Category Archives: Popular music

by | January 8, 2017 · 6:00 am

David Bowie and Japanese style

 

Japanese fashion, theater, and music played significant roles in David Bowie’s pioneering career.

The Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto devised some of Bowie’s most iconic stage outfits, and in the 1960s the singer studied dance with Lindsay Kemp, a UK performance artist who was influenced by kabuki theater with its exaggerated gestures, elaborate costumes and makeup, and onnagata actors—men playing female roles.

This training with Kemp inspired Bowie as he explored ideas of masculinity, exoticism, and alienation. The inspiration extended to the musical realm as well: on Moss garden from Heroes (1977) Bowie plays a Japanese koto; It’s no game (no. 1) from Scary monsters (and super creeps) (1980) features Japanese vocals; and the instrumental B-side Crystal Japan (1980) was released as a single in Japan and featured in a sake commercial.

This according to “David Bowie’s love affair with Japanese style” by Tessa Wong, Anna Jones, and Yuko Kato (BBC news 12 January 2016).

Today would have been Bowie’s 70th birthday! Above, Yamamoto’s Tokyo pop design for Bowie; below, It’s no game (no. 1).

BONUS: That sake ad.

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by | December 30, 2016 · 6:00 am

Patti Smith and rock heroics

 

From her time as a young performance poet in New York in the late 1960s to her current position as punk rock’s éminence grise, Patti Smith has foregrounded the image of the poet as privileged seer.

Smith’s romantic impulses can be viewed within the context of her activity in the Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church, the preeminent public face of the East Village poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Her complex negotiations between her understanding of the poet as visionary and the adamantly playful, diffuse, and collaborative aesthetic characterizing downtown New York’s poetic community fed into the development of her performative stance as proto-punk rock icon.

This according to “‘Nor did I socialise with their people’: Patti Smith, rock heroics and the poetics of sociability” by Daniel Kane (Popular music XXXI/1 [January 2012] pp. 105–23).

Today is Smith’s 70th birthday! Below, her iconic 1974 recording of Hey Joe.

More posts about punk rock are here.

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by | December 27, 2016 · 6:00 am

Oscar Levant, composer

 

Today Oscar Levant is widely remembered for his mordant wit, his virtuoso interpretations of George Gershwin’s piano music, and his cameo appearances in numerous films. Fewer people realize that he was also a highly regarded composer who had studied with Arnold Schoenberg.

Levant’s hero worship of Gershwin stunted his confidence as a songwriter and a classical composer, though one of his pop songs, Blame it on my youth, has become a standard. Colleagues including Schoenberg, Aaron Copland, and Virgil Thomson all considered him an immensely gifted composer.

This according to A talent for genius: The life and times of Oscar Levant by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger (New York: Villard, 1994; reprint Los Angeles: Silman-James, 1998).

Today would have been Levant’s 110th birthday! Below, Nat Cole’s classic recording of Blame it on my youth.

BONUS: The 1942 premiere of Levant’s piano concerto.

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by | December 15, 2016 · 6:00 am

Eddie Palmieri and La Perfecta

palmieri-la-perfecta

Eddie Palmieri recalled the early days of his band La Perfecta in 2013, on the eve of his acceptance of an NEA Jazz Masters award.

The year was 1961, and the group had scheduled a three-day recording session—but it turned out that the budget shrank each day, so the band had to follow suit. On the first day the horn section comprised four trumpets; on the second day Palmieri could afford only two trumpets and two less-expensive trombones; and on the third day he had to settle for a single trombone and a flute.

For a few months after the record was released, Palmieri barked in the street outside the small Midtown Manhattan club where La Perfecta was playing, trying to divert foot traffic from the nearby Palladium Ballroom where his more famous rivals were performing. “Not there, folks!” he remembers shouting, “Over here, folks!” But soon La Perfecta was hot, and Palmieri’s guerilla tactics paid off with a 90-day Palladium booking.

This according to “Eddie Palmieri: Rebellious perfection” by Giovanni Russonello (JazzTimes XLIII/1 [January–February 2013] pp. 28–33).

Today is Palmieri’s 80th birthday! Above, the group’s first album; below, a more recent incarnation of La Perfecta, still featuring a modest brass section and a flute.

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by | December 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Pérez Prado and mambo

Pérez Prado was largely responsible for establishing and popularizing mambo in the 1950s and 1960s, and was among the first arrangers to introduce full orchestration (including strings) to Latin music.

By his mid-20s, while working as a pianist in Havana’s clubs, cinemas, and casinos, Prado began to develop his own unique rhythmic ideas, which began coalescing into mambo—an upbeat and brassy dance music in which horns and percussion provide punchy punctuation.

Mambo was most likely a dance before it was a style of music; like the cha-cha-chá, it evolved from the traditional rumba. Prado sometimes claimed that he heard mambo emerging from the cross-rhythms of five or six guitarists simultaneously jamming after hours in Cuban clubs.

Though Prado—and mambo—grew increasingly popular, he left Cuba in 1947; some have suggested that Cuban music publishers considered him an upstart who dirtied their native rumba with forms like jazz, and so conspired to deny him work. He settled in Mexico City in 1948, and formed his own band. He gradually succeeded in becoming a multimedia sensation, regularly performing at Mexico’s most chic clubs and serving as musical director for a number of Mexican films.

The records that Prado cut for RCA in late 1949 helped to ignite the firestorm of “mambo mania”, and he settled into a career in New York City in the 1950s, scoring ten consecutive weeks at the top of the U.S. charts in 1955. Although he was almost certainly not the originator of mambo, he did more than anyone else to make it internationally popular.

This according to “Prado, Pérez” by Chris Slawecki (Encyclopedia of music in the 20th century [New York: Routledge, 2013] p. 489); this resource is one of many included in RILM music encyclopedias, an ever-expanding full-text compilation of reference works.

Today would have been Prado’s 100th birthday! Below, live in 1960.

Related post: Accidental hooks

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by | December 5, 2016 · 6:00 am

Women singer-songwriters in the 1990s

P.J. Harvey, Bjork, and Tori Amos in 1994, photographed by John Stoddart.

 

The 1990s saw the emergence of a new kind of female artist, writing songs that focused on intimate topics of sexuality, gender, and the body in an explicit, direct way.

These women explored how everyday life is experienced through the body, and at the center of their songwriting was a specifically female experience, drawing on female agency and power, all experienced through an embodied self. These artists also embraced the confessional history of singer-songwriters, drawing in their audiences with closeness and intimacy through their bodily experiences.

This according to “The female singer-songwriter in the 1990s” by Sarah Boak, an essay included in The Cambridge companion to the singer-songwriter (New York Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 257–64).

Below, P.J. Harvey’s Dress, a song discussed in Boak’s essay.

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by | November 8, 2016 · 6:00 am

Tecnocumbia and Ecuadorian identity

 

Peruvian tecnocumbia arrived in Ecuador in the 1990s, and the ensuing tecnocumbia boom fostered a new music scene that revitalized Ecuadorian popular music (EPM) and contested Ecuadorians’ perception of its national music.

Social, economic, and political factors triggered the increasing production and consumption of this music, and EPM, a stigmatized music that was barely heard in the mainstream media in the 1970s and 1980s, came to be perceived as música nacional by the working classes. The historical contexts, social relations, political economies, and physical landscapes that generate and maintain the EPM scene illuminate how working-class musicians, entrepreneurs, and fans from Quito responded to the social and economic crisis in the country that brought about a massive wave of emigration in the late 1990s.

This according to “The Ecuadorian popular music scene in Quito: Contesting the national imaginary” by Ketty Wong, an essay included in Made in Latin America: Studies in popular music (New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 89–98).

Above and below, Quito native Jaime Enrique Aymara, known as el rey de la tecnocumbia.

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by | November 6, 2016 · 6:00 am

Ray Conniff makes it big

 

In the late 1940s Ray Conniff made an intense study of hit records to discover the key to successful recording.

In 1953 he became musical director for Columbia Records, and in 1955 he was responsible for the arrangements on Don Cherry’s Band of gold, a million seller; the next year he was allowed to produce his own album, ’S wonderful, which sold half a million copies.

Conniff made many LPs that developed the swing-era formula he had devised, starting a trend that was widely copied. His 1966 version of Somewhere my love, an arrangement of the vocal version of Maurice Jarre’s Lara’s theme from the film Doctor Zhivago, became one of the most famous successes in the history of film background music.

This according to “Conniff, Ray” by Reuben and Naomi Musiker (Conductors and composers of popular orchestral music: A biographical and discographical sourcebook [New York: Routledge, 2013] pp. 47–51); this reference work is one of many resources included in RILM music encyclopedias, an ever-expanding full-text compilation of reference works.

Today would have been Conniff’s 100th birthday! Below, Conniff demonstrates his signature use of voices as big-band instruments.

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by | October 27, 2016 · 6:00 am

P-funk tears the roof off

 

In the 1970s George Clinton took funk to a new level when he formulated the P-funk concept, which was defined by a philosophy, attitude, culture, and musical style.

Grounded in the ideology of Black Power, P-funk advocated self-liberation from the social and cultural restrictions of society, creating new social spaces for African Americans to redefine themselves and celebrate their blackness.

P-funk had its own language, fashion, dances, and mythical heroes and villains, who Clinton presented as black science-fiction characters. The mastermind and producer of five P-funk groups, Clinton combined these cultural components to create stories about black people and black life from a black perspective.

This according to “Funk” by Portia K. Maultsby (The Garland encyclopedia of world music III [New York: Routledge, 2013] pp. 680–86); this encyclopedia is one of many resources included in RILM music encyclopedias, an ever-expanding full-text compilation of reference works.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the opening of the P-Funk Earth Tour, whose production budget was the largest amount ever allocated for a black music act to tour at that time. Below, an excerpt from the tour’s performance in Houston shortly after it opened in New Orleans.

BONUS: Wishing for more? Here’s the whole concert.

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by | September 22, 2016 · 6:00 am

Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian studies

brasiliana

Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian studies is a dynamic academic forum where scholars from diverse disciplines in humanities and social sciences publish their research, establish academic discussion, exchange ideas, and draw on each others’ research within the field of Brazilian studies.

Brazil is currently establishing itself as an economic and political power within a global context, and the interdisciplinary study of Brazil is emerging at a high academic level. Several universities worldwide are offering programs under the term Brazilian studies, an area that differs from the more common Latin American studies. Academic communities of Brazilianists exchange ideas across universities and collaborate on research projects inside and outside Brazil. This is an academic journal absolutely dedicated to Brazilian studies.

Although the journal was launched by Statsbiblioteket, Aarhus, in 2012, it is new to RILM because vol. IV/1 (August 2015) is the first issue that features musical content.

Below, Vitor Ramil’s Milonga das sete cidades, the subject of one of the issue’s articles.

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