A master craftsman details the practical and spiritual processes he uses to create objects out of wood, while unraveling the intricacies of creativity and how it applies to every day life.
From Keroncong to Xinyao presents a captivating and groundbreaking exploration of Singapore’s vibrant record industry from 1903 to 1985, revealing how Singapore was once a significant recording centre in Southeast Asia. The book highlights the pioneers and innovators of the industry, from performing artists to recording engineers. Records made during this musical heyday covered diverse genres, from Malay keroncong to Chinese opera and pop songs, and, from the 1950s, the rock ’n’ roll wave that was sweeping the world. Beautifully illustrated with photographs, record album art and archival images, this book takes readers on a fascinating journey through the music industry’s triumphs and challenges, revealing its resonating contributions to Singapore’s cultural heritage.
For the first time, all data for recordings of non-classical piano made for issue on disc and cylinder records prior to 1935 are brought together in this work. The majority of the listing consists of material which has never been published in any form. The volume includes piano solos, duets, trios, and quartets, as well as selected titles where a soloist is featured within a recording by a dance band or orchestra. It covers a wide variety of pianists and piano styles including ragtime, stride, novelty-syncopated, boogie, and blues. This work will be of interest to major libraries, archives, and schools of music, as well as researchers and collectors. The recordings covered in this work range from the earliest known piano recordings which were made in 1889 as cylinder records for the North American Phonograph Company through recordings of the early 1930s by some of the great jazz pianists of that era (Mary Lou Williams, Garland Wilson, Herman Chittison, Art Tatum, and Teddy Wilson). In between are a wide variety of pianists and piano styles from around the world. While many of the solos recorded were of popular tunes of the day, there is also a fascinating selection of piano compositions, often played by the composer. They include such well-known names as Felix Arndt, Nacio Herb Brown, Hoagy Carmichael, Rudolf Friml, George Gershwin, John W. Green, Ferdie Grofe, Ralph Rainger, Leslie Stuart, Clarence Williams, and Vincent Youmans. A comprehensive title index includes composer credits for the majority of titles listed.
The first comprehensive guide to pre-1934 female popular vocal recordings sung in English—from around the world and including all styles—this discographical study includes solos, duets, trios, and quartets composed by the great songwriters of the early 1900s (from Irving Berlin to Victor Young). The majority of the listings includes material that has not been previously published, and a large number of entries profile such prolific artists as Helen Clark and Gladys Rice, who are not in previous discographies. A special feature includes data on sound-on-disc recording made for early talking-picture musical shorts (especially by Vitaphone) that is not documented elsewhere. A comprehensive title index includes composer credits for the majority of the titles listed. The first comprehensive guide to pre-1934 female popular vocal recordings sung in English—from around the world and including all styles—this discographical study includes solos, duets, trios, and quartets composed by the great songwriters of the early 1900s (from Irving Berlin to Victor Young). The majority of the listings includes material that has not been previously published, and a large number of entries profile such prolific artists as Helen Clark and Gladys Rice, who are not in previous discographies. A special feature includes data on sound-on-disc recording made for early talking-picture musical shorts (especially by Vitaphone) that is not documented elsewhere. A comprehensive title index includes composer credits for the majority of the titles listed. Many of the records documented in this volume are by the artists who introduced these songs at this time or who performed them in the original productions of the shows or movies for which they were written. The singing styles include those of cabaret performers, music-hall and vaudeville acts. Songs for the stage, screen, and radio are also included.
Museum Objects, Health and Healing provides an innovative and interdisciplinary study of the relationship between objects, health and healing. Shedding light on the primacy of the human need for relationships with objects, the book explores what kind of implications these relationships might have on the exhibition experience. Merging museum and object studies, as well as psychotherapy and the psychology of well-being, the authors present a new theory entitled Psychotherapeutic Object Dynamics, which provides a cross- disciplinary study of the relationship between objects, health and well-being. Drawing on primary research in museums, psychotherapeutic settings and professional practice throughout the US, Canada, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the UK, the book provides an overview of the theory’s origins, the breadth of its practical applications on a global level, and a framework for further understanding the potency of objects in exhibitions and daily life. Museum Objects, Health and Healing will be essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students interested in museum studies, material culture, mental health, psychotherapy, art therapies and anthropology. It should also be valuable reading for a wide range of practitioners, including curators, exhibition designers, psychologists, and psychotherapists.
On the surface,Grain of Truthis a brief, simple book in which the author makes objects out of wood – a hand plane for himself, a marimba for his children, a box to hold the cremated remains of his grandmother-in-law. It’s not a how-to book, not a description of technique so much as an exploration of craft as a contemplative and spiritual practice. It shows how one’s hands can serve as guides in the unfolding of awareness. The book is organized into eight chapters, based on the essential symbols of ancient Taoism (wind, earth, thunder, deep water, mountain, shallows, fire, and the unfathomable). Each chapter deals with a particular craft project – its inspiration, the materials it requires, the rewards it offers. Using sharp tools and a delicate touch, Laird uses the creative process to discover his essence. Grain of Truthis lyrical and mesmerizing. Like Eugen Herrigel’sZen in the Art of Archery,it explores physical discipline as a path to spiritual awakening. Like Thoreau’sWalden,it places the unadorned self in nature, simple experience opening a door to unforeseen depths. Like Annie Dillard’sPilgrim at Tinker Creek,it evokes the mystical through keen observation of the natural world. It’s a book to cherish.
Last year, Night Shade Books unleashed The Book of Cthulhu onto an unsuspecting world. Critically acclaimed as “the ultimate Cthulhu anthology” and “a ‘must read’ for fans of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos,” The Book of Cthulhu went where no collection of mythos tales had gone before: to the very edge of madness… and beyond. For nearly a century, H. P. Lovecraft’s tales of malevolent Great Old Ones existing beyond the dimensions of this world, beyond the borders of sanity, have captured and held the imaginations of writers and aficionados of the dark, the macabre, the fantastic, and the horrible. Now, because you demanded more, anthologist Ross E. Lockhart has risked all to dive back into the Cthulhu canon, combing through mind-shattering manuscripts and moldering tomes to bring you The Book of Cthulhu 2, with even more tales of tentacles, terror, and madness. Featuring monstrous stories by many of weird fiction’s brightest lights, The Book of Cthulhu 2 brings you even more tales inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s greatest creation: The Cthulhu mythos. This year, the stars are right… Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Bagpipe-playing bluestocking Ruari MacDonald must protect the standing stone circles and ancient Picti-carved pillars around Callanish Castle—but the laird plans to lease his croft lands and force her to marry a sinister English earl. After years abroad in the East India Company, Lochaber Gordon returns to Scotland to wreak long-awaited vengeance on his father, the Duke of Aberdeen. First stop, the Outer Hebrides, to create a world-class whisky distillery on leased MacDonald lands. Sparks fly and desire sizzles when Ruari and Lochaber clash. They flee the Hebrides and race across the Scottish Highlands to escape the earl, evade the warlike MacDonalds, save the Picti artifacts, and claim their destinies.
You could have saved her. Sure as the tide against his Highland shores, the refrain beats into Constable Angus ‘Dubh’ MacNeil’s mind. For years it has haunted him, accompanied by the faces of those he could not save—the Burned Man, the Strangled Woman, the Drowned Boy. All witnesses to a secret he cannot share and a gift he now refuses to embrace. You could have saved her. The refrain drives Angus to the seashore at dawn, where a girl lies on the unblemished sand. She wears a green cloak and cradles a corps creadha, a Highland voodoo doll. She has suffered a ritualistic, three-fold death—her head bludgeoned, her throat cut, and symbolically drowned. It is Faye Chichester, daughter of an American billionaire whose mission to reintroduce wolves to the Highlands has embroiled the village of Glenruig. But even as media and police swarm the area, that refrain—you could have saved her—echoes in all Angus’s thoughts. For he carries a burden, a blessing, a curse, a secret—dà-shealladh, the second sight of Gaelic lore. Gills MacMurdo, noted folklorist, academic, and Angus’s oldest friend, confirms what the dà-shealladh is warning. Just as Faye’s death was three-fold, so must the murder victims fulfil the ancient pattern. More will die, unless Angus does what he must—close his eyes and see.
The folklore of the Scottish Highlands is unique and very much alive. Dr Anne Ross is a Gaelic-speaking scholar and archaeologist who has lived and worked in crofting communities. This has enabled her to collect information at first hand and to assess the veracity of material already published. In this substantially revised edition of a classic work first published 30 years ago, she portrays the beliefs and customs of Scottish Gaelic society, including: seasonal customs deriving from Celtic festivals; the famous waulking songs; the Highland tradition of seers and second sight; omens and taboos, both good and bad; and, chilling experiences of witchcraft and the Evil Eye Rituals associated with birth and death. Having taken her MA, MA Hons and PhD at the University of Edinburgh, Anne Ross became Research Fellow in the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh. She then rapidly established herself as one of Britain's leading Celtic scholars. Her seminal work is "Pagan Celtic Britain" and she has also published "Druids - Preachers of Immortality" with Tempus Publishing.
It has been four decades since the publication of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born but her analysis of maternity and the archetypal Mother remains a powerful critique, as relevant today as it was at the time of writing. It was Rich who first defined the term “motherhood” as referent to a patriarchal institution that was male-defined, male controlled, and oppressive to women. To empower women, Rich proposed the use of the word “mothering”: a word intended to be female-defined. It is between these two ideas—that of a patriarchal history and a feminist future—that the introductory text, Interrogating Motherhood, begins. Ross explores the topic of mothering from the perspective of Western society and encourages students and readers to identify and critique the historical, social, and political contexts in which mothers are understood. By examining popular culture, employment, public policy, poverty, “other” mothers, and mental health, Interrogating Motherhood describes the fluid and shifting nature of the practice of mothering and the complex realities that define contemporary women’s lives.
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