If you’re interested in music, you’ll be fascinated by Bloomsbury’s new titles that explore both the foundations of sound and the intrinsic qualities of genre. Expand your music knowledge with these new summer releases from Bloomsbury!
MAY 2016
Global Punk: Resistance and Rebellion in Everyday Life
Discover more about your favorite genre’s origins with Global Punk. Author Kevin Dunn investigates both the political and personal effects of this powerful genre by tracing the history and culture of DIY punk.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for a book that tackled punk in all its complexity both on a global and local level and finally, Kevin Dunn has done it. In Global Punk, Dunn doesn’t come across as a dispassionate observer, but an active participant in a very real and living resistant subculture, one that still resonates across the world. By reminding us how vital punk still is on a day to day basis, Dunn has created a book that truly inspires and reminds us why punk still matters and why we should never give up the hope of positive change.” – Brian Cogan, Molloy College, USA, and author of The Encyclopedia of Punk (2010)
Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom
David Toop offers one of the most in-depth explorations of spontaneity in music. Join the author as he traces the roots of improvisation, from improv groups of the 1960s to jazz that embraced and rejected a stream-of-consciousness sound, and discover the lingering effects of improvisation in your favorite rock music of the 1960s and 1970s.
“Maelstrom indeed … [This] is an encyclopedic vortex of musicology, memoir and speculative extemporisation on the nature of improvisation and freedom in music … crammed with detail and fascinating observations … A captivating reading experience that perfectly embodies its subject in form.” – The Wire
JUNE 2016
Sonic Rupture: A Practice-led Approach to Urban Soundscape Design
Argue your way through the origins of creativity with this analysis of urban soundscape design. Let Jordan Lacey prove to you that the clatter you hear outside your window is not distracting you, but inspiring you through the sonic rupture model. Discover how Lacey opens a new world of possibility through the noise around us.
“Guiding us expertly through aesthetic and intellectual reflections and the practice of his own work, Jordan Lacey literally ruptures the biophilic dream of traditional acoustic ecology and persuasively collapses its idealisation of nature. In its stead he develops the fundamentals for an Urban Soundscape Design that engages the complexity of place and placement. Providing a timely regeneration of soundscape studies, Sonic Rupture breaks with the complacency of a dialectical hearing, and creates a sonic access to land as an affective earth where we hear noise not as a nuisance but as a sign of limitless potential; and where sound artists and listeners have a mandate for political activism through their joyful participation in the diversification of the urban crust.” – Salomé Voegelin, University of the Arts London, UK and author of Listening to Noise and Silence (2010) and Sonic Possible Worlds (2014)
AUGUST 2016
Hip Hop Headphones: A Scholar’s Critical Playlist
Available for pre-order, Hip Hop Headphones analyzes the foundation of Hip Hop Culture and its educational application. Explore various essays, lectures, definitions, and articles with James Braxton Peterson, who guides the reader to new ways of captivating students through the compelling music of Hip Hop.
“Hip Hop Headphones represents an extension of Professor Peterson’s scholarly and critical intervention in the field of Critical Hip Hop Studies and captures the fullness of his scholarly interests as a quintessentially interdisciplinary scholar, committed to both high theory and popular accessibility. Offering a fresh nuanced assessment of hip hop culture’s foundational moment, Hip Hop Headphones has the feel of a scholarly mixtape, not unlike the mixed genre style that W.E.B. Du Bois introduced with The Souls of Black Folk.” – Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University, USA, and author of Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (2013)
