Historical Dictionary of Popular Music

Norman Abjorensen

This book seeks to trace the rise of popular music, identify its key figures and track the origins and development of its multiple genres and styles, all the while seeking to establish historical context. It is, fundamentally, a ready reference guide to the broad field of popular music over the past two centuries. It has become a truism that popular music, so pervasive in the modern world, constitutes a soundtrack to our lives – a constant though changing presence as we cross thresholds and grow from children to teenagers to adults. But it has become more than a soundtrack; it has become a narrative. Not just an accompaniment to our daily lives but incorporating our lives, our sense of identity, our lived experiences, into it. We have become part of the music just as the music has become part of us.

The Historical Dictionary of Popular Music contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on major figures across genres, definitions of genres, technical innovations and surveys of countries and regions. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about popular music.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 694 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-5381-0214-5 • Hardback • May 2017 • $170.00 • (£131.00)

978-1-5381-0215-2 • eBook • May 2017 • $161.50 • (£125.00)

Series: Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts

Subjects: Music / History & Criticism, Reference / Dictionaries

Historical Dictionary of Popular Music

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This book seeks to trace the rise of popular music, identify its key figures and track the origins and development of its multiple genres and styles, all the while seeking to establish historical context. It is, fundamentally, a ready reference guide to the broad field of popular music over the past two centuries. It has become a truism that popular music, so pervasive in the modern world, constitutes a soundtrack to our lives – a constant though changing presence as we cross thresholds and grow from children to teenagers to adults. But it has become more than a soundtrack; it has become a narrative. Not just an accompaniment to our daily lives but incorporating our lives, our sense of identity, our lived experiences, into it. We have become part of the music just as the music has become part of us.

The Historical Dictionary of Popular Music contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on major figures across genres, definitions of genres, technical innovations and surveys of countries and regions. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about popular music.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 694 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-5381-0214-5 • Hardback • May 2017 • $170.00 • (£131.00)

978-1-5381-0215-2 • eBook • May 2017 • $161.50 • (£125.00)

Series: Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts

Subjects: Music / History & Criticism, Reference / Dictionaries

Author

Norman Abjorensen is an Australian historian, academic and broadcaster with a long interest in popular music. A former journalist, he has a PhD from The Australian National University, Canberra, and has presented radio programs on new music and the history of rock, lectured on popular culture and written a jazz column for a Melbourne newspaper.

Table of Contents

Editor’s Foreword (Jon Woronoff)
Preface
Chronology
Introduction
THE DICTIONARY
Appendices
Bibliography
About the Author

Reviews

Abjorensen—historian, broadcaster/journalist, coauthor of Historical Dictionary of Australia—offers some 1,300 entries defining musical acts/creators, genres, countries/continents, terminology, and publications covering nearly 200 years of popular music around the world and emphasizing Great Britain and the US.... Entries on many major artists (Chet Atkins, Dick Dale, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie, for instance) helpfully reveal historical significance. A chronology, notable songs, and an extensive bibliography are included. A variety of comparable biographical tools are already available, including AllMusic.... [T]he work provides some helpful historical analysis...

Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels.
— Choice Reviews

Historical Dictionary of Popular Music is a reference work for the college and academic/research library, for a public reference collection, and for the keen and well-heeled enthusiast (especially if such an “expert” gives talks and lectures). The compiler’s own introduction tells how as a child he heard Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole, grew up to love Buddy Holly, discovered Dave Brubeck, saw Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen perform on stage, and “in late middle age” listens as much to Bob Dylan as Celtic punk – a sentimental journey of his own which he generously and profitably shares with his readers.

— Reference Reviews

Historical Dictionary of Popular Music

Norman Abjorensen

Historical Dictionary of Popular Music

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