Times A-Changin': Flexible Meter as Self-Expression in Singer-Songwriter Music [Hardcover]

How did emerging singer-songwriters in the 1960s and 1970s develop traditions for musical self-expression? This book takes a new listen to the music of beloved songwriters Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Paul Simon, and Cat Stevens to show how they used malleable metric settings as an important part of their self-expressive toolkit in performance.In 1960s and 1970s singer-songwriter music, some artists used malleable metric settings alongside other features of self-expression in performance. This resulted in songs with extremes of self-expressive timing flexibility that cannot be accounted for using a single conception of meter. This book proposes a theory of flexible meter that recasts metric structure as encompassing the variety of metric scenarios presented by the self-expressive performance practice of singer-songwriters, from metric regularity to metric ambiguity, and vacillations between these two possibilities. Author Nancy Murphy explores performances by Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Paul Simon, and Cat Stevens to investigate the individual metric style of each artist and how their flexible metric techniques contribute to the self-expressive rhetoric of the singer-songwriter performance tradition.AbstractTable of ContentsList of Figures and CaptionsAcknowledgementsChapter 1: The Self Expressive Rhetoric of Flexible MeterSelf-Expressive FeaturesFlexible Meter and The Fiddle and the Drum Self-Expression and the Singer-SongwriterExpectations for Singer-Songwriter MusicBob Dylan and The Folk RevivalFlexible Meter as Self-Expression in Singer-Songwriter MusicChapter 2: The Theory of Flexible MeterTypes of Flexible MeterRegular MeterReinterpreted MeterLost MeterAmbiguous MeterMetric PotentialChapter 3: Regular and Reinterpreted MeterRegular MeterReinterpreted MeterJoni Mitchell's Rhapsodic SentimentsPaul Simon: Reinterpreted Meter Expressing Enigmatic LyricsCat Stevens's Intl³#