The Singer-Songwriter in Europe is the first book to explore and compare the multifaceted discourses and practices of this figure within and across linguistic spaces in Europe and in dialogue with spaces beyond continental borders. The concept of the singer-songwriter is significant and much-debated for a variety of reasons. Many such musicians possess large and zealous followings, their output often esteemed politically and usually held up as the nearest popular music gets to high art, such facets often yielding sizeable economic benefits. Yet this figure, per se, has been the object of scant critical discussion, with individual practitioners celebrated for their isolated achievements instead. In response to this lack of critical knowledge, this volume identifies and interrogates the musical, linguistic, social and ideological elements that configure the singer-songwriter and its various equivalents in Europe, such as the French auteur-compositeur-interprète and the Italian cantautore, since the late 1940s. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of this figure in the post-war period, how and why its contours have changed over time and space subsequently, cross-cultural influences, and the transformative agency of this figure as regards party and identity politics in lyrics and music, often by means of individual case studies. The book's polycentric approach endeavours to redress the hitherto Anglophone bias in scholarship on the singer-songwriter in the English-speaking world, drawing on the knowledge of scholars from across Europe and from a variety of academic disciplines, including modern language studies, musicology, sociology, literary studies and history.

Songwriter's Market is packed with insider information about the music industry that can spell the difference between success and failure. You'll find support and encouragement through listings for support organizations, online resources, as well as articles and interviews with industry insiders. With completely updated listings for music publishers, record companies, managers, booking agents, and record producers, as well as information about how the music industry works and how to protect yourself from the scam artists of the industry, this helpful guide is every musician's best friend.

A fascinating survey of popular culture in Europe, from Celtic punk and British TV shows to Spanish fashion and Italian sports. From One Direction and Adele to Penelope Cruz and Alexander Skarsgard, many Europeans are becoming household names in the United States. This ready-reference guide covers international pop culture spanning music, literature, movies, television and radio, the Internet, sports, video games, and fashion, from the mid-20th century through the present day. The organization of the book—with entries arranged alphabetically within thematic chapters—allows readers to quickly find the topic they are seeking. Additionally, indexing allows for cross-cultural comparisons to be made between pop culture in Europe to that of the United States. An extensive chronology and lengthy introduction provide important contextual information, such as the United States' influence on movies, music, and the Internet; the effect of censorship on Internet and social media use; and the history of pop culture over the years. Topics feature key musicians, songs, books, actors and actresses, movies and television shows, popular websites, top athletes, games, clothing fads and designers, and much more.

A Book of European Writers A-Z By Country Published on June 12, 2014 in USA.

This two-volume encyclopedia profiles the contemporary culture and society of every country in Europe. Each country receives a chapter encompassing such topics as religion, lifestyle and leisure, standard of living, cuisine, gender roles, relationships, dress, music, visual arts, and architecture. This authoritative and comprehensive encyclopedia provides readers with richly detailed entries on the 45 nations that comprise modern Europe. Each country profile looks at elements of contemporary life related to family and work, including popular pastimes, customs, beliefs, and attitudes. Students can make cross-cultural comparisons-for instance, a student could compare social customs in Denmark with those in Norway, compare Greece's cuisine with that of Italy, and contrast the architecture of Paris with Amsterdam and Barcelona. Culture and society are changing in each region and nation of Europe due to many political and economic forces, both inside and outside of each nation's borders. This encyclopedia considers many of the transformations connected to globalization, as well as traditions that still hold strong, to provide a complete assessment of the processes that make European societies and cultures distinctive.

Beginning early in the 1980s, a dance music revolution swept across Europe and Britain, merging rock, new wave, disco and worldbeat sounds. The resulting explosion of high-energy, increasingly electronic dance-pop caused a sensation worldwide. In this book of original interviews, 32 of the era's most celebrated artists, producers and industry professionals discuss their lives and careers: Thomas Anders (Modern Talking's "You're My Heart, You're My Soul"), Pete Burns (Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)"), Desireless ("Voyage Voyage"), Phil Harding (PWL Mixmaster), Junior ("Mama Used to Say"), Leee John (Imagination's "Just an Illusion"), Liz Mitchell (Boney M.'s 1988 "Megamix"), Fab Morvan (Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True"), Taco ("Putting On the Ritz"), Jennifer Rush ("The Power of Love"), Sabrina ("Boys"), Spagna ("Call Me"), Amii Stewart ("Knock on Wood"), Yazz ("The Only Way Is Up") and many more. Includes special commentary by Academy Award winner Mel Brooks and Audrey Landers, star of Dallas.

This volume examines the transnational character of popular music since the Cold War era to the present. Bringing together the cross-disciplinary research of native scholars, Eastern European Popular Music in a Transnational Context expands our understanding of the movement of physical music, musicians and genres through the Iron Curtain and within the region of Eastern Europe. With case studies ranging from Goran Bregović, Czesław Niemen, the reception of Leonard Cohen in Poland, the Estonian punk scene to the Intervision Song Contest, the book discusses how the production and reception of popular music in the region has always been heavily influenced by international trends and how varied strategies allowed performers and fans to acquire cosmopolitan identities. Cross-disciplinary in nature, the investigations are informed by political, social and cultural history, reception studies, sociology and marketing and are largely based on archival research and interviews.

The Sámi are Europe’s only recognized indigenous people living across regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Russian Kola peninsula. The subjects of a history of Christianization, land dispossession, and cultural assimilation, the Sámi have through their self-organization since World War II worked towards Sámi political self-determination across the Nordic states and helped forge a global indigenous community. Accompanying this process was the emergence of a Sámi music scene, in which the revival of the distinct and formerly suppressed unaccompanied vocal tradition of joik was central. Through joiking with instrumental accompaniment, incorporating joik into forms of popular music, performing on stage and releasing recordings, Sámi musicians have played a key role in articulating a Sámi identity, strengthening Sámi languages, and reviving a nature-based cosmology. Thomas Hilder offers the first book-length study of this diverse and dynamic music scene and its intersection with the politics of indigeneity. Based on extensive ethnographic research, Hilder provides portraits of numerous Sámi musicians, studies the significance of Sámi festivals, analyzes the emergence of a Sámi recording industry, and examines musical projects and cultural institutions that have sought to strengthen the transmission of Sámi music. Through his engaging narrative, Hilder discusses a wide range of issues—revival, sovereignty, time, environment, repatriation and cosmopolitanism—to highlight the myriad ways in which Sámi musical performance helps shape notions of national belonging, transnational activism, and processes of democracy in the Nordic peninsula. Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe will not only appeal to enthusiasts of Nordic music, but, by drawing on current interdisciplinary debates, will also speak to a wider audience interested in the interplay of music and politics. Unearthing the challenges, contradictions and potentials presented by international indigenous politics, Hilder demonstrates the significance of this unique musical scene for the wider cultural and political transformations in twenty-first-century Europe and global modernity.

This is the first annotated bibliography, in German or English, to gather the rich sources for German-language folk-music scholarship. It presents a comprehensive view of both historical and contemporary trends in a field embracing folkloristics and ethnomusicology, as well as philological and cultural studies. Beginning with early theories of folk song-formulated by Herder, Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, and others-the book examines the most important collections of the 19th-century folk-song movement, and surveys the 20th-century institutions and publications that have made folk-music scholarship essential to an understanding of German-speaking Europe. The book represents the enormous diversity of folk music. Ideas of genre and classification contrast with the ways in which minority and ethnic groups have contributed to the complex constructs of 19th- and 20th-century nationalism. The intellectual history in this book often takes the form of a clash between institutions and the forceful personalities of scholars who theorized that folk music was the product of individuals or the linguistic core of nations. Entries that illustrate the ways in which constructs of folk music have contributed to the politics of culture (e.g., in Nazi Germany or in the workers' culture of the former German Democratic Republic) also constitute the expansive musical landscape covered by this book The author includes diverse disciplinary perspectives, not just those of folklorists, but also concepts from ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and religious and cultural studies. In addition to traditional studies of the canons of German folk music (e.g., ballads and singing-society repertories), Bohlman includes studies of religious and ethnic minorities, and of German folk music in nations and regions outside Central Europe. The comprehensive nature of this book, not only makes available a rich history of scholarship, but also contextualizes Central European folk music as a vital and critical discipline for the interpretation of a changing Europe. Includes index.

The volume focuses on music during the process of European integration since the Second World War. Often music in Europe is defined by its relation to the concept of Occidentalism (Musik im Abendland; western music). The emphasis here turns rather to recent manifestations of its evolvement in ensembles, events, musical organisations and ideas; questions of unity and diversity from Bergen to Tel Aviv, from Lisbon to Baku; and deals with the tension between local, regional and national music within the larger confluence of European music. The status of classical and avante-garde music, and to a degree rock and pop, during Europe's development the past sixty years are also reviewed within the context of eurocentrism – the domination of European music within world music, a term propagated by anthropologists and ethnomusicologists several decades ago and based on multiculturalism. Conversely, the search for a musical European identity and the ways in which this search has in turn been influenced by multiculturalism is an ongoing, dynamic process.