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Summary

What makes good or bad music? Be it classical or popular, music has the power to divide as well as unite. This book explores the roots and branches of these conflicts.

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Bad Music by Christopher J Washburne

Why are some popular musical forms and performers universally reviled by critics and ignored by scholars-despite enjoying large-scale popularity? How has the notion of what makes "good" or "bad" music changed over the years-and what does this tell us about the writers who have assigned these tags to different musical genres? Many composers that are today part of the classical "canon" were greeted initially by bad reviews. Similarly, jazz, country, and pop musics were all once rejected as "bad" by the academy that now has courses on these and many other types of music. This book addresses why this is so through a series of essays on different musical forms and performers. It looks at alternate ways of judging musical performance beyond the critical/academic nexus, and suggests new paths to follow in understanding what makes some music "popular" even if it is judged to be "bad." For anyone who has ever secretly enjoyed ABBA, Kenny G, or disco, Bad Music will be a guilty pleasure!

"Every now and then a book comes along that is embedded in our collective cultural conscience that we rarely see publicly discussedBad Music: The Music We Love to Hate is such a volume." -- Laura J. Gray, University of Wartloo, Notes

Chris Washburne is an Assistant Professor in the Music Department at Columbia University. He is also a trombonist who has played with major bands led by Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri, and leads his own Latin-jazz group.
Maiken Derno holds a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Dept of Comparative Literature at the U of Copenhagen, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia U from 1997-98. She also serves as an editor for Brondum Art Publishers, Copenhagen. They reside in New York City.

SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780415943666
ISBN 10 0415943663
Title Bad Music
Author Christopher J Washburne
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Year published 2004-09-26
Number of pages 390
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note Unavailable