- Home
- Music / Interview
- music
- art
- American Music Documentary

American Music Documentary
Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology
Music / Interview
Sales Date: 2018-06-05
A critical companion to the most celebrated music documentaries of the twentieth century
Documentary filmmakers have been making films about music for a half-century. American Music Documentary looks at five key films to begin to imagine how we might produce, edit, and watch films from an ethnomusicological point of view. Reconsidering Albert and David Maysles's Gimme Shelter, Jill Godmilow's Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, Shirley Clarke's Ornette: Made in America, D.A. Pennebaker's and Chris Hegedus's Depeche Mode: 101, and Jem Cohen's and Fugazi's Instrument, Harbert lays the foundations for the study and practice of "ciné-ethnomusicology." Interviews with directors and rich analysis from the disciplinary perspectives of film studies and ethnomusicology make this book a critical companion to some of the most celebrated music documentaries of the twentieth century.
Hardcover is un-jacketed.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Where Is the Music? What Is the Music?: Albert Maysles, Gimme Shelter (1970)
Representing the Margins and Underrepresenting the Real: Jill Godmilow, Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman (1974)
The Use and Abuse of Musicological Concepts: Shirley Clarke, Ornette: Made in America (1985)
The Theater of Mass Culture: D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, Depeche Mode: 101 (1988)
Cinematic Dub and the Multitude: Jem Cohen and Fugazi, Instrument (1999)
Epilogue: Toward a Ciné-Ethnomusicology
Appendix A: Extended Music Filmography
Appendix B: Cited Interviews and Archival Material
Appendix C: Glossary of Terms: Sounds, Shots, and Editing Techniques
Notes
Works Cited
Index
BENJAMIN J. HARBERT is associate professor in the music and the film and media studies departments at Georgetown University. He is the producer and director of Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana Prison Musicians and co-editor of The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity.
"By connecting the analysis of musical styles and filmic techniques to broader social and economic issues, this book provides a new perspective on documentary cinema, and will encourage film studies scholars and students interested in documentary practices to engage more fully with sound and music."
~Barley Norton, reader in ethnomusicology, Goldsmiths, University of London
"A call for a ciné-ethnomusicology, American Music Documentary is as much an invitation for a critical, reflexive ethnomusicology. Forging new ground in the study—and making—of music films, it is an utterly compelling read."
~Marina Peterson, author of Sound, Space, and the City