front cover of Cultural Sustainabilities
Cultural Sustainabilities
Music, Media, Language, Advocacy
Edited by Timothy J. Cooley
University of Illinois Press, 2019
Environmental sustainability and human cultural sustainability are inextricably linked. Reversing damaging human impact on the global environment is ultimately a cultural question, and as with politics, the answers are often profoundly local. Cultural Sustainabilities presents twenty-three essays by musicologists and ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, folklorists, ethnographers, documentary filmmakers, musicians, artists, and activists, each asking a particular question or presenting a specific local case study about cultural and environmental sustainability. Contributing to the environmental humanities, the authors embrace and even celebrate human engagement with ecosystems, though with a profound sense of collective responsibility created by the emergence of the Anthropocene. Contributors: Aaron S. Allen, Michael B. Bakan, Robert Baron, Daniel Cavicchi, Timothy J. Cooley, Mark F. DeWitt, Barry Dornfeld, Thomas Faux, Burt Feintuch, Nancy Guy, Mary Hufford, Susan Hurley-Glowa, Patrick Hutchinson, Michelle Kisliuk, Pauleena M. MacDougall, Margarita Mazo, Dotan Nitzberg, Jennifer C. Post, Tom Rankin, Roshan Samtani, Jeffrey A. Summit, Jeff Todd Titon, Joshua Tucker, Rory Turner, Denise Von Glahn, and Thomas Walker
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front cover of The Magic of Beverly Sills
The Magic of Beverly Sills
Nancy Guy
University of Illinois Press, 2015
With her superb coloratura soprano, passion for the world of opera, and down-to-earth personality, Beverly Sills made high art accessible to millions from the time of her meteoric rise to stardom in 1966 until her death in 2007. An unlikely pop culture phenomenon, Sills was equally at ease on talk shows, on the stage, and in the role of arts advocate and administrator. Merging archival research with her own love of Sills's music, Nancy Guy examines the singer-actress's artistry alongside the ineffable aspects of performance that earned Sills a passionate fandom. Guy mines the memories of colleagues, critics, and aficionados to recover something of the spell Sills wove for people on both sides of the footlights during the hot moments of onstage performance. At the same time, she analyzes essential questions raised by Sills's art and celebrity. How did Sills challenge the divide between elite and mass culture and build a fan base that crossed generations and socio-economic lines? Above all, how did Sills capture the unnameable magic that joins the members of an audience to a performer--and to one-another? Intimate and revealing, The Magic of Beverly Sills explores the alchemy of art, magnetism, community, and emotion that produced an American icon.
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front cover of Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan
Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan
Nancy Guy
University of Illinois Press, 2005
Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan tells the peculiar story of an art caught in a sea of ideological ebbs and flows.  Nancy Guy demonstrates the potential significance of the political environment for an art form's development, ranging from determining the smallest performative details (such as how a melody can or cannot be composed) to whether a tradition ultimately thrives or withers away.
 
When Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government and military retreated to Taiwan in 1949, they brought along numerous Peking opera performers. Expecting that this symbolically important art would strengthen regime legitimacy and authority, they generously supported Peking opera's perpetuation in exile. Valuing mainland Chinese culture above Taiwanese culture, the Nationalists generously supported Peking opera to the virtual exclusion of local performing traditions, despite their wider popularity. Later, as Taiwan turned toward democracy, the island's own "indigenous" products became more highly valued and Peking opera found itself on a tenuous footing. Finally, in 1995, all of its opera troupes and schools (formerly supported by the Ministry of Defense) were dismantled.
 
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front cover of Social Voices
Social Voices
The Cultural Politics of Singers around the Globe
Edited by Levi S. Gibbs
University of Illinois Press, 2023
Singers generating cultural identity from K-Pop to Beverly Sills

Around the world and across time, singers and their songs stand at the crossroads of differing politics and perspectives. Levi S. Gibbs edits a collection built around the idea of listening as a political act that produces meaning. Contributors explore a wide range of issues by examining artists like Romani icon Esma Redžepova, Indian legend Lata Mangeshkar, and pop superstar Teresa Teng. Topics include gendered performances and the negotiation of race and class identities; the class-related contradictions exposed by the divide between highbrow and pop culture; links between narratives of overcoming struggle and the distinction between privileged and marginalized identities; singers’ ability to adapt to shifting notions of history, borders, gender, and memory in order to connect with listeners; how the meanings we read into a singer’s life and art build on one another; and technology’s ability to challenge our ideas about what constitutes music.

Cutting-edge and original, Social Voices reveals how singers and their songs equip us to process social change and divergent opinions.

Contributors: Christina D. Abreu, Michael K. Bourdaghs, Kwame Dawes, Nancy Guy, Ruth Hellier, John Lie, Treva B. Lindsey, Eric Lott, Katherine Meizel, Carol A. Muller, Natalie Sarrazin, Anthony Seeger, Carol Silverman, Andrew Simon, Jeff Todd Titon, and Elijah Wald

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