Tricia Rose’s Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America is a foundational piece of scholarship on hip hop culture. Written in the mid-1990s, it explores the complex economic, social, and cultural origins of hip hop. It also discusses the social and cultural implications of its many facets and prominent features, including rapping, DJing, B Boying/breaking, signifying, scratching, and sampling. Anyone interested in learning more about this genre should definitely read this book.
Editor’s Note:Our Spider Sounds holiday music extravaganza continues today (you can check out part 1 here). We asked folks who work in the Parsons Music Library, Boatwright Memorial Library, and the Music Department to share some of their favorite music to listen to during the holiday season. Any holiday and all genres of music were fair game and we got quite a fun selection — so much so that we split everyone’s picks across two posts! Links will take you to either the library catalog or to otherrelevantinformation. Do you see any of your favorites on this list? If there are favorites or overlooked classics you’d like to add, please share them in the comments to this post! We at the Parsons Music Library wish you all a peaceful and enjoyable Winter Break.
A list of holiday favorites (familiar and otherwise) — part the second:
We’ve shared lots of holiday music in the past couple of posts. What are some of your favorites? Let us know in the comments on this post (or the first post in the series). Some of the selections shared stream on UR’s audio subscription services and some are available as CDs. Stop by the Parsons Music Library to pick up some holiday tunes for listening — or even some scores and do some music making of your own this season!
Editor’s Note: “Spider Sounds” invites members of the University of Richmond community to share their thoughts about items in the Parsons Music Library’s collection. The links included will take you to the library catalog record for the item in question, or to additional relevant information.
Today’s installment of “Spider Sounds” comes courtesy of UR Music Department faculty member Dr. Gene Anderson. Dr. Anderson is the author of a number of articles about early jazz and the analysis of wind music. He has been kind enough to share a review of a recent biography about Louis Armstrong’s early career entitled Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism. Thanks, Gene!
The main thesis of Master of Modernism, which focuses on the period between Armstrong’s departure from New Orleans to join King Oliver’s Creole Band in 1922 to his successful transition into the swing era in the early 1930s, is that the trumpeter’s success “depended on his ability to skillfully negotiate the musical and social legacies of slavery,” and whose career, “can be understood as a response to these interlocking trajectories.” The fulfillment of such a thesis demands nothing short of a cultural history of the period, which Brothers eloquently and compellingly provides. Although the author contributes few new revelations to Armstrong’s well-known life story, he furnishes the most coherent narrative of these years to date by adding details and filling in chronological gaps by means of little-known archival photographs, first-person recollections from contemporaries and primary sources like black newspapers and periodicals.
Armstrong, armed with an exceptional ear, extraordinary memory and a nascent ability to read music, left his hometown with a thorough grounding in black vernacular music—its blues-infused aspects of collective improvisation, freak and obbligato playing (“playing second”) having been fostered variously by plantation music, the heterophonic singing of the Sanctified Church, King Oliver’s “monkeyshines” or “ragging the tune” to Manuel Perez’ leads, and the hawking of wares by street vendors, Lorenzo and Santiago. Most importantly, he was immersed in what Brothers calls the “fixed and variable model” of performance which “became the key ingredient in Armstrong’s mature style.”
Brothers concludes his investigation by summarizing the characteristics that made Armstrong a great melodist. The author’s stances on a few controversial issues have been addressed by others, but this exquisitely written and exhaustively researched work stands as an invaluable addition to the literature and will very likely come to be regarded, with its companion, Louis Armstrong in New Orleans, as the definitive study of Armstrong’s early career.
Editor’s Note:“Spider Sounds” invites members of the University of Richmond community to share their thoughts about CDs and other items in the Parsons Music Library’s collection. The links included will take you to the library catalog record for the item in question, or to additional relevant information.
Today’s installment of “Spider Sounds” comes courtesy of UR Music Department faculty member Joanna Love, Ph.D., who is on sabbatical currently but was kind enough to share her thoughts on a 5 disc set of DVDs entitled “The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” This multi-part documentary covers rock history from its beginnings in the 1950s to Lollapalooza in the 1990s and features interviews, classic footage and concert performances. Thanks, Joanna!
I really like the Time Life History of Rock n Roll DVD collection.
It provides insightful (and entertaining) primary and secondary source interviews that situate American musical styles popular in the latter half of the 20th century within American culture, the music industry, and technological innovations.
It’s particularly interesting that you get to see the artists and producers themselves reflecting on their music.
