Music/Culture
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Series Editors: Deborah Wong, University of California; Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas; Jeremy Wallach, Bowling Green State University, Ohio

The Wesleyan Music/Culture series has consistently reshaped and redirected music scholarship. Founded in 1993 by George Lipsitz, Susan McClary, and Robert Walser, the series features outstanding critical work on music. Unconstrained by disciplinary divides, the series addresses music and power through a range of times, places, and approaches. Music/Culture strives to integrate a variety of approaches to the study of music, linking analysis of musical significance to larger issues of power—what is permitted and forbidden, who is included and excluded, who speaks and who gets silenced. From ethnographic classics to cutting-edge studies, Music/Culture zeroes in on how musicians articulate social needs, conflicts, coalitions, and hope. Books in the series investigate the cultural work of music in urgent and sometimes experimental ways, from the radical fringe to the quotidian. Music/Culture asks deep and broad questions about music through the framework of the most restless and rigorous critical theory.

Living Space Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780819569202
Pub Date: 16 Jan 2025
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 42 b&w photos
Description:
Examines John Coltrane's "late period" and Miles Davis's "Lost Quintet" through the prisms of digital architecture and experimental photographyLiving Space: John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Free Jazz, from Analog to Digital fuses biography and style history in order to illuminate the music of two jazz icons, while drawing on the discourses of photography and digital architecture to fashion musical insights that may not be available through the traditional language of jazz analysis. The book follows the controversial trajectories of two jazz legends, emerging from the 1959 album Kind of Blue. Coltrane's odyssey through what became known as "free jazz" brought stylistic (r)evolution and chaos in equal measure.
RRP: £20.50
Sounds of Other Shores Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9780819501066
Pub Date: 16 Jan 2025
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 21 b&w photos, 5 tables, 1 map
Description:
A study of transoceanic musical appropriation and Swahili ethnic subjectivity on the Kenyan coastSounds of Other Shores takes an ethnographic ear to the history of transoceanic stylistic appropriation in the Swahili taarab music of the Kenyan coast. Swahili taarab, a form of sung poetry that emerged as East Africa's first mass-mediated popular music in the 1930s, is a famously cosmopolitan form, rich in audible influences from across the Indian Ocean. But the variants of the genre that emerged in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa during the twentieth century feature particularly dramatic, even flamboyant, appropriations of Indian and Arab sonic gestures and styles.
RRP: £18.95
Brassroots Democracy Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 424
ISBN: 9780819501127
Pub Date: 17 Oct 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 25 b&w photos
Description:
**A new understanding of the birth of jazz through a fine-grained social history of early African American musicians **Brassroots Democracy recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from below," following the musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes. Perhaps most importantly, Barson locates the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas—Haiti—as a nexus for cultural and political change in nineteenth-century Louisiana.

The In-Between in Javanese Performing Arts

History and Myth, Interculturalism and Interreligiosity
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780819501264
Pub Date: 01 Oct 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 14 b&w photos, 5 b&w line drawings, 4 b&w tables
Description:
The role of performing art in one of the world's most diverse and complex societies/>/>This book is the first comprehensive overview of Javanese performing arts from their origins to their dynamic present. Renowned scholar and musician Sumarsam draws from a lifetime of immersion in both wayang and gamelan to guide readers through the concept of the "in-between," revealing how the interplay of dualisms—myth and history, sacred and secular, personal and cultural—forms the bedrock of Javanese performance. Rigorously researched historical case studies reveal the intricate relationship between histories and mythologies in Java.
The Life of Music in South India Cover The Life of Music in South India Cover
Format: 
Pages: 244
ISBN: 9780819500731
Pub Date: 05 Feb 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Pages: 244
ISBN: 9780819500748
Pub Date: 01 Feb 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Description:
An insider's eight-decade overview of South India's 20th century classical music culture. This book offers an account of Carnatic music culture drawing on the knowledge of T. Sankaran, a musician raised in an illustrious non-Brahmin devadasi family, and his long affiliation with cultural institutions including All India Radio (AIR) and the Tamil Isai Sangam (Tamil Music Academy).
Dissonant Landscapes Cover Dissonant Landscapes Cover
Format: 
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9780819500489
Pub Date: 02 Feb 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 15 color photos, 1 b&w table, 1 printed music item
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9780819500496
Pub Date: 29 Feb 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 15 color photos, 1 b&w table, 1 printed music item
Description:
Listening to the dissonances of nature and nationhood in modern Iceland. During the past three decades, Iceland has attained a strong presence in the world through its musical culture, with images of the nation being packaged and shipped out in melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. What 'Iceland' means for people, both at home and abroad, is conditioned by music and its ability to animate notions of nature and nationality.
Queer Arrangements Cover Queer Arrangements Cover
Format: 
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780819500632
Pub Date: 02 Feb 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780819500649
Pub Date: 01 Feb 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 22 b&w photos, 15 figures
Description:
Queer Arrangements is a new study of Billy Strayhorn that examines his music and career at the intersection of jazz and Black queer history.The legacy of Black queer composer, arranger and pianist Billy Strayhorn (1915–1967) hovers at the edge of canonical jazz narratives. Queer Arrangements explores the ways in which Strayhorn's identity as an openly gay Black jazz musician shaped his career, including the creative roles he could assume and the dynamics between himself and his collaborators, most famously Duke Ellington, but also iconic singers such as Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald.
The Land Is Sung Cover The Land Is Sung Cover
Format: 
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780819500571
Pub Date: 31 Jan 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780819500588
Pub Date: 01 Feb 2024
Series: Music/Culture
Description:
Ethnography on the politics of land and belonging in post apartheid Zulu performances What does it mean to belong? In The Land is Sung, musicologist Thomas Pooley shows how performances of song, dance, and praise poetry connect Zulu communities to their ancestral homes and genealogies. For those without land tenure in the province of KwaZulu-Nata, performances articulate a sense of place.
Musical Resilience Cover Musical Resilience Cover
Format: 
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780819500090
Pub Date: 08 Nov 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 24 b&w halftones, 1 map
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780819500106
Pub Date: 08 Nov 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 24 b&w halftones, 1 map
Description:
In Musical Resilience, Shalini Ayyagari shows how professional low-caste musicians from the Thar Desert borderland of Rajasthan, India have skillfully reinvented their cultural and economic value in postcolonial India. Before India's independence in 1947, the Manganiyar community of hereditary musicians were tied to traditional patrons over centuries and through hereditary ties. In postcolonial India, traditional patronage relations faded due to new political conditions, technological shifts, and cultural change.
Love and Rage Cover

Love and Rage

Autonomy in Mexico City's Punk Scene
Format: 
Pages: 232
ISBN: 9780819580931
Pub Date: 08 Nov 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 33 b&w photos
Pages: 232
ISBN: 9780819580948
Pub Date: 08 Nov 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 33 b&w photos
Description:
Love and Rage is a deeply ethnographic account of punk in Mexico City as it is lived and practiced, connecting the sounds of punk music to different styles of political action. Through compelling first-person accounts, ethnographer Kelley Tatro shows that punk is more than music. It is a lifestyle choice that commits scene participants to experimentation with anarchist politics.
Critical Brass Cover Critical Brass Cover
Format: 
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780819500182
Pub Date: 08 Nov 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 40 b&w photos
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780819500199
Pub Date: 08 Nov 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 40 b&w photos
Description:
Critical Brass tells the story of neofanfarrismo, an explosive carnival brass band community turned activist musical movement in Rio de Janeiro, as Brazil shifted from a country on the rise in the 2000s to one beset by various crises in the 2010s. Though predominantly middle-class, neofanfarristas have creatively adapted the critical theories of carnival to militate for a more democratic city. Illuminating the tangible obstacles to musical movement building, Andrew Snyder argues that festive activism with privileged origins can promote real alternatives to the neoliberal city, but meets many limits and contradictions in a society marked by diverse inequalities.
Sound Fragments Cover Sound Fragments Cover
Format: 
Pages: 348
ISBN: 9780819580764
Pub Date: 10 May 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 35 b&w photos
Pages: 348
ISBN: 9780819580771
Pub Date: 10 May 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 35 b&w photos
Description:
This book is an ethnographic study of sound archives and the processes of creative decolonization that form alternative modes of archiving and curating in the 21st century. It explores the histories and afterlives of sound collections and practices at the International Library of African Music. Sound Fragments follows what happens when a colonial sound archive is repurposed and reimagined by local artists in post-apartheid South Africa.
Seeding the Tradition Cover Seeding the Tradition Cover
Format: 
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780819580795
Pub Date: 03 May 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 34 b&w halftones, 6 tables, 1 map
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780819580801
Pub Date: 14 Jun 2022
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 34 b&w halftones, 6 tables, 1 map
Description:
For artists, creativity plays a powerful role in understanding, confronting, and negotiating the crises of the present. Seeding the Tradition explores conflicting creativities in traditional music in Hõ Chí Minh City, the Mekong Delta, and the Vietnamese diaspora, and how they influence contemporary southern Vietnamese culture. The book centers on the ways in which musicians of đón ca tài tù, a "music for diversion," practice creativity or sáng tạo in early 21st-century southern Vietnam.
Ways of Voice Cover Ways of Voice Cover
Format: 
Pages: 296
ISBN: 9780819579393
Pub Date: 09 Nov 2021
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 37 figures
Pages: 296
ISBN: 9780819579386
Pub Date: 09 Nov 2021
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 37 figures
Description:
An exploration of ethical dynamism in vocal life Ways of Voice is the first ethnomusicological monograph to delve deeply into the diverse, variegated techniques of voice production in North India. It explicitly thematizes the dynamic movement between vocal dispositions—singers who consciously retrain themselves in order to acquire a different voice, focusing on the ways in which singers not only "have" voice, but actively acquire, cultivate and contest particular vocal dispositions. The book deals extensively with the formation and contestation of particular, historically grounded ways of voice, from Bollywood film singers to modern raga vocality to pop Sufi song.
Living from Music in Salvador Cover Living from Music in Salvador Cover
Format: 
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780819580498
Pub Date: 05 Oct 2021
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 10 b&w halftones, 1 table, 16 figures
Pages: 320
ISBN: 9780819580481
Pub Date: 05 Oct 2021
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 10 b&w halftones, 1 table, 16 figures
Description:
An ethnography about local working musicians in Brazil's "most African" city Living from Music in Salvador examines the labor of musicians in Salvador da Bahia, widely regarded as Brazil's most African city. Drawing on fieldwork that spans over sixteen years, the book explores local musicians' lives as members of a flexible work force, emphasizing questions of race, social class, and cultural politics in relation to professional music making. From clubs and restaurants, to Carnaval parades and festival celebrations, to concert stages and recordings, the abiliy of musicians to earn a living wage is contingent on their navigating industry and societal conditions that are profoundly informed by the entrenched legacies of colonization and slavery.
Beyoncé in the World Cover Beyoncé in the World Cover
Format: 
Pages: 392
ISBN: 9780819579911
Pub Date: 08 Jun 2021
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 31 color photos
Pages: 392
ISBN: 9780819579928
Pub Date: 08 Jun 2021
Series: Music/Culture
Illustrations: 31 color photos
Description:
From Destiny's Child to Lemonade, Homecoming, and The Gift, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has redefined global stardom, feminism, Black representation, and celebrity activism. This book brings together new work from sixteen international scholars to explore Beyonce's impact as an artist and public figure from the perspectives of critical race studies, gender and women's studies, queer and cultural studies, music, and fan studies. The authors explore Beyoncé's musical persona as one that builds upon the lineages of Black female cool, Black southern culture, and Black feminist cultural production.