Washington University Press Search Results Page

Emerald Street

A History of Hip Hop in Seattle

By Daudi Abe. Foreword by Sir Mix-A-Lot

From the first rap battles in Seattle’s Central District to the Grammy stage, hip hop has shaped urban life and the music scene of the Pacific Northwest for more than four decades. In the early...

Sailor Song

The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas

By Gerry Smyth. Illustrated by Jonny Hannah

Passed down in the oral tradition and sung as working songs, sea shanties tell the compelling human stories of life on the water: hard labor, battling the elements, pining for distant loves and far-away homes....

American Sabor

Latinos and Latinas in US Popular Music / Latinos y latinas en la musica popular estadounidense

By Marisol Berríos-Miranda, Shannon Dudley, and Michelle Habell-Pallán. Translated by Angie Berríos Miranda

Evoking the pleasures of music as well as food, the word sabor signifies a rich essence that makes our mouths water or makes our bodies want to move. American Sabor traces the substantial musical contributions...

Classical Seattle

Maestros, Impresarios, Virtuosi, and Other Music Makers

By Melinda Bargreen

The past 50 years have seen a tremendous arts boom in Seattle, which has given the city not only internationally recognized classical music institutions but also great performance halls to showcase their work and that...

Onnagata

A Labyrinth of Gendering in Kabuki Theater

By Maki Isaka

Kabuki is well known for its exaggerated acting, flamboyant costumes and makeup, and unnatural storylines. The onnagata, usually male actors who perform the roles of women, have been an important aspect of kabuki since its...

Theatre Backstage from A to Z

Revised and Expanded

By Warren C. Lounsbury and Norman C. Boulanger

This invaluable guide to theatrical production includes up-to-date definitions of all technical aspects of stagecraft, including the many advances in the past decade, particularly in the areas of trusses, rigging, and automated lights and their...

Onnagata

A Labyrinth of Gendering in Kabuki Theater

By Maki Isaka

Kabuki is well known for its exaggerated acting, flamboyant costumes and makeup, and unnatural storylines. The onnagata, usually male actors who perform the roles of women, have been an important aspect of kabuki since its...

Women Playing Men

Yue Opera and Social Change in Twentieth-Century Shanghai

By Jin Jiang

This ground-breaking volume documents women's influence on popular culture in twentieth-century China by examining Yue opera. A subgenre of Chinese opera, it migrated from the countryside to urban Shanghai and morphed from its traditional all-male...

How Musical Is Man?

By John Blacking

This important study in ethnomusicology is an attempt by the author -- a musician who has become a social anthropologist -- to compare his experiences of music-making in different cultures. He is here presenting new...

Heroines of Jiangyong

Chinese Narrative Ballads in Women’s Script

By Wilt L. Idema

Heroines of Jiangyong is the first English translation of a set of verse narratives recorded in the unique women's script (nushu) of rural Jiangyong County, Hunan, in southern China. This selection of Chinese folk literature...

Amelia

The Libretto

By Gardner McFall

In the new opera Amelia, a first time mother-to-be, whose psyche has been scarred by the loss of her pilot father in Vietnam, must break free from anxiety to embrace healing and renewal for the...

The Tooth That Nibbles at the Soul

Essays on Music and Poetry

By Marshall Brown

The Tooth that Nibbles at the Soul brings together Marshall Brown’s new and previously published writings on literature and music. These essays engage questions that are central to the development of literature, music, and the...

Joel-Francois Durand in the Mirror Land

By Jonathan W. Bernard

The second part of this volume comprises four essays on Durand’s music, contributed by three of his former composition students -- Christian Asplund, Eric Flesher, and Ryan M. Hare -- and by his colleague, music...

Seeing with Music

The Lives of Three Blind African Musicians

By Simon Ottenberg

In the course of his ongoing study of the aesthetic world of the Limba of Sierra Leone, anthropologist Simon Ottenberg met three men from Wara Wara Bafodea chiefdom who played an instrument called the kututeng,...

Luk Thung

The Culture and Politics of Thailand's Most Popular Music

By James Leonard Mitchell

Since the 1960s, the hybrid popular music called luk thung has embodied the aspirations, frustrations, and sorrows of Thailand’s working class. Global scholarship, however, has been slow in examining this seminal genre. In this pioneering...

Theatre of Dreams, Theatre of Play

No and Kyogen in Japan

By Khanh Trinh, Monica Bethe, Eric C. Rath, J. Thomas Rimer, Mikio Takemoto

Dating from the 15th to early 20th century, 160 works from the rich material culture of Japanese no and kyogen theatre (nogaku)—
including masks and costumes as well as paintings, musical instruments and libretti—have been selected...

The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings

By Agustin Gurza. With Jonathan Clark

The Strachwitz Frontera Collection is the largest repository of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican American vernacular recordings in existence. More than 40,000 recordings, all produced during the first half of the 20th century, have been...

Multiple Impressions

Contemporary Chinese Woodblock Prints

By Xiaobing Tang, Shang Hui, and Anne Farrer

Multiple Impressions examines works by 40 leading printmakers from contemporary China, highlighting the extraordinary innovations, in both technique and conception, which have transformed this long-established art form in recent years. It includes works by such...

Composing Voices

A Cycle of Dramatic Monologues

By Robert Pack

Robert Pack's new volume of poetry, Composing Voices: A Cycle of Dramatic Monologues, is a fabulously expanded version of his 1984 book, Faces in a Single Tree. In each of the poems a single person...

Willing to Choose

Volition & Storytelling in Shakespeare's Major Plays

By Robert Pack

"And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story." - William Shakespeare

"This book is intended for the reader and theater-goer who loves Shakespeare's plays and enjoys contemplating them in their...