Popular Music Studies

Anarchist Punks Resisting Gentrification: Countercultural Contestations of Space in the New Berlin

by David Drissel

Modes of music listening and modes of subjectivity in everyday life

by Ruth Herbert

Journal of Sonic Studies, Vol. 2(1), May 2012
Available online

Technologically mediated solitary listening now constitutes the prevalent mode of musical engagement in the... more Technologically mediated solitary listening now constitutes the prevalent mode of musical engagement in the Industrialized West. Music is heard in a variety of real-world contexts, and qualities of subjective experience might similarly be expected to be wide-ranging. Yet though much is known about function (music as a behavioural resource) less research has focused on ways in which music mediates consciousness. This essay critiques conceptualizations of music listening in extant literature and explores how listening to music in daily life both informs and reflects subjectivity.

Psychological and musicological literature on music listening commonly distinguishes between autonomous and heteronomous ways of listening, associating the former with unusual and the latter with mundane, habitual listening scenarios. Empirical findings from my research, which used ethnographic methods to tap qualities of subjective experience, indicate that attentive and diffused listening do not map neatly onto 'special' and 'ordinary' contexts and that a distributed, fluctuating attentional awareness and multimodal focus are central to many experiences of hearing music.

Cliff Richard:'n Opvoedkundige waardering

by Jannie Pretorius

The music that comes from the streets

by Magda Pucci

published in: MUSIMID 3. Meeting of Music and Media, 2007, Santos:  Criterio, 2007

The Concept of Lo-fidelity. The Cultural and Aesthetic Implications of Lo-fi Music Production

by Melle Kromhout

Over the Ruined Factory There's a Funny Noise: Throbbing Gristle and the Mediatized Roots of Noise in/as Music

by Melle Kromhout

Popular Music and Society, Vol. 34, No. 1, February 2011, pp. 23–34

Britain's Throbbing Gristle used a kind of aural and conceptual violence to pursue specific ideological goals. The... more Britain's Throbbing Gristle used a kind of aural and conceptual violence to pursue specific ideological goals. The concept of noise is crucial to the understanding of this use, but is often explained in a limiting discourse. Friedrich Kittler offers an alternative approach by showing how the introduction of media technology initially formed this discourse. When one assesses the use of noise and its relation to violence from such a media historic point of view, Throbbing Gristle's layered work becomes conceptually coherent and turns out to be an exemplary case study for the status of noise in popular music more generally.

As distant and close as can be Lo-fi recording: site-specificity and (in) authenticity

by Melle Kromhout

Paper presented at The Fifth Annual Art of Record Production Conference, Cardiff, 2009

In the paper I elaborate on lo-fi recording and its relation towards its hi-fi counterpart, using literature on (the... more In the paper I elaborate on lo-fi recording and its relation towards its hi-fi counterpart, using literature on (the history of) audio recording, the concept of noise – one of lo-fi’s most distinctive features in opposition to hi-fi – and the conceptualization of spatiality and physicality in and of music. Since, as Stan Link points out (in “The Work of Reproduction in the Mechanical Aging of an Art: Listening to Noise.” Computer Music Journal, 25:1, 2001: 34–47), there now exist ‘some very high-tech means to achieve “lo-fi” ends,’ I focus on whether lo-fi is or isn’t moving away from the hi-fi aesthetics of the music studio, what meanings are actually performed through lo-fi aesthetics as a strategy for authenticity, relying on site specificity and physicality, and what this might mean for the construction of the music studio as a conceptual framework in the study of popular music.

Emotional Blueprints: War Songs as an Affective Medium

by Serguei Alex. Oushakine (Сергей Ушакин)

in: Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe. Ed. by Mark D. Steinberg and Valeria Sobol. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011.

'Crippled with nerves’: popular music and polio, with particular reference to Ian Dury

by George McKay

Popular Music 28:3 (October 2009), 341-365. Special issue on popular music and disability (ed. McKay).

This article looks at a remarkable cluster of popular musicians who contracted and survived poliomyelitis (‘infantile... more This article looks at a remarkable cluster of popular musicians who contracted and survived poliomyelitis (‘infantile paralysis’) epidemics through the twentieth century, and ways in which they managed and, to varying extents, explored their polio-related impairments and experiences in their music. Drawing on medical history and disability studies, it focuses largely on the pop and rock generation of polio survivors – the children and young people from the 1940s and 1950s who were among the last to contract the disease prior to the successful introduction of mass vaccination programmes (in the West). These include Neil Young, Steve Harley, Joni Mitchell, and Israel Vibration. The article then looks in detail at the work of Ian Dury, who was for a while the highest profile visibly physically disabled pop artist in Britain, and who produced a compelling body of works exploring the experiences of disability.

Includes 7 images.

Published in a special issue of Popular Music, on popular music and disability, containing eight essays by scholars from Europe, USA, Australia, guest-edited by George McKay.

Endless Analogue: Situating Vintage Technologies in the Contemporary Recording & Production Workplace

by Dr. Samantha Bennett

Presented at: 7th Art of Record Production Conference. San Francisco State University. December 2011

Article submitted to: Journal on the Art of Record Production. Issue #7.

Back to the Future: The Quest for Sonic Perfection in the Age of Digitalisation

by Dr. Samantha Bennett

Presented at: Digital Pop and the Death of the Musical Artefact. Popular Music Research Unit Symposium. Goldsmiths College, London. October 2011.

The Listener as Remixer: Mix Stems in Online Community and Competition Contexts

by Dr. Samantha Bennett

Presented at: Experience, Engagement, Meaning: Biennial Conference of IASPM UK/ Ireland. University of Cardiff. September 2010

Beyond Baker Street

by Tara Brabazon

Montage, Sunday Observer, April 1, 2012

Locating the canon in Tamworth: Historical narratives, cultural memory and Australia’s “Country Music Capital”

by Sarah Baker

co-authored with Alison Huber. Accepted for publication in Popular Music  (forthcoming 2013).

This article concerns the regional city of Tamworth, NSW, Australia, a place that prides itself on its reputation as... more This article concerns the regional city of Tamworth, NSW, Australia, a place that prides itself on its reputation as Australia’s home of country music. The authors consider the ways in which stories surrounding country music’s past are produced and circulated in a city which seems determined to record, memorialise and narrate a coherent and public narrative about its country music heritage. The paper focuses in particular on some of the processes through which certain aspects of Australian country music’s history become dominant or canonical within this narrative.

O MODALISMO NA MUSICA POPULAR URBANA DO BRASIL

by Vicente Ribeiro

The Gendered Sound of South Africa: Karen Zoid and the Performance of Nationalism in the New South Africa

by Nicol Hammond

Yearbook of Traditional Music Vol 42 (2010) pp. 1-20

Are the Gorillaz a postmodern artistic statement or a culture industry commodity to satisfy an image obsessed market?

by Jake Whiteley

This paper will be examining the Gorillaz through multiple theoretical frameworks in an attempt to contextualise such... more This paper will be examining the Gorillaz through multiple theoretical frameworks in an attempt to contextualise such a statement.

It can be inferred that although mainstream success has been achieved (by conventional methods of analysis: Awards, Sales, and Market power), the Gorillaz true cultural significance can be expressed through themes of the postmodern; of bricolage, image, irony, political statement, and through caricature as simulacra.

Student Music

by Paul Long

This is a version of a paper that began as ‘Rock (and everything else) Goes to College.  The role of universities, the NUS and student union venues in the business of live music’,  presented at ‘The Business of Live Music’, University of Edinburgh, 2011. It has been published in 2011 as ‘Student Music’’, Arts Marketing: An International Journal. Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 121-135.

This paper aims to explore in detail aspects of the role and character of student unions as venues for live music in... more This paper aims to explore in detail aspects of the role and character of student unions as venues for live music in post-war Britain. Guiding questions ask: what part have student unions, entertainment officers and the wider body of students – in their role as consumers – played in the economics of the live music business? What is specific to the business of live music in student unions? How is this sector of activity related to national and local scenes, promoters, non-student audiences
and the wider popular music culture and economy?

The research draws upon formal and informally archived
sources to formulate definitions and scope for research, tracing the historical emergence and fortunes of popular music programming in universities.

The research traces a history of professionalization of music provision by students, a result of co-ordination efforts by the National Union of Students. It outlines the specific character of
live music business in student unions as determined by its subsidized nature.

The role and character of student unions in the economy of the music industry is rarely considered and this paper offers a set of concepts for further research and detailed historical insights into this sector of business.

«Το λαϊκό στοιχείο στην ελληνική Οπερέττα»

by Manolis Seiragakis

«Το λαϊκό στοιχείο στην ελληνική Οπερέττα», στο πρόγραμμα της Εθνικής Λυρικής Σκηνής για τους Απάχηδες των Αθηνών, Αθήνα 2008, σ. 31-36.

Changing the Sound and Image of Commercial Country Music: The John Rich Effect

by David Pruett

For presentation at Society for American Music annual meeting,
March 2012, Charlotte, North Carolina

In his seminal study, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (1997), sociologist Richard Peterson emphasizes... more In his seminal study, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (1997), sociologist Richard Peterson emphasizes the structural arrangements in which musical artists work, i.e. their distinct social system, while deemphasizing the role of innovation in the contributions of a few select people.  Using Nashville artist, producer, songwriter, music publisher, and television personality John Rich as a case study, my research takes a different approach from Peterson, examining instead how a single individual who, while working within Nashville’s commercial structure, has contributed to significant change in the system’s output, 2004-2011.

I emphasize this time frame because it marks a period of dramatic change in both the sound and image of commercial country music. This is evidenced by the sudden popularity in 2004 of Big & Rich (John Rich and Kenny Alphin), Gretchen Wilson, whom Rich discovered and produced, and the MuzikMafia that Rich co-founded and that Country Music Television (CMT) identified as the number-one hit of the year. Rich has since charted forty Billboard Top Forty country singles as a songwriter, ten albums as a recording artist, and eleven Top Ten albums as a producer, and has been featured on a variety of hit television shows, including Donald Trump’s The Celebrity Apprentice, whose fourth season he won in May 2011. Drawing upon extensive interviews with the artist himself, this paper explores Rich’s influence on Nashville’s contemporary scene, contextualizing his frequently underrated cultural and historical significance to the ongoing development of commercial country music.