Showing papers on "Popular music published in 1982"

Analysing popular music: theory, method and practice

Abstract: Popular music analysis-why? One of the initial problems for any new field of study is the attitude of incredulity it meets. The serious study of popular music is no exception to this rule. It is often confronted with an attitude of bemused suspicion implying that there is something weird about taking ‘fun’ seriously or finding ‘fun’ in ‘serious things’. Such attitudes are of considerable interest when discussing the aims and methods of popular music analysis and serve as an excellent introduction to this article.

A History of Music Education in the United States

Abstract: Keene provides a detailed account of music instruction in colonial and nationalized America from the 1600s to the end of the 1960s. (Music)

A Theory Of Musical Genres. Two Applications

Abstract: This paper, delivered at the First International Conference on Popular Music Studies (Amsterdam, 1980), was originally printed in Popular Music Perspectives (ed. D. Horn and P. Tagg; 1981, Goteborg and Exeter: International Association for the Study of Popular Music, p. 52-81). Page turns in the original are marked between braces, e.g. “{52-53}” as the boundary between pages 52 and 53. Please note that Fabbri has considerably expanded the ideas presented below in his book Il suono in cui viviamo (1996, Milan: Feltrinelli) under the headings “Che genere di musica?” (p. 7-32) and “I generi musicali e i loro metalinguaggi” (p. 33-41).

A Song for One or Two: Music and the Concept of Art in Early China

Abstract: This study of theories of music and art in China from the classical period to the Six Dynasties is based on analysis and interpretation of textual and archaeological evidence. Its wide-ranging sources include mythology, aesthetic philosophy, musical lore, and notation systems. The evolution of theories of music and art is considered in the context of cosmological and moral philosophy.

A theoretical model for the sociomusicological analysis of popular musics

Abstract: Henry Pleasants has argued that the significant revolution in musical style to occur at the turn of the century was not that represented by the works of composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and their successors but that constituted through the advent of Afro-American and Afro-American influenced musics and the very substantial impact that these musics subsequently made, not only on main stream Western culture, but on world culture as a whole (Pleasants 1969). Yet despite the radical shift in musical and social aesthetic that has been maintained since the turn of the century through successive waves of so-called ‘popular’ music, remarkably little attention has been paid to popular music as a cultural form. As Jenny Taylor and Dave Laing have remarked, ‘popular music remains a poor relation in cultural theory, usually being tagged onto a list in which film or television takes pride of place’. A reason for this neglect, Taylor and Laing continue, ‘is its lack of status … which has the effect that rock is usually studied or taught in odd corners of the curriculum … In addition’, they conclude, ‘music as such poses great problems in the determination of meaning and signification’ (Taylor and Laing 1979, P. 43).

The critique criticised: Adorno and popular music

Abstract: Adorno's critique of popular music is generally considered the least convincing aspect of his otherwise impressive analysis of the predicament of Western music in the twentieth century. The immediate reasons as to why his views on popular music are difficult to accept are obvious enough, and it must be admitted that the usual criticisms – that Adorno is prejidiced, arrogant and uniformed in this field contain more than a grain of truth. However, my intention here is not to add anything new in the way of invective, nor is it to attack Adorno's basic thesis regarding the dilemma facing twentieth-century culture as a whole. Instead, I propose to offer some suggestions as to how Adorno's writings on popular music may be approached so that the end result is something more than outright dismissal of his extreme and often dogmatic value judgements. It is an attempt to rescue the baby from the bath water, so to speak, as it seems to me that hidden in his theory there remains a potential which was never properly recognised by Adorno.

What kind of music

Abstract: ‘What kind of music?’ This question has been put to me by hundreds of people, always for different reasons: by fellow train passengers who want to know what I do; by hi-fi dealers anxious to advise on the right type of speakers for listening to my record collection; in record shops when I enquire about the latest releases; by theatre managers when I have asked to hire their premises for a concert; by a young spectator while I am tuning up my '63 Stratocaster; by other musicians when I have asked to join a group; by civil servants responding to my application for a state grant; by sound engineers when I have hired a recording studio or amplification system; by the RAI* when I have proposed programmes or when I am engaged as a guitarist and they want to determine how much I should be paid; by policemen and frontier guards throughout Europe when I go through customs with my instruments and identity card on which is written: ‘Profession: Musician’.

The urbanisation of African music: some theoretical observations

Abstract: Interest in the processes of change involved in the transformation of rural African recreational music into popular music under urban conditions has grown substantially over the past decade (see Nettl 1978; Mukuna 1980). This interest has largely focused on two complementary problem areas: what such change can tell us about the principles and dynamics of musical development, and what processes of musical change may reveal about human behaviour (see Rycroft 1977, pp. 216–17) and the role of musical expression in social reorganisation. If the study of the urban music of modern Africa is to advance our knowledge in these areas, we must formulate ‘a conceptual framework in which changes and retentions of musical style and context can be understood within a synthesis of social and cultural change’ (Szwed 1970, p. 220). The results of my research into the past three centuries of urban musical change among black South Africans have suggested some tentative steps toward constructing such a framework (see Coplan 1980A).

The Political Meaning of Highlife Songs in Ghana

Abstract: This paper explores the political meaning of Ghanaian Highlife songs, which are generally regarded as pure entertainment. The paper is the result of a close cooperation between a Ghanaian insider (Asante-Darko) and a European outsider (Van der Geest). More than one hundred Highlife songs were collected, transcribed, and translated. All these texts are recorded songs. Nearly all Highlife songs examined in this paper are in the Twi (or Akan) language. (The Akan are a collection of culturally related societies with mutually intelligible languages. They number about four million people and live in the southern part of Ghana.) It should be made clear, however, that Highlife is also performed in other languages, within and outside of Ghana. This brief paper does not discuss the methodological problems involved in the use of artistic expressions for anthropological purposes. This has been done elsewhere (Fabian, 1978; Asante-Darko and Van der Geest, 1981). Instead, it analyzes the meaning of songs and people's reactions to them. The first section of the paper provides background information about Highlife music in Ghana. The second section deals with the hidden meaning of art in general and, in particular, with the hidden political meaning of Ghanaian Highlife songs. Highlife is a blend of traditional Akan rhythms and melodies with European musical elements, such as the use of European instruments and harmony. It encompasses a variety of artistic expressions: music, dancing, story-telling, and theater. Performances by Highlife bands are called concerts, even in the Twi language. They usually start with a comic or tragi-comic play filled with musical effects and intermezzos and end with a performance of Highlife songs (Richard, 1974; Collins, 1976a). Both the play and the songs can be about many different topics, rural or urban, modern or traditional, true events or stories. Generally, however, the songs deal with the problems of everyday life: poverty, marriage problems, hatred, gossip, shame, sickness, and death (Bame, 1974; Ricard, 1974). Apart from live performances, Highlife owes its popularity to recordings, which are produced in Ghana.

Musical aesthetics in present-day cairo

Abstract: F our widely applicable aesthetic criteria contribute to the acceptability of music within a particular culture: (1) conformity to established tradition; (2) artistic creativity; (3) innovation and modernity; and (4) the cultivation of individual and distinctive musical traits. In contemporary Cairo, tradition, creativity, innovation, and individuality are expressed in various, often imprecise, ways by musical critics, historians, musicians, and members of the listening public. Tradition is suggested by such labels as rvh Sharqiyyah, "Eastern spirit," and taba' Misrf, "Egyptian character."1 Creativity is described as a form of complexity resulting from musical workmanship on the part of the artist. Innovation is connected with a large number of musicians and musical compositions from the late 19th century to the present, and linked with a variety of musical novelties. Individuality is applied to many distinguishing musical traits ranging from unusual vocal timbre to specialization in a specific genre or musical style. Today, the music of Cairo can be viewed roughly as having one large central domain and several smaller peripheral domains, all overlapping and interacting with one another.2 Egyptians and neighboring Arabs generally refer to the music of the central domain as fann, "art" or "craft," mfusqd, "music," and tarab, "enchantment" or "entertainment." This music is performed by famous professional singers such as Umm Kulthum and 'Abd al-Wahhab, and features large orchestras consisting of pan-Arab instruments such as the qanin, 'uid, nay, and violin. This music is popular among Arab audiences and is well known even among non-Arabs as the dominant style of "Arab Music." The major peripheral domains are: old works composed mostly before World War I; Islamic religious genres; compositions modeled after European art music, mostly from the 1960s and early 1970s when the Cairo Symphony Orchestra was active in Egypt; works emulating European popular music; and indigenous folk music found in Cairo and in communities along the Nile. The aim of this study is to clarify the musical implications of tradition, creativity, innovation, and individuality, and to demonstrate how they interact with one another to influence the music of contemporary Cairo.

Beginnings and Endings in Western Art Music

Abstract: Beginnings and Endings (and Middles) Every musical performance starts and, some time later, stops. This statement is of course a truism. But it does not follow that every composition necessarily has a beginning and an ending. Some musics, notably certain ritual compositions of non-Western peoples and many contemporary Western art works, sound more like arbitrarily bounded segments of eternal continua than like closed statements. Although such open-ended species of music offer fascinating insights into the meanings of time in the societies that produce and utilize them, this paper concentrates on another type of music. Music which exhibits closure, a minority of the music on this earth, is more familiar to most Western ears. Musical closure is usually connected with tonality. Although pieces composed prior to the tonal period (roughly 1600-1910) exhibit some degree of closure, that closure became more fully established when rudimentary tonal procedures were introduced into the compositional styles of the sixteenth century. Only once tonality became fully developed was it possible for an entire composition to be a realization of a single tonal process. Similarly, the twentieth-century music which most obviously exhibits high degrees of closure is that in which some aspects of tonal thinking still function. Most music, whether closed or open, contains phrases, which have clearly defined beginnings, middles, and cadential endings. This internal rhythm of musical phrases is traceable ultimately to the physicalbreathingpatterns of singing. The degree to which a composition is closed depends on the manner in which successive phrases relate to one another. A composition in which the cadence of one phrase is appreciably stronger than the cadence of a previous phrase is a piece that exhibits a greater degree of closure than one in which each successive cadence is of equivalent finality. A strong cadence ends not only its phrase but also several preceding phrases. A phrase group is created in this manner. The final cadence of the piece is of course strongest, since it must bring to a close the entire work. Thus closure, like tonality itself, is hierarchical. Non-tonal systems of pitch organization, in vogue before and after the tonal period, exhibit some degree of closure, but no music is as richly or unequivocally hierarchical as tonal music. Tonality is not necessarily the only possible system of organization that can completely order a piece, but it is the most thorough and pervasive example we have. Hence tonal pieces, more than others, demand well-defined beginnings and endings. Satisfaction of this demand has led, not suprisingly, to stylistic conventions of beginnings and endings. The finality of cadences is the most obvious, but not the only, determinant of structural hierarchies in tonal music. There are also degrees of beginning - does a certain gesture begin just the phrase it starts, or does it function as the beginning of a phrase group, subsection, section, movement, or piece? Most importantly, the relationships of the middles of these segments - their points of greatest tension - determine the multi-leveled complexity of the hierarchy.1 The relative finality of tonal cadences depends on text (in vocal music), accentual pattern, orchestration, dynamics, textural density, and degree of tonal and rhythmic stability. The degree of stability is particularly significant. Composers of tonal music utilize ready-made pitch and rhythmic hierarchies. For example, a rhythmically well prepared authentic cadence on the tonic is far more stable and hence more potent for closure than a premature deceptive cadence on the submediant of a non-tonic key. Terms like "authentic cadence" and "deceptive cadence" are names for some of the conventions of tonal music. They are some of the many musical shapes that serve so often as cadences that they are heard as such even without reference to their context. Of course there are more cadential formulae than there are names for them, especially when we consider also non-pitch elements, which in tonal music are understood as secondary structural parameters. …

Developing Contemporary Idioms out of Traditional Music

Abstract: The search for new idioms of music or new ways of making music is one of the major preoccupations of our contemporary world of music, for whether it is Africa or Asia, Latin America or Europe, there seems to be widespread consciousness among musicians of our era that music must reflect the historical experience as well as the intellectual environment of those who make it. For historical and sociological reasons, this search has been much more intense in the western hemisphere and those countries musically within their orbit than elsewhere, and has led to highly technical approaches to music and the creation of equally complex music. Alongside these techniques and technical materials that have issued from them are cultural and aesthetic problems posed by the outcome of this search. These are, to a large extent, equally significant for musicians in the so-called Third World who share a similar con-

Popular Music: A Teacher's Guide

Abstract: The approach is multi-disciplinary. Popular music, it is argued, is not only a musical, but a social phenomenon.

Sources of popular song in early nineteenth-century Britain: problems and methods of research

Abstract: In urbanised Britain by the nineteenth century, the long symbiosis of the oral tradition with songs transmitted at least in part through printing was turning firmly in favour of the latter. Despite this — and largely because of the welcome rediscovery of industrial folk song — our picture of popular song between 1800 and 1850 is currently dominated by music in the survival of which oral transmission has played the greater part. Even when the music we hear can be shown with any certainty to have been in circulation at that time, a major cirticism of this emphasis arises. The oral tradition is a sifting process; what survives has passed ‘the test of time’, and this can only obscure the picture.