Music as a Mirror of History

Alright!: Black American Dance Music from the Disco Era Review by Amy Hanson
Most people shunt disco into a category either well-stuffed with white suits, mirror balls and Tony Manero wannabes from the movement's American heyday, or packed with the Euro stylings of Giorgio Moroder and synthesized grooves. As a result, the era has been distilled into a standardized set list of mixes, club staples and ho-hum rip offs. However, what disco actually set out to be, and its shape and nature before it was corrupted by the mainstream dreamers, proves a fascinating, stunning and forgotten history. Alright! Black American Dance Music from the Disco Era is the history by which our modern text is written. In the very beginning, disco wasn't about the flashing lights and hip tripping clothes at all, it was solely about capturing the best groove, hitting the vibe and letting it all spool out from that one perfect beat. People crowded onto club floors to dance, to move with songs that were politicized rather than plastic, songs that made and were made famous by the early labels Westbound and Century.

The Witches continue their exploration of the music of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This series, successfully launched with the disc Nobody’s Jig, sheds new light on songs and dances at the intersection of the art music and folk music repertories.

In the penultimate episode of his widely popular and critically acclaimed HBO series, Painting with John, its creator, John Lurie, sat in a Manhattan recording studio, working out musical parts for the show’s soundtrack. “After the illness started, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do this again,” said Lurie.

"HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I" (usually shortened to HIStory) is the ninth studio album by American singer Michael Jackson. It was Jackson's fifth album released through Epic Records, and the first released on his label MJJ Productions. "HIStory" consists of two discs: the first, "HIStory Begins", is a greatest hits compilation; the second, "HIStory Continues", comprises new material written and produced by Jackson and collaborators. The themes include environmental awareness, isolation, greed, suicide, injustice, and Jackson's conflicts with the media.

The Late-Victorian Discovery Of The Music Hall by English intellectuals marks a crucial moment in the history of popular culture. Music Hall and Modernity demonstrates how such pioneering cultural critics as Arthur Symons and Elizabeth Robins Pennell used the music hall to secure and promote their professional identity as guardians of taste and national welfare. These social arbiters were, at the same time, devotees of the spontaneous culture of "the people." In examining fiction from Walter Besant, Hall Caine, and Henry Nevinson, performance criticism from William Archer and Max Beerbohm…