At a time in the 1950s when America is a little more innocent, two children and their flamboyant aunt head toward California in a Buick Skylark convertible. Pauly Mahoney knows if she doesn’t fret about her family, no one will. Certainly not her unstable mother or fun-loving father, who can’t seem to make ends meet without her help. It’s Pauly’s job to hold the family together—until a hot summer night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when her parents are killed in a freak carnival accident and Pauly’s world turns upside down. Abandoned by indifferent relatives, Pauly and her brother are headed nowhere…until their unfamiliar Aunt Nora volunteers to take them in. No one seems to care that their unlikely guardian angel is a free-spirited, chain-smoking movie extra with no visible means of support. But when Aunt Nora points her stylish car toward California, Pauly and her brother find themselves on a rollicking cross country journey with a woman who will show them that promises can be kept through laughter and tears—and whose open heart has room for both of them and more. “The most appealing heroine since Scout Finch… I'm telling everyone I know: don't miss this one!”—Cassandra King, author of The Same Sweet Girls

"The Oxford Handbook of Community Singing shows in abundant detail that singing with others is thriving. Using an array of interdisciplinary methods, chapter authors prioritize participation rather than performance and provide finely grained accounts of group singing in community, music therapy, religious, and music education settings. Themes associated with protest, incarceration, nation, hymnody, group bonding, identity, and inclusivity infuse the 47 chapters. Written almost wholly during the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic, the Handbook features a section dedicated to collective singing facilitated by audiovisual or communications media (mediated singing), some of it quarantine-mandated. The last of eight substantial sections is a repository of new theories about how group singing practices work. Throughout, the authors problematize the limitations inherited from the western European choral music tradition and report on workable new remedies to counter those constraints"--

In Transforming Choral Singing: An Activist's Guide for Choir Directors, author Charles W. Beale draws from his many years of choral directing experience to put forth a new vision for choral singing: to move audiences and change the world. He lays down a non-canonical and inclusive framework, grounded in critical musicology and pedagogy, for mission-driven and activist-oriented engagement with the choral arts and provides practical takeaways for choral practitioners and conductors through a lively mix of practical workshops, tips, and suggestions.

Manual of Singing Voice Rehabilitation: A Practical Approach to Vocal Health and Wellness provides speech-language pathologists and singing teachers with the tools to lay the foundation for working with singers who have voice injuries. Singing voice rehabilitation is a hybrid profession that represents a very specific amalgam of voice pedagogy, voice pathology, and voice science. Becoming a singing voice rehabilitation specialist requires in-depth training and thorough preparation across these fields. This text presents a conceptual and practical basis for interacting with singers in an effective and supportive way, identifying factors to address, structuring singing voice rehabilitation sessions, and ensuring that singers are getting adequate exercise while allowing their injuries to heal, as well as resources and materials to provide to singers to optimize the outcome of their rehabilitation. Each chapter exposes readers to important concepts of singing voice rehabilitation and the elements that need to be addressed in the singing voice rehabilitation process, which include medical factors, emotional factors, vocal hygiene, vocal pacing, and vocal coordination and conditioning. This text contains information for developing exercises and interventions to target specific vocal problems and guidance in customizing vocal exercises based on injury, singing style, skill level, professional level, and the particular vocal demands of each singer. Key features include: * Rehabilitation and therapy exercises * Clinical case studies to illustrate real-life examples and practical application While the intended audience for this book is speech-language pathologists and teachers of singing who are accomplished performers, experienced pedagogues, and clinically and scientifically well-informed, there is information herein that will be of value to all singers, physicians interested in learning more about the behavioral side of singing voice rehabilitation, nonsinging speech-language pathologists, or anyone seeking knowledge about singing health, including music educators, music therapists, conductors, vocal coaches, worship leaders, or music directors. Disclaimer: Please note that ancillary content (such documents, audio, and video) may not be included as published in the original print version of this book.

An ethnographic study of music, performance, migration, and circulation, Singing Across Divides examines how forms of love and intimacy are linked to changing conceptions of political solidarity and forms of belonging, through the lens of Nepali dohori song. The book describes dohori improvised, dialogic singing, in which a witty repartee of exchanges is based on poetic couplets with a fixed rhyme scheme, often backed by instrumental music and accompanying dance, performed between men and women, with a primary focus on romantic love. The book tells the story of dohori's relationship with changing ideas of Nepal as a nation-state, and how different nationalist concepts of unity have incorporated marginality, in the intersectional arenas of caste, indigeneity, class, gender, and regional identity. Dohori gets at the heart of tensions around ethnic, caste, and gender difference, as it promotes potentially destabilizing musical and poetic interactions, love, sex, and marriage across these social divides. In the aftermath of Nepal's ten-year civil war, changing political realities, increased migration, and circulation of people, media and practices are redefining concepts of appropriate intimate relationships and their associated systems of exchange. Through multi-sited ethnography of performances, media production, circulation, reception, and the daily lives of performers and fans in Nepal and the UK, Singing Across Divides examines how people use dohori to challenge (and uphold) social categories, while also creating affective solidarities.

Singing the Body Electric explores the relationship between the human voice and technology, offering startling insights into the ways in which technological mediation affects our understanding of the voice, and more generally, the human body. From the phonautograph to magnetic tape and now to digital sampling, Miriama Young visits particular musical and literary works that define a century-and-a-half of recorded sound. She discusses the way in which the human voice is captured, transformed or synthesised through technology. This includes the sampled voice, the mechanical voice, the technologically modified voice, the pliable voice of the digital era, and the phenomenon by which humans mimic the sounding traits of the machine. The book draws from key electro-vocal works spanning a range of genres - from Luciano Berio's Thema: Omaggio a Joyce to Radiohead, from Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room, to Björk, and from Pierre Henry's Variations on a Door and a Sigh to Christian Marclay's Maria Callas. In essence, this book transcends time and musical style to reflect on the way in which the machine transforms our experience of the voice. The chapters are interpolated by conversations with five composers who work creatively with the voice and technology: Trevor Wishart, Katharine Norman, Paul Lansky, Eduardo Miranda and Bora Yoon. This book is an interdisciplinary enterprise that combines music aesthetics and musical analysis with literature and philosophy.

The first study to connect the exponential growth in amateur choral singing to the culture of public celebrations and festivals.

This book serves as a guide to any patient, clinician, or person who desires to understand how transgender and gender diverse individuals can be assisted in achieving voice and communication congruity with gender. Voice and communication style serve as intricate links to one’s identity and are central aspects of the gender transition process. Guiding a transgender or gender diverse patient through this transition is complex, requiring an understanding of the patient’s desires, the ability to identify and work with patients to achieve sustainable patterns of behavioral modification that affect voice in a positive manner, and an understanding of the role of newly emerging surgical techniques. This is best addressed by an interdisciplinary team, and this book makes this material available in one source. The first section of the book consists of introductory chapters written by primary care physicians, endocrinologists, and psychiatrists addressing the complex nature of transition from the medical standpoint. A review of hormonal replacement therapies, psychological evaluations, and potential effects of hormone replacement on voice is included. The second section describes the behavioral techniques available in speech and voice therapy for voice change and addresses outcomes that can be expected from behavioral intervention. Each chapter addresses the physiologic principles of therapeutic techniques for effecting change, techniques of instruction, nuances for transgender and gender diverse patients, methods of generalization, and methods of maintenance. Finally, the third section of the book details the surgical techniques available to assist patients in voice transition and their expected outcomes for voice modification. Each chapter includes an introduction, preoperative assessment, role of preoperative therapy, surgical technique, postoperative management, and expected outcome. This section also includes a surgical atlas. This is an ideal guide for otolaryngologists, speech-language pathologists, primary care providers, as well as psychiatrists and endocrinologists caring for transgender and gender nonconforming patients.