Persistent Themes In Sound Recordings

During the past century recorded music has echoed from phonographs, jukeboxes, car radios, televisions, portable Walkmen, and contemporary digital devices. In addition to general listeners and record buyers, music scholars have taken interest in audio imagery and prominent themes in lyrics. This volume continues that academic tradition. However, it should be noted that rather than just naming isolated subjects in songs, this investigation probes for clusters of ideas that constitute important audio themes. This is the first of several volumes in a "Persistent Themes" Series that is being sponsored by The Paw Paw Press. Each volume will examine a few highly important general themes by breaking them down into component topics and illustrating several recordings that constitute the framework for both the smaller topics and the over-arching themes. For example, the authors have identified "Addictions" as an important lyrical theme. They have gathered hundreds of recordings that illustrate this theme and arranged these songs by topic, such as "Alcohol Abuse", "Cigarette Smoking", "Drug Use", "Gluttony", and so on. Thus the general theme is justified by the large number of recordings attributed to each of the related sub-topics.