Dear MUSICOLOGY-ALL Subscribers,
I hope the following will be of interest to you:
Rumba Rules
The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu's Zaire
Bob W. White
"What began with an extraordinary feat of immersion into Kinshasa's music scene toward the end of Mobutu's regime has been honed and crafted into a study of Congolese popular culture and politics that is bound to become a classic. A feat of ethnography and a much-needed ray of hope in these messy and tragic times."-Johannes Fabian, author of Memory against Culture: Arguments and Reminders
"Rumba Rules is a really exciting book, definitely worthy of the 'groundbreaking' and 'sorely needed' labels it is bound to attract. It is full of the basics and the nuances; deeply informative about a place, a scene, a local history, and lived realities; and deeply accountable to debates and discussions about how popular culture encodes a feeling of and for modernity."-Steven Feld, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Music, University of New Mexico
"Rumba Rules ties dance music to dictatorship, band leaders to politicians, in ways that are sensitive to the struggles of Congolese musicians and their fans in Kinshasa. Bob W. White neither diminishes the artistry and entertainment value of musical performances nor over-determines their role in political culture. This is a book that finely theorizes the relationship between aesthetics and political culture through vivid and often amusing storytelling."-Louise Meintjes, author of Sound of Africa! Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio
Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) from 1965 until 1997, was fond of saying "happy are those who sing and dance," and his regime energetically promoted the notion of culture as a national resource. During this period Zairian popular dance music (often referred to as la rumba zaïroise) became a sort of musica franca in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But how did this privileged form of cultural expression, one primarily known for a sound of sweetness and joy, flourish under one of the continent's most brutal authoritarian regimes? In Rumba Rules, the first ethnography of popular music in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bob W. White examines not only the economic and political conditions that brought this powerful music industry to its knees, but also the ways that popular musicians sought to remain socially relevant in a time of increasing insecurity.
Drawing partly on his experiences as a member of a local dance band in the country's capital city Kinshasa, White offers extraordinarily vivid accounts of the live music scene, including the relatively recent phenomenon of libanga, which involves shouting the names of wealthy or powerful people during performances in exchange for financial support or protection. With dynamic descriptions of how bands practiced, performed, and splintered, White highlights how the ways that power was sought and understood in Kinshasa's popular music scene mirrored the charismatic authoritarianism of Mobutu's rule. In Rumba Rules, Congolese speak candidly about political leadership, social mobility, and what it meant to be a bon chef (good leader) in Mobutu's Zaire.
http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=12384628332&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=5956
Duke University Press
July 2008 320pp £16.99 PB 978-0-8223-4112-3
SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE OF £12.00 to MUSICOLOGY-ALL Subscribers
Postage and Packing £2.75
(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: MA031208RR for discount)
To order a copy please contact Marston on 44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask] or visit our website www.combinedacademic.co.uk
Sounding Salsa
Performing Latin Music in New York
Christopher Washburne
"Washburne shows the reader in myriad ways how and why salseros have become the 'migrant workers' of the music world. His vantage point as both practicing musician and scholar is unique, giving us a privileged view of musical performance as seen from the bandstand. This is a very successful and engaging sociology and ethnomusicology of modern salsa" -Ruth Glasser, Lecturer, Urban and Community Studies Program, University of Connecticut, author of My Music is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York Communities, 1917-1940
This ethnographic journey into the New York salsa scene of the 1990s is the first of its kind. Written by a musical insider, and from the perspective of salsa musicians, Sounding Salsa is a pioneering study that offers detailed accounts of these musicians grappling with intercultural tensions and commercial pressures. Christopher Washburne, himself an accomplished salsa musician, examines the organizational structures, recording processes, rehearsing, and gigging of salsa bands, paying particular attention to how they created a sense of community, privileged "the people" over artistic and commercial concerns, and incited cultural pride during performances.
Sounding Salsa addresses a range of issues, musical and social. Musically, Washburne examines sound structure, salsa aesthetics, and performance practice, along with the influences of Puerto Rican music. Socially, he considers the roles of the illicit drug trade, gender, and violence in shaping the salsa experience. Highly readable, Sounding Salsa offers a behind-the-scenes perspective on a musical movement that became a social phenomenon.
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1557_reg.html
Temple University Press
June 2008 6 x 9 inches 272pp £17.99 PB 978-1-59213-316-1
SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE OF £12.50 to MUSICOLOGY-ALL Subscribers
Postage and Packing £2.75
(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: MA031208SS for discount)
To order a copy please contact Marston on 44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask] or visit our website www.combinedacademic.co.uk
Chicano Rap
Gender and Violence in the Postindustrial Barrio
Pancho McFarland, Chicago State University
"This study of Chicano rap music is truly a first of its kind. . . . a single-focus study on Chicano rap, its musicians and politics, and how rap and hip hop is a musical counter-narrative to the disenfranchisement of working class barrios. This book has strong potential to have crossover appeal to scholars in popular music, Chicano studies, urban studies, and American studies."-Arturo Aldama, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and Director of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America, University of Colorado, Boulder
Powered by a driving beat, clever lyrics, and assertive attitudes, rap music and hip hop culture have engrossed American youth since the mid-1980s. Although the first rappers were African Americans, rap and hip hop culture quickly spread to other ethnic groups who have added their own cultural elements to the music. Chicano Rap offers the first in-depth look at how Chicano/a youth have adopted and adapted rap music and hip hop culture to express their views on gender and violence, as well as on how Chicano/a youth fit into a globalizing world.
Pancho McFarland examines over five hundred songs and seventy rap artists from all the major Chicano rap regions-San Diego, San Francisco and Northern California, Texas, and Chicago and the Midwest. He discusses the cultural, political, historical, and economic contexts in which Chicano rap has emerged and how these have shaped the violence and misogyny often expressed in Chicano rap and hip hop. In particular, he argues that the misogyny and violence of Chicano rap are direct outcomes of the "patriarchal dominance paradigm" that governs human relations in the United States. McFarland also explains how globalization, economic restructuring, and the conservative shift in national politics have affected Chicano/a youth and Chicano rap. He concludes with a look at how Xicana feminists, some Chicano rappers, and other cultural workers are striving to reach Chicano/a youth with a democratic, peaceful, empowering, and liberating message.
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/mcfchi.html <http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/mcfchi.html>
Texas University Press
June 2008 6 x 9 inches 248pp 12 color photos £17.99 PB 978-0-292-71803-6
SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE OF £12.50 to MUSICOLOGY-ALL Subscribers
Postage and Packing £2.75
(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: MA031208CR for discount)
To order a copy please contact Marston on 44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> or visit our website www.combinedacademic.co.uk <http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk>
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