The focus for this month's Diversity Book Display is music, which is universal and incredibly diverse. Not only is there a huge variety of styles and sounds that humans define as music, but the people who make music are composed of many different cultures, nations, eras, genders, nationalities, religions, and so forth. The selections below merely scratch the surface of what is available, and in a limited list such as this, many angles of diversity in music are missing. Enjoy and keep exploring!
A physical book display will be available at the Libraries with the selection rotating weekly. Some of the eBooks listed below also have a physical listing. Please check the availability. Special thanks to our Materials Processing Coordinator Leah Zande for compiling this list.
Queer Arrangements: Billy Strayhorn and Midcentury Jazz Collaboration
Barg, Lisa (2023)
The legacy of Black queer composer, arranger, and pianist Billy Strayhorn (1915–1967) hovers at the edge of canonical jazz narratives. "Queer Arrangements" explores the ways in which Strayhorn's identity as an openly gay Black jazz musician shaped his career, including the creative roles he could assume and the dynamics between himself and his collaborators, most famously Duke Ellington, but also iconic singers such as Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald.
This new portrait of Strayhorn combines critical, historically-situated close readings of selected recordings, scores, and performances with biography and cultural theory to pursue alternative interpretive jazz possibilities, Black queer historical routes, and sounds. By looking at jazz history through the instrument(s) of Strayhorn's queer arrangements, this book sheds new light on his music and on jazz collaboration at midcentury. - Publisher's Description
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Contemporary Dimensions in Nigerian Music: A Festschrift for Arugha Aboyowa Ogisi
Aluede, Charles; Oikelome, Albert (2021)
From ancient to contemporary times, music in the area known as Nigeria has passed through different stages of transmutation. Primarily transmitted through oral means has in the last century received significant scholarly attention.
Areas like folksong documentation, ethno-organological studies, popular music studies and art music have continued to feature in scholarly discourse. Societal dynamism allows room for scholarly reassessment and evaluation of aspects of Nigerian music; thus, reflecting change and continuity in the area. It is within this cusp that this book looks at contemporary trajectories in Nigerian music. - Publisher's Description
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Hip-hop in Musical Theatre
Hodges Persley, Nicole (2023)
Hip-Hop culture's explosive arrival on the art scene of New York in the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx in the 1970s began to influence all aspects of musical theater from singing to scenic design. "Hip-Hop in Musical Theatre" takes an intersectional standpoint to explore Hip-Hop's influence on musical theater practice and aesthetics by giving the reader a comprehensive map of musical theater productions that have been impacted by Hip-Hop music and culture.
Offering insightful briefs on musical theater productions that contain aesthetic, musical and embodied references to the global phenomenon of Hip-hop culture, this volume takes the reader through a virtual tour of Hip-Hop's influence on American musical theater. From early traces of hip-hop's rap scene in the 1970s that appeared in musicals such as Micki Grant's Tony Award nominated "Don't Bother Me I Can't Cope" (1971) and Broadway smash hits such as "The Wiz" (1974) to international juggernauts such as Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" (2015), this introductory book decodes the sights and sounds of Hip-Hop culture within the socio-cultural context in which the musicals are produced. - Publisher's Description
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Race in American Musical Theater
Lee, Josephine (2023)
While most discussions of race in American theater emphasize the representation of race mainly in terms of character, plot, and action, "Race in American Musical Theater" highlights elements of theatrical production and reception that are particular to musical theater. Examining how race functions through the recurrence of particular racial stereotypes and storylines, this introductory volume also looks at casting practices, the history of the chorus line, and the popularity of recent shows such as Hamilton.
Moving from key examples such as Show Boat! and South Pacific through to all-Black musicals such as "Dreamgirls," "Bring in 'da Noise," "Bring in 'da Funk," and "Jelly's Last Jam," this concise study serves as a critical survey of how race is presented in the American musical theater canon. Providing readers with historical background, a range of case studies and models of critical analysis, this foundational book prompts questions from how stereotypes persist to “who tells your story?” - Publisher's Description
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Psalms, Islam, and Shalom: A Common Heritage of Divine Songs for Muslim-Christian Friendship
Sarwar, Eric (2023)
For fourteen centuries, a gap of mutual suspicion and hostility has existed between Christians and Muslims, despite attempts to engage theologically, apologetically, polemically, and militarily (such as the Crusades). During the past four decades, increased Islamization in Pakistan has led to blasphemy laws, nationalization of Christian institutions, a state policy of religious and political profiling, and discrimination against followers of Jesus. Historic animosity has resulted in widespread violence and persecution. Amid such an environment, past efforts at reaching Muslims with the gospel have proved ineffective or even detrimental, highlighting a need for a different approach to engaging with Islamic culture.
Eric Sarwar's research, experience, and practice have uncovered the valuable and mostly untapped role of the biblical Psalms in fostering peaceful friendship with Muslims. The book of Psalms, called Zabor in Arabic, is a common heritage of divine song that can be used as a point of connection for public witness between Muslims and Christians. Especially in the Pakistani context, Psalms carries vast potential, in terms of both text and musical expression, as a bridge to peacemaking and missional engagement. Yet the book of Psalms has never been a significant part of witness to the Muslim world. Sarwar believes that can change. - Publisher's Description
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Unsilent Strangers: Music, Minorities, Co-existence, Japan
De Ferranti, Hugh; Shishikura, Masaya; Reyes, Michiyo Yoneno (2023)
This collection of essays on the music of migrant minorities in and from Japan examines the central role music plays in the ongoing adjustment, conciliation, and transformation of newcomers and “hosts” alike. It is the first academic text to address musical activities across a range of migrant groups in Japan––particularly those of Tokyo and its neighboring areas and the first to juxtapose such communities with those of Japanese emigrants as ethnic minorities elsewhere. It presents both archival and fieldwork-based case studies that highlight music in the dynamics of encounter and attempted identity-making, under a unifying framework of migration. The 2019 introduction of a new “Specified Skilled Worker” visa category marked the beginning of Japan’s “new immigration era,” led by the slogan of tabunka kyosei, or “multicultural coexistence.” The contributors to this volume analyze the concept itself and the many problems around realizing this ideal through ethnographic accounts of current minorities, including South Indians, Brazilians, Nepalis, Filipinos, Iranians, and Ainu domestic migrants. This volume will be of interest to ethnomusicologists, students of the cultures of migrant communities, and those engaged with cultural change and diversity in Japan and East Asia. - Publisher's Description
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The Downhome Sound: Diversity and Politics in Americana Music
Bailey, Mandi Bates (2023)
American roots music, also known as Americana music, can be challenging to categorize, spanning the genres of jazz, bluegrass, country, blues, rock and roll, and an assortment of variations in between. In "The Downhome Sound," Mandi Bates Bailey explores the messages, artists, community, and appeal of this seemingly disparate musical collective.
To understand the art form’s intended meanings and typical audiences, she analyzes lyrics and interviews Americana artists, journalists, and festival organizers to uncover a desire for inclusion and diversity. Bailey also conducts an experiment to assess listener reception relative to more commercial forms of music. The result is an in-depth study of the political and cultural influence of Americana and its implications for social justice. - Publisher's Description
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Assimilation v. Integration in Music Education: Leading Change Toward Greater Equity
Jenkins, Chris (2024)
"Assimilation v. Integration in Music Education" engages with an existential question for American conservatories and orchestras: What does it mean to diversify Western classical music? Many institutions have focused solely on diversifying the demography of their participants, but without a deeper conversation about structural oppression in classical music, this approach continues to isolate and exclude students of color. Rooted in the author’s experience working with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students at a major American conservatory, this book articulates the issues facing minority students in conservatories and schools of music, going beyond recruitment to address the cultural issues that alienate students. The author argues that the issue of diversity should be approached through the lens of aesthetics, and that the performance and pedagogy of Western classical music must change if a more diverse membership is to thrive in this genre.
Reflecting on the author’s experience through the lens of recent critical theory in music education, this volume presents the viewpoints of Black and Latinx music students in their own words. Addressing the impact of racialized aesthetics on the well-being of BIPOC music students, the author shows how students are alienated when attempting to assimilate into conservatory environments and envisions an alternative, integrative approach to conservatory education. Offering a deep dive into the psychological and cultural reasons for the racialization of Western classical music, and potential institutional solutions, this concise book is relevant to performers, students, and institutional leaders. - Publisher's Description
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Disability and Accessibility in the Music Classroom: A Teacher's Guide
Carrico, Alexandria; Grennell, Katherine (2023)
"Disability and Accessibility in the Music Classroom" provides college music history instructors with a concise guide on how to create an accessible and inclusive classroom environment.
In addition to providing a concise overview of disability studies, highlighting definitions, theories, and national and international policies related to disability, this book offers practical applications for implementing accessibility measures in the music history classroom. The latter half of this text provides case studies of well-known disabled composers and musicians from the Western Art Music canon from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century as well as popular music genres, such as the blues, jazz, R&B, pop, country, and hip hop. These examples provide opportunities to integrate discussions of disability into a standard music history curriculum. - Publisher's Description
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Age-related Evolution of the Professional Singing Voice: Prevention, Voice Testing and Voice Therapy
Lycke, Hugo (2023)
This book discusses the age-related evolution of the professional singing voice. The book features 124 Figures and 40 Tables, and provides specific examples of the vocal evolution of student singers and professionals of both genders, from 8 to 88 years old.
The author hopes that his unique professional experience of 60 years as speech and voice therapist/vocal coach in the worlds of musical theatre, opera, and music conservatories, will inspire all people involved in voice phenomena, providing them with new ideas for their own practice with ageing voices. - Publisher's Description
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Music, Culture and Identity in the Muslim World: Performance, Politics and Piety
Salhi, Kamal (2014)
In contrast to many books on Islam that focus on political rhetoric and activism, this book explores Islam's extraordinarily rich cultural and artistic diversity, showing how sound, music and bodily performance offer a window onto the subtleties and humanity of Islamic religious experience.
Through a wide range of case studies from West Asia, South Asia and North Africa and their diasporas - including studies of Sufi chanting in Egypt and Morocco, dance in Afghanistan, and "Muslim punk" on-line - the book demonstrates how Islam should not be conceived of as being monolithic or monocultural, how there is a large disagreement within Islam as to how music and performance should be approached, such disagreements being closely related to debates about orthodoxy, secularism, and moderate and fundamental Islam, and how important cultural activities have been, and continue to be, for the formation of Muslim identity. - Publisher's Description
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The Popular and the Sacred in Music
Kärjä, Antti-Ville (2022)
Music, as the form of art whose name derives from ancient myths, is often thought of as pure symbolic expression and associated with transcendence. Music is also a universal phenomenon and thus a profound marker of humanity. These features make music a sphere of activity where sacred and popular qualities intersect and amalgamate.
In an era characterised by postsecular and postcolonial processes of religious change, re-enchantment and alternative spiritualities, the intersections of the popular and the sacred in music have become increasingly multifarious. In the book, the cultural dynamics at stake are approached by stressing the extended and multiple dimensions of the sacred and the popular, hence challenging conventional, taken-for-granted and rigid conceptualisations of both popular music and sacred music. At issue are the cultural politics of labelling music as either popular or sacred, and the disciplinary and theoretical implications of such labelling. Instead of focussing on specific genres of popular music or types of religious music, consideration centres on interrogating musical situations where a distinction between the popular and the sacred is misleading, futile and even impossible. The topic is discussed in relation to a diversity of belief systems and different repertoires of music, including classical, folk and jazz, by considering such themes as origin myths, autonomy, ingenuity and stardom, authenticity, moral ambiguity, subcultural sensibilities and political ideologies. - Publisher's Description
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Honoring Trans and Gender-expansive Students in Music Education
Garrett, Matthew; Palkki, Joshua (2021)
Trans and gender-expansive (TGE) youth deserve a safe and empowering space to engage in high quality school music experiences. Supportive music teachers ensure that all students have access to ethically and pedagogically sound music education.
In this practical resource, authors Matthew L. Garrett (he/him) and Joshua Palkki (he/him) encourage music educators to honor gender diversity through ethically and pedagogically sound practices across choral, instrumental, and general music classroom environments by highlighting the narratives and experiences of TGE musicians. - Publisher's Description
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Empowering Song: Music Education from the Margins
de Quadros, André; Amrein, Emilie (2022)
"Empowering Song: Music Education from the Margins" weaves together subversive pedagogy and theories of resistance with community music education and choral music, inspiring professionals to revisit and reconsider their pedagogical practices and approaches.
The authors’ unique insight into some of the most marginalized and justice-deprived contexts in the world — prisons, refugee shelters, detention facilities, and migrant encampments — breeds evocative and compassionate enquiry, laying the theoretical groundwork for pedagogical practices while detailing the many facets of equity-centered, musical leadership. Presenting an orientation to healing informed by theory, "Empowering Song" explores the ways in which music education might take on the challenging questions of cultural responsiveness within the context of justice, seeking to change not only how choral music is led but also our conceptions of why it should matter to all. - Publisher's Description
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Women Drummers: A History from Rock and Jazz to Blues and Country
Smith, Angela (2014)
In 1942, drummer Viola Smith sent shock waves through the jazz world by claiming in Down Beat magazine that “hep girls” could sit in on any jam session and hold their own. In "Women Drummers: A History from Rock and Jazz to Blues and Country," Angela Smith takes Viola at her word, offering a comprehensive look at the world of professional drumming and the women who had the courage and chops to break the barriers of this all-too-male field. Combining archival research with personal interviews of more than fifty female drummers representing more than eight decades in music history, Smith paints a vivid picture of their struggles to overcome discrimination—not only as professional musicians but in other parts of their lives. Women Drummers outlines the evolution of female drumming from pre-biblical times when women held important leadership roles to their silencing by the church during the Middle Ages to spearheading the fight for women’s rights in the modern era. The stories and personal accounts of female drummers who bucked tradition and societal norms are told against the backdrop of the times in which they performed and the genres they represented, from rock and jazz to blues and country.
Although women have proven time and time again that they can more than hold their own against their male counterparts, female drummers not only remain a minority, but their contributions have been obscured by the traditional chauvinistic attitudes in the music business and gender stereotypes that surround the drum itself as a “male” instrument. "Women Drummers" takes a major step forward in undoing this misconception by acknowledging the talent, contribution, and growing power of women drummers in today’s music environment. - Publisher's Description
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Jews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity
Hersch, Charles (2017)
"Jews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity" explores the meaning of Jewish involvement in the world of American jazz. It focuses on the ways prominent jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, and Red Rodney have engaged with jazz in order to explore and construct ethnic identities.
The author looks at Jewish identity through jazz in the context of the surrounding American culture, believing that American Jews have used jazz to construct three kinds of identities: to become more American, to emphasize their minority outsider status, and to become more Jewish. From the beginning, Jewish musicians have used jazz for all three of these purposes, but the emphasis has shifted over time. In the 1920s and 1930s, when Jews were seen as foreign, Jews used jazz to make a more inclusive America, for themselves and for blacks, establishing their American identity. Beginning in the 1940s, as Jews became more accepted into the mainstream, they used jazz to "re-minoritize" and avoid over-assimilation through identification with African Americans. Finally, starting in the 1960s as ethnic assertion became more predominant in America, Jews have used jazz to explore and advance their identities as Jews in a multicultural society. - Publisher's Description
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Roma Music and Emotion
Bonini Baraldi, Filippo (2021)
In "Roma Music and Emotion," author Filippo Bonini Baraldi forges a much-needed theory of music, emotion, and empathy from an anthropological perspective, addressing the failure of the prevailing psychological theories on music and emotion to account for non-western musical cultures.
Bonini Baraldi, having spent years among the Hungarian Roma of rural Transylvania, presents compelling ethnographic descriptions of their weddings, funerals, community celebrations, and intimate family gatherings. Based on extensive field research and informed by hypotheses drawn from the cognitive sciences, the anthropology of art, and aesthetics, Roma Music and Emotion analyzes why Roma musicians cry along with music and how they arouse specific feelings in their audiences.
Translated by Margaret Rigaud, and with a Foreword by Steven Feld, "Roma Music and Emotion" makes an important ethnomusicological contribution to theoretical discussions of the relationship between music and emotion. - Publisher's Description
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Even in the Rain: Uyghur Music in Modern China
Wong, Chuen-Fung (2023)
"Even in the Rain: Uyghur Music in Modern China" explores music as constitutive of Uyghur cultural and social life where subaltern experiences of ethnicity, race, and nationhood are indexed. A Central Asian Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim people, the Uyghur are identified in China as one of the fifty-five officially designated “minority nationalities.” Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the Uyghur homeland in the far Chinese northwest, Chuen-Fung Wong focuses on aspects of Uyghur music making as it faces the state’s management of minority art expressions. Music serves as a metaphor of the Uyghur nation—as heritage (miras), culture (medeniyet), and tradition (en’ene)—while it struggles to survive, respond, and adapt to the Chinese state’s aggressive maneuvering and the broader intercultural influences that have shaped Uyghur performing arts in modern times. As the Uyghur and other non-Han peoples in China continue to be minoritized under the pretexts of multiculturalism and cultural enlightenment, local musicians and audiences react with a vast range of performing and listening approaches to engage assimilation, racism, and other grim realities of everyday life.
"Even in the Rain" provides the political, historical, and theoretical context to address overlapping genres and soundscapes, which are bound by creative processes that have negotiated the state’s minority policy and the collective pursuit of identity. With a focus on the minoritized musical consciousness in Uyghur performance, especially on the ways in which Uyghur musicians encounter modernity under a colonial context, this book examines the cultivation of a unique musical deftness that has allowed musicians to move across the various localizing strategies and intercultural practices. Uyghur musical modernity should not be understood as the passive acceptance of outside influences—and certainly not the erasure of indigenous elements and national heritage. Local traditions and hegemonic influences sometimes appear to be more collaborating than conflicting, in that subaltern expressions actively opt to manifest in forms that are dominant and deemed universal. This timely and comprehensive analysis spans approximately seven decades of modern Uyghur musical life, during which musicians and audiences adopted an array of methods, experimenting with new identity formations to navigate life as often reluctant Chinese citizens. - Publisher's Description
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Access, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the U.S.
Cuyler, Antonio (2021)
Analyzing the lack of diversity among opera executives, this book examines the careers of executive opera managers of color in the U.S. By interrogating the impact of race on arts managers’ careers, the author contemplates how opera might attract and retain more racially diverse arts managers to ensure its future.
With a focus on the U.S., research is contextualized via qualitative data to explore, enhance, and institutionalize access, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) in the opera industry. In a revealing series of expert-conducted interviews, the author poses illuminating questions, such as: What if an inability to recruit and retain diverse executives is the primary source of opera’s challenges? If more racially diverse opera executives existed, would the art form persist in struggling to find its place in contemporary society? From where will the next generation of diverse opera managers emerge?
As the magnitude of the global diversity problem grows within the creative and cultural industries, this book serves as a guide for Arts Management practitioners and students who may view their class, different ability, ethnicity, gender, race, or sexual orientation as a liability in their pursuit of executive careers. - Publisher's Description
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Music in Canada: Capturing Landscape and Diversity
Keillor, Elaine (2008)
Kwakwaka'wakw welcome songs, an aria from Joseph Quesnel's 1808 opera Lucas et Cécile, rubbaboos (a combination of elements from First Peoples, French, and English music), the Tin Pan Alley hits of Shelton Brooks, and the contemporary work of Claude Vivier and Blue Rodeo all dance together in Canada's rich musical heritage. Elaine Keillor offers an unprecedented history of Canadian musical expressions and their relationship to Canada's great cultural and geographic diversity.
A survey of "musics" in Canada - the country's multiplicity of musical genres and rich heritage - is complemented by forty-three vignettes highlighting topics such as Inuit throat games, the music of k.d. lang, and orchestras in Victoria. Music in Canada illuminates the past but also looks to the future to examine the context within which Canadian music began and continues to develop. A CD by the author of previously unrecorded Canadian music is included. - Publisher's Description
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Feature image by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash