Theory in popular music has historically tended to approach musical processes of rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and form as abstractions, without very directly engaging the intimate connection between the performer and instrument in popular music performance. Embodied Expression in Popular Music illuminates under-researched aspects of music theory in popular music studies by situating musical analysis in a context of embodied movement in vocal and instrumental performance. Author Timothy Koozin offers a performance-based analytical methodology that progresses from basic idiomatic gestures, to gestural combinations and interactions with large-scale design, to broader interpretive strategies that engage with theories of embodiment, the musical topic, and narrative. The book examines artistic practices in popular song that draw from a vast range of stylistic sources, including rock, blues, folk, soul, funk, fusion, and hip-hop, as well as European classical and African American gospel musical traditions. Exploring the interrelationships in how we create, hear, and understand music through the body, Koozin demonstrates how a focus on body-instrument interaction can illuminate musical structures while leveling implied hierarchies of cultural value. He provides detailed analysis of artists' creative strategies in singing and playing their instruments, probing how musicians represent subjectivities of gender, race, and social class in shaping songs and whole albums. Tracing connections from foundational blues, gospel, and rock musicians to current rap artists, he clarifies how inferences of musical topic and narrative are part of a larger creative process in strategically positioning musical gestures. By engaging with songs by female artists and artists of color, Koozin also challenges the methodological framing of traditional theory scholarship. As a contribution to work on embodiment and meaning in music, this study of popular song explores how the situated and engaged body is active in listening, performing, and the formation of musical cultures, as it provides a means by which we understand our own bodies in relation to the world.

About the Author
Timothy Koozin is Professor and area chair of Music Theory at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston. His research interests include music and meaning, theories of embodiment and musical gesture, popular music, and the music of Toru Takemitsu. His essays on musical gesture in popular music appear in numerous published journal articles and edited collections. Koozin is co-author of the music textbooks Music for Sight Singing and Music for Analysis, ninth edition (both volumes with Thomas Benjamin, Michael Horvit and Robert Nelson). He is the former editor of the electronic journal of the Society for Music Theory, Music Theory Online.

Reviews
Timothy Koozin widens our horizons as he demonstrates how composers-as-performers have endowed popular song with personalized gestures and agencies, embodying a range of topics, tropes, and narratives to fashion complex subjectivities as conditioned by race, gender, and class. His mastery of all these intersecting approaches is breathtaking! * Robert S. Hatten *
In this fascinating study of recorded popular music, Timothy Koozin presents an original approach to the dynamic interplay of artistic identity, performative expression, and cultural topics. As he illustrates how to explore an embodied knowledge of musical performance, his analyses bring to life the vocal and instrumental gestures from a vast array of styles and genres. * Lori Burns, Professor of Music, University of Ottawa *
This exciting book offers new perspectives on guitar and keyboard playing, singing, and rapping. Koozin's profound, perceptive analyses engage rock, funk, soul, folk, gospel, blues, and hip hop - and support a significant theory of gesture and agency. Ultimately, Embodied Expression in Popular Music shows how bodily performance can shape musical structure and musical meaning. * Jonathan De Souza, author of Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition *
Timothy Koozin widens our horizons as he demonstrates how composers-as-performers have endowed popular song with personalized gestures and agencies, embodying a range of topics, tropes, and narratives to fashion complex subjectivities as conditioned by race, gender, and class. His mastery of all these intersecting approaches is breathtaking! * Robert S. Hatten, Professor Emeritus, The University of Texas at Austin *



Book Information
ISBN 9780197692981
Author Timothy Koozin
Format Hardback
Page Count 312
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 590g
Dimensions(mm) 224mm * 152mm * 28mm