Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos explores the many-layered relationships female fans build with feminist musicians in general and with Tori Amos, in particular. Using original interview research with more than forty fans of Tori Amos, multiple observer-participant experiences at Amos’s concerts, and critical content analysis of Amos’s lyrics and larger body of work, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek utilizes a combination of gender, emotions, music, and activism to unravel the typecasts plaguing female fans. Trier-Bieniek aggressively challenges the popular culture stereotypes that have painted all female fans as screaming, crying teenage girls who are unable to control themselves when a favorite (generally male) performer occupies the stage. In stunning contrast, admirers of Tori Amos comprise a more introspective category of fan. Sing Us a Son, Piano Woman examines the wide range of stories from these listeners, exploring how Amos’s female fans are unique because Amos places the experiences of women at the center of her music. Tori Amos’s fan base is considered devoted because of the deeply emotional, often healing, connection they have to her music, an aspect that has been overlooked, particularly in sociological and cultural research on gender, emotions and music. Tori Amos’s female fans as a social phenomenon are vital for understanding the multi-layered relationships women can have with female singer/songwriters. At a time when superficial women dominate public media presentations, from the Kardashians to the “Real Housewives,” the relationship between Tori Amos and her fans illustrates the continuous search by women for female performers who challenge patriarchal standards in popular culture. Trier-Bieniek’s research serves as a springboard for further study of women in pop culture whose purpose is empower and provoke their fans, as well as change society.

Out on the barren margins of Babylonian exile, the great Psalmist suggests their captors are actually asking for a song of joy. Imagine that. Is it possible to sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? Christians today find themselves caught up in the massive sweep of secularizing culture. Do we have a joyful song to sing anymore? Do we know what our song has been throughout history? Could we possibly sing as a mighty choir, just perhaps igniting spiritual renewal for our world--and for each one of us as well? This book proposes the possibility of finding a new song for our time.

Sing Us A Song Ma, Before We Say Goodbye is a lively, vividly rendered and extremely moving memoir of Johnny Slater's childhood in war-torn Liverpool. Written by his daughter Carol, it follows Johnny from the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, right up until his period of National Service from 1954-1956. It tracks the progress of Johnny, his brother Jimmy, sister Cath, Ma, Da, Aunty Julia and his four-legged friends, Punch and Judy - through the devastation of the Liverpool Blitz, their evacuation to a country farm (and the first sight of cows for the children), Johnny's school years, D-Day, first love, and the devastating tragedy that befalls the family during Johnny's time in the army. It is full of detail and colour, painting an exuberant and loving picture of working class life in Kirkdale, on the banks of the Mersey, where life was often hard and money in short supply, but where communities pulled together, family was everything and it only took a chippy dinner or a bonfire to send a small boy into paroxysms of joy. The dialect-driven dialogue creates a rich sense of place, and the characters are full of life and love, so that the untimely death of one of them at the end of the narrative is profoundly moving and tragic.

Stories have traditionally been classified as epics, myths, sagas, legends, folk tales, fairy tales, parables or fables. However, the definitions of the terms have a tendency to overlap, making it difficult to classify and categorize material. For this reason, a case can be made for the introduction of a new genre, termed the shamanic story - a story that has either been based on or inspired by a shamanic journey (a numinous experience in non-ordinary reality) or one that contains a number of the elements typical of such a journey. Other characteristics include the way in which the stories all tend to contain embedded texts (often the account of the shamanic journey itself), how the number of actors is clearly limited as one would expect in subjective accounts of what can be regarded as inner journeys, and how the stories tend to be used for healing purposes. Within this new genre, it is proposed that there exists a sub-genre – shamanic stories that deal specifically with divination, and examples are presented and analysed to support this hypothesis. By means of textual analysis it can be shown they all share certain attributes in common, the identification of which forms the conclusion of the work.

A bible-focussed guide to manifestation showing that the thoughts become things philosophy has been with us always and showing that the 'Secret' was well known to the ancients.

This book explores jazz as a cultural lodestone and source of critical inquiry for over a century.