Vocals tinged with pain and desperation. The deep thuds of an upright bass. Women with short bangs and men in cuffed jeans. These elements and others are the unmistakable signatures of rockabilly, a musical genre normally associated with white male musicians of the 1950s. But in Los Angeles today, rockabilly's primary producers and consumers are Latinos and Latinas. Why are these "Razabillies" partaking in a visibly "un-Latino" subculture that's thought of as a white person's fixation everywhere else? As a Los Angeles Rockabilly insider, Nicholas F. Centino is the right person to answer this question. Pairing a decade of participant observation with interviews and historical research, Centino explores the reasons behind a Rockabilly renaissance in 1990s Los Angeles and demonstrates how, as a form of working-class leisure, this scene provides Razabillies with spaces of respite and conviviality within the alienating landscape of the urban metropolis. A nuanced account revealing how and why Los Angeles Latinas/os have turned to and transformed the music and aesthetic style of 1950s rockabilly, Razabilly offers rare insight into this musical subculture, its place in rock and roll history, and its passionate practitioners.

Vocals tinged with pain and desperation. The deep thuds of an upright bass. Women with short bangs and men in cuffed jeans. These elements and others are the unmistakable signatures of rockabilly, a musical genre normally associated with white male musicians of the 1950s. But in Los Angeles today, rockabilly's primary producers and consumers are Latinos and Latinas. Why are these "Razabillies" partaking in a visibly "un-Latino" subculture that's thought of as a white person's fixation everywhere else? As a Los Angeles Rockabilly insider, Nicholas F. Centino is the right person to answer this question. Pairing a decade of participant observation with interviews and historical research, Centino explores the reasons behind a Rockabilly renaissance in 1990s Los Angeles and demonstrates how, as a form of working-class leisure, this scene provides Razabillies with spaces of respite and conviviality within the alienating landscape of the urban metropolis. A nuanced account revealing how and why Los Angeles Latinas/os have turned to and transformed the music and aesthetic style of 1950s rockabilly, Razabilly offers rare insight into this musical subculture, its place in rock and roll history, and its passionate practitioners.

Raucous, sensual and sublime: how twelve pioneering female artists rewrote the rules of pop. From Kate Bush to Nicki Minaj, from Janet Jackson to TLC and Taylor Swift, pop's greatest female pioneers are simply strange: smashing notions of taste and decorum, and replacing them with new ideals of pleasure. Instead of rehashing biographies, Lesley Chow dives deep into the music of these groundbreaking performers, identifying the ecstatic moments in their songs and finding out what makes them unique. You're History is a love letter to pop's most singular achievements, celebrating the innovations of women who are still critically underrated. It's a ride that includes tributes to Chaka Khan, Rihanna, Neneh Cherry, Sade, Shakespears Sister, Azealia Banks, and many more... “The slim, sharp book considers a range of female artists from Janet Jackson and Taylor Swift to TLC and Nicki Minaj, a group that the Australian cultural critic Chow views as ‘outliers, marking moments where the culture might have swerved to incorporate their influence, but somehow contrived not to.’” — New York Times summer reads

DIVCultural and literary study of the construction of racial and artistic identity in soul cover albums of three popular artists--Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and Phoebe Snow./div

The best of the cult-favorite music magazine Roctobers conversations with overlooked or forgotten artists, from the Outlaw Country singer David Allan Coe to the frustrated interstellar glam act Zolar X.

This volume explores the significations and developments of the Salsa consciente movement, a Latino musico-poetic and political discourse that exploded in the 1970s but then dwindled in momentum into the early 1990s. This movement is largely linked to the development of Nuyolatino popular music brought about in part by the mass Latino migration to New York City beginning in the 1950s and the subsequent social movements that were tied to the shifting political landscapes. Defined by its lyrical content alongside specific sonic markers and political and social issues facing U.S. Latinos and Latin Americans, Salsa consciente evokes the overarching cultural-nationalist idea of Latinidad (Latin-ness). Through the analysis of over 120 different Salsa songs from lyrical and musical perspectives that span a period of over sixty years, the author makes the argument that the urban Latino identity expressed in Salsa consciente was constructed largely from diasporic, deterritorialized, and at times imagined cultural memory, and furthermore proposes that the Latino/Latin American identity is in part based on African and Indigenous experience, especially as it relates to Spanish colonialism. A unique study on the intersection of Salsa and Latino and Latin American identity, this volume will be especially interesting to scholars of ethnic studies and musicology alike.

First as a doe-eyed ingénue with “As Tears Go By,” then as a gravel-voiced phoenix rising from the ashes of the 1960s with a landmark punk album, Broken English, and finally as a genre-less icon, Marianne Faithfull carved her name into the history of rock ’n’ roll to chart a career spanning five decades and multiple detours. In Why Marianne Faithfull Matters, Tanya Pearson crafts a feminist account that explains the musician’s absence from the male-dominated history of the British Invasion and champions the eclectic late career that confirmed her redemption. Putting memoir on equal footing with biographical history, Pearson writes about Faithfull as an avid fan, recovered addict, and queer musician at a crossroads. She’s also a professional historian unafraid to break from the expectations of the discipline if a “titty-centered analysis” or astrology can illuminate the work of her subject. Whether exploring Faithfull’s rise to celebrity, her drug addiction and fall from grace as spurned “muse,” or her reinvention as a sober, soulful chanteuse subverting all expectations for an aging woman in music, Pearson affirms the deep connections between listeners and creators and reveals, in her own particular way, why Marianne Faithfull matters.