Benjamin Piekut's Books

Experimentalism Otherwise

The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits

By: Benjamin Piekut

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Experimentalism Otherwise

The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits

By: Benjamin Piekut

In Experimental Otherwise, Benjamin Piekut takes the reader into the heart of what we mean by "experimental" in avant-garde music. Focusing on one place and time—New York City, 1964—Piekut examines five disparate events: the New York Philharmonic’s disastrous performance of John Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis; Henry Flynt’s demonstrations against the downtown avant-garde; Charlotte Moorman’s Avant Garde Festival; the founding of the Jazz Composers Guild; and the emergence of Iggy Pop. Drawing together a colorful array of personalities, Piekut argues that each of these examples points to a failure and marks a limit or boundary of canonical experimentalism. What emerges from these marginal moments is an accurate picture of the avant-garde, not as a style or genre, but as a network defined by disagreements, struggles, and exclusions.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

297

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520948424

ISBN 13

9780520948426

Henry Cow

The World Is a Problem

By: Benjamin Piekut

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Henry Cow

The World Is a Problem

By: Benjamin Piekut

In its open improvisations, lapidary lyrics, errant melodies, and relentless pursuit of spontaneity, the British experimental band Henry Cow pushed rock music to its limits. Its rotating personnel, sprung from rock, free jazz, and orchestral worlds, synthesized a distinct sound that troubled genre lines, and with this musical diversity came a mixed politics, including Maoism, communism, feminism, and Italian Marxism. In Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem Benjamin Piekut tells the band’s story—from its founding in Cambridge in 1968 and later affiliation with Virgin Records to its demise ten years later—and analyzes its varied efforts to link aesthetics with politics. Drawing on ninety interviews with Henry Cow musicians and crew, letters, notebooks, scores, journals, and meeting notes, Piekut traces the group’s pursuit of a political and musical collectivism, offering up its history as but one example of the vernacular avant-garde that emerged in the decades after World War II. Henry Cow’s story resonates far beyond its inimitable music; it speaks to the avant-garde’s unpredictable potential to transform the world.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

306

Publisher

Duke University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1478005513

ISBN 13

9781478005513

Bangkok is Ringing

Sound, Protest, and Constraint

By: Benjamin Tausig

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Bangkok is Ringing

Sound, Protest, and Constraint

By: Benjamin Tausig

Winner of the 2020 British Forum for Ethnomusicology Book Prize Bangkok Is Ringing is an on-the-ground sound studies analysis of the political protests that transformed Thailand in 2010-11. Bringing the reader through sixteen distinct "sonic niches" where dissidents used media to broadcast to both local and diffuse audiences, the book catalogues these mass protests in a way that few movements have ever been catalogued. The Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt protests that shook Thailand took place just before other international political movements, including the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. Bangkok Is Ringing analyzes the Thai protests in comparison with these, seeking to understand the logic not only of political change in Thailand, but across the globe. The book is attuned to sound in a great variety of forms. Author Benjamin Tausig traces the history and use in protest of specific media forms, including community radio, megaphones, CDs, and live concerts. The research took place over the course of sixteen months, and the author worked closely with musicians, concert promoters, activists, and rank-and-file protesters. The result is a detailed and sensitive ethnography that argues for an understanding of sound and political movements in tandem. In particular, it emphasizes the necessity of thinking through constraint as a fundamental condition of both political movements and the sound that these movements produce. In order to produce political transformations, Bangkok Is Ringing argues, dissidents must be sensitive to the ways that their sounding is constrained and channeled.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

225

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190847549

ISBN 13

9780190847548

American Music Documentary

Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology

By: Benjamin J. Harbert

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

American Music Documentary

Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology

By: Benjamin J. Harbert

Documentary filmmakers have been making films about music for a half-century. American Music Documentary looks at five key films to begin to imagine how we might produce, edit, and watch films from an ethnomusicological point of view. Reconsidering Albert and David Maysles's Gimme Shelter, Jill Godmilow's Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, Shirley Clarke's Ornette: Made in America, D.A. Pennebaker's and Chris Hegedus's Depeche Mode: 101, and Jem Cohen's and Fugazi's Instrument, Harbert lays the foundations for the study and practice of "ciné-ethnomusicology." Interviews with directors and rich analysis from the disciplinary perspectives of film studies and ethnomusicology make this book a critical companion to some of the most celebrated music documentaries of the twentieth century. Hardcover is un-jacketed.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

319

Publisher

Wesleyan University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0819578029

ISBN 13

9780819578020

Henry Cow

The World Is a Problem

By: Benjamin Piekut

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Henry Cow

The World Is a Problem

By: Benjamin Piekut

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

306

Publisher

Duke University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1478005513

ISBN 13

9781478005513

Book's by Benjamin Piekut

Experimentalism Otherwise

Experimentalism Otherwise

Henry Cow

Henry Cow

Bangkok is Ringing

Bangkok is Ringing

American Music Documentary

American Music Documentary

Henry Cow

Henry Cow

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email