New Books in Music

Discussions of punk tend to focus on groups, like the Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, and the punk scenes of New York, London, and Los Angeles. Punk, however, was a broader musical cultural movement and sprung up in multiple locations. The Dead Kennedys hailed from the San Francisco punk scene... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Can sociology explain punk? In a new book, Networks of Sound, Style, and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool, and Sheffield, 1975-80 (Manchester University Press, 2015), Nick Crossley from the University of Manchester offers an important new perspective on the birth of punk and post-punk in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield in the mid to late 1970s. Crossley uses social network analysis (SNA) to show why punk developed in specific places in specific ways. This is in contrast to existing work that seeks to ground punk in the strains of adolescent life in the crisis ridden 1970s, or in the actions of specific individuals. The book seeks to account for punk and post-punk in the four cities as a series of musical worlds, all of which have similarities shown by the SNA. Indeed, by concentrating on the networks that facilitated the rise of punk, the book shows how punk can be explained through networks of connected and sometimes competing sets of enthusiasts, before it became a subject of national moral panic. Combining readable examples of SNA with the story of punk, the book will be of interest to a popular, as well as academic, audience. Prof Crossley will be discussing some of his work that has followed the publication of the book, along with a range of papers on music and networks in Manchester on June 16th-18th 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Beyond what people say, what their voices sound like matters. Voice, as Ana Marcia Ochoa Gautier argues in this marvelous new book Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Colombia(Duke University Press, 2014), was embedded in 19th-century conversations and debates about the boundaries between nature and culture, between the civilized and barbaric, between inclusion or marginalization in a public civic sphere. Set in Colombia but relevant for much of Latin America and the Caribbean, the book draws on brilliant interpretations of the sonorous written archive to take up questions of sound, inscription and the epistemological and ontological status of voice. The book will prompt new formulations in both Sound Studies and Latin American Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

For the past few decades a major focus has been how the Internet, and Internet associated new media, allows for greater social and political participation globally. There is no disputing that the Internet has allowed for more participation, but the medium carries an inherent elitism and the need for expertise, which may limit accessibility. According to some advocates, old media like radio offer an alternative without the limitations of new media systems. In her new book Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism (MIT Press, 2014), Christina Dunbar-Hester, an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, explores the activist organization the Prometheus Project, and its role in advocating for greater community access to low power radio licenses. In an ethnographic examination of the medium of microradio, Dunbar-Hester examines the dichotomy of old versus new media, as well as the use of media for participatory and emancipatory politics on the local community level. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

“The chief aim of [philosopher Francois Laruelle’s] life’s work is to consider philosophy without resorting to philosophy in order to do so.” What is non-philosophy, what would it look like to practice it, and what are the implications of doing so? Alexander R. Galloway introduces and explores these questions in a vibrant and thoughtful new book. Laruelle: Against the Digital (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) uses Francois Laruelle’s non-philosophy as a foundation for considering the philosophical concept of digitality. In a series of ten chapters (plus intro and conclusion) and 14 theses, Galloway offers an exceptionally clear and provocative treatment of digitality as a way of thinking about and with difference. In addition to offering a critical encounter with some of the most fundamental aspects of Laruelle’s work as they open up ways of thinking about identity, distinction, and exchange, the book also contains some wonderful discussions of brightness and obscurity, representation and aesthetics, computation, photography, music, ethics, and capitalism, while putting the work of Laruelle into dialogue with Deleuze, Badiou, Marx, Althusser, and others. It’s an exciting work, and I will be re-reading and thinking with it for some time to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Bruce Springsteen is an American icon, known to his fans as “Bruce” and the “Boss.” Springsteen burst onto the American music scene in 1975 with the release of his classic album, Born To Run. His concerts are legendary, and his music offers keen insight on American society. In Bruce Springsteen: American Poet and Prophet (Scarecrow Press, 2014), Donald Deardorff explores the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen and uses them to explore what they reveal about American culture. The book examines how Springsteen’s career represents and comments on the tremendous changes that have shaped the United States since World War II. Deardorff traces the development in Springsteen’s thought, giving equal weight to both the early and late part of his career. In the podcast, we explore a wide range of topics, including artistic influences on Bruce, Springsteen’s analysis of the crisis in masculinity, Bruce’s response to postmodernism, and even the surprising range of artists Bruce has influenced. Donald Deardorff has taught numerous courses in American literature and literary criticism at Cedarville University Ohio, since 1996. He is the author of The Image of God in the Human Body: Essays on Christianity and Sports and Sports: A Reference Guide and Critical Commentary, 1980-1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

For many people, filmgoing is a moment to submerge themselves in a new world of meaning and experience a different reality. While film is prominently defined by its ‘moving images’ these alone are not usually able to fully move a viewer. Audiovisual cinema is much more compelling and music has a unique ability to produce emotive power for the viewer. In Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience (Baylor University Press, 2013), Kutter Callaway, Affiliate Professor at Fuller Seminary, addresses how cinematic music uniquely opens up a space that invites the viewer to feel. Through his investigation Callaway moves beyond the tradition of textual and literary approaches to film and offers us methods for hearing images and seeing sounds. In our conversation we discuss audience reception, musical transparency, Finding Nemo, filmic narrative, music’s theological capacity, Pixar, western cultural imagination, Up, musical leitmotifs, and Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

What is Ska music? This is a deceptively complicated question. In this podcast Heather Augustyn, the author of Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation(Scarecrow Press, 2013) discusses ska’s journey from a local music in 1950s and 1960s Jamaica, its journey to Great Britain and its fusion with punk and other 1970s musical forms, and then its arrival and dissemination across the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Even as the music developed in different locations and responded to local conditions, it retained its core sound and its central themes and imagery. Augustyn draws on her decades-long research as she tells the story of ska’s growth and development. Heather Augustyn is a journalist and writing teacher living in Chesterton, Ind. She author of Ska: An Oral History (with a foreword by Cedella Marley) which was nominated for the ARSC Award for Excellence, Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World’s Greatest Trombonist (with a foreword by Delfeayo Marsalis). Her website is http://skabook.com and she blogs at Foundation Ska. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

S. Duncan Reid has written a meticulously researched and detailed account of the performances and recording career of Bay Area-raised and small group Latin-jazz innovator and vibraphonist Cal Tjader. Tjader’s high-energy yet lyrical and melodic playing introduced new demographics of jazz listeners to the soulful sound of Latin jazz for four decades beginning in the 1940s and ending with Tjader’s untimely death at the age of 56 in 1982. In Cal Tjader: The Life and Recordings of the Man Who Revolutionized Latin Jazz (McFarland, 2013), Reid details Tjader’s uncanny ability to soak up ever-evolving stylistic and percussive nuances – and discusses his collaborations with and influences on other Latin jazz innovators such as Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Poncho Sanchez, Vince Guaraldi, Michael Wolff and many, many more. Reid recounts how Mario Bauza, Machito, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stan Kenton, among others, had influenced the Latin jazz scene in the 1940s with their exciting big band/orchestral sound – and that the majority of influential jazz critics were “East of the Mississippi.” One of the delights in Reid’s book is to see how Tjader, with his San Francisco Bay Area roots and a European family background, nonetheless was attracted to and became an innovator in the small-group Latin jazz scene. Cal Tjader was literally born to rhythm. His father, of Swedish descent, was a talented vaudevillian. His Idaho-born mother played classical piano. Tjader’s parents opened a popular dance studio in San Mateo, California in the late 1920s. Tjader was already tap dancing in front of audiences by the age of 4 and as a child even danced with tap dance legend Bill “Bojangles” Robinson on a Hollywood set in the early 1930s. Forsaking tap dancing in high school, Tjader picked up drums and within three years won a Gene Krupa drum contest playing “Drum Boogie.” News of his success, however, was “overshadowed” by another news event –the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. After serving in the South Pacific in WWII, Tjader returned to the San Francisco Bay area, attended San Francisco State College and soon began collaborating with other West Coast jazz musicians – most notably Dave Brubeck (Tjader started out as a drummer for Brubeck in the late 1940s and subsequently the vibes), and sax player Paul Desmond. It wasn’t long, however, before Tjader became enamored of the infectious and complex percussive permutations in Afro-Cuban rhythms after meeting Cuban percussionist Armando Peraza in San Francisco early in 1950. Reid also writes that Tjader’s collaborations/recordings with classically trained jazz pianist George Shearing were central to Tjader’s own evolution in the small-group Latin sound. Shearing called Tjader a “percussive genius.” Tjader always had a lyrical quality to his playing – he left space and was always looking for new compositional challenges, and it wasn’t long before Tjader became a fixture in the small-group Latin jazz scene in San Francisco, playing gigs at the most famous San Francisco clubs of the day – notably The Blackhawk, The Great American Music Hall, and the El Matador. Tjader is probably most associated with his catchy cover of the Gillespie/Pozo hit Guarachi Guaro on his Grammy-nominated album Soul Sauce in 1964. Tjader later won a Grammy for his album La Onda Va Bien, recorded in 1979. Reid is upfront about Tjader’s problems with alcohol and challenging family dynamics but doesn’t psychologize – he lets his interviewees do the talking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

The last few decades has seen a turn toward traditional forms of American music; call it Americana, alternative country, or a new folk revival. In “I Hear America Singing”: Folk Music and National Identity (Temple University Press, 2014), Rachel Clare Donaldson, an independent scholar based in Baltimore, offers a history of the first folk revival, tracing it from the early twentieth century into the 1970s. A historian by training, Donaldson brings together a history of folk music and performers such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan, a comprehensive understanding of U.S. political and social history, and the various strains of the American Left. Throughout, she traces the history of an idea, an inclusive and open image of what it means to be American. And she does so through song. In our conversation, she talks about all of that and, among other things, the punk band Anti-Flag. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music