March 2012
37 posts
“It’s a little misleading to say three fingers. It’s actually two fingers, middle...”
– Banjo player Earl Scruggs talked to Terry Gross about his signature picking method. (via nprfreshair)
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nprmusic:
The Brooklyn Philharmonic invited...
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“At one point, when Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner of New York, he...”
– The story of the Thomashefskys, stars of the Yiddish stage. (via nprfreshair)
A documentary of the Thomashefskys airs tonight on PBS! We have several Yiddish movies in the Main Library, if you’re interested in seeing some.
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“[Alan Lomax] imagined a tool that would integrate thousands of sound recordings,...”
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Joel Rose reports on how volunteers have realized the folklorist’s Global Jukebox dream. (via nprmusic)
As you know, we really love Alan Lomax and the recordings he made. This 5 minute segment explains the Global Jukebox digitization process (17,400 recordings, all available free online. After...
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The Work of Opera: Genre, Nationhood, and Sexual...
Today’s book is a collection of essays on opera called The work of opera: genre, nationhood, and sexual difference (Columbia University Press, 1997) edited by Richard Dellamora and Daniel Fischlin. Although this isn’t new, it’s still a good resource.
Dellamora and Fischlin felt strongly moved by the AIDS epidemic being constructed as a “sexual plague” and how...
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Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music
Writer and activist Ellen Willis spent years critiquing popular/rock music for the New Yorker (in addition to writing occasionally for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice) during the ’60s and ’70s, and was one of the first music critics to do so on a large scale.
Willis especially loved counterculture musicians, like Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, unsurprising when you consider her...
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Listening through the noise: the aesthetics of...
Oxford University Press came out recently (well, in 2010) with a new book by Joanna Demers called Listening through the noise: the aesthetics of experimental electronic music. Demers looks at electronic music since 1980, examining the huge variety of genres and subgenres in electronic music.
From the back of the book:
The abilities of electronic music to use preexisting sounds and to create...
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Watchnprmusic:
Watch video from Julia Holter’s first-ever public New York City performance, including the dreamy “Moni Mon Amie” rendered in torch song at the baby grand piano. You can also download the entire concert recorded live from Le Poisson Rouge.
Holter has a wonderful voice. A beautiful video
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Watchnprmusic:
The best reason to hate Bach’s Goldberg Variations—aside from the obvious reason that everyone asks you all the time which of the two Glenn Gould recordings you prefer—is that everybody loves them. Not a moment goes by when someone doesn’t release a new recording, accompanied by breathless press. They’re like a trendy bar that (infuriatingly) keeps staying trendy. Yes, I’m suspicious...
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Watchnypl:
Did you miss Meshell Ndegeocello at The Schomburg Center a few weeks ago? Watch this great video that exudes the spirit of the evening. The Schomburg’s Women’s Jazz Festival continues tonight, as some of New York’s best female jazz musicians come together to pay homage to the great jazz and blues greats, while next Monday, a group of performers play from the Bernice Johnson Reagon...
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Africa and the Blues
One of our latest books is a favorite of music faculty Toby King. Written in 1999 by anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik, Africa and the Blues comes from academic roots yet is very accessible to non-academics. Kubik talks a look at blues an its origins, with traits coming from Africa and various mutations occurring all over the Americas.
Kubik’s work goes back over fifty...
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Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on...
Today’s book is far from new - faculty member Pat Muchmore recently brought this gem to my attention. Composer/author/musician/lexicographer Nicholas Slonimsky wrote the first edition of the Lexicon of Musical Invective in 1953 and it’s been republished many times since, most recently in 2000.
Slonimsky collected terrible reviews by critics of famous and lauded composers and...
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The Pi Day Playlist: 10 Songs In Your iTunes That... →
totalvibration:
It’s Pi Day! Count pi to some insane number of places all you want, then create a playlist from your iTunes of ten 3-minute, 14-second songs to soundtrack your day. I’ll get you started with mine.
The Jesus Lizard “Destroy Before Reading”
Andrew WK “Girls Own Love”
Starflyer 59 “E.P. Nights”
Chelsea Wolfe “Demons”
Macha “Until Your Temples Are Pounding”
Queen “Jealousy”
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Spring Break Hours
Spring break is almost here, although it’s felt plenty spring-like before now. The Music Library will still be here, but our hours are reduced throughout the duration of the break.
As always, if you need to return a Music Library item when we’re closed, you can always drop it off at the Main Library. Regular hours resume Monday, April 2nd.
*Note: we’ll be closed weekends during...
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Thomas Edison National Historical Park - Theo... →
Interested in old recording techniques? Then you’ll be pleased to learn that the National Park Service recently made available several wax cylinder recordings from the late 1800s. From the website:
In 2011, the National Park Service digitized a box of unique wax cylinder recordings made by Theo Wangemann during his European trip of 1889-90. The recordings include the voices of the eminent...
Watchnprmusic:
Watch an excerpt from Kinshasa Symphony, an amazing documentary about a singular African orchestra that builds trumpet bells from the wheel rim of an old minibus in a place ravaged by war, poverty and corruption.
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That's the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader
Hip-hop studies is one of the newer fields of academic music scholarship, but it’s currency doesn’t mean it’s any less important. Although it seems like hip-hop studies might be a narrow field, it’s really incredibly interdisciplinary.
The 2nd edition of That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (Routledge, 2012) edited by Murray Forman & Marsk Anthony...
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Ethnomusicology: a Research and Information Guide
We recently received the 2nd edition of Jennifer C. Post’s incomparable resource book Ethnomusicology: a Research and Information Guide (Routledge, 2011) and let me tell you, it is chock full of fantastic information - the title does not disappoint.
Post herself explains the book’s contents best in the introduction:
This guide for research in ethnomusicology directs users to...
