music

In Athens, choral performance was much more than a dramatic method: it was a civic and collective experience, a kind of democratic embodiment of plurality. V. Azoulay and P. Ismard see in it the profound identity of a society overcoming its divisions.

Al Capone’s city is regaining a reputation for crime—and is setting it to music. This latter is known as “drill,” a new form of rap that claims to document street life and violent criminality.

Our interest in celebrities is a major structuring element of contemporary societies. According to Sharon Marcus “stars” appeared in the 19^th century in theatre, and the case of Sarah Bernhardt allows us to characterise the type of interaction that arises between the media, publics and celebrities.

Music naturally conveys emotion but, over the course of the 20^th century, it has also become a tool of manipulation and perhaps even a weapon of control. Juliette Volcler describes this process in her book devoted to the career and research of little-known sound engineer Harold Burris-Meyer.

In this comprehensive study of music rooted in the Southern part of Louisiana, Sara Le Menestrel questions the stereotypes pertaining to Cajun and Creole music. Her historical perspective reveals how the complex issues of race, identity and authenticity have created a dynamic that contradicts previous studies which focused on a more segregated approach.

Starting from the experimentations of three European ensembles playing improvised music at the turn of the 1970s, Matthieu Saladin defines an aesthetics of free improvisation, whose genuine political dimension he brings to light.

A book on the writings of author and trumpet player Ralph Ellison about jazz music offers an extensive and thought-provoking reflection on Ellison’s theory of the condition of African Americans.

Michael Jackson was a lot more than just a singer: Sylvie Laurent recounts the story of the pop star who became a “monster,” whose quest for white-skinned androgyny reveals in several respects the agonizing indecision of the African-American community in the face of racism and sexism.

Between literary and sociological experimentation, the publication of the email exchange that led to the book by Howard S. Becker and Robert R. Faulkner on jazz repertoires reveals the secrets of the creative process.

“Can Wagner the composer only be loved in spite of Wagner the man?” To answer this question, Timothée Picard points out that music is not “in and of itself anti-Semitic or nationalistic,” and his encyclopedic dictionary of Wagner goes a long way towards proving the point.

Rocky, John Travolta, Bruce Springsteen or the Al Pacino of Dog Day Afternoon are all witnesses to the understudied disappearance of the American working class in the 1970s. During this crucial decade, Nixon took over the working-class vote and workers themselves changed the boundaries of “blue-collar America,” doing away with class interests and embracing a definition of themselves as members of a white culture.

From the faubourg Saint-Germain to the concert halls in which he gave the first “recitals,” Franz Liszt helped to bring music into a new era. Heralding the end of the musical Old Regime, the success of his fantasias for piano reveals some of the social and cultural institutions that shaped musical production under the July Monarchy.