5448 books match the query 'History and criticism' and 404 start with a

cover of Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians: Performing "Out There"

Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians

Performing "Out There"

David G. Such

University of Iowa Press, 1993

 Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians focuses on performers whose out styles, by definition, transcend traditional boundaries of jazz and most Western forms of music; some of these performers are well known, such as John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor, and others are not, including Daniel Carter, Billy Bang, and Jemeel Moondoc. David Such uses an interdisciplinary approach, ranging from philosophy to ethnomusicology to psychobiology, to examine how both cultural and personal factors have influenced the out musicians and their music and what the music symbolizes to listeners and to the musicians themselves.

Such strikes a balance between out music itself and the cultural domain as he explores the social contexts and economic pressures that affect out musical performance. Using material from extensive personal interviews, Such evaluates the impact of civil rights, postindustrialization, and urbanization on the beliefs and attitudes of out musicians.

By performing with many of the out musicians he interviews, Such is able to examine out music and the worldviews of out musicians in a uniquely comprehensive manner and to resolve some of the more controversial issues surrounding out jazz. In the process, he makes out music more understandable to jazz fans and scholars alike and clarifies its role in the overall development of jazz.

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cover of Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing

Avenues of Translation

The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing

Galasso, Regina

Bucknell University Press, 2019

Winner of the 2020 SAMLA Studies Book Award — Edited Collection

Cities both near and far communicate in a variety of ways. Travel between, through, and among urban centers initiates contact, and cities themselves are sites of ever-changing cultural and historical encounters. Predictable and surprising challenges and opportunities arise when city borders are crossed, voices meet, and artistic traditions find their counterparts. Using the Latin word for “translation,” translatio, or “to carry across,” as a point of departure, Avenues of Translation explores how translation perpetuates, diversifies, deepens, and expands the literary production of cities in their greater cultural context, and how translation shapes an understanding of and access to a city's past and present literary and cultural practices. Thinking about translation and the city is a way to tell the backstories of the cities, texts, and authors that are united by acts of translation.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
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cover of Awakening Spaces: French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music, and Culture

Awakening Spaces

French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music, and Culture

Brenda F. Berrian

University of Chicago Press, 2000

The fast-paced zouk of Kassav', the romantic biguine of Malavoi, the jazz of Fal Frett, the ballads of Mona, and reggae of Kali and Pôglo are all part of the burgeoning popular music scene in the French Caribbean. In this lively book, Brenda F. Berrian chronicles the rise of this music, which has captivated the minds and bodies of the Francophone world and elsewhere.

Based on personal interviews and discussions of song texts, Berrian shows how these musicians express their feelings about current and past events, about themselves, their islands, and the French. Through their lyrical themes, these songs create metaphorical "spaces" that evoke narratives of desire, exile, subversion, and Creole identity and experiences. Berrian opens up these spaces to reveal how the artists not only engage their listeners and effect social change, but also empower and identify themselves. She also explores the music as it relates to the art of drumming, and to genres such as African American and Latin jazz and reggae. With Awakening Spaces, Berrian adds fresh insight into the historical struggles and arts of the French Caribbean.
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cover of Aztec Antichrist: Performing the Apocalypse in Early Colonial Mexico

Aztec Antichrist

Performing the Apocalypse in Early Colonial Mexico

Ben Leeming

University Press of Colorado, 2022

In Aztec Antichrist, Ben Leeming presents a transcription, translation, and study of two sixteenth-century Nahuatl religious plays that are likely the earliest surviving presentations of the Antichrist legend in the Americas, and possibly the earliest surviving play scripts in the whole of the New World in any language.
 
Discovered in the archives of the Hispanic Society of America in New York inside a notebook of miscellaneous Nahuatl-Christian texts written almost entirely by an Indigenous writer named Fabían de Aquino, the plays are filled with references to human sacrifice, bloodletting, ritual divination, and other religious practices declared “idolatrous” at a time when ecclesiastical authorities actively sought to suppress writing about Indigenous religion. These are Indigenous plays for an Indigenous audience that reveal how Nahuas made sense of Christianity and helped form its colonial image—the title figure is a powerful Indigenous being, an “Aztec Antichrist,” who violently opposes the evangelizing efforts of the church and seeks to draw converted Nahuas back to the religious practices of their ancestors. These practices include devotion to Nahua deities such as Tlaloc, Quetzalcoatl, and Tezcatlipoca who, in one of the most striking moves made by Aquino, are cast as characters in the plays.
 
Along with the translations, Leeming provides context and analysis highlighting these rare and fascinating examples of early Indigenous American literature that offer a window into the complexity of Nahua interactions with Christianity in the early colonial period. The work is extremely valuable to all students and scholars of Latin American religion, colonialism, Indigenous history, and early modern history and theater.
 
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