Showing papers on "Popular music published in 1999"

Music Genres and Corporate Cultures

Abstract: Music Genres and Corporate Cultures explores the seemingly haphazard workings of the music industry, tracing the uneasy relationship between economics and culture. Keith Negus examines the contrasting strategies of major labels. Through in-depth case studies of three major genres; rap, country, and salsa, Negus explores the way in which the music industry recognises and rewards certain sounds, and how this influences both the creativity of musicians, and their audiences. He examines the tension between raps public image as the spontaneous `music of the streets' and the practicalities of the market, and asks why country labels and radio stations promote top-selling acts like Garth Brooks over hard-to-classify artists like Mary Chapin-Carpenter, and how the lack of soundscan systems in Puerto Rican record shops affects salsa music's position on the US Billboard chart. Drawing on over seventy interviews with music industry personnel in Britain and the United States, Music Genres and Corporate Cultures shows how the creation, circulation and consumption of popular music is shaped by record companies and corporate business styles while stressing that music production takes within a broader culture, not totally within the control of large corporations.

The subcultures reader

Abstract: Introduction I Sub-Societies and the Sociological Tradition II Youth Sub-Cultures III Contesting the Subcultural Terrain IV Ethics and Ethnography V Historical Studies VI Spatial Organisations and Territorial Identities VII Sounds, Styles, and Embodied Politics VIII Mediated, Commercial and Virtual Subcultures Bibliography

The Performance of Music

Abstract: Publisher Summary Music performance is a large subject that can be approached in many different ways. This chapter focuses on empirical research of music performance and related matters. Most of this research is concerned with Western tonal music and mainly art music. Excellence in music performance involves two major components like a genuine understanding of what the music is about, its structure and meaning, and a complete mastery of the instrumental technique. Evaluation of performance included many studies which are reviewed earlier. Evaluation occurs in the everyday activity of music critics, music teachers, and musicians. An overall evaluation is considered as a weighted function of the evaluations in the specific aspects. In order to maintain the tempo and to achieve perceived synchrony, musicians should therefore play a small amount ahead of the beat they hear. With sharp attacks the delay is less, and instruments with sharp attacks may therefore serve as “beat-definers” for the rest of an ensemble. In addition, some attempts are made to predict evaluation of music performances from the physical characteristics of the performances.

Popular music in theory : an introduction

Abstract: Popular Music in Theory provides a critical introduction to the key theoretical issues which arise in the study of contemporary popular music. The book is organized in a way that shows how popular music is created across a series of relationships that link together industry and audiences, producers and consumers. Starting from the dichotomy between production and consumption which characterizes much work on popular culture, Keith Negus explores the equally significant social processes that intervene between and across the production-consumption divide, examining the ways that popular music is mediated by a series of technological, cultural, historical, geographical, and political factors. This broad framework provides signposts to various tracks taken by the sounds and images of popular music, and also highlights distinctive theoretical routes into the study of contemporary popular music. This volume is intended mainly for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in sociology, media and communication studies, and cultural studies. However, it will also appeal to those who enjoy thinking and talking about popular music and who might like to delve a little deeper.

Teaching music musically

Abstract: 1. Musical value 2. Music as culture: the space between 3. Principles of music education 4. Why and how of musical assessment 5. What of the future?

Indie: The institutional politics and aesthetics of a popular music genre

Abstract: This article is concerned with the complex relations between institutional politics and aesthetics in oppositional forms of popular culture. Indie is a contemporary genre which has its roots in punk's institutional and aesthetic challenge to the popular music industry but which, in the 1990s, has become part of the ‘mainstream’ of British pop. Case studies of two important ‘independents’, Creation and One Little Indian, are presented, and the aesthetic and institutional politics of these record companies are analysed in order to explore two related questions. First, what forces lead ‘alternative’ independent record companies towards practices of professionalization and of partnership/collaboration with major corporations? Second, what are the institutional and political-aesthetic consequences of such professionalization and partnership? In response to the first question, the article argues that pressures towards professionalization and partnership should be understood not only as an abandonment of previou...

In the Culture Society: Art, Fashion and Popular Music

Abstract: Angela McRobbie's new collection of essays considers the social consequences of cultural proliferation and the social basis of aesthetic innovation.

Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures

Abstract: The pulsing beats of salsa, merengue, and bolero are a compelling expression of Latino/a culture, but few outsiders comprehend the music's implications in larger social terms. Frances R. Aparicio combines the approaches of musicology and sociology with literary, cultural, Latino, and women's studies to offer a detailed genealogy of Afro-Caribbean music in Puerto Rico. She compares the music to selected Puerto Rican literary texts, then looks both at how Latinos/as in the United States use salsa to reaffirm their cultural identities and how Anglos eroticize and depoliticize it in their adaptations. The close examination of lyrics shows how these songs articulate issues of gender, desire, and conflict, and Aparicio's interviews with Latinas/os reveal how they listen to salsa and the meanings they find in it.

Substance Use in Popular Movies and Music.

Abstract: DOCUMENT RESUME

Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience

Abstract: This vivid ethnography of the musical lives of heavy metal, rock, and jazz musicians in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio shows how musicians engage with the world of sound to forge meaningful experiences of music. Unlike most popular music studies, which only provide a scholar's view, this book is based on intensive fieldwork and hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews. Rich descriptions of the musical life of metal bars and jazz clubs get readers close to the people who make and listen to the music. Of special interest are Harris M. Berger's interviews with Timmy "The Ripper" Owens, now famous as lead singer for the pioneering heavy metal band, Judas Priest. Owens and other performers share their own experiences of the music, thereby challenging traditional notions of harmony and musical structure. Using ideas from practice theory and phenomenology, Berger shows that musical perception is a kind of practice, both creatively achieved by the listener and profoundly informed by social context.

Key terms in popular music and culture.

Abstract: Acknowledgments. Notes on contributors. Introduction: Putting It Into Words: Key Terms for Studying Popular Music Bruce Horner (Drake University) and Thomas Swiss (Drake University). Part I: Locating Popular Music in Culture:. 1. Ideology: Lucy Green (University of London). 2. Discourse: Bruce Horner (Drake University). 3. Histories: Gilbert Rodman (University of South Florida). 4. Institutions: David Sanjek (BMI Archives). 5. Politics: Robin Balliger (Stanford University). 6. Race: Russell Potter (Rhode Island College). 7. Gender: Holly Kruse (La Salle University). 8. Youth: Deena Weinstein (DePaul University). Part II: Locating Culture in Popular Music. 9. Popular: Anahid Kassabian (Fordham University). 10. Music: David Brackett (SUNY Binghamton). 11. Form: Richard Middleton (University of Newcastle upon Tyne). 12. Text: John Shepherd (Carleton University). 13. Images: Cynthia Fuchs (George Mason University). 14. Performance: David Shumway (Carnegie Mellon University). 15. Authorship: Will Straw (McGill University). 16. Technology: Paul Theberge (Concordia University). 17. Business: Mark Fenster (Yale Law School) and Thomas Swiss (Drake University). 18. Scenes: Sara Cohen (University of Liverpool). Index.

Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945

Abstract: Have records, compact discs, and other sound reproduction equipment merely provided American listeners with pleasant diversions, or have more important historical and cultural influences flowed through them? Do recording machines simply capture what's already out there, or is the music somehow transformed in the dual process of documentation and dissemination? How would our lives be different without these machines? Such are the questions that arise when we stop taking for granted the phenomenon of recorded music and the phonograph itself. Now comes an in-depth cultural history of the phonograph in the United States from 1890 to 1945. William Howland Kenney offers a full account of what he calls "the 78 r.p.m. era"-from the formative early decades in which the giants of the record industry reigned supreme in the absence of radio, to the postwar proliferation of independent labels, disk jockeys, and changes in popular taste and opinion. By examining the interplay between recorded music and the key social, political, and economic forces in America during the phonograph's rise and fall as the dominant medium of popular recorded sound, he addresses such vital issues as the place of multiculturalism in the phonograph's history, the roles of women as record-player listeners and performers, the belated commercial legitimacy of rhythm-and-blues recordings, the "hit record" phenomenon in the wake of the Great Depression, the origins of the rock-and-roll revolution, and the shifting place of popular recorded music in America's personal and cultural memories. Throughout the book, Kenney argues that the phonograph and the recording industry served neither to impose a preference for high culture nor a degraded popular taste, but rather expressed a diverse set of sensibilities in which various sorts of people found a new kind of pleasure. To this end, Recorded Music in American Life effectively illustrates how recorded music provided the focus for active recorded sound cultures, in which listeners shared what they heard, and expressed crucial dimensions of their private lives, by way of their involvement with records and record-players. Students and scholars of American music, culture, commerce, and history-as well as fans and collectors interested in this phase of our rich artistic past-will find a great deal of thorough research and fresh scholarship to enjoy in these pages.

Towards a digital library of popular music

Abstract: Digital libraries of music have the potential to capture popular imagination in ways that more scholarly libraries cannot. We are working towards a comprehensive digital library of musical material, including popular music. We have developed new ways of collecting musical material, accessing it through searching and browsing, and presenting the results to the user. We work with different representations of music: facsimile images of scores, the internal representation of a music editing program, page images typeset by a music editor, MIDI files, audio files representing sung user input, and textual metadata such as title, composer and arranger, and lyrics. This paper describes a comprehensive suite of tools that we have built for this project. These tools gather musical material, convert between many of these representations, allow searching based on combined musical and textual criteria, and help present the results of searching and browsing. Although we do not yet have a single fully-blown digital music library, we have built several exploratory prototype collections of music, some of them very large (100,000 tunes), and critical components of the system have been evaluated.

Syncopation in rock: a perceptual perspective

Abstract: While study of the social and cultural aspects of popular music has been flourishing for some time, it is only in the last few years that serious efforts have been made to analyse the music itself: what Allan Moore has called ‘the primary text’ (1993, p. 1). These efforts include general studies of styles and genres (Moore, 1993; Bowman, 1995); studies of specific aspects of popular styles such as harmony and improvisation (Winkler 1978; Moore 1992, 1995; Walser 1992), as well as more intensive analyses of individual songs (Tagg 1982; Hawkins 1992). In this paper I will investigate syncopation, a phenomenon of great importance in many genres of popular music and particularly in rock.

Apostles of Rock: The Splintered World of Contemporary Christian Music

Abstract: Contemporary Christian music is one of the fastest growing areas of popular music. CCM is heard on more than 500 radio stations throughout America, and outsells both jazz and classical music in record shops. This text is a critical, objective examination of contemporary Christian music. The authors reveal how it has become an American cultural phenomenon and how this genre of music relates to a larger popular culture. The book maps the world of CCM by bringing together the perspectives of the people who perform, study, listen to and market this music.

Acting in concert : music, community, and political action

Abstract: "A highly readable, innovative investigation of the potential political implications of popular music." --Edwar Bryan Portis, Texas A&M University "Political science has too often ignored the critical political dimensions of music in social life. Now Mark Mattern has given us a groundbreaking examination of the varied political functions of populist musics--from social glue to social dynamite--as reflected in three fascinating, diverse, and disenfranchised case-study communities. Acting in Concert is, truly, music to intellectual ears." --George H. Lewis, author of Side Saddle on the Golden Calf: Social Structure and Popular Culture in America "Acting in Concert is a pioneering work that opens up new ways of thinking about the public dimensions of music. In an era when music is all too often packaged, standardized, and drained of energy and political passion, Mattern shows through vivid case studies and probing discussion of large ideas like politics and community that people's participation in the creation and experience of music can be a vital resource for democracy." --Harry C. Boyte, coauthor of Building America In this lively account of politics and popular music, Mark Mattern develops the concept of "acting in concert," a metaphor for community-based political action through music. Through three detailed case studies of Chilean, Cajun, and American Indian popular music, Mattern explores the way popular muisicians forge community and lead members of their communities in several distinct kinds of political action that would be difficult or impossible among individuals who are not linked by communal ties. More than just entertainment, Mattern argues that popular music can serve as a social glue for bringing together a multitude of voices that might otherwise remain silent, and that political action through music can increase the potential for relatively marginalized people to choose and determine their own fate. Mark Mattern is an assistant professor of political science at Chapman University, Orange, California.

The Historical Performance of Music: An Introduction

Abstract: Offering students and performers a concise overview of historical performance, this 1999 book takes into account the many significant developments in the discipline. It addresses practical matters rather than philosophical issues and guides readers towards further investigation and interpretation of the evidence provided, not only in the various early instrumental and vocal treatises, but also in examples from the mainstream repertory. Designed as a parent volume for the series Cambridge Handbooks to the Historical Performance of Music, this book provides an historical basis for artistic decision-making which has as its goal the re-creation of performances as close as possible to the composer's original conception. It relates many of the issues discussed to major works by Bach, Mozart, Berlioz and Brahms, composed c.1700–c.1900, the core period which forms the principal (though not exclusive) focus for the whole series.

Rules of rebellion: slamdancing, moshing, and the American alternative scene

Abstract: Since 1993, popular music magazines in the USA such as Rolling Stone have reported the outbreak of an alternative music ‘revolution’, as bands such as Green Day (who trace their musical roots to late-1970s punk groups such as the Sex Pistols) achieve large-scale popular success. In September 1994 the Boston Globe newspaper devoted significant coverage to the free Green Day concert in Boston that was cancelled midway through as the crowd of 70,000 (comprised mostly of teenagers) threatened to overwhelm the security guards. The news media have focused their attention on the dancing known as ‘slamdancing’, or ‘moshing’, which is associated with this newly popular music. Slamdancing and moshing are two different, albeit similar, styles of dance in which participants (mostly men) violently hurl their bodies at one another in a dance area called a ‘pit’. The media attention paid to this music and its associated violent audience-behaviour paint them as emerging threats to public safety. On 10 September 1994, the Globe reported that ‘there have been severe injuries in mosh pits, where fans act out the hostile lyrics of groups such as Green Day’.

Riffs, Repetition, and Theories of Globalization

Abstract: iffs-short repeated segments of sound, deployed singly, in call and response, in layers, as melody, accompaniment, and bass line-per- vade African-American musics and various world popular musics, especial- ly those of the African diaspora. They are but one aspect of a multilayered set of musical and cultural practices contributing to an African American musical sensibility, and they interact freely with the entire musical complex that Samuel Floyd (1995) has termed ring shout elements: Calls, cries, and hollers; call-and-response devices; additive rhythms and poly- rhythms, heterophony, pendular thirds, blue notes, bent notes, and elisions, hums, moans, grunts, vocables, and other rhythmic-oral declamations, interjec- tions and punctuations; off-beat melodic phrasings and parallel intervals and chords; constant repetition of rhythmic and melodic figures and phrases (from which riffs and vamps would be derived); timbral distortions of various kinds; musical individuality within collectivity; game rivalry, hand clapping, foot pat- ting, and approximations thereof; apart playing; and the metronomic pulse that underlies all African-American music (Floyd 1995:6). In jazz, the alleged monotony and repetitiveness of riff patterns, as well as their supposed non-developmental quality in a large-scale structural sense, have been grounds for the ambivalent admittance of musicians such as Count Basie into the modernist critical canon. Gunther Schuller finds inherent flaws (including harmonic stasis and lack of melodic interest) in the "riff cum blues" format of many Basie compositions, and Andre Hodeir, while praising Basie's rhythmic sensibility, finds his recordings character- ized by "extreme melodic monotony" (Schuller 1989:253; Hodeir 1962:97). A more pessimistic view of repetition in modernist critical theory can be found in the work of Theodor Adorno, who, through a chain of metaphor- ical associations, equates the repetition in popular music with industrial standardization, loss of individuality, military marching, and hence fascism (Adorno 1941; 1990:61).

Popular Music On Screen: From Hollywood Musical to Music Video

Abstract: A critical and historical overview of the place, role and function of popular music on film and television screens, describing what the author denotes as 'the visual economy of popular music'.

A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song

Abstract: Introduction: The Languages of Black-Jewish Relations "Yiddle on Your Fiddle": The Culture of Black-Jewish Relations "I Used to Be Color Blind": The Racialness of Jewish Men "Swanee Ripples": From Blackface to White Negro "Lift Ev'ry Voice": African American Music and the Nation "Melancholy Blues": Making Jews Sacred in African American Music Epilogue: The Lasting Power of "Black-Jewish Relations" Notes Index

Strategies for music education in Africa: towards a meaningful progression from tradition to modern

Abstract: There are three stage of music education in traditional Africa. The first stage inducts a new born baby into feeling the sensations of musical pulse and sound as a sympathetic participant till the ...

The Parents' Music Resource Center: from information to censorship

Abstract: My purpose in this paper is to recount the history of the Parents' Music Resource Center, an American organisation founded in 1985 whose main concern has been to denounce the obscenity and violence of rock music on the grounds that it is partly responsible for the numerous ills that plague the United States. The PMRC claimed that it only wished to inform the public but my suggestion here is that the actions of the organisation resulted in a de facto censorship of popular music. I shall accordingly describe the various steps of the process that led from information to censorship as well as probe the deeper reasons that may have motivated the action of the Center.

Contemporary Northern Irish Society: An Introduction

Abstract: This is a critical overview of the various sources of social and political identity in Northern Ireland. The book examines the key variables of sociology - status, class and gender and, in this case, ethno-religion - and explains why ethno-religious sentiment has become the principle source of political identity. A range of themes are covered: the role and status of women; the representations of the conflict and peace process in the media; sport; and the importance of popular music.

Representations of femininity in popular music

Abstract: Every text and every reading has a social and therefore political dimension, which is to be found partly in the structure of the text itself and partly in the social relations of the reader and the way they are brought to bear upon the text. (Fiske 1989b, pp. 97–8)The position outlined in the quotation above suggests that meanings are the result of convergence between material properties of a text, and the particular social allegiances of the reader. Two approaches to music and meaning are embodied in this stance: the first theorises music as the material realisation of social forces which are structured into the text and into the reading subject, while the second promotes a view in which the text is rewritten in the act of recontextualisation within the practices of everyday life. Both approaches, the former represented by the critique of mass culture offered by the Frankfurt School, the latter by theories of popular culture, have their roots in the Marxist tradition which theorises the fundamental conflict in society as one between the dominant economic class and all those subordinated by it. Within this context, music is subject to a critique which reveals its stance as either affirming or opposing the ideology of the dominant economic order. The central question is therefore not whether music is ideological, but how ideology is made material and the extent to which listeners are free to produce meanings. In this paper these issues are examined in relation to ideologies of femininity in popular music.

Gothic music and the inevitability of genre

Abstract: (1999). Gothic music and the inevitability of genre. Popular Music and Society: Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 31-50.