Showing papers in "Popular Music in 2007"

Rethinking the music industry

Abstract: This article examines a very basic question for popular music studies: what is ‘the music industry?’ It surveys the usage of the term in various arenas and argues that it is often used in ways which state or imply that the industry is a homogenous unit with shared objectives and interests. However, the reality is that this picture is, at best, outdated and an inaccurate portrayal of the organisational structure of the global music economy in the mid-2000s. In addition, to think of a single ‘music industry’ rather than music industries, plural, is simplistic and does little to aid understanding of those cultural industries which are primarily concerned with the creation, management and selling of music, either as a physical/digital product, a performance, or as a bundle of intellectual property rights. We tease out the implications of this, especially as they relate to understanding what is routinely referred to as ‘the music industry’ and the development of policies for it.

The melodic-harmonic 'divorce' in rock

Abstract: Several authors have observed that rock music sometimes features a kind of independence or ‘divorce’ between melody and harmony. In this article, I examine this phenomenon more systematically than has been done in the past. A good indicator of melodic-harmonic divorce is cases where non-chord-tones in the melody do not resolve by step. I argue that this does occur frequently in rock ‐ often with respect to the local harmony, and sometimes with respect to the underlying tonic harmony as well. This melodic-harmonic ‘divorce’ tends to occur in rather specific circumstances: usually in pentatonically based melodies, and in verses rather than choruses. Such situations could be said to reflect a ‘stratified’ pitch organisation. A particularly common situation is where the verse of a song features stratified organisation, followed by a chorus which shifts to a ‘unified’ organisation in which both melody and accompaniment are regulated by the harmonic structure.

From blatant to latent protest (and back again): on the politics of theatrical spectacle in Madonna’s ‘American Life’

Abstract: This paper explores ambiguities of political resistance and anti-war protest in Madonna’s music video, ‘American Life’. We begin by tracing the history of the making, promotion and eventual withdrawal of the video in the context of the military build-up and media campaign that preceded the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In these opening sections, we focus in particular on the (perhaps deliberately generated) controversy surrounding the work, and its problematic relationship with contemporary corporate mass media. We then proceed to describe the visual contents of the video, and present three distinct readings of it: first, as a gesture of overt protest against the war; second, as a work that is unaware of the manner in which its signifying textures unwittingly and covertly celebrate the culture it would critique, thus nullifying its overt subversive gesture; and third, as a work that is in fact far more politically resistant than it knows, through an uncanny form of protest that is dependent upon this very complicity.

t.A.T.u. You! Russia, the global politics of Eurovision, and lesbian pop

Abstract: The author argues that the success of the Russian pop duo, t.A.T.u., and in particular their participation in the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest, is revealing of the multiple and contradictory ways in which Russia is currently engaging with concepts of the national and the international. Specifically, the essay considers t.A.T.u.’s performance of faux-lesbian pop eroticism as a productive flashpoint of East-West misreading and failed translation that might account for the pop duo’s very different reception in Russia and the West. The controversies and inconsistencies that have followed t.A.T.u are located in the larger context of ongoing debates over the redefinition of post-Soviet Russian national identity and Russia’s emerging role on the global pop cultural stage. From this perspective, it is argued, the t.A.T.u. phenomenon interfaces with aspects of both post-Soviet and international youth cultures, shifts in Russian attitudes toward gender, sexuality, and identity politics, and the contradictory commodification and transnational circulation of distinctive ‘European’ identities that is Eurovision’s stock and trade. Thus, a secondary question addressed by the author concerns the value of Eurovision itself as a subject suitable for serious scholarly engagement.

Techno, Frankenstein and copyright

Abstract: This essay argues that the widespread but not widely recognised adaptation of Frankenstein in contemporary dance music problematises the 'technological' constitution of modern copyright law as an instrument wielded by corporations to exert increasing control over cultural production. The argument first surveys recent accounts of intellectual property law's responses to sound recording technologies, then historicises the modern discourse of technology, which subtends such responses, as a fetish of industrial capitalism conditioned by Frankenstein. The increasing ubiquity of cinematic Frankenstein adaptations in the latter two decades of the twentieth century outlines the popular cultural milieu in which Detroit techno developed its futuristic aesthetic, and which provided subsequent dance music producers with samples that contributed to techno's popularisation. These cultural and economic contexts intersect in an exemplary case study: the copyright infringement dispute in 1999 and 2000 between Detroit's Underground Resistance (UR) techno label and the transnational majors Sony and BMG.

'I Will Survive': musical mappings of queer social space in a disco anthem

Abstract: This essay reconsiders the constituencies of fans and detractors present at prime and bursting 1970s dicsos. It argues for a more gender-inclusive conception of discos multiracial ‘gay’ revellers and for a particular convoluted conception of ‘homophobia’ as this applies to the Middle-American youths who raged against disco in midsummer 1979. Their historic eruption at Chicago’s Comiskey Park came just weeks after the chart reign of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’, today a classic emblem of gay culture in the post-Stonewall and AIDS eras and arguably disco’s greatest anthem. Disco inspired lovers and haters, too, among music critics. Critical adulation and vitriol are conjoined in the present reading of musical rhetoric, which explores disco’s celebrated power to induce rapture in devotees at the social margins while granting anti-disco critics’ charge of inexpressivity in its vocals. In ‘Survive’ musical expressivity is relocated in the high-production instrumentals, where troping of learned and vernacular, European and Pan-American, sacred and profane timbres and idioms defines a euphoric space of difference and transcendence. The use of minor mode for triumphant purposes is also a striking marker of difference in ‘Survive’ and is among the factors at work in the song’s prodigious afterlife.

Authors and Rappers: Italian Hip Hop and the Shifting Boundaries of Canzone d'Autore

Abstract: By offering a historical reconstruction of the process of contextualisation of hip hop culture in Italy over the last fifteen years, the article assesses the current status of canzone d’autore and its changing configuration under the impact of rap music. From a theoretical point of view, the conceptual framework combines the sociological definition of ‘field of cultural production’ elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu with the related literature on social and symbolic boundaries. From a methodological point of view, the analysis is based on the data collected by Club Tenco (a cultural organisation which plays an institutional role within the field of canzone d’autore) as well as on a series of qualitative interviews carried out with a number of Italian rappers and cantautori. Special attention is paid to a very few crucial figures that can be considered paradigmatic examples in the dynamic process of boundary-making of the two cultural (sub-)fields of Italian rap and canzone d’autore.

Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978–1984. By Simon Reynolds. Faber and Faber, 2005. 752 pp. ISBN: 0571215696

Abstract: of musicological, sociological and historical concerns that, taken together, seem to shed as much light on authorial predilections as the reason for Woodstock’s enduring place in the common memory. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to see how a thorough-going account of the festival could be put together without sacrificing a degree of cohesiveness and, as is acknowledged, it was far from being a uniform experience – in either execution or perception. It is, on balance, preferable to have a more multifarious examination of the topic than a direct historical account which might be something of an injustice to the range of responses, descendants and effects of those three days. This dynamic, rather than static, approach ultimately pays dividends in providing a thought-provoking range of both questions and answers which helps to preserve the memory of Woodstock as a site of study, and starting point for further discussion, without setting it in stone as a subject whose meanings have been thoroughly delineated. In so doing it remains true to the organic and free spirited nature of the original Woodstock, or at least popular perceptions of it, as well as the task of probing such perceptions with academic clarity.

Marketing androgyny: the evolution of the Backstreet Boys

Abstract: The trend in popular culture away from idealising mature, strong ‘men’ in favour of young, androgynous ‘boys’ can in part be traced to how pop music impresarios such as Lou Pearlman present sexuality to their huge market of young listeners. During their time under the management of Wright Stuff, 1996–1998, the Backstreet Boys were the most popular manufactured boyband in the world, and as such influenced the sexual development of millions of young women and men. This paper examines how, during this period, the presentation and marketing of the Backstreet Boys, and their youngest member Nick Carter in particular, encouraged queer readings, and how those subtle queer subtexts in the music and videos may have affected their (mostly) young, uncritical audience.

Inventing recorded music: the recorded repertoire in Scandinavia 1899–1925

Abstract: The first Scandinavian records appeared in 1899. By 1925, over 27,000 sides had been made in the region, and recordings had become an established part of musical life. Half of the recordings were made by the Gramophone Company, the market leader, but there were at least a dozen competing firms. The companies had to find out by trial and error what types of music would be attractive to customers. Early recording artists were mostly well-known personalities from opera, theatre or music halls, and their repertoire had already been tried on the stage. Most Scandinavian records were pressed in Germany or the United Kingdom, and the companies also promoted their international repertoire in the region, but customers preferred local artists. A hundred years ago, opera singers were the only internationally known recording artists. Popular music was tied to local languages and traditions, and a demand for imported popular music only emerged after World War One, with the growing popularity of modern dance music.

Lazzari felici: Neapolitan song and/as nostalgia

Abstract: Although the canzone napoletana (Neapolitan song) is the best-known Italian popular music in the world, it is also the most misunderstood. It is mostly associated with operatic or quasi-operatic vocal styles, but all the other Neapolitan popular voices, the performance features and even the history of this musical genre are less well known. This essay in particular considers how the porous Neapolitan voice is a 'space' for complex negotiations between different musical styles, and how through this voice (that admits within itself the existence of other vocal styles) Neapolitan composers, musicians and singers articulate different relationships between music, history and nostalgia. Introduction: the porous city In an essay written with Asja Lacis and published in the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1925, Walter Benjamin pondered one of the qualities of Naples: its porosity. As porous as this stone is the architecture. Building and action interpenetrate in the courtyards, arcades, and stairways. In everything, they preserve the scope to become theaters of new unforeseen constellations. (. . .) No situation appears intended forever, no figure asserts it is 'thus and not otherwise.' (. . .) Music is omnipresent, not the mournful music of the courtyards but the brilliant sounds of street music. The broad cart, a kind of xylophone, is hung with colorful song texts. Here they can be bought. One musician turns the organ while another, standing beside it, appears with his plate before anyone who dreamily stops to listen. So, everything is mobile - music, toys, and ice cream circulate through the streets. This music is both a residue of the last and a prelude to the next feast day. Irresistibly, the festival penetrates each and every working day. Porosity is the inexhaustible law of life in this city, reappearing everywhere. (Benjamin and Lacis 1986, pp. 165-8) Extending the concept of porosity from architecture to music and thence to Neapolitan culture in general, Benjamin and Lacis defined a distinctively Neapolitan way of life. Porosity as metaphor and concept thereafter became pivotal for writers and intellectuals, particularly Neapolitan ones, who saw porosity in relation to the condition of Naples as a city symbolically 'liminal' in its essential being, a city on the boundary that lived life to the limit. Porosity expresses the duplicity of Naples, tolerant in its receptivity yet resentful of impositions, a city that nourishes itself on conflicts and assimilates rather than annuls them. 1

The Italian Canzone and the Sanremo Festival: change and continuity in Italian mainstream pop of the 1960s

Abstract: In this essay I propose an analysis of the Sanremo Italian Song Festival from 1964 to 1967, to which is added an introduction about its history and musical, social and cultural features. The aim of the essay is not only to propose a different perspective on the songs presented at the Festival in the 1960s, but also to re-configure our understanding of the popular music mainstream and the mechanisms of musical change in our mass-mediated and industrialised societies, as well as the question of identifying the peculiarities of the Italian canzone.

Selling Italy by the sound: cross-cultural interchanges through cover records

Abstract: Since the beginning of modern canzone, cover versions have represented a shortcut to importing and exporting songs across national borders. By breaking language barriers, these records have played the role of ambassadors of Italian music abroad and, vice-versa, of Anglo-American music at home. Although cover records mania boomed especially in the 1960s, the history of Italian popular music is disseminated by such examples, including exchanges with French- and Spanish-speaking countries as well. After reflecting on the nature of ‘cover’ and offering a definition that includes its being a cross-cultural space most typical of Italy and other peripheral countries in the age of early contact with pop modernity, the paper focuses on the economic, aesthetic and sociological paradigms that affect the international circulation of cover records and suggests a few theoretical explanations that refuse the obsolete ‘cultural imperialism’ thesis in favour of a more flexible view hinged upon the notion of ‘deterritorialisation’. In the final section the paper provides a short history of Italian records that were hits abroad, decade by decade, and ends by highlighting those artists that played the role of cultural mediators between Italy and the world.

The Hendrix chord: blues, flexible pitch relationships, and self-standing harmony

Abstract: Jimi Hendrix was often characterised by his exotic appearance and extravagant performance, but underneath these trappings was an extraordinary guitarist who managed to transform some of the key elements of blues and rhythm-and-blues traditions. An important feature of Hendrix’s music is his characteristic use of the seventh chord with a sharp ninth, or the augmented ninth chord, now often referred to as the ‘Hendrix chord’. This paper examines some ways in which Hendrix used this chord by surveying and drawing comparisons between various instances. It is not necessarily the fully voiced version of the chord that Hendrix used, but interval combinations drawn from or related to it, with particular timbres and articulations. Together these define what might be called a ‘sharp ninth sound’. Through register placement, timbre, articulation, and chordal function, it is intimately tied to the blues idiom, adding a blues tonal element. This is one aspect of Hendrix’s music, then, that shows his deep roots in the blues. Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) revolutionised the playing of the electric guitar during the four years (1967–1970) of his career as a rock superstar, expanding its tonal and timbral possibilities through an innovative melding of blues, rhythm-and-blues, and rockwithvarioustimbre-shapingtechniquesanddevices.Hewasoftencharacterised in terms of his exotic appearance, stage mannerisms, the high volume at which he played, and the myriad of sound effects he experimented with, but underneath these trappings was an extraordinary guitarist who managed to transform some of the key elements of the blues and rhythm-and-blues traditions into something that seemed light-years from what everybody else was doing. An important and widely recognised feature of Hendrix’s music is his characteristic use of the seventh chord with a sharp ninth, or the augmented ninth chord. 2 It is perhaps most familiar to us through ‘Purple Haze’, an early hit record with a memorable riff and inspired lyrics that became a signature piece for him, and judging frommostaccountsitwasthisparticularinstancethatledtotheappellation,‘Hendrix chord’. 3 The most common voicing for this chord on the guitar, as played in E, is e–gY–d–g, and indeed, this voicing is used as the first chord in ‘Purple Haze’, in this casefunctioningastonic.Hendrixusedthechordextensively,oratleastcharacteristic interval combinations drawn from it, in about one third of his studio recordings and numerous concert performances, establishing it as an essential component in the identity of his sound.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the 1970s: l’Orchestra Co-operative, 1974–1983

Abstract: L'Orchestra, a cooperative established in 1974/75, based in Milan, Italy, was a unique organisation, involving musicians, sound and lighting engineers, music critics and teachers, and concert managers. It was started as a kind of artists' union, a federation of folk, rock, political song, jazz, avant-garde groups, but in a few months it became a concert agency and a record company; it held music courses for amateurs and published music tutorials; it helped managing the first multipurpose art/social centre in Milan. L'Orchestra promoted studies along various disciplinary perspectives (sociology, music education, ideological criticism, semiotics) that in some respects embody and in others help explain the development of popular music studies and of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) in Italy. A special kind of 'participant observation' Very little is known even in Italy about l'Orchestra, a co-operative officially established in April 1975 in Milan by musicians and other music activists (if this is a good translation for operatori musicali). Since 1983, when its operations came to an end and regular press coverage ceased, nothing was written about it. A few recent books covering Italian music and politics in the 1970s (like Casiraghi 2005, or my own Album Bianco, Fabbri 2002) include references to l'Orchestra, but no full article or essay, no book, no thesis was dedicated to the subject, compared to the many dealing with various aspects of Italian music life at that time: bands, singer-songwriters, record labels, organisations like Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano, independent radios, political and cultural groups and associations.1 However, l'Orchestra enjoys a kind of mythical status amongst Italian musicians and music critics: it is always mentioned as 'that' legendary independent label, publishing records by Italian and European groups as varied as Stormy Six, Gruppo Folk Internazionale and Ensemble Havadin, Quarto Stato, Pan Brumisti, Picchio dal pozzo, Mamma non piangere, Henry Cow and Art Bears, Etron Fou Leloublan, Sogenanntes linksradikales Blasorchester, a few Italian singer-songwriters (Mario De Leo, Alfredo Lacosegliaz, Alessandro Carrera) and most of Italian radical jazz soloists and groups active in the 1970s (Guido Mazzon, Toni Rusconi and OMCI, Andrea Centazzo, Mario Schiano, Giancarlo Schiaffini). But l'Orchestra wasn't just a record label, and its typical all-encompassing attitude

Mouse Tracks: The Story of Walt Disney Records . By Tim Hollis and Greg Ehrbar. Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi, 2006. 221 pp. ISBN 1 57806 848 7 (paperback); ISBN 1 57806 849 5 (cloth)

Abstract: lack of flow and cohesion across the book. Additional boxes provide information and comment that should either be in the main text or left out entirely. Inserts titled ‘Author’s opinion’ and ‘Author’s note’ make one wonder what the main body of text is meant to be! The two chapters on the history of popular music are a very odd inclusion. There are plenty of excellent texts that deal more thoroughly with these topics and the author’s comments are rather facile and simplistic. The following extract makes the point on both the writing style and content:

The Italian Way(s). A special issue on Italian popular music

Abstract: Popular music studies have experienced a strange fate in Italy. After a promising beginning in the 1970s and the early 1980s (with the direct contribution by musicians and scholars like Franco Fabbri and Umberto Fiori to the new intellectual formation), a situation of stasis followed. The latter was characterised by the presence of individual important voices but without the support of a constituency strong enough to guarantee in Italy the institutionalisation of this new field of research.

The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sounds of Popular Music. By Virgil Moorefield. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: The MIT Press, 2005. 143 pp.

Abstract: more complex formal, often polyrhythmic ideas without losing the direct impact of minimalism. One recurring notion is that of the desire on the part of many of these composers to create memorable musical ‘images’ as opposed to what Gann views as an obsession with musical language or technique (pp. 168–70), which was the tendency with serial and even process-driven minimalism. The use of the term ‘image’ as opposed to ‘hook’ or ‘catchiness’ shows Gann to be distinguishing between a pop musician’s and classical composer’s emphasis on issues which are similar but not the same. In the wake of recent developments at the paper, with a new more emphatically commercial ownership – which has made several highly contentious changes, such as the sacking of Robert Christgau, and placed restrictions on political comment – it would appear that The Village Voice will no longer have a place for a scene such as the one Gann has surveyed, and there seems to be little sign of anything remotely equivalent in the mainstream cultural press (leaving music magazines such as The Wire to one side). Gann’s journalism is much more occasional now that he has turned more towards his own composing and to an academic career, but he now maintains a blog (http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic) which exerts as much if not more influence than his columns for the Voice. The subject of this collection may not be the most immediately appealing to the readers of Popular Music as it is more obviously connected to matters in contemporary classical music, and perhaps it is problematic that so few of the names Gann celebrates have become more widely known. Yet the book offers a valuable insight from an engaging and immensely readable author into music in the wake of minimalism, and could work well as a companion piece to a study such as Robert Fink’s (2005) recent cultural study of minimalism in classical and disco music.

Paolo Conte: Italian 'arthouse exotic'

Abstract: Paolo Conte is the most internationally successful of the Italian singer-songwriters who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. He is also among the most idiosyncratic, eclectic and unusual exponents of what Franco Fabbri has defined as the canzone d’autore (author’s song). Nonetheless he remains a rather arcane, cult figure in the Anglophone world – an example of what Simon Frith has called ‘the unpopular popular’. A combination of apparent opposites – the provincial and the cosmopolitan – his music appropriates a global sweep of influences without being definable as ‘world music’. Characteristics of both his rough, untrained singing style and wry, ironic and opaque compositions have strong affinities with US singer-songwriters like Tom Waits and Randy Newman, and he draws heavily on early American jazz influences, although he remains quintessentially Italian. This makes him difficult to categorise in the world music market.

Putting spanners in the works: the politics of the 99 Posse

Abstract: This article examines the politics of the Neapolitan rap band 99 Posse. Growing up in a city characterised by high unemployment and crime, individual band members independently gravitated towards far left politics, and emerged in late 1991 as the house band of the ‘Officina99’, an autonomist squat in the east of the city which gave the group its name. This article examines their political commitment through their songs, covering subjects from youth unemployment to the exploitation of casual workers. Another theme is how, over a decade, their initial denunciation of ‘communism’ mutated into sympathy. It is argued that the reason for their huge success – apart from their rather controversial decision to sign up with a major multinational such as BMG – lies in their ability to make these themes relevant to disaffected young people.

Music and Urban Geography. By Adam Krims. New York & London: Routledge, 2007. xli + 203 pp. ISBN 0-415-97011-3 (hardback); ISBN 0-415-97012-1 (paperback)

Abstract: contributed to the development of a ‘Balearic beat’ which has shaped popular music genres across Europe and further afield. The next two contributions deal with the diasporic imagination. Chris Lawe Davies and Karl Neuenfeldt look at how the ‘magical islands’ of the Torres Strait emerge in the ‘identity narratives’ of two island songwriters who, along with twothirds of the islanders, now live on mainland Australia. Despite the geographic distance, the islanders maintain close emotional ties to the island, and music helps sustain these links and re-animate conception of the islands as ‘home’. Through a discussion of the Carnival genres of Trinidad, Tina Ramnarine argues that performance on the island is at its very core diasporic in nature, looking simultaneously to Africa, India and Trinidad itself (through the Caribbean Diaspora). Thus, in Trinidad – as on many other islands – boundaries are blurred, creating spaces for the exploration of musical spheres that are tuned to ‘common human experience’, challenging our notions of boundaries and ethnicities. While the role of music in the construction of island identities arises in several contributions, it is especially marked in the final two chapters. Werner Graebner’s discussion of the taarab music of Zanzibar actually challenges local narratives, which attribute the emergence of the genre to an envoy of the Sultan Seyyid Bargash bin Said, who was sent to Egypt for musical instruction, supporting the island’s orientation toward the Islamic world rather than the African mainland. Through meticulous analysis, Graebner shows how taarab was actually shaped through centuries of exchange across the Indian Ocean, and this is still the case, as taarab evolves into ‘modern taarab’. Fiona Richards closes the volume with a look at how three British composers, John Ireland (1879–1962), Judith Weir (b. 1954) and Andrew Hugill (b. 1957), have represented British islands in their music. Islandness, Richards argues, is deeply embedded in the British imagination, and through expressions of nostalgia, landscape and folklore, British composers have created soundscapes that perpetuate this fascination. In conclusion, Island Musics is a stimulating exploration of the dynamic relations between music and place in contexts around which one can draw a line – or can one? Despite their clear territorial demarcation, islands are as much imagination as reality. Thus, our fascination with island sounds. And thus, the relevance of this volume to island studies, but also to ethnomusicology generally.