This book seeks to trace the rise of popular music, identify its key figures and track the origins and development of its multiple genres and styles, all the while seeking to establish historical context. It is, fundamentally, a ready reference guide to the broad field of popular music over the past two centuries. It has become a truism that popular music, so pervasive in the modern world, constitutes a soundtrack to our lives – a constant though changing presence as we cross thresholds and grow from children to teenagers to adults. But it has become more than a soundtrack; it has become a narrative. Not just an accompaniment to our daily lives but incorporating our lives, our sense of identity, our lived experiences, into it. We have become part of the music just as the music has become part of us. The Historical Dictionary of Popular Music contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on major figures across genres, definitions of genres, technical innovations and surveys of countries and regions. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about popular music.

The US music industry is an exciting, fast-paced, marketplace which brings together creative and business interests to connect artists with audiences. This book traces the history of the music industry from the Colonial era to the present day, identifying trends and the innovative leaders who have shaped its course. This volume embraces the diversity of the American music industry, spanning classical to country and hip hop to heavy metal. Historical Dictionary of the American Music Industry contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes that provide a comprehensive directory of college music business programs and a listing of all relevant music industry trade associations, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important artists, managers, companies, industry terminology and significant trade associations. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the business of music.

The Historical Dictionary of English Music seeks to identify and briefly annotate a wide range of subjects relating to English musical culture, largely from the early 15th century through 1958, dates that reflect the coalescence of an identifiable English style in the early Renaissance and the death of the iconic Ralph Vaughan Williams in the mid-20th century. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about English music.

Presenting information heretofore difficult or impossible to find in English, this work opens a window on the colorful panorama of Finnish music. The 500-plus entries present historical and modern composers, the accomplishments of hundreds of internationally acclaimed performing artists, as well as more general articles on folk music, early manuscripts and publications, cantors and hymnals, early Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Lutheran music, leading orchestras and choral groups, festivals, and much more. No other such extensive and comprehensive work on Finnish music exists in any language other than Finnish and Swedish. This English-language dictionary makes the subject available to readers throughout the world. In addition to the entries, chronologies of Finnish history and Finnish music, as well as a map of Finland, correlate history and locations with the entries. A general bibliography and entry-specific bibliographies offer further resources. The Dictionary interprets a sometimes limited amount of available information, describing forms and styles of compositions, operatic roles performed, the content of scholarly work, and significant and unusual events in the lives of the musicians.

Ghana, the former British colony of the Gold Coast, is historically known for being the first country to the south of the Sahara to attain political independence from colonial rule. It is known for its exports of cocoa and a variety of minerals, especially gold, and it is now an oil exporting country. But Ghana’s importance to the African continent is not only seen in its natural resources or its potential to expand its agricultural output. Rather the nation’s political history of nationalism, the history of military engagement in politics, record of economic depression and the ability to rise from the ashes of political and economic decay is the most unique character of the country. This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Ghana covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Ghana.

Russian music today has a firm hold around the world in the repertoire of opera houses, ballet companies, and orchestras. The music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergey Rachmaninov, Sergey Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich is very much today’s lingua franca both in the concert hall and on the soundtracks of international blockbusters from Hollywood. Meanwhile, the innovations of Modest Musorgsky, Alexander Borodin, and Igor Stravinsky have played their crucial role in the development of Western music, influencing the work of virtually every notable composer of the past century. Historical Dictionary of Russian Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries for each of Russia’s major performing organizations and performance venues, and on specific genres such as ballet, film music, symphony and church music. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Russian Music.

Library Journal praises the book as "an excellent one-volume ready reference resource for students, researchers, and others interested in music history." Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music, Second Edition covers the persons, ideas, practices, and works that made up the worlds of Western music during the long 19th century (ca. 1780–1918). It’s the first book to recognize that Romantic music was very nearly a global phenomenon. It includes more women, more Black musicians and other musicians of color, and more exponents of musical Romanticism from Central and South America as well as Central and Eastern Europe than any other single-volume study of Romantic music—thus challenging the conventional hegemony of musical Romanticisms by men and by Western European nations. This book includes entries on topics including anti-Semitism, sexism, and racism that were pervasive and defining to the worlds of musical Romanticism but are rarely addressed in general studies of that subject. It includes Romantic musicians who were not primarily composers, as well as topics such as the Haitian Revolution, spirituals, and ragtime that were more important for music in the long 19th century than is generally acknowledged. The result is an expansive, inclusive, diverse, and more richly textured portrayal of Romantic music than is elsewhere available. Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and a dictionary section with more than 600 cross-referenced entries on traditions, famous pieces, persons, places, technical terms, and institutions of Romantic music. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Romantic music.

Kenya has a rich and complex history. Due to the vast discoveries of prehistoric archaeological remains, Kenya is one of the few places in the world with the largest and most complete record of human’s cultural development. Furthermore, the country’s strategic location astride the Indian Ocean and the East African littoral attracted numerous foreigners such as the Arabs, Persians, Portuguese, Americans, British, Chinese, French, and Germans. Additionally, immigrants from throughout Africa and beyond have settled in Kenya to escape conflict or political persecution, while others wanted an opportunity to begin a new life. As a result of being a gateway to the world, the country traditionally has been one of the most important business, cultural, diplomatic, and political centers in Africa. Still, Kenya, like many other countries throughout the world, has been plagued by an increasing array of complex economic, political, and social challenges. Historical Dictionary of Kenya, Fourth Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Kenya.

Sacred music is a universal phenomenon of humanity. Where there is faith, there is music to express it. Every major religious tradition and most minor ones have music and have it in abundance and variety. There is music to accompany ritual and music purely for devotion, music for large congregations and music for trained soloists, music that sets holy words and music without words at all. In some traditions—Islamic and many Native American, to name just two--the relation between music and religious ritual is so intimate that it is inaccurate to speak of the music accompanying the ritual. Rather, to perform the ritual is to sing, and to sing the ritual is to perform it. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Sacred Music contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries on major types of music, composers, key religious figures, specialized positions, genres of composition, technical terms, instruments, fundamental documents and sources, significant places, and important musical compositions. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about sacred music.

A wide-flung archipelago lying between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic country. For over two thousand years it was a crossroads on the major trading route between China and India, but it was not brought together into a single entity until the Dutch extended their rule throughout the Netherlands East Indies in the early part of the 20th century. Declaring its independence from the Dutch in 1945, the Republic of Indonesia was ruled by only two regimes over the next half century Throughout the years the country has continued to be dogged by an inefficient bureaucracy and by perpetual problems of corruption. However, since 2004 Indonesia has successfully carried out four direct elections for president, together with an equal number of elections for legislative bodies at all levels of government, and has finally in 2014 elected a president with no ties to either the military or to the previous authoritarian power structure. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Indonesia contains a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Indonesia.