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More and more people are discovering Brazil’s fascinating culture, especially the striking exuberance and inventiveness of its popular music. In Brazilian Jive, David Treece uncovers the genius of Brazilian song, both as a sophisticated, articulate art form crafted out of the dialogue between music and language and as a powerfully eloquent expression of the country’s social and political history.Focusing on the cultural struggles of music-making in Brazil, this book traces their journey from the rise of samba through the bossa nova revolution of the late 1950s to the emergence of rap in the 1990s. It describes how Brazilian music grew out of the pain and dispossession of slavery and, inspired by African traditions, how it celebrates new ways of moving freely in time and space. Resonant with the rhythms and tones of the modern, the Brazilian soundscape also expresses the country’s dissonances and contradictions, while the conversation between melody and word often signifies a larger dialogue between its artistic and political cultures.Looking deep into those cultures, Brazilian Jive provides fresh insight into how the life of a nation has been performed in some of the world’s most remarkable music.

Born on the unlit streets of Buenos Aires, tango was inspired by the music of European immigrants who crossed the ocean to Argentina, lured by the promise of a better life. In the capital’s marginal districts, it was embraced and shaped by young men who told tales of prostitutes, petty thieves and disappointed lovers through its music and movements. Chronicling the stories told through tango’s lyrics, this book shows how the dance went from slumming it in the brothels and cabarets of lower-class Buenos Aires to the ballrooms of Paris, London, Berlin and beyond.Tracing the evolution of tango, Mike Gonzalez and Marianella Yanes set its music, key figures and the dance itself in their place and time, and explore its subsequent global impact. It was not until Paris went crazy for tango just before World War I that it became acceptable for middle-class Argentineans to perform the seductive dance, and each new generation has embraced it with renewed enthusiasm, from Tokyo to Helsinki.Telling the sexy, enthralling history of this stylish and dramatic dance, Tango is a book for music fans, ballroom aficionados and everyone fascinated by the cultural history of Latin America.

Since his untimely death in 1974 at the age of 26, singer-songwriter Nick Drake has not only gained a huge international audience, which eluded him during his lifetime, but has come to represent the epitome of English romanticism. Drake’s small but much-loved body of work has evoked comparisons with Blake, Keats, Vaughan Williams and Delius, placing him within a long line of English mystical Romantics. Yet upon closer inspection Drake’s work betrays a myriad of international, cosmopolitan influences and approaches that seem to confound his status as archetypal English troubadour.Nick Drake's music itself hints at a specific English landscape of the kind that he would have wandered through during his lifetime. Yet his interest in blues, jazz and Eastern mysticism imply a broader conception of English national identity in the late 1960s, one far removed from mere parochial nostalgia. Similarly, the framing of Drake’s music after his death has done much to situate him as a particular kind of English artist, integrating American counterculture, the English class system and a nostalgic re-imagining of the hippy era for contemporary audiences.Nick Drake: Dreaming England explores how ideas of Englishness have come to be so intimately associated with the cult singer songwriter. Essential reading for any fan of Nick Drake, the book will also appeal to those interested in folk music or English national identity.To hear Culture Club's podcast on Nick Drake with author Nathan Wiseman-Trowse please click here.

This book explores the origins of dub in 1970s Kingston, Jamaica, and traces its evolution as a genre, approach and attitude to music to the present day. Stopping off in the cities where it has made most impact – London, Berlin, Toronto, Bristol and New York – Remixology spans a range of genres, from post-punk to dub-techno, jungle to the now ubiquitous dubstep. Along the way Sullivan speaks with a host of international musicians, DJs and luminaries of the dub world including Scientist, Adrian Sherwood, Channel, U-Roy, Clive Chin, Dennis Bovell, Shut Up And Dance, DJ Spooky, Francois Kevorkian, Mala and Roots Manuva.This wide-ranging and lucid book follows several parallel threads, including the evolution of the MC, the birth of sound-system culture and the broader story of the post-war Jamaican diaspora itself. One of the few books to be written specifically on dub and its global influence, Remixology is also one of the first to look at the specific relationship between dub and the concept that cuts across all postmodern creative disciplines today: the remix.

Jimi Hendrix, one of the great instrumentalists in rock history, pioneered an amplified sound that extended the scope of the guitar into the urban landscape. Jimi Hendrix: Soundscapes traces Hendrix’s personal and musical trajectory through the places in which he played, following him from the Pacific Northwest to the California coast, through the South and on to New York City, and from his musical beginnings as a youth in Seattle to his debut, touring career and his last weeks in London.Hendrix was a genuine inner-city dweller, a nighthawk and wanderer who roamed the streets and alleys of everyday neighbourhoods and sought out seedy basement bars and intimate clubs – whether as performer or audience member. The rumble, uproar, babble and discord of urban life inspired Hendrix to incorporate noise into his powerful repertoire. Tracking the variety of places where Hendrix played, from open-air stages to dilapidated ballrooms, Marie-Paule Macdonald shows in this book how landscape and cityscape became for Hendrix a material to be exploited; he would eventually commission an architect and sound engineer to build an urban recording studio that would capture the reverberation, bounce, sustain and echo that he heard and played.Crackling with the electrifying sound of explosive creativity, Jimi Hendrix: Soundscapes explores place and space to offer fascinating new insights into Hendrix’s resounding talent.

Born in a mainly working-class area of North Tyneside in 1951, Gordon Sumner would become one of the world’s best-selling music artists. Known professionally as Sting, he was the lead singer for the band The Police from 1977 to 1984, before launching a hugely successful solo career. The foundations of Sting’s creativity and drive for success were established in the region of his birth, with vestiges of his ‘Northern Englishness’ continuing to emerge in his music long after he left the area. Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the formation of The Police, this is the first book to examine the relationship between Sting’s working-class background in Newcastle and the creativity and inspiration behind his music. Focusing on the sometimes-blurry borderlines between nostalgia, facts, imagination and memories – as told by Sting, the people who knew (and know) him, and those who have written about him – Carr investigates the often complex resonance between local boy Gordon Sumner and the star the world knows as Sting. This book will be of great interest to the many fans of Sting and The Police, as well as those interested in the history of popular music.

Five Years Ahead of My Time: Garage Rock from the 1950s to the Present tells of an explosive musical phenomenon whose continuing influence on popular culture is dramatic and deep. The tale begins in 1950s America, when classic rock ’n’ roll was reaching middle age and teenage musicians kept its primal rawness going with rough-hewn instrumentals. In the mid-1960s, the Beatles and the British Invasion conquered America, and soon every neighbourhood had its own garage band. Groups like the Sonics and 13th Floor Elevators burned brightly but briefly, only to be rediscovered by a new generation of connoisseurs in the 1970s. Numerous compilation albums followed, spearheaded by Lenny Kaye’s seminal Nuggets, which resulted in garage rock’s rebirth across the world during the 1980s and ’90s.Be it the White Stripes or the Black Keys, bands have consistently found inspiration in the simplicity and energy of garage rock. It is a revitalizing force, looking back to the past to forge the future. And this, for the first time, is its story.

Of all the great British bands to emerge from the 1960s, none had a stronger sense of place than the Kinks. Often described as the archetypal English band, they were above all a quintessentially working-class band with a deep attachment to London.Mark Doyle examines the relationship between the Kinks and their city, from their early songs of teenage rebellion to their album-length works of social criticism. He finds fascinating and sometimes surprising connections with figures as diverse as Edmund Burke, John Clare and Charles Dickens. More than just a book about the Kinks, this is a book about a social class undergoing a series of profound changes, and about a group of young men who found a way to describe, lament and occasionally even celebrate those changes through song.

Song Noir examines the formative first decade of Tom Waits’s career, when he lived, wrote and recorded nine albums in Los Angeles; from his soft, folk-inflected debut, Closing Time (1973), to the abrasive, surreal Swordfishtrombones (1983). Starting his song-writing career in the ’70s, Waits absorbed LA's wealth of cultural influences. Combining the spoken idioms of writers like Kerouac and Bukowski with jazz-blues rhythms, he explored the city’s literary and film noir traditions to create hallucinatory dreamscapes.Waits mined a rich seam of the city’s low-life locations and characters, letting the place feed his dark imagination. Mixing the domestic with the mythic, Waits turned quotidian, autobiographical details into something more disturbing and emblematic; a vision of LA as the warped, narcotic heart of his nocturnal explorations.

The Monkees represent a vital problem for rock and pop, and perhaps the major question: is it the music that matters or the personality and image of the performers?This book explores the system behind the Monkees, the controversial made-for-tv band that scored some of the biggest hit records of the 1960s. The Monkees represent the cumulative result of a complex coordination of talented individuals, from songwriters to studio musicians to producers – the system of the 1960s Hollywood music industry. The new rock criticism bewailed the fake band, while fans and audiences made the Monkees a major commercial success. More than any other band in the 1960s, the Monkees illustrate the genius of the system and its role in popular music.

Crooners sing close to the mic in a soft, intimate style. In this book Alex Coles explores the crooner in popular music from the 1950s to the present. Each chapter focuses on one song and one singer – Frank Sinatra, Scott Walker, Barry White, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Tom Waits, Grace Jones, Ian McCulloch, Nick Cave and Nas – and examines in detail how each contributes to the crooner image. The book describes how crooners traverse era, gender, geography and genre – where Barry White developed out of disco, Nick Cave sprang from alternative rock; where Grace Jones was born from reggae and funk, Nas originated from hip-hop. Ultimately, Coles shows how the crooner continues to be a figure that enables listeners to reflect on and communicate their emotions.

Transatlantic Drift explores the emergence and evolution of nightclubs and electronic dance music from the 1950s onwards. It traces the rhythmic journey of dance music, following the pulse as it bounced between Europe, North America and the Caribbean. Music, dance styles and nightclub spaces are not created in isolation; they are shaped by collective influences and shared experiences. This book uncovers the interconnected story of dance music, taking in hotspots such as New York, Detroit, London, Manchester, Chicago, Düsseldorf and Ibiza. Transatlantic Drift offers an engaging exploration of how people have come together to share melodies and rhythms, forming a global conversation through electronic music.

Iceland punches well above its weight in the world of music, producing global icons like Björk, Sigur Rós, Of Monsters and Men, and Laufey, while at the same time nurturing a vibrant local scene. This book explores how Iceland’s unique social habits, institutions and everyday practices contribute to its thriving music culture.Tracing the development of Icelandic popular music since the rock ’n’ roll era, it examines key influences shaping the scene, from Reykjavík’s musicians to national institutions like radio and concert venues. With engaging explanations of sociological factors, the book sheds light on why Iceland has become a powerhouse in music. An illuminating journey through Iceland’s music history, this is a celebration of the artistry and cultural forces behind its global impact.