Musical Metropolis

Decentralization and diversity characterized much of the performance of art music in Los Angeles. Decentralization defined the city's growth since the late-nineteenth century, and because the central city did not dominate music culture, as in the East and Midwest, a greater diversification of music emerged in the communities of Greater Los Angeles. Performers and audiencesincluded Latinos, Euro-Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans, but the notion of diversity goes beyond ethnicity; it also includes 'media diversity', the presentation of music through a variety of media. recording, radio, film media strongly influenced music performance in the city as it grew into the epicenter of entertainment in America.

The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical’s evolving relationship to American culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shape and influence it, in America and across the globe: a genre that may seem, at first glance, light-hearted and escapist serves also as a bold commentary on society. Forty-four essays examine the contemporary musical as an ever-shifting product of an ever-changing culture. This volume sheds new light on the American musical as a thriving, contemporary performing arts genre, one that could have died out in the post-Tin Pan Alley era but instead has managed to remain culturally viable and influential, in part by newly embracing a series of complex contradictions. At present, the American musical is a live, localized, old-fashioned genre that has simultaneously developed into an increasingly globalized, tech-savvy, intensely mediated mass entertainment form. Similarly, as it has become increasingly international in its scope and appeal, the stage musical has also become more firmly rooted to Broadway—the idea, if not the place—and thus branded as a quintessentially American entertainment.

Introduction to the Music Industry: An Entrepreneurial Approach is an introductory textbook that offers a fresh look at one of the fastest-changing businesses in the world today. Emphasizing the importance of entrepreneurial thinking for the music industry, this textbook engages college-level students in learning the fundamentals of the music business while discovering ways to shape the industry’s future. Every chapter explores the inner workings of the music industry, using creative problem-solving exercises, discussion questions, collaborative projects, case studies, hands-on activities, and inspiring stories of actual music entrepreneurs. The textbook’s companion website provides multi-media content, study guides, and an instructor’s manual with lesson plans and suggestions for assessing students’ work. This book will be beneficial to students who want to learn the basics of the music industry and be involved in some way, whether a professional working in support of artists, or an artist trying to launch his or her performing career.

"Music and Some Highly Musical People" by James M. Trotter is a history of African-American music. Trotter's work is highly reflective of the society in which it was written. For example, Trotter's coverage of classical music was influenced by a movement to raise classical music and its performance to the level of religious service. A leader in this movement was white journalist John Sullivan Dwight. With this reverence on classical music, Trotter's description of classical soloists such as Thomas Wiggins and Sisieretta Jones become examples of racial culture and uplift through the musical genre itself.