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Alternative
music encompasses a wide variety of styles, political
thought and purposes and has been recognized as a genre of
music since the 1980's.
As defined by the 2001 edition of The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, alternative music is
'Music that may be defined in opposition to other musics'. Some groups
originally identified as alternative have moved into the
current popular music mainstream, so whether they can still
be identified as alternative is up to the performer and the
listener. Some of the better known styles are punk, grunge, riot grrrl,
indie (independent), emo, and post-rock.
Books
Due to the
shifting nature and definition of alternative music, most
materials in book format will be chapters within a larger
work or studies on smaller movements (e.g., grunge) or
related social movements (feminism) as there hasn't been a
large body of scholarly study published on the whole. Here
are some titles to explore:
American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV
4th Floor Stacks ML3477 .S73 2003
New Grove Dictionary of American
Music
Reference ML101 .U6 N48
Rockin' Out of the Box: Gender Maneuvering in
Alternative Hard Rock
4th Floor Stacks ML3918 .R63 S35 2002
Non-Book Resources
Videos and sound recordings may be included as part of
your research. Our collection can be keyword searched, and
then limited to type of media (video or music recording). If you
search under GENRE/FORM for music,
you will note two different listings
for 'music video recordings' and 'music
videos'. Music videos are normally
performances of music while the video
recordings can be recorded interviews
or instruction on music. The world of alternative
music is moving so quickly that the subject heading labels
created by the Library of Congress (the classification
system used by most academic libraries) can't keep up. The
most successful searches will be for particular performers
or groups.
Journals devoted specifically to alternative music are
mostly found on the Internet and consist of album and
performance reviews, rarely presented in the objective and
scholarly sense that you will need for a research paper.
Some full-text sources available to CSUSM users are:
Billboard (available through Academic Search
Elite, although articles are generally not scholarly)
Popular Music (in Periodicals 1991-on, or online
2000-on through CSUSM catalog)
Popular Music & Society (available through
Academic Search Premier for materials older than 6 months,
paper subscription for current articles will begin in 2004)
Postmodern Culture (available through Project
Muse)
Rolling Stone (Recommend using the hard copy in
Periodicals 1967-on to get the images as well as text.
Online material older than most recent 4 weeks is available
through Academic Search Premier)
Internet Sources
Alternate Music Press
Online journal for the genre, with lots of opinion-based
text, but
offers good resource lists to the independent labels, book
and CD reviews and some interviews with artists. Some
copyright-compliant downloads are offered.
Alternative
From DMOZ, the Open Directory Project, a short list of sites
for bands and artists, genres, e-zines and more.
BBC Radio
1-Alternative
Alternative music, recorded interviews, charts and
more about the British indie scene.
Grammy Awards: Alternative Music Album
While this site is not the official Grammy site, the
authors have listed each year's winning album (starting
with 1991) with links to brief information about the
group/artist and a timeline of their work.
Composers &
Performers
Look for the musicians home page--but be sure it is the
authorized site and not one put up by a fan. Frequently, the
home page will be hosted by the record label of the artist.
Artists and Bands
Provided by About.com, this site provides links to a
variety of alternate performers' sites, but since the
page is viewed within the About.com frame, it
is difficult to tell where you are or get the accurate citation
information for your paper.
Individual Musicians (All Genres)
and Popular Groups
Assembled by Indiana University, this covers a broad
range of musical artists with alternative artists mixed
in with pop and classical.
List of Alternative Music Artists
Provided by Wikipedia, the most useful part of the entry
on alternative music is this list of artists, leading to
entries discussing the group's history, influences and
recordings.
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