Journal ArticleJournal of Music Theory · October 1, 2023
The transformation of blues into rhythm and blues in the mid-twentieth century mirrored the experience of migrants who traveled from the South and adapted to bustling city life in the North and Midwest. When millions of Black Americans moved to cities duri ...
Full textOpen AccessCite
Book · January 1, 2021
Sweet Thing: The History and Musical Structure of a Shared American Vernacular Form is a historical and analytical study of one of the most productive and enduring shared musical resources in North American vernacular music. Many of us learn the form as ch ...
Full textCite
Journal ArticleMusic Theory Online · December 2020
This article briefly recounts recent work identifying the most common lyric formulas in early blues and then demonstrates the prevalence of these formulas in early country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. The study shows how the preferen ...
Full textCite
Journal ArticleRace and Justice · January 31, 2017
Recent scholarship has shed light on the troubling use of rap lyrics in criminal trials. Prosecutors have interpreted defendants’ rap lyrics as accurate descriptions of past behavior or in some cases as real threats of violence. There are at least two prob ...
Cite
Journal ArticleMusic Theory Online · August 1, 2010
In American folk and popular music, dissonance frequently functions in ways that cannot be explained by conventional tonal theory. Two types of dissonance—the dropping and hanging thirds—function outside of classical norms, and within the framework of a mo ...
Link to itemCite
