When rock and roll exploded onto the American cultural mainstream in the 1950s, enthusiasts and detractors alike identified the backbeat as the most distinctive and captivating feature of this controversial ‘new’ music. Although it shocked many, the backbeat soon became ubiquitous, and it remains among the most prevalent features in contemporary popular music around the globe. Long before the rock and roll revolution, backbeating had a rich history in the performance of African-American music, dance, worship, labour, and sexuality. This chapter establishes the backbeat as a pervasive and powerful manifestation of signifyin(g), as theorized by Henry Louis Gates, Jr, a strategic form of cultural production that responds to, reinterprets, and builds upon received texts or expressions to expose, challenge, and invert the hierarchies they (re)produce. The origins of the backbeat are traced to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African-American musical traditions – including worship music, prison songs, early jazz, and hokum blues – and its early history is charted through a critical survey of recordings from the 1920s to the 1950s. This history reveals that the backbeat often functioned as a means of resisting oppressive social structures and forging group solidarity, and it illuminates how and why the backbeat became a central convention of drum kit performance practice.

The drum kit is most commonly considered an instrument rooted in popular music traditions and is a defining element of most popular music styles. In recent years the drum kit has emerged in the unlikely context of contemporary classical music. As a result, there is an expanding repertoire of fully notated music by composers operating within the framework of Western classical music notational traditions. This chapter illuminates the influence that the drum kit has had on classical music since the early twentieth century and presents an overview of composed works starting with Darius Milhuad’s La Créations du Monde from 1923 and ending with Nicole Lizée’s Ringer from 2009. The chapter shows that early approaches to drum kit composition began as an assimilation of existing popular music styles with little progression in performance techniques and expression for the instrument. More recently composers have found a balance between contemporary classical music techniques and the drum kit’s rich traditions, grooves, and styles to make something progressive and new. Through the author, Ben Reimer’s, own commissioning, performances, and research the chapter contemplates the elements that lead to this confluence in contemporary classical drum kit music

Polycarp was an important Christian leader of the first half of the second century. Although he wrote many letters, only one has survived – his Epistle to the Philippians (Pol. Phil.). A narrative of his death is also extant, the Martyrdom of Polycarp (Mart. Pol.). Collections of the Apostolic Fathers have consistently included both works. Hill and Beatrice have argued that Polycarp stands behind various traditions from “the elder” cited by Irenaeus. A canon list ascribes a Didaskalia to Polycarp.

What does it mean to build digital worlds in the Anthropocene? Despite their compromised provenance, computer and video games offer a potent avenue for designing and partaking in environmental scenarios. As a review of the varied approaches to ludic world design suggests, differences in opinion as to who or what constitutes a viable game world – broadly speaking, designers, players, software or spaces – bear on environmental impasses in our shared world, which is marked by multispecies entanglements and obligations. If the essence of world-building lies primarily not in a singular, authorial intent or vision but in a collective imagining and realisation, then designed worlds may serve as both inspirations and cautionary tales for our ecologically compromised times.

In this chapter we examine the intersection of drumming and disability by foregrounding the experiences of drummer and co-author Cornel Hrisca-Munn, who describes his disability as multi-limb deficient. Commencing with a discussion of concepts from the field of disability studies, we explain how drumming exposes the inadequacy of either/or medical- and social-model thinking. Nuanced understandings of lived experiences help to make sense of disability theory, and we use examples from Cornel’s life as a drummer to highlight the importance of complexity and context. We proceed with a narrative by Cornel on how he has experienced others’ perceptions of him through his online presence on internet and social media platforms. Cornel’s experiences of being the object of others’ inspiration porn or trolling on social media highlight how difficult it is for him to be regarded solely as a drummer; instead, he is compartmentalized as a ‘disabled drummer’. Following, we provide a detailed description of how Cornel plays the song ‘Everlong’ by Foo Fighters to illustrate that how people see Cornel play drums changes how they hear him play drums. Finally, Cornel details how he is often compared to Rick Allen of Def Leppard, and explains why this comparison is problematic.

In this autoethnographic essay, the author – a drummer – describes how he derives meaning from playing the drum kit. He presents accounts of playing drums both alone and in the context of an original rock band. Drawing from existing scholarship on aesthetic experience and meaning in music making, the author argues that while he plays drums often in a state of flow, it may be unhelpful to construe this – as others have done – as music making for its own sake. Rather than positioning his drumming as autotelic or intrinsically worthwhile, the author explains how he plays for the fulfilment derived therefrom, as part of a life lived in search of eudaimonia – flourishing both individually and as part of a community. Drumming in these contexts is, the author argues, a locus of spirituality, understood through the lenses of embodiment, authenticity, and personal agency as a form of success. Playing drums – for this drummer – provides a connection to, and a window into, his soul.

It was the culmination of a months-long legislative fight, not to mention some eighty years of swirling allegations about Catholic sexual deviance, when the local sheriff and health commissioner arrived at St. Joseph Academy in remote Mena, Arkansas, where Catholics represented a tiny minority of the population. The county officials entered the school under authority bestowed by the state’s new Convent Inspection Act of 1915, designed to end the rumored practice of Catholic institutions harboring girls for the sexual gratification, as one enraged Arkansan put it, of a “lecherous bunch” of priests.1 Discovering no evidence of crime or malfeasance among the several Sisters of Mercy and the small number of female students at the school, the sheriff, evidently impressed by his hosts, apologized to them and promised to return for a social visit with his wife. Meanwhile, elected officials in Georgia successfully installed a similar law aimed at routing out Catholic perversion, and legislators in seven other states – from Iowa to Oregon to Minnesota – debated their own versions of a convent inspection bill. Together, these largely forgotten efforts at policing sexual activity in Catholic institutions hint at how significant and controversial Catholicism has been in the history of gender and sexuality in the United States.

The document known to us as the Epistle to Diognetus is a perplexing text. Its origins are obscure since the author is anonymous, the identity of the recipient remains unknown, the text has several lacunae, the integrity of the final two chapters is questionable, and nothing in the document indicates a specific date or provenance. What is more, Diogn. is entirely unknown to Christian authors of the patristic and medieval periods since no-one mentions or cites the document as far as we know.

The Shepherd of Hermas packs a striking number of conundrums, textual, compositional, theological, and reception historical. To begin with, despite the fact that there are more papyri of this book than any of the other Apostolic Fathers, as well as than most New Testament books taken separately, we still do not have the complete text in Greek. As a result, in current critical editions the last chapters are supplied from the Latin (and Ethiopic) translations. It is also the longest AF book, replete of allegorical material, occasionally inconsistent and largely repetitive, which leads modern readers every now and again to describe it as naive, dilettante, and incompetent, or plainly boring. Moreover, the manner in which the book is written in large narrative sections with seemingly poor connection from one to another has occasioned several theories of multiple authorship.

Christianity and Judaism as we know them today can both be traced back to the richly diverse Judaism that flourished in Palestine in late Second Temple times, but it was only after 70 CE that the two traditions began to define themselves over against each other in mutually exclusive ways. The period between the First Jewish Revolt (66–74 CE) and the Bar Kokhba war (132–135 CE) – the period in which much of the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers was written – was crucial in this development. The aim of this study will be to throw light on this parting of the ways. It will outline briefly what we know about Rabbinic Judaism in Palestine and synagogal Judaism in the Diaspora at this time, and then read against this picture the references to Jews and Judaism in the Apostolic Fathers, especially in the Epistle of Barnabas. What Barnabas shows is a Christianity that sharply differentiates itself from Judaism, but at the same time does not want to sever all ties. It wants to hold on to the Jewish Scriptures as word of God, but through a process of allegorization to appropriate them as Christian Scripture.

This chapter directs our attention to the drum kit played outside the jazz and rock realm, which most commonly dominates the efforts of scholars in their research. The case of Brazil serves as a backdrop to discuss the development of Brazilian rhythms on the drum kit, highlighting different approaches to play samba like batucada and samba jazz. Firstly, the text presents a Historical Overview, pointing to seminal drummers such as Luciano Perrone, Edison Machado, Dom Um Romão and Airto Moreira. Secondly, it investigates Technical Characteristics of Brazilian Drum Kit Playing, in an attempt to describe what is generally referred to as ‘the Brazilian feel’. Within that discussion, the limitations of music notation in order to capture nuances of Brazilian rhythms emerge, especially in the context of irregular spacing between sixteenth notes. Lastly, through a brief survey of drummers from more recent decades, it becomes evident that newer generations of musicians have continued to expand Brazilian drum kit playing with their own interpretation of traditional rhythms, applying new concepts, techniques and creative ideas.

Music leadership is a foggy notion with many meanings. Leaders may be chosen, unchosen, appointed, unappointed, or self-appointed. As a powerful dimension of collaborative performance, leadership is framed here first as a linear-hierarchical model– a ‘one-way street’; second, as a visionary-transformational model – a ‘two-way street’; and third, as a plural-distributed model – a ‘shared street’. All three are examined in the light of Leader-Member Exchange theory of leadership (LMX). The extent to which the leader and subordinate exchange resources and support beyond what is expected based on the formal employment contract evidences a high LMX. A low LMX relationship is one in which the employee performs within the bounds of the employment contract but contributes nothing extra. Nine musicians, selected for their many years of experience in giving, receiving, and sharing leadership functions, provided interview data. Analysis generated a number of different elements that were identified as having a reported impact on music decision making. This chapter uses those elements to contribute to a growing body of knowledge of use to the drummer in her development of a suite of 'off-instrument' skills now seen as every bit important as her suite of 'on-instrument' ones.