Performance Philosophy is an emerging interdisciplinary field of thought, creative practice and scholarship. The Performance Philosophy book series comprises monographs and essay collections addressing the relationship between performance and philosophy within a broad range of philosophical traditions and performance practices, including drama, theatre, performance arts, dance, art and music. The series also includes studies of the performative aspects of life and, indeed, philosophy itself. As such, the series addresses the philosophy of performance as well as performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as-performance.

"Amy Absher's The Black Musician and the White City tells the story of African American musicians in Chicago during the mid-twentieth century. While depicting the segregated city before World War II, Absher traces the migration of black musicians, both men and women and both classical and vernacular performers, from the American South to Chicago during the 1930s to 1950s.
Absher's work diverges from existing studies in three ways: First, she takes the history beyond the study of jazz and blues by examining the significant role that classically trained black musicians played in building the Chicago South Side community. By acknowledging the presence and importance of classical musicians, Absher argues that black migrants in Chicago had diverse education and economic backgrounds but found common cause in the city's music community. Second, Absher brings numerous maps to the history, illustrating the relationship between Chicago's physical lines of segregation and the geography of black music in the city over the years. Third, Absher's use of archival sources is both extensive and original, drawing on manuscript and oral history collections at the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago, Columbia University, Rutgers's Institute of Jazz Studies, and Tulane's Hogan Jazz Archive. By approaching the Chicago black musical community from these previously untapped angles, Absher offers a history that goes beyond the retelling of the achievements of the famous musicians by discussing musicians as a group. In The Black Musician and the White City, black musicians are the leading actors, thinkers, organizers, and critics of their own story"--Publisher's website.

In this lesson, students will analyze several of the elements that combined to make Berry such an important and influential artist. They will examine his pioneering guitar riffs, his carefully crafted lyrics that spoke directly to the emerging market of white, middle-class teen listeners, his blend of R&B and Country and Western influences, and his energetic performance style, which helped pave the way for a generation of guitar-playing showmen.

In this lesson, students explore the particularities of Bo Diddley's music, contrasting it with other artists of the late 1940s and early 50s, specifically John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen," Chuck Berry's "School Days" and The Chordettes' "Mr. Sandman." Through comparative listening, students will determine elements of Bo Diddley's style, including his emphasis on rhythm and lyrical content, and examine how his recordings compared with the popular music of his peers. In groups, students watch 1980s-era footage of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, engaging in a guided discussion to draw conclusions as to whether they believe Bo Diddley can be viewed as a precursor to Hip Hop.

In this lesson, students will trace the influence of Gospel music on early Rock and Roll, particularly in R&B's embrace of such key musical features as the call-and-response and in the uses of complex rhythms. The class will make side-by-side comparisons of Gospel and early Rock and Roll songs, as well as work in groups to chart the overall influence of Gospel on a range of different popular music genres.

This lesson will focus on two of those DJs: Memphis's Dewey Phillips, whose popular show "Red Hot and Blue" frequently featured music by African-American artists, and Los Angeles's Hunter Hancock, widely regarded as the first DJ in the western part of the country to regularly play R&B on the air. Reaching both black and white audiences, these pioneering DJs played an integral role in bringing African-American music into the mainstream, a process that lay at the heart of the soon-to-come Rock and Roll revolution.

In this lesson, students embark on a "walking tour" of Memphis, using the city as a case study through which to view complex race relations and integration issues that affected communities across the U.S. While plotting points of historical interest on a map, students consider how artists such as Elvis, the Mar-Keys, and Booker T. and the MGs resisted social norms through their music and performances. Listening to oral history from Stax owner Jim Stewart, students explore how an integrated record label operated in the middle of a segregated community and was able to create a unique and powerful Soul sound that signaled a shift in race relations in America.

In this lesson, students will watch a 25-minute video, Aretha Franklin ABC News Close Up (1968), as a pre-lesson activity. In class, students examine a timeline of landmark events that occurred during the women's movement from 1961 to 1971. While watching multiple live performances of Aretha Franklin, including "Dr. Feelgood," "Do Right Woman," "Respect," "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," and "Chain of Fools," students will seek to identify Gospel influences and investigate whether issues related to women's rights are reflected in the songs as well. The extension activity includes an insightful personal narrative that provides an account of sexism that existed during the Civil Rights era.

In this lesson, students will learn about behind-the-scenes operations at Motown Records and a few of the company's most important contributors through a "cafe conversation."

In this lesson, students will examine the history and popularity of "We Shall Overcome" and investigate six additional songs from different musical genres that reveal the impact of the Civil Rights movement. These are: Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," a poignant Blues song depicting the horrors of lynching; Bob Dylan's "Oxford Town," a Folk song about protests after the integration of the University of Mississippi; John Coltrane's "Alabama," an instrumental Jazz recording made in response to the September 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four African-American girls; Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam," a response to the same church bombing as well as the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi; Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," a Soul song written after Cooke's arrest for attempting to check in to a whites-only motel in Shreveport, Louisiana; and Odetta's "Oh Freedom," a spiritual that Odetta performed at the 1963 March on Washington.

Accompanying the musical and political changes in Soul music that took place as the 1960s moved forward into the 1970s was a profound shift in African-American identity. Whereas Motown artists had been groomed for mass consumption by white audiences in the mid-1960s, Soul artists increasingly embraced a style much more in sync with their African roots (and in many cases reflecting a more militant political view). These developments paralleled musical changes in which melody was to varying degrees made secondary to an emphasis on rhythm and groove, as it often was in traditional African musical forms. Together, these shifts were emblematic of the growing Black Pride movement, with its characteristic slogan, "black is beautiful." This lesson looks at these social and musical changes, with a focus on James Brown and his seminal proclamation of black pride, "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud."

In this lesson, students will examine photographs, live recordings, video interviews, and a government report in order to learn about the historical and cultural context of the Soul music recorded in the 1970s.

In this lesson, students investigate a collection of musical performances, television interviews, and movie trailers, discussing how black artists of the 1970s, including James Brown, George Clinton, and Curtis Mayfield, addressed black audiences through the music and aesthetics of Funk, casting a light on all that the Civil Rights movement could not do for a racially divided America.

In this lesson, students will examine raw documentary footage, demographic charts, television news stories, and song lyrics to connect the sounds of early Hip Hop to the substandard living conditions in American inner cities in the late 1970s, particularly the Bronx in New York City. Students will compose their own verses to Grandmaster Flash's "The Message," to be followed up with a research-driven writing assignment to further explore the urban environment depicted in the landmark song.

Gangsta Rap grew in part out of the social and political climate on the West Coast, where cities such as Compton, California, became engulfed in gang violence fueled by the crack cocaine epidemic. Longstanding tensions between the African-American community and the police came to a head in the Rodney King case and the announcement of its verdict. Gangsta rappers began to write explicitly about inner city violence. Songs were marked by a liberal use of profanity and images of the gun-toting toughs who lived amidst the brutality of the inner city. Gangsta Rap often overlapped with the East Coast-based "Mafioso Rap," whose practicioners cultivated personas of high-living, power-wielding gangsters who drove fancy cars, drank champagne, and sported intimidating weapons all while promoting a strong sense of kinship. Fiction seemed to become fact when rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. were victims of unsolved, highly public murders. Soon enough, a countermovement some called "Conscious Hip Hop€" began to emerge, primarily on the East Coast. Many fans saw it as an answer to the often violent and controversial lyrics common in Gangsta Rap. Though in many ways responding to the same conditions to which Gangsta Rap reacted, this subgenre sought to inspire positivity through its lyrics, much like some of the earliest Hip Hop music. Lyrics were intended to challenge and inspire while also questioning the social and political status quo.

In this lesson, students will discuss how the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance and Locke's New Negro were exemplified by the poetry of Langston Hughes. Specifically, they will examine how Hughes incorporated the vernacular tradition of the Blues in his work, and identify the literary techniques Hughes employs to make his poetry so vivid.

Textbook for undergraduate brass methods course focusing on brass instrument techniques and pedagogy.

This OER presents an integrated suite of learning resources developed for the core music theory and musicianship curriculum at the University of Northern Iowa School of Music. It provides a more comprehensive symbiosis of musicianship and music theory learning than can be found in existing textbooks, including engaging and progressive video demonstrations and interactive listening and vocal exercises that integrate musical knowledge with foundational musical skills. This OER affords the flexibility to shape core musicianship and music theory learning to meet the needs of changing School of Music demographics well into the future, a resource for innovative and inviting music programs accessible to all.

Devised theatre is a method of theatre-making in which the script or (if it is a predominantly physical work) performance score originates from collaborative, often improvisatory work by a performing ensemble. The ensemble is typically made up of actors, but other categories of theatre practitioner may also be central to this process of generative collaboration, such as visual artists, composers, and choreographers; indeed, in many instances, the contributions of collaborating artists may transcend professional specialization.

Please view this book as a source of knowledge but know that every director you meet both good and bad you will learn from. Your journey is never over and the goal of any artist should be to take the lessons of the past, learn from your own experience, and transform your understanding into a unique approach that will change the future of the artform. This is my gift to you as you are the future. Best of luck on your journey.