impacted upon Soviet foreign policy and changing attitudes to the Third World.

There is more to sound recording than just recording sound. Far from being simply a tool for the preservation of music, the technology is a catalyst. In this award-winning text, Mark Katz provides a wide-ranging, deeply informative, consistently entertaining history of recording's profound impact on the musical life of the past century, from Edison to the Internet. Fully revised and updated, this new edition adds coverage of mashups and Auto-Tune, explores recent developments in file-sharing, and includes an expanded conclusion and bibliography.

The violin was first mentioned in a book in the sixteenth century. An abundant and diverse literature on the instrument has grown since then, and a complete general guide to these materials has not been produced in the modern era. The last, Edward Heron-Allen's De Fidiculis Bibliographia , was published in1894. This book fills that void, organizing and annotating information on the violin from a variety of fields and sources. It provides a comprehensive, though selective, guide to all facets of the instrument. The book is divided into 4 main parts: Reference and General Studies; Acoustics and Construction; Violin Playing, Performance Practice, and Music; and Violinists, Composers, and Violin Teachers. It will serve as a ready reference for students and scholars, and is a welcome addition to the esteemed Routledge Music Bibliography series.

This unique anthology assembles primary documents chronicling the development of the phonograph, film sound, and the radio. These three sound technologies shaped Americans' relation to music from the late nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War, by which time the technologies were thoroughly integrated into everyday life. There are more than 120 selections between the collection's first piece, an article on the phonograph written by Thomas Edison in 1878, and its last, a column advising listeners "desirous of gaining more from music as presented by the radio." Among the selections are articles from popular and trade publications, advertisements, fan letters, corporate records, fiction, and sheet music. Taken together, the selections capture how the new sound technologies were shaped by developments such as urbanization, the increasing value placed on leisure time, and the rise of the advertising industry. Most importantly, they depict the ways that the new sound technologies were received by real people in particular places and moments in time.

This unique anthology assembles primary documents chronicling the development of the phonograph, film sound, and the radio. These three sound technologies shaped Americans' relation to music from the late nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War, by which time the technologies were thoroughly integrated into everyday life. There are more than 120 selections between the collection's first piece, an article on the phonograph written by Thomas Edison in 1878, and its last, a column advising listeners "desirous of gaining more from music as presented by the radio." Among the selections are articles from popular and trade publications, advertisements, fan letters, corporate records, fiction, and sheet music. Taken together, the selections capture how the new sound technologies were shaped by developments such as urbanization, the increasing value placed on leisure time, and the rise of the advertising industry. Most importantly, they depict the ways that the new sound technologies were received by real people in particular places and moments in time.

The violin was first mentioned in a book in the sixteenth century. An abundant and diverse literature on the instrument has grown since then, and a complete general guide to these materials has not been produced in the modern era. The last, Edward Heron-Allen's De Fidiculis Bibliographia , was published in1894. This book fills that void, organizing and annotating information on the violin from a variety of fields and sources. It provides a comprehensive, though selective, guide to all facets of the instrument. The book is divided into 4 main parts: Reference and General Studies; Acoustics and Construction; Violin Playing, Performance Practice, and Music; and Violinists, Composers, and Violin Teachers. It will serve as a ready reference for students and scholars, and is a welcome addition to the esteemed Routledge Music Bibliography series.

Imprisoned since age nineteen, Alim Braxton has spent more than a quarter century on North Carolina's death row. During that time, he converted to Islam and dedicated his life to redemption. Braxton, a rapper since the age of thirteen, uses his rhymes as a form of therapy and to advocate for prison reform, particularly by calling attention to the plight of the wrongfully incarcerated. This book, a hip-hop-rich prison memoir, chronicles Braxton's struggles and triumphs as he attempts to record an album while on death row, something no one has done before. Braxton's world is complex: full of reflections on guilt, condemnation, incarceration, religious awakening, and the redemptive power of art. Ultimately, Braxton shows us that even amid the brutality of our prison system there are moments of joy, and on death row joy may be the most powerful form of resistance.