Your Librarian
Background and History of Chosen Genre
Bring readers into some of your research into the history and origins of the genre. By introducing these sources and commenting on what insights they raise, you can give readers important, yet brief context for the genre (assume that readers don’t know it) and set up the rest of the essay to move beyond just establishing how the genre got started. This necessary context for readers can also help you, as a scholar, better understand how the genre came to be and what might be important to notice about the genre’s beginnings or the place it is from.
You will likely find many sources such as books (chapters), academic journal, magazine, and newspaper articles.
REQUIREMENTS FOR RESEARCH COMPONENT
- Minimum of four sources. Of these sources, you need to have at least one:
- Chapter from a book OR
- Scholarly journal and/or “peer-reviewed” article
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AND any combination of the following relevant to your option
- Newspaper article
- Magazine article
- Open web source such as
- Fan discussions
- Blogs
- Social Media
- Interviews
- The music itself (such as lyrics, which would be considered a primary source!)
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Other -- confirm with Professor Kerr
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If you will be using less "traditional", documented sources, be sure to confirm that the source is acceptable by first consulting with your instructor.
SAMPLE SELECTION OF EBOOK SOURCES
50 Years of Rolling Stone : the Music, Politics and People that Changed Our Culture. by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781683350200Publication Date: 2017-05-16For the past fifty years, Rolling Stone has been a leading voice in journalism, cultural criticism, and--above all--music. This landmark book documents the magazine's rise to prominence as the voice of rock and roll and a leading showcase for era-defining photography. From the 1960s to the present day, the book offers a decade-by-decade exploration of American music and history. Interviews with rock legends--Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen, and more--appear alongside iconic photographs by Baron Wolman, Annie Leibovitz, Mark Seliger, and other leading image-makers. With feature articles, excerpts, and exposés by such quintessential writers as Hunter S. Thompson, Matt Taibbi, and David Harris, this book is an irresistible and essential keepsake of the magazine that has defined American music for generations of readers.
The Anthology of Rap by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780300163063Publication Date: 2010-11-02From the school yards of the South Bronx to the tops of the Billboard charts, rap has emerged as one of the most influential musical and cultural forces of our time. In The Anthology of Rap, editors Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois explore rap as a literary form, demonstrating that rap is also a wide-reaching and vital poetic tradition born of beats and rhymes. This pioneering anthology brings together more than three hundred rap and hip-hop lyrics written over thirty years, from the "old school" to the "golden age" to the present day. Rather than aim for encyclopedic coverage, Bradley and DuBois render through examples the richness and diversity of rap's poetic tradition. They feature both classic lyrics that helped define the genre, including Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five's "The Message" and Eric B. & Rakim's "Microphone Fiend," as well as lesser-known gems like Blackalicious's "Alphabet Aerobics" and Jean Grae's "Hater's Anthem."
Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grass Roots, and Regional Traditions in the United States by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781617032660Publication Date: 2012-06-01Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States reflects the fascinating diversity of regional and grassroots music in the United States. The book covers the diverse strains of American folk music--Latin, Native American, African, French-Canadian, British, and Cajun--and offers a chronology of the development of folk music in the United States. The book is divided into discrete chapters covering topics as seemingly disparate as sacred harp singing, conjunto music, the folk revival, blues, and ballad singing. It is among the few textbooks in American music that recognizes the importance and contributions of Native Americans as well as those who live, sing, and perform music along our borderlands, from the French speaking citizens in northern Vermont to the extensive Hispanic population living north of the Rio Grande River, recognizing and reflecting the increasing importance of the varied Latino traditions that have informed our folk music since the founding of the United States.
From the Velvets to the Voidoids by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781613745953Publication Date: 2005-05-01Exhaustively researched and packed with unique insights, this history journeys from the punk scene's roots in the mid-1960s to the arrival of "new wave" in the early 1980s. With a cast that includes Patti Smith, Pere Ubu, Television, Blondie, the Ramones, the MC5, the Stooges, Talking Heads, and the Dead Boys, this account is the definitive story of early American punk rock. Extraordinarily balanced, it tells the story of the music's development largely through the artists' own words, while thoroughly analyzing and evaluating the music in a lucid and cogent manner. First published in 1993, this was the first book to tell the stories of these then-little-known bands; now, this edition has been updated with a new discography, including imports and bootlegs, and an afterword detailing the post-1970s history of these bands.
Genre in Popular Music by Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780226350400Publication Date: 2009-10-15The popularity of the motion picture soundtrack "O Brother, Where Art Thou? "brought an extraordinary amount of attention to bluegrass, but it also drew its share of criticism from some aficionados who felt the albumOCOs inclusion of more modern tracks misrepresented the genre. This soundtrack, these purists argued, wasnOCOt bluegrass, but OC roots music, OCO a new and, indeed, more overarching category concocted by journalists and marketers. Why is it that popular music genres like these and others are so passionately contested? And how is it that these genres emerge, coalesce, change, and die out? In "Genre in Popular Music, " Fabian Holt provides new understanding as to why we debate music categories, and why those terms are unstable and always shifting.
Hip Hop Movement: From R& B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780739181171Publication Date: 2013-01-01The Hip Hop Movement offers a critical theory and alternative history of rap music and hip hop culture by examining their roots in the popular musics and popular cultures of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. Connecting classic rhythm & blues and rock & roll to the Civil Rights Movement, and classic soul and funk to the Black Power Movement, The Hip Hop Movement explores what each of these musics and movements contributed to rap, neo-soul, hip hop culture, and the broader Hip Hop Movement. Ultimately, this book's remixes (as opposed to chapters) reveal that black popular music and black popular culture have always been more than merely "popular music" and "popular culture" in the conventional sense and reflect a broader social, political, and cultural movement. With this in mind, sociologist and musicologist Reiland Rabaka critically reinterprets rap and neo-soul as popular expressions of the politics, social visions, and cultural values of a contemporary multi-issue movement: the Hip Hop Movement.
Links to eBooks from OneSearch Based on a Subject Search
SAMPLE SELECTION OF BOOK SOURCES
Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black & White, Body and Soul in American Music by Call Number: 781.640973 P888gISBN: 9780062463692Publication Date: 2017-08-15Ann Powers explores how popular music became America's primary erotic art form. Powers takes us from nineteenth-century New Orleans through dance-crazed Jazz Age New York to the teen scream years of mid-twentieth century rock-and-roll to the cutting-edge adventures of today's web-based pop stars. Drawing on her deep knowledge and insights on gender and sexuality, Powers recounts stories of forbidden lovers, wild shimmy-shakers, orgasmic gospel singers, countercultural perverts, soft-rock sensitivos, punk Puritans, and the cyborg known as Britney Spears to illuminate how eroticism--not merely sex, but love, bodily freedom, and liberating joy--became entwined within the rhythms and melodies of American song.
Let's Rock!: how 1950s America created Elvis and the Rock & Roll Craze by Call Number: 781.660973 A656LISBN: 9781442269361Publication Date: 2016-10-28Rock & roll was one of the most important cultural developments in post-World War II America, yet its origins are shrouded in myth and legend. Let's Rock reclaims the lost history of rock & roll. Based on years of research, as well as interviews with Bo Diddley, Pat Boone, and other rock & roll pioneers, the book offers new information and fresh perspectives about Elvis, the rise of rock & roll, and 1950s America. Rock & roll is intertwined with the rise of a post-World War II youth culture, the emergence of African Americans in society, the growth of consumer culture, technological change, the expansion of mass media, and the rise of a Cold War culture that endorsed traditional values to guard against communism.
Parental Discretion Is Advised: the Rise of N.W.A and the Dawn of Gangsta Rap by Call Number: 782.421649 K35pISBN: 9781501134913Publication Date: 2017-12-05Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella caused a seismic shift in hip-hop when they decided to form N.W.A in 1986. Suddenly rap became gangsta and relevant on the West Coast. With their hard-core image, bombastic sound, and lyrics that were equal parts poetic, lascivious, conscious, and downright in-your-face, N.W.A spoke the truth about life on the streets of Compton, California--then a hotbed of poverty, drugs, gangs, and unemployment. Their 'hood tales offered a sharp contrast from the cozy, comfortable images of thriving middle-class life emanating from television screens across America. For the group, making music was not about being nice or projecting a false reality. It was all about expressing themselves. Going beyond the story portrayed in the 2015 blockbuster movie Straight Outta Compton, through firsthand interviews, extensive research, and top-notch storytelling, Los Angeles Times music reporter Gerrick Kennedy transports you back in time and offers a front-row seat to N.W.A's early days and the drama and controversy that followed the incendiary group as they rose to become multiplatinum artists.
Punk Avenue: Inside the New York City Underground, 1972-1982 by Call Number: 781.66 M313aISBN: 9781941110492Publication Date: 2017-05-02Punk Avenue: The New York City Underground 1972-1982 is an intimate look at author Paris-born Phil Marcade's first ten years in the United States where drifted from Boston to the West Coast and back, before winding up in New York City and becoming immersed in the early punk rock scene. From backrooms of Max's and CBGB's to the Tropicana Hotel in Los Angeles and back, Punk Avenue is a tour de force of stories from someone at the heart of the era. With brilliant, often hilarious prose, Marcade relays first-hand tales about spending a Provincetown summer with photographer Nan Goldin and actor-writer Cookie Mueller, having the Ramones play their very first gig at his party, working with Blondie's Debbie Harry on French lyrics for her songs, enjoying Thanksgiving with Johnny Thunders' mother, and starting the beloved NYC punk-blues band The Senders.
Depression Folk: Grassroots Music and Left-wing Politics in 1930s America by Call Number: 781.6213 C678dISBN: 9781469630465Publication Date: 2016-10-01While music lovers and music historians alike understand that folk music played an increasingly pivotal role in American labor and politics during the economic and social tumult of the Great Depression, how did this relationship come to be? Ronald D. Cohen sheds new light on the complex cultural history of folk music in America, detailing the musicians, government agencies, and record companies that had a lasting impact during the 1930s and beyond. Covering myriad musical styles and performers, Cohen narrates a singular history that begins in nineteenth-century labor politics and popular music culture, following the rise of unions and Communism to the subsequent Red Scare and increasing power of the Conservative movement in American politics--with American folk and vernacular music centered throughout.
The Underground Is Massive: how Elctronic Dance Music Conquered America by Call Number: 781.648 M433uISBN: 9780062271785Publication Date: 2015-04-28Rooted in American techno/house and '90s rave culture, electronic dance music has evolved into the biggest moneymaker on the concert circuit. Music journalist Michaelangelo Matos has been covering this beat since its genesis, and in The Underground Is Massive, charts for the first time the birth and rise of this last great outlaw musical subculture. Drawing on a vast array of resources, including hundreds of interviews and a library of rare artifacts, from rave fanzines to online mailing-list archives, Matos reveals how EDM blossomed in tandem with the nascent Internet--message boards and chat lines connected partiers from town to town. In turn, these ravers, many early technology adopters, helped spearhead the information revolution. As tech was the tool, Ecstasy--(Molly, as it's know today) an empathic drug that heightens sensory pleasure--was the narcotic fueling this alternative movement.
Death Metal Music: the Passion and Politics of a Subculture by Call Number: 781.66 P985dISBN: 0786415851Publication Date: 2003-05-05Death Metal is among the most despised forms of violently themed entertainment. Many politicians, conservative groups and typical Americans attribute youth violence and the destruction of social values to such entertainment. The usual assumptions about the Death Metal scene and its fans have rarely been challenged. This book investigates the demographic trends, attitudes, philosophical beliefs, ethical systems, and behavioral patterns within the scene, seeking to situate death metal in the larger social order. The Death Metal community proves to be a useful microcosm for much of American subculture and lends insight into the psychological and social functions of many forbidden or illicit entertainment forms. The author's analysis, rich in interviews with rock stars, radio hosts, and average adolescent fans, provides a key to comprehending deviant tendencies in modern American culture.
Grunge: Seattle by Call Number: 781.66097 H496g, 2016ISBN: 9781938901546Publication Date: 2016-06-14Chronicling the intertwined lives of members of core grunge bands, Justin Henderson reveals the origins and inspirations of the grunge music movement. Illustrating the dramatic and emotional tensions that arose between the various players, he describes the collisions between personalities and egos, artists and corporations, suburbs and cities, obscurity and fame. The book is also a unique guide to the key locations in the grunge story, exploring the cafes, apartments, and studios where members of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Alice in Chains practiced and played. A new chapter explores the continuing influence of Grunge on music today.
