An intimate exploration of New York City through the music that defines it.
From Broadway to the Bronx tells the history of New York City in song across a variety of different genres that the city has been home to and instrumental in developing, covering everything from early twentieth-century sheet music to Broadway's musical theater, hip-hop, disco, punk, dancehall, but also contemporary metal, rock, and pop. It features an analysis of the work of artists with intimate connections to the city like Billy Joel, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Debbie Harry, Shinehead, and the Wu-Tang Clan, as well as an exclusive interview with RENT original cast member, Anthony Rapp. The collection includes essays from authors across the disciplines of cultural studies, media studies, cultural history, and musicology, resulting in a far-ranging treatment of the interconnection of the city space and its musical history.
By:
Veronika Keller,
Sabrina Mittermeier (University of Kassel,
Germany)
Imprint: Intellect Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 244mm,
Width: 170mm,
ISBN: 9781789389906
ISBN 10: 1789389909
Pages: 220
Publication Date: 26 July 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction Veronika Keller and Sabrina Mittermeier 1. New York’s Tin Pan Alley in Two and a Half Songs: Immigrants and the New York Music Industry between the 1890s and 1910s Veronika Keller 2. ‘The Milkman’s on His Way’: ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ and the Illusion of New York Chris Flinterman 3. Sweet Charity, Musical Cosmopolitanism, and New York City Nick Braae 4. Of Promises and Prisons: Ambivalent Visions of the Big Apple in The Last Poets’ ‘On the Subway’ and ‘New York, New York’ Martin Butler and Marek Jeziński 5. ‘I, Too, Sing New York’: Gil Scott-Heron from ‘New York City’ to ‘New York is Is Killing Me’ Justin Patch 6. ‘An Atmosphere Where Anything Is Allowed’: Patti Smith’s Horses and 1970s New York Punk Ryan Donovan Purcell 7. No Place Like New York: Diana Ross’s ‘Home’ (1978) from The Wiz Jaap Kooijman 8. The Vibe, Vocality and Vitality of Billy Joel’s ‘New York State Of Mind’ Diane Hughes 9. The Lights Are Out on the Mean Streets: Lou Reed’s ‘Dirty Blvd.’ and Inequality in New York City Stephen Petrus 10. Anthrax and Public Enemy ‘Bring the Noise’: The Musical Collaboration That Helped Define aA New New York Sound Ben Quail 11. Forgotten No Longer: Staten Island, ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ and the Emergence of the Wu-Tang Clan Brianna Quade 12. Shinehead’s ‘Jamaican in New York’: The Circularity of Jamaican and African American Cultural Practice and Reggae’s Resonance in Hip Hop from The Bronx to Brooklyn, and Beyond James Barber 13. ‘A Different Kind of Apple Now’: David Rudder’s ‘The Immigrants’ and ‘Forty- One Bullets’ Alison Mc Letchie 14. ‘It Tells the Truth, and Things That Tell the Truth Tend to Last': Anthony Rapp on Jonathan Larson’s RENT Sabrina Mittermeier and Anthony Rapp 15. ‘Life’s Ill, Sometimes Life Might Kill’: Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein Alex de Lacey 16. ‘North of 96th Street’: Latinx Class Mobility and In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes Elena Machado Sáez 17. ‘Lighters Up’: Lil’ Kim’s Ode to Brooklyn: ‘In the Concrete 181 Jungle, the Strong Stand and Rumble’ Emma Horrex 18. Citing the Past as a Political Resource against Donald Trump: Performing Punk and Queer Feminism in Blondie’s Music Video Doom or Destiny Lene Annette Karpp Notes on Contributors Index
Sabrina Mittermeier is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in British and North American history at the University of Kassel, Germany. She is the author of A Cultural History of Disneyland Theme Parks – Middle-Class Kingdoms (Intellect, 2021), the (co)editor of, among other volumes, Fighting for the Future – Essays on Star Trek: Discovery (Liverpool University Press, 2020), The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek (2022) and Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect, 2022). Her research on theme parks, film and television has also been published in several collections and journals, such as the Journal of Popular Culture and Science Fiction Film and Television. Veronika Keller is a research associate at the institute for musicology and music pedagogy at the University of Kobenz, Germany. Her research interests include (classical) music in different media and popular music in the late 20th and early 21st, mainly in the USA, Germany and South Korea as well as its transcontinental exchanges.
