Showing papers on "Popular music published in 2022"

The Rhythm Image

Abstract: Music videos play a critical role in our age of ubiquitous streaming digital media. They project the personas and visions of musical artists; they stand at the cutting edge of developments in popular culture; and they fuse and revise multiple frames of reference, from dance to high fashion to cult movies and television shows to Internet memes. Above all, music videos are laboratories for experimenting with new forms of audiovisual expression. The Rhythm Image explores all these dimensions. The book analyzes, in depth, recent music videos for artists ranging from pop superstar The Weeknd to independent women artists like FKA twigs and Dawn Richard. The music videos discussed in this book all treat the traditional themes of popular music: sex and romance, money and fame, and the lived experiences of race and gender. But they twist these themes in strange and unexpected ways, in order to reflect our entanglement with a digital world of social media, data gathering, and 24/7 demands upon our attention.

Metafilm Music in Jean-Luc Godard's Cinema

Abstract: This monograph explores the underresearched use of music in Jean-Luc Godard’s films and video essays from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. While Godard is largely hailed as a leading innovator of visual montage, unique storytelling style, and groundbreaking cinematography, his achievements as a leading pioneer in sculpting complex soundtracks altering the familiar relationship between sound and image have been mainly overlooked. On these soundtracks, music assumes the unique role of metafilm music. Metafilm music self-consciously refers to its own role as film music and disrupts the primary function of film music as an essential filmic device creating cinematic illusion. The concept of metafilm music describes how Godard thinks with film music about film music. Metafilm music manifests itself in Godard’s work in four distinct manners: as fragmentized musical cues; as the same fragment verbatim repeated several times; as extrapolated, short excerpts from classical or popular music; and as music making as a model for filmmaking. With a detailed analysis of these parameters, the book explores fragmented and repeated music as Godard’s critique of the leitmotif technique. Godard further self-reflexively investigates genre-specific music in musical comedies, films noir, and melodramas, as well as prototypical film music as arguably its own musical genre. His last foray into metafilm music entails music making as a metaphor for filmmaking. By thinking with music about the function of film music, Godard has created throughout his career multilayered soundtracks that challenge the conventional norms of film music and sound.

Was bei vielen Beachtung findet: Zu den Transformationen des Populären

Abstract: Abstract Being popular means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged. Rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. They do not speak to the quality or originality of the popular, only to its evident success across different scales of evaluation. People do not buy good products, they buy popular ones; they do not listen to the best music, but to popular music; they do not share, like or retweet important, but popular news. Even the ‘unpopular’ can be popular: a despised politician, a hated jingle, an unpopular measure. The popular modifies whatever it affords with attention. Its quantitatively and hierarchically comparative terms (‘bestseller’, ‘outperformer’, ‘high score’, ‘viral’) generate valences that do not inhere in the objects themselves. Conversely, the non-popular, which does not find any measurable resonance in these terms, risks being dismissed as irrelevant or worthless simply because it does not appear in any rankings or ratings. This can also be observed particularly with artefacts whose relevance as part of high culture could be taken for granted even when they do not achieve mass resonance. Our paper proposes the following central hypothesis: The transformations of the popular, which began in Europe around 1800 and introduced the powerful distinction between low culture and high culture, establish a competitive distinction between the popular and the non-popular becoming dominant over the course of the 20th century. As a result, the popular is no longer either culture of the ‘lower classes’ or the inclusion of the ‘people’ in the service of higher goals. The popular today is hardly the object of desired transgressions (Leslie Fiedler’s “cross the border, close the gap”) or an expression of felt or feared “massification” or “flattening”. The dissemination of the popular is no longer a normative project. It has, in fact, become an inescapable condition of cultural self-understanding in the globalised present. The purpose of our research is to devise a theory of the popular that does justice to this fact. Our research outline identifies two decisive transformations that have led to this condition: 1. the popularization of quantifying methods to measure attention in popular culture around 1950; 2. the popularization of the Internet around 2000, whereby the question of what can and cannot become popular is partially removed from the gatekeepers of the established mass media, educational institutions and cultural elites and is increasingly decided via social media.

Traces of the Spirit

Abstract: "Sylvan's thesis furnishes far more of the same valued experiences than is usually realized: ritual activity, communal ceremony, a philosophy and worldview, a code for living one's life, a cultural identity, a social structure, a sense of belonging, and crucially, Sylvan argues encounters with the numinous." — Journal of Religion Most studies of the religious significance of popular music focus on music lyrics, offering little insight into the religious aspects of the music itself. Traces of the Spirit examines the religious dimensions of popular music subcultures, charting the influence and religious aspects of popular music in mainstream culture today and analyzing the religious significance of the audience's experiences, rituals, and worldviews. Sylvan contends that popular music subcultures serve the function of religious communities and represent a new and significant religious phenomenon. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork using interviews and participant observation, Sylvan examines such subcultures as the Deadheads, raves and their participants, metalheads, and Hip Hop culture. Based on these case studies, he offers a comprehensive theoretical framework in which to study music and popular culture. In addition, he traces the history of West African possession religion from Africa to the diaspora to its integration into American popular music in such genres as the blues, rock and roll, and contemporary musical youth subcultures.

On the Development and Practice of AI Technology for Contemporary Popular Music Production

Abstract: Although the use of AI technology for music production is still in its infancy, it has the potential to make a lasting impact on the way we produce music. In this paper we focus on the design and use of AI music tools for the production of contemporary Popular Music, in particular genres involving studio technology as part of the creative process. First we discuss how music production practices associated with those genres can differ significantly from traditional views of how a musical work is created, and how this affects AI music technology. We argue that—given the role of symbolic representations in this context, as well as the integration of composition activities with editing and mixing—audio-based AI tools are better suited to support the artist’s creative workflow than purely piano-roll/MIDI-based tools. Then we give a report of collaborations with professional artists, in which we look at how various AI tools are used in practice to produce music. We identify usage patterns as well as issues and challenges that arise in practical use of the tools. Based on this we formulate some recommendations and validation criteria for the development of AI technology for contemporary Popular Music.

OUP accepted manuscript

Abstract: Abstract In the small but growing literature on the philosophy of country music, the question of how we ought to understand the genre’s notion of authenticity has emerged as one of the central questions. Many country music scholars argue that authenticity claims track attributions of cultural standing or artistic self-expression. However, careful attention to the history of the genre reveals that these claims are simply factually wrong. On the basis of this, we have grounds for dismissing these attributions. Here, I argue for an alternative model of authenticity in which we take claims about the relative authenticity of country music to be evidence of ‘country’ being a dual-character concept in the same way that it has been suggested of punk rock and hip-hop. Authentic country music is country music that embodies the core value commitments of the genre. These values form the basis of country artists’ and audiences’ practical identities. Part of country music’s aesthetic practice is that audiences reconnect with, reify, and revise this common practical identity through identification with artists and works that manifest these values. We should then think of authenticity discourse within country music as a kind of game within the genre’s practice of shaping and maintaining this practical identity.

Community music interventions, popular music education and eudaimonia

Abstract: The fields of community music and popular music education have expanded rapidly over the past few decades. While there are many similarities between these two fields, there are aspects that set these two areas of practice apart. This article seeks to explore the intersections of community music interventions and popular music education to explain how they are similar and in which ways they are unique. This discussion centres on examinations of facilitation, ownership of music, training and certification, inclusivity, life-long music making, amateur engagement, informal learning and non-formal education, and social concerns. The Greek philosophy of eudaimonism, understood as ‘human flourishing’ is then used to explore the opportunities for human fulfilment through popular music education and community music approaches.

Sounds like meritocracy to my ears: exploring the link between inequality in popular music and personal culture

Abstract: Extant research documents the impact of meritocratic narratives in news media that justify economic inequality. This paper inductively explores whether popular music is a source of cultural frames about inequality. We construct an original dataset combining user data from Spotify with lyrics from Genius and employ unsupervised computational text analysis to classify the content of the 3,660 most popular songs across 23 European countries. Drawing on Lizardo’s enculturation framework, we analyze lyrics through the lens of public culture and explore their link with individual beliefs as a reflection of personal culture. We find that, in more unequal societies, songs that frame inequalities as a structural issue (lyrics about ‘Struggle’ or omnipresent ‘Risks’) are more popular than those adopting a meritocratic frame (songs we describe as ‘Bragging Rights’ or those telling a ‘Rags to Riches’ tale). Moreover, we find that the presence in public culture of a certain frame is associated with the expression of frame-consistent individual beliefs about inequality. We conclude by reflecting on the promise of automatic text classification for the study of lyrics, the theorized role of popular music in the study of culture, and by proposing venues for future research.

Comparing the Prevalence of Alcohol, Combustible and Electronic Cigarettes, Hookah, and Marijuana, in Music Videos across 6 Genres of Popular Music from 2014–2020

Abstract: Abstract Objectives To determine the frequency of alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes/cigars, e-cigarettes, and hookah portrayals in popular music lyrics and videos on YouTube across 6 genres over 7 years; assess percent change over the years, document brand placement, and determine frequency of promotion of substances/devices by Teen Choice Award celebrities. Methods We analyzed 699 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 between 2014 and 2020. Two raters coded 10% of the songs to establish inter-rater reliability and remaining songs were reviewed by one rater. Results The majority of songs (59.2%) on YouTube included either lyrical or video depictions and 20.6% included both. Songs that featured substances/devices were viewed 148 billion times on YouTube as of February 2021. Nearly 25% of videos depicting substances/devices featured branding. Forty-three (18.22%) of the music celebrities who featured substances/devices in their videos received one or more Teen Choice Awards during the study period. Conclusions Popular music celebrities promote substance use in their lyrics and music videos, which are easily accessible to children and adolescents. Some of these celebrities are highly popular and influential among adolescents. Policy Implications. Findings support the need to limit promotion of these substances to youth by influencers to reduce substance use and misuse.

The cultural shareability of Korean popular media in India: A reflexive thematic analysis of BTS music videos

Abstract: In this article, the BTS phenomenon in India was examined by looking closely at the music of this South Korean band. A reflexive thematic analysis was performed on five BTS music videos followed by interviews with self-identified Indian BTS fans. Three salient themes were identified in the music videos and fans’ interview responses: the fusion of multiple music video genres, cultural hybridity and love as an evolutionary process. It is suggested that these identified themes are culturally shareable with Indian fans. The cultural shareability of the music of BTS has gradually created a mere-exposure effect amongst Indians, which is responsible for their growing affinity for Korean popular media.

Genre-Conditioned Acoustic Models for Automatic Lyrics Transcription of Polyphonic Music

Abstract: Lyrics transcription of polyphonic music is challenging not only because the singing vocals are corrupted by the background music, but also because the background music and the singing style vary across music genres, such as pop, metal, and hip hop, which affects lyrics intelligibility of the song in different ways. In this work, we propose to transcribe the lyrics of polyphonic music using a novel genre-conditioned network. The proposed network adopts pre-trained model parameters, and incorporates the genre adapters between layers to capture different genre peculiarities for lyrics-genre pairs, thereby only requiring lightweight genre-specific parameters for training. Our experiments show that the proposed genre-conditioned network outperforms the existing lyrics transcription systems.

“We are of one blood”: Hungarian popular music, nationalism and the trajectory of the song “Nélküled” through radicalization, folklorization and consecration

Abstract: ABSTRACT This paper addresses the relationship between popular music, nationalism and political power in a local context through the case of Hungary. Through the combination of musicological group analysis, fieldwork, interviews and media analysis, we follow the trajectory of the song “Nélküled” (Ismerős Arcok 2007) between 2007 and 2021 through its changing musical, social, media and political contexts. We identify three processes: firstly, the radicalization of the band in a subcultural context parallel to the development of the so-called national rock genre; secondly, the popularization and folklorization of the song, whereby it becomes at least partly detached from the original performing artists and embedded into the everyday culture of broader population segments; and finally, the parallel processes of political legitimation and cultural consecration. Our enquiry contributes a political economic perspective to the relatively under-theorized system of relationships between popular music, its social-cultural (genre, taste) and industrial logics, politics and the media by complementing media-based theories of subculture and mainstream with an understanding of political actors and processes. Through this, we also complement studies of everyday nationalism with viewing cultural practices in the political context of hegemonic right-wing ideology and increasing government control of the cultural and media industries.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy

Abstract: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy is the first thorough analysis of how policy frames the behavior of audiences, industries, and governments in the production and consumption of popular music. Covering a range of industrial and national contexts, this collection assesses how music policy has become an important arm of government, and a contentious arena of global debate across areas of cultural trade, intellectual property, and mediacultural content. It brings together a diverse range of researchers to reveal how histories of music policy development continue to inform contemporary policy and industry practice. The Handbook maps individual nation case studies with detailed assessment of music industry sectors. Drawing on international experts, the volume offers insight into global debates about popular music within broader social, economic, and geopolitical contexts.

‘What's So Funny?’: Videomemes and the Circulation of Contemporary Music in Social Media

Abstract: Prosumers use sound and music as parodic tools to transform the meaning of the original content. These practices give rise to the audio-visual phenomena of videomemes—mash-ups, shreds, literal versions, … —which have become popular in everyday communication through social media. The selection of a particular piece, genre, or repertoire has social and political implications: it helps establish the position of the person making the selection in online networks and contributes to the negotiation of meaning and canons. Thus, both prosumers and consumers use musical videomenes as cultural artefacts in communication, configuring processes of mutual recognition and interacting in different ways in online communities. In this article, I analyse the circulation of contemporary music videomemes in social media. First, I contextualise the relevance of these amateur productions in the digital era. Then, I discuss the power of parody to reinforce and subvert discourses in this repertoire. Finally, I explore three categories of videomemes—covers, collisions, and shreds—analysing paradigmatic case studies in order to illustrate the most common processes in the creation and circulation of these productions.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Youth Culture

Abstract: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Youth Culture provides a comprehensive and fully up-to-date overview of key themes and debates relating to the academic study of popular music and youth culture. While this is a highly popular and rapidly expanding field of research, there currently exists no single-source reference book for those interested in this topic. The handbook is comprised of 32 original chapters written by leading authors in the field of popular music and youth culture and covers a range of topics including: theory; method; historical perspectives; genre; audience; media; globalization; ageing and generation.

The Feel of the Guitar in Popular Music Performance

Abstract: Popular-music guitarists frequently reference the physicality of the fretboard when discussing songwriting and performance. Brittany Howard, for example, advocates that the feel of her guitar and physical gestures — chord shapes, licks, and riffs — are more critical to her craft than theoretical knowledge regarding pitch and harmony. However, in-depth gestural perspectives on musical organization are underrepresented in popular-music scholarship. This video article responds by investigating the relationship between fretboard gestures and popular music’s features in two contexts. First is a close analysis of “Short and Sweet” that focuses on how Howard coordinates chord voicings and larger left-hand shifts with important rhetorical moments reflected in the song’s lyrics. A following motion-capture study then surveys how similar gestural trends might generalize to performances by other guitarists. Data from performances by 14 local practicing guitarists demonstrate that the musicians typically prefer to articulate moments of formal transition with the largest physical gestures. Such findings suggest a degree of gestural intentionality and strategy amongst guitarists and clarify the contexts in which a guitarist might choose to maintain or abandon fretboard affordances.

A history of popular music education in the United States

Abstract: Despite many current popular music styles originating in the United States, there has typically been a lack of inclusion of popular music in school-based music education contexts in the United States. In recent years, however, the incorporation of popular musics has become more commonplace with the propagation of modern band programmes and initiatives designed to diversify the genres of music included in school music. With the increased presence of popular music education (PME) in US schools, it is timely to further examine the history of popular music in school music programmes as well as the social conditions and educational rationales that led to the emergence of PME in US school music programmes. This article combines existing research on the history of PME into one document while adding further research and descriptions of important events in the history of PME in the United States not yet in print.

Climate-conscious popular music education: Theory and practice

Abstract: Given popular music’s impact and its tradition in environmental activism, popular music education seems suited to contribute to a societal transformation towards sustainability in which the arts are increasingly considered to play an important role. The article proposes goals and methods of a climate-conscious popular music education, illustrated with examples from the author’s experience in music education. Drawing from and adding to eco-literate music pedagogy and activist music education, the article suggests that a climate-conscious popular music education should include: reducing the carbon footprint of educational practices; cultivating ecological consciousness, i.e. a connection to and appreciation of local nature; understanding climate change as a complex issue of intergenerational and global justice; using the specific potential of music to help overcome barriers to climate action, in particular its sensory, imaginative, creative, emotional, expressive and communal character.

Lessons on popular music form, creation and reception through the Song Exploder podcast

Abstract: This article positions Hrishikesh Hirway’s Song Exploder as an archetypical example of how musical exploration, examination and education can come together in podcast form. Song Exploder’s combination of content and format allows audiences with a range of musical experience and interest to gain insight into how popular music is created at the level of individual songs, and more broadly in terms of genre and industry reception and delivery processes. Originally conceived as an audio-only podcast, versions of Song Exploder have also been staged ‘live in concert’, and in audio-visual format for Netflix. To demonstrate Song Exploder’s success, I situate it alongside similar music/media crossovers in print, radio and film and television, while also presenting findings from my five years experience of using Song Exploder as a teaching tool for undergraduate students in Australia.

‘Make Classical Music Great Again’: Contemporary Music, Masculinity, and Virality in Memetic Media in Online Spaces

Abstract: While an image may be worth a thousand words, a meme can be worth much more. From politics to videos, games to social media, memes are an integral part of today’s online communication and content production in the paradigm of participation culture that is prevalent on the internet and in society. By looking at memes as a socially constructed and intertextual discourse which represents different voices, perspectives, and creative insights, these cultural units are also a reflection of how cybercommunities think about, circulate, and imbue content with meaning in their everyday lives. Among many varieties of meme categories, music plays an important role in the production and consolidation of this online dimension, especially on YouTube and other social media. From rock to classical music, most music genres are featured either in static or audiovisual memes, except for one (large) period of music that is commonly referred to as ‘modern’ music. Despite niche and specialised meme pages, groups and forums related to contemporary music, this broad category is quite overlooked by YouTube compilations, social media featuring classical music, and other online spaces, thus mixing and confusing repertoires and stereotypes. With recurrent tropes regarding gender, power, and aesthetics that can be found either in pages dedicated to western contemporary art music and on other generalised platforms labelling it as ‘ugly’, ‘male’ or ‘white’, this paper aims to examine how the musical dimension affects the production of music memes and related online content, thus analysing its role in popular culture today and how cybercommunities—with or without audiovisual literacy—relate to and spread this (musical) phenomenon.

Detection of Indonesian Dangdut Music Genre with Foreign Music Genres Through Features Classification Using Deep Learning

Abstract: A piece of music consists of elements that form a single unit that makes it sound beautiful. Music is not only used as entertainment but also as a variety of means. These kinds of music have a long history and journey so that humans can recognize the flow of music through rhythm, vocals, and supporting instrumentals. The art of music has changed along with the development of technology to influence the musical genre. This paper aims to detect the dangdut music genre among Western music genres. The dangdut music genre dataset used in this study uses its own dataset of 100 data, while the western music genre dataset uses the popular GTZAN dataset. The GTZAN dataset has 1000 data from 10 music genres. In comparison, the duration of the music used for each genre in this study uses 30 seconds. The method used in detecting the classification of these genres is deep learning. The accuracy obtained when using this dataset in deep learning modeling is above 90%. However, when the data of the dangdut music genre was added to the dataset, the accuracy decreased to around 76%. Several model tests have been carried out and always get the accuracy of the dangdut music genre of 88.89%. It proves that dangdut music is somewhat different from other foreign music genres, but some are still detected similar to jazz and pop music genres.

New Music

Abstract: New music is a concept that came into prominence after the end of World War I. It connotes not just a species of musical composition, but a separate culture of music making and performance somewhat distinct from that associated with more mainstream Western art music. In this chapter, I trace the development of this culture, its institutions and global reach, alongside extensive examination of the specific challenges the music in question presents for those who perform it. The period in question is divided into three sections: 1918–1945, the establishment of “new music” as a category; 1945–c. 1975, the heyday of the avant-garde; and c. 1975–present day, associated with some degree of consolidation of new music with wider art music culture. Early “objectivist” styles of performance are contrasted with those embodying essential continuities with earlier eras, interacting with issues of Texttreue and Werktreue. The growth of the new music festival after 1945 in particular, the role of radio stations, and the new music ensemble are surveyed, alongside specific performance issues involving indeterminacy, extended techniques, and new virtuosity. The final section asks questions about the meanings and future of new music in the twenty-first century.

Evaluation of Multimedia Popular Music Teaching Effect Based on Audio Frame Feature Recognition Technology

Abstract: Music education should pay attention to popular music that exists in students’ real life and deeply affects them. Moreover, it needs to be combined with “popular classical music” to make them happily learn popular music, appreciate popular music artistically, and feel popular music aesthetically. This study combines the audio frame feature recognition technology to evaluate the effect of multimedia popular music teaching and improve the quality of multimedia popular music teaching. Moreover, this study adaptively revises the speech spectrum technology to construct a multimedia pop music system based on audio frame feature recognition technology. Finally, this study verifies the performance of this system through experimental research. According to the results of experimental research, it can be seen that the effect of the system proposed in this study is very good.

Listening, but Not Being Heard: Young Women, Popular Music, Streaming, and Radio

Abstract: ABSTRACT The recording and radio industries have faced a reckoning over their lack of gender equity. While Generation Z is poised to become the dominant music audience, research on the wants and needs of young women listeners is lacking. This study used focus groups to investigate how Generation-Z women feel about today’s music and audio media options. Specifically, their musical tastes are more eclectic, but they find little appeal in current popular music, and they see widespread disrespect for women in music. Participants also recognize that current trends of male-dominated radio presentation are likely to turn potential women listeners away.

A comparative analysis of melodic rhythm in two corpora of American popular music

Abstract: This paper compares two corpora of melodies drawn from premillennial and postmillennial American popular music, and identifies several notable differences in their use of rhythm. The premillennial corpus contains melodies written between 1957 and 1997 [deClercq and Temperley (2011. “A Corpus Analysis of Rock Harmony.” Popular Music 30 (1): 47–70)], while the postmillennial corpus (compiled for this study) consists of songs popular between 2015 and 2019. For both corpora, we analysed (1) the distribution of note onsets within measures; (2) the distribution of four-note rhythmic cells, (3) the speed of melodic delivery, and (4) the tempo of the tactus. Our analyses indicated that the postmillennial melodies are delivered more quickly, are distributed more evenly throughout their measures, repeat rhythmic cells more frequently, and are annotated at slower tempos. Even when the tactus tempos were standardized into an allowable window of 70–140 BPM, this effect, though smaller, remained. We then use our techniques to observe the properties of three representative postmillennial tracks, finding that salient information can be located in both standardized and non-standardized tactus data, and that tempo-variant differences between corpora are closely connected to musical genre, with music designated as “pop” being more similar over both genres, and postmillennial rap and hip-hop introducing the most uniqueness.

Data Science Approach to Compare the Lyrics of Popular Music Artists

Abstract: Popular music lyrics exhibit clear differences between songwriters. This study describes a quantitative approach to the analysis of popular music lyrics. The method uses explainable measurements of the lyrics and therefore allows the use of quantitative measurements for consequent qualitative analyses. This study applies the automatic quantitative text analytics to 18,577 songs from 89 popular music artists. The analysis quantifies different elements of the lyrics that might be impractical to measure manually. The analysis includes basic supervised machine learning, and the explainable nature of the measurements also allows to identify specific differences between the artists. For instance, the sentiments expressed in the lyrics, the diversity in the selection of words, the frequency of gender-related words, and the distribution of the sounds of the words show differences between popular music artists. The analysis also shows a correlation between the easiness of readability and the positivity of the sentiments expressed in the lyrics. The analysis can be used as a new approach to studying popular music lyrics. The software developed for the study is publicly available and can be used for future studies of popular music lyrics.

The politics is in the drums: Producing and composing in the music classroom

Abstract: Music technology courses are increasingly common offerings in university and secondary music programmes. Curriculum standards, subject matter and classroom practices of these courses are still very much in flux. The music education field therefore has a unique opportunity to shape and define music technology as a subject before it becomes fully standardized. Teaching this subject in the context of European-descended ‘art’ music traditions will perpetuate the white racial frame of school music. The author argues that educators should critically examine the racialized split between ‘art’ and ‘popular’ forms of electronic music, and should consciously centre ‘the Black Electronic’ in their curricula. This includes the techniques of beatmaking and sampling, as well as their cultural and political contexts and meanings. An example project drawing on hip hop methods and values is presented.

How popular music pedagogy is integrated in the diverse environment of international school education in China: A case study in Shanghai

Abstract: In Western countries, music educators have made efforts to revitalise enthusiasm for music education by integrating more mainstream and culturally-relevant genres into their curriculum. Conversely, current research indicates that popular music pedagogy in mainland China is not encouraged and faces many obstacles, as school music education is used to promote Chinese traditional music and bolster nationalism. This qualitative case study investigates how popular music pedagogy in an international school, based in China, accommodates the diverse cultural backgrounds of its Chinese and non-Chinese students when teaching Western and Chinese popular music. For 6 weeks, I had the privilege of closely observing a music class containing a mixture of 12 Chinese and non-Chinese students at an international secondary school based in Shanghai, China. Findings revealed that students were given autonomy to engage with their preferred music genre during lessons that focused on music performance and composition. Interestingly, Chinese students gravitated towards studying C-pop on their own accord, a domestic and sanitised form of popular music. However, the study of modern popular music genres was not prevalent during the music appraisal lessons. The challenges of integrating Chinese popular music pedagogy in an international classroom setting are also discussed.

Music and Digital Media: A planetary anthology

Abstract: Anthropology has neglected the study of music. Music and Digital Media shows how and why this should be redressed. It does so by enabling music to expand the horizons of digital anthropology, demonstrating how the field can build interdisciplinary links to music and sound studies, digital/media studies, and science and technology studies. Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital assume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of an extra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory.