Top 40 Democracy

Top 40 Democracy PDF Author: Eric Weisbard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226896188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A capacious and stimulating tour de force of the mainstream music industry that reveals the cultural import of even the most deliberately banal performers and songs. Weisbard finds depths in our culture s shallows as he investigates and articulates the cultural construction of such phenomena as Dolly Parton, Elton John, the Isley Brothers, A&M Records, and the rise of radio populism. He further sheds new light on the upheavals in the music industry over the last fifteen years and the implications of them for the audiences the industry has shaped. Each chapter brings us to see afresh precisely that music and those musicians that have become the most familiar and overexposed, by delving into the minutiae of how pop stars and their music were made and framed for repeated consumption in the era dominated by radio."

Top 40 Democracy

Top 40 Democracy PDF Author: Eric Weisbard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226896188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
A capacious and stimulating tour de force of the mainstream music industry that reveals the cultural import of even the most deliberately banal performers and songs. Weisbard finds depths in our culture s shallows as he investigates and articulates the cultural construction of such phenomena as Dolly Parton, Elton John, the Isley Brothers, A&M Records, and the rise of radio populism. He further sheds new light on the upheavals in the music industry over the last fifteen years and the implications of them for the audiences the industry has shaped. Each chapter brings us to see afresh precisely that music and those musicians that have become the most familiar and overexposed, by delving into the minutiae of how pop stars and their music were made and framed for repeated consumption in the era dominated by radio."

Performing Democracy

Performing Democracy PDF Author: Donna A. Buchanan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226078267
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
CD contains musical excerpts referenced in the text.

You Shook Me All Campaign Long

You Shook Me All Campaign Long PDF Author: Eric T. Kasper
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574417452
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Music has long played a role in American presidential campaigns as a mode of both expressing candidates’ messages and criticizing the opposition. The relevance of music in the 2016 campaign for the White House took various forms in a range of American media: a significant amount of popular music was used by campaigns, many artist endorsements were sought by candidates, ever changing songs were employed at rallies, instances of musicians threatening legal action against candidates burgeoned, and artists and others increasingly used music as a form of political protest before and after Election Day. The 2016 campaign was a game changer, similar to the development of music in the 1840 campaign, when “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” helped sing William Harrison into the White House. The ten chapters in this collection place music use in 2016 in historical perspective before examining musical messaging, strategy, and parody. The book ultimately explores causality: how do music and musicians affect presidential elections, and how do politicians and campaigns affect music and musicians? The authors explain this interaction from various perspectives, with methodological approaches from several fields, including political science, legal studies, musicology, cultural studies, rhetorical studies, and communications and journalism. These chapters will help the reader understand music in the 2016 election to realize how music will be relevant in 2020 and beyond.

Song of Ourselves

Song of Ourselves PDF Author: Mark Edmundson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674237161
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In the midst of a crisis of democracy, we have much to learn from Walt Whitman’s journey toward egalitarian selfhood. Walt Whitman knew a great deal about democracy that we don’t. Most of that knowledge is concentrated in one stunning poem, Song of Myself. Esteemed cultural and literary thinker Mark Edmundson offers a bold reading of the 1855 poem, included here in its entirety. He finds in the poem the genesis and development of a democratic spirit, for the individual and the nation. Whitman broke from past literature that he saw as “feudal”: obsessed with the noble and great. He wanted instead to celebrate the common and everyday. Song of Myself does this, setting the terms for democratic identity and culture in America. The work captures the drama of becoming an egalitarian individual, as the poet ascends to knowledge and happiness by confronting and overcoming the major obstacles to democratic selfhood. In the course of his journey, the poet addresses God and Jesus, body and soul, the love of kings, the fear of the poor, and the fear of death. The poet’s consciousness enlarges; he can see more, comprehend more, and he has more to teach. In Edmundson’s account, Whitman’s great poem does not end with its last line. Seven years after the poem was published, Whitman went to work in hospitals, where he attended to the Civil War’s wounded, sick, and dying. He thus became in life the democratic individual he had prophesied in art. Even now, that prophecy gives us words, thoughts, and feelings to feed the democratic spirit of self and nation.

Musical Democracy

Musical Democracy PDF Author: Nancy S. Love
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791481247
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Musical metaphors abound in political theory and music often accompanies political movements, yet music is seldom regarded as political communication. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy S. Love explores how music functions as metaphor and model for democracy in the work of political theorists and activist musicians. She examines deliberative democratic theorists—Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls—who employ musical metaphors to express the sense of justice that animates their discourse ideals. These metaphors also invoke embodied voices that enter their public discourse only in translation, as rational arguments for legal rights. Love posits that the music of activists from the feminist and civil rights movements—Holly Near and Bernice Johnson Reagon—engages deeper, more fluid energies of civil society by modeling a democratic conversation toward which deliberative democrats' metaphors merely suggest. To omit movement music from politics is, Love argues, to refuse the challenges it poses to modern, rational, secular, Western democracy. In conclusion, Musical Democracy proposes that a more radical—and more musical—democracy would embrace the spirit of humanity which moves a politics dedicated to the pursuit of justice.

Music, Radio and the Public Sphere

Music, Radio and the Public Sphere PDF Author: Charles Fairchild
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023039051X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Radio, the most widely used medium in the world, is a dominant mediator of musical meaning. Through a combination of critical analysis, interdisciplinary theory and ethnographic writing about community radio, this book provides a novel theorization of democratic aesthetics, with important implications for the study of old and new media alike.

Music and Politics

Music and Politics PDF Author: John Street
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745636551
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
It is common to hear talk of how music can inspire crowds, move individuals and mobilise movements. We know too of how governments can live in fear of its effects, censor its sounds and imprison its creators. At the same time, there are other governments that use music for propaganda or for torture. All of these examples speak to the idea of music's political importance. But while we may share these assumptions about music's power, we rarely stop to analyse what it is about organised sound - about notes and rhythms - that has the effects attributed to it. This is the first book to examine systematically music's political power. It shows how music has been at the heart of accounts of political order, at how musicians from Bono to Lily Allen have claimed to speak for peoples and political causes. It looks too at the emergence of music as an object of public policy, whether in the classroom or in the copyright courts, whether as focus of national pride or employment opportunities. The book brings together a vast array of ideas about music's political significance (from Aristotle to Rousseau, from Adorno to Deleuze) and new empirical data to tell a story of the extraordinary potency of music across time and space. At the heart of the book lies the argument that music and politics are inseparably linked, and that each animates the other.

Pete Seeger in His Own Words

Pete Seeger in His Own Words PDF Author: Pete Seeger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317254287
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Long an icon of American musical and political life, Pete Seeger has written eloquently in a diverse array of publications but nowhere is his life story more personally chronicled than in these, his private writings, documents and letters stored for decades in his family barn. Pete Seeger: His Life in His Own Words, collects Seeger's letters, notes, published articles, rough drafts, stories and poetry - creating the most intimate picture yet available of Seeger as a musician, an activist and a family man. The book covers the passions, personalities and experiences of a lifetime of struggle - from the pre-WWII labour movement and the Communist Party, to Woody Guthrie, the Civil Rights movement and the struggle against the war in Vietnam. The portrait that emerges is not of a saint, but a flesh-and-blood man, struggling to understand his time and his place.

Songs of America

Songs of America PDF Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593132955
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw “Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics but also by our music—by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones. From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take readers on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw reflects on them as an artist and performer. Their perspectives combine to create a unique view of the role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation. Beginning with the battle hymns of the revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the fight for women’s suffrage, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations, and the cultural and political climates that produced them. Readers will discover the power of music in the lives of figures such as Harriet Tubman, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and will learn more about some of our most beloved musicians and performers, including Marian Anderson, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, and more. Songs of America explores both famous songs and lesser-known ones, expanding our understanding of the scope of American music and lending deeper meaning to the historical context of such songs as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Over There,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” As Quincy Jones says, Meacham and McGraw have “convened a concert in Songs of America,” one that reminds us of who we are, where we’ve been, and what we, at our best, can be.

Twilight of Democracy

Twilight of Democracy PDF Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385545819
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.