Dancing to the Drum Machine is a never-before-attempted history of what is perhaps the most controversial musical instrument ever invented: the drum machine. Here, author Dan LeRoy reveals the untold story of how their mechanical pulse became the new heartbeat of popular music. The pristine snap of the LinnDrum. The bottom-heavy beats of the Roland 808. The groundbreaking samples of the E-MUSP-1200. All these machines-and their weirder, wilder-sounding cousins-changed composition, recording, and performance habits forever. Their distinctive sounds and styles helped create new genres of music, like hip hop and EDM. But they altered every musical style, from mainstream pop to heavy metal to jazz. Dan LeRoy traces the drum machine from its low-tech beginnings in the Fifties and Sixties to its evolution in the Seventies and its ubiquity in the Eighties, when seemingly overnight, it infiltrated every genre of music. Drum machines put some drummers out of work, while keeping others on their toes. They anticipated virtually every musical trend of the last five decades: sequencing, looping, sampling, and all forms of digital music creation. But the personalities beneath those perfect beats make the story of drum machines a surprisingly human one-told here for the very first time.

This is the fascinating story of Catholic heroes who, despite discrimination and persecution, saw the promise of America and sought to fight for its independence. Some of these Catholic heroes were Americans, like the three Carroll brothersmof Maryland who included Charles, the longest-lived signer of the Declaration of Independence, John, America's first bishop, and John Barry, one of the founders of the U.S. Navy. Other heroes were foreign-born: Frenchmen like legendary generals the Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Rochambeau, as well as Polish soldiers such as Casimir Pulaski, the founder of the U.S. Calvary, and the daring Thaddeus Kosciuszko. All were inspired by their Catholic faith to join the Revolution and its call for human freedom and dignity. For all who are passionate about the Catholic Faith and the American experiment, Dan LeRoy's Liberty's Lions is a book you won't be able to put down.

This book explores dancing from the 1960s to the 1980s; though this period covers only twenty years, the changes during it were seismic. Nevertheless continuities can be found, and those are what this book examines. In dancing, it answers how we moved from the self-control that formed the basis for ballroom dancing, to ecstatic rave dancing. In terms of music, it answers how we moved from the beat groups to electronic dance music. In terms of youth, it answers how we moved from youth culture to club culture.

A candid memoir by the multiplatinum recording artist chronicles his life from his childhood in England and rise to fame at the height of the punk-pop revolution to his popular hits and his collaborations with fellow artists.

Eleven authors analyse recent dance practices in the theatre, in club culture and on film, addressing dance in interdisciplinary relationship with music, painting and play texts. This text attempts to fill a gap with an up-to-date account of exciting and challenging new work, illuminated by fascinating new theoretical frameworks.

This volume brings together new work in the philosophy of dance for a general philosophical audience. Scholars working across the fields of philosophy, dance studies, and related areas explore the nature of dance as a practice and an artform. This collection of essays covers topics such as the experience of dancing, the nature and appreciation of dance artworks, and the distinctive contribution of dance to philosophical understanding.

Pieces of the Musical World: Sounds and Cultures is a fieldwork-based ethnomusicology textbook that introduces a series of musical worlds each through a single "piece." It focuses on a musical sound or object that provides a springboard from which to tell a story about a particular geographic region, introducing key aspects of the cultures in which it is embedded, contexts of performance, the musicians who create or perform it, the journeys it has travelled, and its changing meanings. A collaborative venture by staff and research ethnomusicologists associated with the Department of Music at SOAS, University of London, Pieces of the Musical World is organized thematically. Three broad themes: "Place", "Spirituality" and "Movement" help teachers to connect contemporary issues in ethnomusicology, including soundscape studies, music and the environment, the politics of identity, diaspora and globalization, and music and the body. Each of the book's fourteen chapters highlights a single musical "piece" broadly defined, spanning the range of "traditional," "popular", "classical" and "contemporary" musics, and even sounds which might be considered "not music." Primary sources and a web site hosting recordings with interactive listening guides, a glossary of musical terms and interviews all help to create a unique and dynamic learning experience of our musical world.