Week 2
Themes and Issues
• Genre
• Identity
• Technology
• The Music Industry
• Centres and Peripheries
• Authenticity and Appropriation
The Music Industry
• Who are the people involved in
producing music for consumption? • Composer
• Lyricist
• Talent
• Arranger
• A&R (artists and repertoire)
• Producer intervenes directly in recording process • Engineers
• Studio musicians • Publicity/public relations • ‘External’ agents

The Music Industry

• Alternatives to this model – Singer/songwriter/producers – Indie labels
– DIY: independent (often digital) consumption, manipulation, production,
dissemination

Centres and Peripheries

– Centres: geographical centres of music industry that achieve power, wealth,
and influence over mass media
– Peripheries: smaller institutions and/or social groups who are excluded from
the centre in a variety of ways

Authenticity
• Authenticity – a claim to a ‘real’ or true
relationship to a particular style of music
• Positive value in popular music criticism – based on a contradiction:
– On stage (real or virtual), you are performing...
– but value is placed on ‘keeping it real’.
• ‘Keeping it real’ is more important in some genres than others

Appropriation
• Appropriation - Taking possession of or assigning use to a particular idea for a
specific purpose
• Can be viewed as negative – ‘theft’
• Can be viewed as positive – creatively
transforming something
• In music, the use of borrowed elements or styles

Robert Johnson
1911-1938

Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My


Robert Johnson’s musical style
• Played ‘Delta’ blues
– Unpolished, rough, bare
– Guitar and voice (self-accompanied)
– Musical structure itself is repetitive and straightforward: a backdrop for the
more remarkable elements to stand out
• Vocal quality
• Improvisation in vocal and guitar parts

Robert Johnson’s Complete Recordings

• Entire recorded output consists of 29 masters and 13 alternate takes
• Disovered by HC Speir of American Record Company – ‘race records’
• Two sessions:
– November 1936 – Gunter Hotel, San Antonio
Texas
– June 1937 – warehouse in Dallas Texas

Themes and Issues

• Genre
• Identity
• Technology
• The Music Industry
• Centres and Peripheries
• Authenticity and Appropriation

Themes and Issues

• Technology
• The Music Industry
• Centres and Peripheries

Sound as Form – Albin Zak

“In the development of a music so stylistically dependent upon machinery,
the history of technology and the history of musical style are linked.”

Sound as Form – Albin Zak
• five broad categories of ‘sound phenomena’ on records
– musical performance – timbre
– echo
– ambience
– texture
• ‘sound’, ‘soundprint’ or ‘sonic signature’
• compositional process, not just composition

Sound as Form – Musical Performance

• The transformation from live to recorded performance impacts musical
composition
• The inscription process (recording) captures more than just ‘the music itself’
• Studio processes transform both the musical material and musical processes:
Example: Overdubbing
• Musical performance becomes musical material or musical object
– How do you create interest for repeated listening to the same exact thing?

Sound as Form – Timbre

• Timbre - ‘sonic color’
– Distinguishing genre/artist
– Transforming the ‘music itself’
• Timbre acts in two ways:
– Physical – actual sonic properties
– Rhetorical – symbolic associations with a particular sound

Sound as Form – Timbre

• Timbre and subgenre:
– The Byrds ‘Mr. Tambourine Man”
• Chiming electric 12-string guitar becomes associated not only with this band,
but with the folk-rock subgenre of the mid-late 1960s
• Timbre and individual artists/bands – The Doors “Light My Fire”
• Vox Continental organ as part of the sonic identity of The Doors • Timbre and
individual tracks
– The Rolling Stones “As Tears Go By”
• Out-of-tune acoustic 12-string guitar not typical to the Stones’
sound, used instead as an expressive compositional tool
• Strings that come in later used rhetorically – reference to classical music

Sound as Form – Timbre
• Timbre ‘is the parameter that allows for the greatest range of experimentation
in rock music’
• There are physical aspects of timbre that help create links to the symbolic – in
other words the physical and rhetorical functions merge
• Example: U2 “Zoo Station”
– Two general types of timbres used to represent
two distinct aspects of the narrative
– Used in terms of the song’s structure – which fluctuates between these two
sound worlds

Sound as Form – Echo
• Echo: replication of a sound, played back immediately following the original
sound.
• Always created mechanically – with an ‘original and a ‘copy’
• Relationship between the two determines the effect
– Temporal separation (delay timing) – Relative loudness
– Number of repeats
– Spatial separation
– Echo and source can have different processing


Sound as Form – Echo
• New technologies continue to emerge to have tighter control over these
elements
• Many different effects possible
– Example: Elvis Presley “Blue Moon of Kentucky” • long delay time – ‘slapback’
• ‘Sam Phillips sound’
– Example: Peter Gabriel “Love to Be Loved”
• Audible delay and spatial separation (panned to
different speakers) of echo
• Disappears at the line ‘In this moment’ – sudden clarity
• Second half – from ‘This old familiar craving’ – echo recedes, voice brought
forward

Sound as Form – Ambience
• Ambience: the quality a sound takes on because
of the physical space that surrounds it (reverb)
• Can be manipulated physically and electronically
• As in timbre and echo, can be associated with individual artists/producers
– Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound’ – 1960s
• Example: Righteous Brothers “You’ve Lost that Loving
Feeling”
– The Phil Collins drum sound – 1980s
• Example: Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight”
• Lack of ambience can also create effect
– Example: Red Hot Chili Peppers “Under the Bridge”

Sound as Form – Texture
• Texture: the overall quality of composite sound images created by the
interaction of diverse elements
• It is often this overall quality – a ‘sonic richness’ that invites repeated listening
– Example: tUnE-yArDs - “Bizness”
– Example: Parquet Courts –“Content Nausea”
• The texture of a recording often has little to do with acoustic reality
Week 3
rock, roll, and corporate control
Themes and Issues
• Genre
• Identity
• Technology
• The Music Industry
• Centres and Peripheries
• Authenticity and Appropriation

Themes and Issues

• Technology
• The Music Industry
• Centres and Peripheries
• Authenticity and Appropriation

The Emergence of Rock ‘n’ Roll

• Stylistically combined elements from ‘black’ and ‘white’ music
– Rhythm and Blues – Hillbilly Music
• Invented by key players
– Artists –Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis
Presley
– Culture brokers
• Producers – Sam Phillips • Deejays – Alan Freed
• Entrance into a ‘mainstream’

Racism in the Southern U.S.

• Social distance between blacks and whites – Jim Crow Laws
• Enforced segregation in public buildings
– Social terrorism – lynching
– Code of conduct – governed and limited interactions
• 1954 Supreme Court declares racial segregation unconstitutional

Racism in the Music Industry

• Mainstream record companies and radio stations tended to either ghetto-ize or
ignore black musical genres
• Popular white musicians were borrowing from black styles
• Swing was one of the first de-segregated genres
• ASCAP vs. BMI – unions, radio, and outsider musics

Economic Changes after WWII

• The postwar economic boom creates increased wealth
• New markets emerge: – Youth – teenagers
– African-Americans
• Both record companies and radio stations begin to actively cultivate these new
markets


Changes in Technology and Media
• From early 1950s – television emerges as the new national media
• Radio becomes local rather than national – Caters to the tastes of local
communities
– Local advertisers fund stations
• 1949 – WDIA in Memphis, Tennesse – First station designed for a black
audience – Listeners crossing racial lines
– Increased opportunity for independent record labels

The new youth market

• 1950s saw both economic and cultural status of adolescents transform
• Transformation from an age group to a virtual class – the invention of the
teenager
• Rejection of popular cultural forms of their parents’ generation
– Search for alternatives in subcultural forms


The new youth market
• 1950s saw both economic and cultural status of adolescents transform
• Transformation from an age group to a virtual class – the invention of the
teenager
• Rejection of popular cultural forms of their parents’ generation
– Search for alternatives in subcultural forms
– Music becomes a key commodity to express rebellion

Alan Freed (1922-1965)

• DJ for a local station in Cleveland, Ohio – Began promoting black music – R&B
• Popularized term ‘rock n roll’
• Started producing live shows and films that featured both black and white
bands and artists
• 1954 moved to a larger New York station
• Payola scandal – early 1960s

Little Richard (b.1932)
• Grew up performing on the vaudeville circuit
• Before the mid-1950s, spent several years making small records for the R&B
market
• Alan Freed began promoting him – Appeared in three of Freed’s films
between 1956-1957
• Foundational figure, but minor commercial success


“Long Tall Sally” – Little Richard
Gonna tell aunt Mary, 'bout uncle John,
He claim he has the misery but he's havin' a lot of fun,
Oh baby, yes baby, woo baby, havin' me some fun tonight.
Well, long tall Sally, she's built for speed,
She's got everything that uncle John need,
Oh baby, yes baby, woo baby, havin' me some fun tonight.
Well, I saw uncle John with bald headed Sally,
He saw aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley, Oh baby, yes baby,
woo baby, havin' me some fun tonight.

Little Richard “Long Tall Sally” – Specialty 1956

• Released as a single by an independent label
• Followed 1955 hit “Tutti Frutti”
• Straightforward 3-chord, verse-chorus-verse structure
• Charisma – heard in his vocal production and seen on film
• Rock and Roll rhythm:
– Syncopated drums – ‘shuffle’or ‘swing’ – Piano fills in at double-time

Chuck Berry (b.1926)

• Recorded with independent R&B label
• Songs championed or addressed the youth market
– “Johnny B. Goode” – Chess, 1958
• Influential role on other rock and
roll artists
– Instrumentation/Texture
– Vocal Style
– Studio innovation

“Johnny B. Goode” – Chuck Berry

Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens There stood a log cabin made
of earth and wood Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode Who never
ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell
Go go... Go Johnny go, etc.
He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack
Go sit beneath the tree by the railroad track
Oh, the engineerswould see him sitting in the shade Strumming with the rhythm
that the drivers made People passing by they would stop and say
Oh my that little country boy could play
Go go... Go Johnny go, etc.

Sun Studio and Sam Phillips
• Sun Record Company founded 1950 in Memphis Tennessee
• Sam Phillips got his start recording hillbilly and blues music
• Convinced that youth market would buy a fusion of black and white styles
• Actively searched for a white singer who could bridge the gap

Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

• Poor, self-taught musician
• Learnedthroughrecordings
• Mostinfluencedbybluesandhillbilly • DiscoveredbyPhillipsin1954
• Brought an abandoned, ‘hillbilly’ attitude to black music – ‘rockabilly’
– Example: ‘That’s Alright’ (1954)
• Breakthrough star
• Picked up by RCA in 1956

Elvis Presley “Blue Suede Shoes” – RCA 1956
• Original release by Carl Perkins/Sam Phillips, through Sun Studio, 1955
• Simple blues form
– Call and response between singer and
instruments
• Standard instrumentation: • Rhythm guitar
• Lead (electric) guitar • Bass
• Drums



“Blue Suede Shoes” on TV
• Elvis made several live TV appearances in 1956 to promote his first album,
Elvis Presley
– Gave him a national audience
– Often filmed from the waist up because of his
dancing
• Backlash from older generation
Week 4
Folk Revival and Revolution
Themes and Issues
• Genre
• Identity
• Technology
• The Music Industry
• Centres and Peripheries
• Authenticity and Appropriation

Themes and Issues • Genre

• Authenticity and Appropriation

Folk Music
• Concept defined and named by Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)
– ‘Treatise on the Origin of Language’, 1772
• Language is human
• Language is social
• Language manifests unique values that constitute ‘culture’
• These unique values are inherent or essential
• Folklore and folk music are seen as repositories of inherent cultural traits
– Volkslieder – folk songs

Collections and Collectors

• From early 19th century, folk song collections increasingly popular
– Transcription – Arrangement – Quotation
• Collectors
– Scholars and composers
– Individual bias/aesthetic choice – Preservation often the aim

Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) • English folk music collector

• Published
– scholarly studies of folk music
– several volumes of folk song transcriptions
– arrangements of folk songs for piano
• Sharp’s criteria
– Rejects urban songs, factory songs, popular songs

“The Death of Queen Jane” (traditional) • Ballad:

– Narrative song genre • Typically tragic stories
– Strophic form
• Repetition of exact melody from verse to verse • Typical in oral traditions
• Ballad that was widely known throughout British Isles and in Appalachian
Valley

Alan Lomax (1915-2002)

• Travelled all over the U.S. as a child with his father, collecting folksong and
folklore
• Focused on recordings of folk music, rather than transcriptions
– 1937-1942 – Library of Congress (Folk Song Archive) – began producing
records
– 1945-1949 – radio show host
– 1950s - Columbia World Library of Folk and
Primitive Music
• Scholarly studies in ethnomusicology


Who are the folk, anyway?
– Folk revivals organised primarily by leftist academics and artists – largely
middle-class
– Fetishization of ‘the folk’
• Romanticized (embodying a unified spirit)
• Idealized (actual conditions like class, education, etc., ignored)
• Collective (‘a people’, not individuals)
– Folk music became a genre attached to a particular ideology

‘The’ folk revival

• Late 1950s through early 1960s
• Folksingers and songwriters began to be recognized in national/public culture
– Precursors (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger) as guardians/father-figures to new
generation
• Understood as an alternative, or in opposition, to popular mainstream
• Urban scene
– Coffeehouses in London, Greenwich Village
(NYC)
– Hipster element – ‘pageants of righteousness’ – Political agenda (protest)

Joan Baez (b.1941)

• Got her start in coffeehouses in Boston
• Early career focus on traditional songs and covers, not original material
– Joan Baez (1960)
– Joan Baez, Vol. 2 (1961)
– Joan Baez in Concert, Pt 1 (1962)
• Became popular face of folk music


Bob Dylan (b.1941) and the Folk Revival
• Dylan emerges in the context of the urban folk scene
• Early music shows some of the ideals of the revival
– Idealized representation of the country – Protest music
• Mutual suspicion on the part of both Dylan and this ‘scene’
– Dylan as exceptional, even idiosyncratic

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (Columbia 1963)

“Masters of War” (1963)

“Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963)


The Newport Folk Festival • In late 50s/early 60s, most important
‘pageant of righteousness’
• Many of the stars of the folk movement
were uncovered here
• Not just performances, also workshops
• Audience understood as insiders, as part of the movement
• Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax acted as cultural guardians

The Newport Folk Festival, July 1965 • Dylan’s third performance at the festival
• Dylan’s presence/fame as disruptive
– Bringing It All Back Home (Columbia 1965)
• Electric and acoustic sides
– The Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” had a long run at number one on
the pop charts
• The Electric Controversy – Sunday 25th July performance
Week 5
The Beatles: From Pop to Art


Themes and Issues

• The Music Industry
• Centres and Peripheries
• Authenticity and Appropriation

Music and Society – early 1960s • The ‘decline’ of rock and roll
• Rise of commercial music – Dance crazes (the Twist)
– Hit factories
• Political upheaval
– 1963 JFK assassination
– Civil Rights movement – Vietnam War

“There is a tendency to think that the sixties, that is, the cultural era rather than
the
chronological decade, began in 1964, the year the Beatles first hit the US pop
charts”
(Reebee Garofalo)

The creation of a global Beatlemania

• 1963
– Beatles rise to popularity in UK
– ‘Beatlemania’ coined by British press – Media coverage in the US


The creation of a global Beatlemania
• 1963
– Beatles rise to popularity in UK
– ‘Beatlemania’ coined by British press
– Media coverage in the US
– US releases of Beatles UK singles, repackaged albums
• “I Want To Hold Your Hand” (single, Capitol, 1963)
• Introducing the Beatles (Vee-Jay, 10 Jan 1964) • Meet the Beatles! (Capitol, 20
Jan 1964)

Meet the Beatles! (Capitol 1964)

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1963)


The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, 9 Feb 1964 • Performed two days after arriving in
US
• Set List
– All My Loving
– Til There Was You
– She Loves You – BREAK
– I Saw Her Standing There – I Want to Hold Your Hand

The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, 9 Feb 1964
• Set of nested performances:
– Musical performance on live television
– Performance of studio audience
– Performance of the listening public • 73,900,000 viewers
• The aftermath – critical/public response


Packaging the Beatles
• Brian Epstein: manager from 1962
• The ‘wild’ vs the ‘tame’ Beatles
• Beatlemania as a wildly successful marketing concept
– Gender and response
• Teenage audience of the early 1960s – Market category (conformity)
– Subculture (rebellion)
• Adult audience turned to psychologists and sociologists for explanation

Revolver (Parlophone/Capitol 1966)

“Eleanor Rigby” (1966)


“I’m Only Sleeping” (1966)

The impact of Revolver
• Marks an end of an era: the end of Beatlemania to a certain extent
• Signals a change in artistic direction
• Individual personalities of the Beatles as
songwriters
• Appropriation of Indian classical music – “Love You To”
– Instrumentation: sitar and tabla
– Indian musical structure
• Unmetered intro, cyclical structure, acceleration


Week 6
Themes and Issues
• Identity
• The Music Industry
• Authenticity and Appropriation
Collective Musical Identities • Subculture
– Term developed by Dick Hebdige, 1979 • Scene
– Term that has largely replaced ‘subculture’, from 1990s (Will Straw, Barry
Shank)
• Tribe
– More recent term from sociology (Andy
Bennett)
• Community of Practice
– More recent term from anthropology (Lave and Wenger 1991)

Subculture/Counterculture
• Subculture as actively-sought ‘subversion of normalcy’ (Hebdige 1979)
• Six ways of identifying subculture (Gelder 2007) – Negative relation to work
– Negative relation to class
– Association with territory, not property
– Movement out of the home/family
– Stylistic ties to excess/exaggeration
– Rejection of ordinary life/mass culture
• Counterculture as specific type of subculture

‘The’ Counterculture
• Late 1960s/early 1970s rise of hippie culture in U.S. and U.K.
• Meeting of cultural production and various forms of discontent
– Political – Social
• Counterculture as identity
• Counterculture as a ‘style’

Subcultural Capital
• Cultural knowledge/commodities that members of the counterculture use to
differentiate themselves from other groups
• Hippie culture defined by characteristic jargon, fads, and fashions
– Appearance
– Slang
– Alternative philosophical systems – Drugs
– Music


The music of the counterculture
– ‘Psychedelic Rock’ • Incorporated variety of genres • Exotic timbres
• Denser textures
• Use of distortion
• Nonsensical or dream-like lyrics • Extended performances • Rejects
mainstream pop
San Francisco and the Scene
• City itself as a centre for subcultural communities and movements
• Venues: clubs and outdoor spaces – ‘be-ins’ and happenings
• Local radio
– Tom Donahue at KSAN
• Artists based in San Francisco – Jefferson Airplane


San Francisco as Social Scene
• City itself as a center for subcultural communities and movements
• Venues, outdoor spaces, and radio supported hippie/psychedelic culture
– ‘be-ins’ and happenings
– Tom Donahue’s radio show
• Artists based in San Francisco – Jefferson Airplane
– Grateful Dead


San Francisco as Social Scene
• City itself as a center for subcultural communities and movements
• Venues, outdoor spaces, and radio supported hippie/psychedelic culture
– ‘be-ins’ and happenings
– Tom Donahue’s radio show
• Artists based in San Francisco – Jefferson Airplane
– Grateful Dead – Janis Joplin
• Codification of style as a result of proximity



Janis Joplin (1943-1970)
• Middle-class background and self- conscious rebellion
• Most successful white blues singer of her generation
• Break-out performance at Monterey Pop Festival in 1967
• Focused on blues and R&B
• ‘Try’ – 1969
• Vocal quality – pushed to the limits
• Emphasis on liveness / ‘being there’

Music Festivals
• ritual origins
– symbolic importance – social importance
• music festivals in Europe and North America
– court festivals of state (from 1350)
– choral festivals (from 1650)
– commemorative festivals (from 1750) – festivalizing genre (20th century)

Music Festivals in the late 60s

• Embodiment of countercultural expression
– Liveness
– Communal experience
– Freedom from bourgeois contexts/values
• Monterey Pop Festival (1967)
– Launched careers of many artists
• Janis Joplin • Jimi Hendrix
• Woodstock (1969)

Woodstock Art and Music Fair (15-18 August, 1969)

• Conceived by Michael Lang in Woodstock, NY
• Relocation/controversy
• Lineup included Joan Baez, Ravi Shankar, Grateful Dead, Santana, Janis Joplin,
Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix
• 400,000 people attended
• Positive media response

Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) • Seemed to ‘appear from

nowhere’ on the scene
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience
– Trio established after Hendrix relocated to London in 1966
– Are You Experienced? (debut album) 1967

Are You Experienced (Track Records, 1967)

Are You Experienced (Reprise Records, 1967)


Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) • Seemed to ‘appear from
nowhere’ on the scene
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience
– Trio established after Hendrix relocated to London in 1966
– Are You Experienced? (debut album) 1967
• Performance Style
– Virtuosic playing technique
– Feedback, distortion, effects – Visually flamboyant

Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock

• Band trouble/breakup, increasing drug problems, financial problems
• Gypsy Suns and Rainbows
– Band cobbled together, rehearsed in rented
house near Woodstock without Hendrix • The final set
– Rain delays, etc., pushed it until 8AM Monday morning
– Unpolished, uninspired performance – ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’
Themes and Issues • Genre
• Identity
• The Music Industry
Music and Race
• Race derived from ras (Arabic) – ‘a collectivity whose members recognised
their relatedness to their leader.’
• Race as a category shifts between emphasis on
– Biology/genealogy – Geography
– Culture
• Race as a constructed category, a way of knowing.
• Music has played and still plays a significant role in its construction

Music and the Racial Imagination

(by Philip V Bohlman and Ronald Radano)
• The Racial Imagination: ‘the shifting matrix of ideological constructions of
difference associated with body type and color that have emerged as part of the
discourse network of modernity.’ (5)
• ‘The imagination of race not only informs perceptions of musical practice but
is at once constituted within and projected into the social through sound.’ (5)

Hearing Race
– Difference as a method of distinguishing or articulating the self
– Metaphysics of ownership: • Music as linguistic
• Music as material
– Ontological mapping of music onto race
– Ethnicity as a choice, race as a limitation.

‘Black Music’ in America to WWII • Constructed category (like ‘race’ itself)

• Incorporated different genres – Blues
– Jazz
– Ragtime
• Race Records
– Early ‘independent’ market for music

‘Black Music’ in America after WWII

• R&B and Rock and Roll emerge as separate categories (late 1950s)
• Rock and Roll heavily caught up in racial issues
• Motown: bringing ‘black music’ into the mainstream
• Soul and Funk begin to develop as alternatives to this mainstream.

Motown and the Industry

• Founded by Berry Gordy, 1959, Detroit
• Focused on R&B production for a mainstream, mixed audience
• Hit factory
– “Innovation within predictability”
– Pyramid structure encompassing black musicians and technicians

Motown’s Pyramid Structure

Songwriters Producers Session Musicians Artists (i.e. stars)
Berry Gordy

Motown as Place, Motown as Form - Motown as Place
- Tightly-knit community – a group of people all aiming at the same thing
- Motown as Form
- Music stylised to express ‘Motown’ through recurring techniques, patterns,
instrumentation, etc.
Jon Landau, ‘Motown: A Whiter Shade of Black’, Crawdaddy! October 1967


“Come See About Me” The Supremes (1964)
Intro: Instrumental
Verse:
I've been crying (ooh, ooh) 'Cause I'm lonely (for you) Smiles have all turned (to
tears) But tears won't wash away the fears
Bridge:
That you're never ever gonna return
To ease the fire that within me burns
It keeps me crying baby for you Keeps me sighin' baby for you
Chorus:
So won't you hurry
Come on boy, see about me (Come see about me)
See about you baby
(Come see about me)
Verse:
I've given up my friends just for you
My friends are gone and you have too
No peace shall I find
Until you come back and be mine
Bridge:
No matter what you do or say I'm gonna love you anyway Keep on crying baby
for you I'm gonna keep sighin' baby for you
Chorus:
So won't you hurry
Come on boy, see about me (Come see about me)
See about you baby
(Come see about me)
Verse:
Sometime's up (ooh, ooh) Sometime's down (ooh, ooh) My life's so uncertain
(ooh, ooh) With you not around (ooh, ooh)
Bridge:
From my arms you maybe out of reach
But my heart says you're here to keep
Keeps me crying baby for you Keep on, keep on crying baby for you
Chorus:
So won't you hurry
Come on boy, see about me (Come see about me)
See about you baby
(Come see about me)

The Motown Sound

- Streamlined means of production
- Overlap between composer/writer/
producer/arranger
- Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team - Funk Brothers – session musicians
- Common musical features:
• Melodic saturation
• Good but unobtrusive beat • Broad sound spectrum • Predictable form


“Same Old Song” The Four Tops (1965)
Intro: Instrumental
Verse:
You're sweet as a honey bee
But like a honey bee stings
You've gone and left my heart in pain All you left is our favorite song
The one we danced to all night long
Bridge:
It used to bring sweet memories Of a tender love that used to be
Chorus:
Now it's the same old song But with a different meaning Since you been gone
It's the same old song
But with a different meaning Since you been gone
I, oh I
Verse:
Sentimental fool am I
To hear an old love song and wanna cry But the melody keeps haunting me
Reminding me how in love we used to be forever, breaking up never
Bridge:
Keep hearing the part that used to touch our heart
Saying together, breaking up never
Chorus:
Now it's the same old song But with a different meaning Since you been gone
It's the same old song
But with a different meaning Since you been gone
I, oh I
Verse:
Precious memories keep a lingering on Every time I hear our favorite song Now
you're gone, left this emptiness
I only reminisce the happiness we spent
Bridge:
We used to dance to the music Make romance through the music
Chorus:
Now it's the same old song But with a different meaning Since you been gone
It's the same old song
But with a different meaning Since you been gone
I, oh I
Motown as Place, Motown as Form
‘What makes Motown work, when it does work... is the combination of the
limitations that are imposed on Motown’s artists, and their capacity... to shatter
them with some little nuance that no one could have predicted.’
Jon Landau, ‘Motown: A Whiter Shade of Black’, Crawdaddy! October 1967

The rise of black nationalism, 1960s-1970s

• Disillusionment after Civil Rights Movement
– Victories in 1964 (passing of Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King given Nobel
Peace Prize)
– Continued setbacks and tragedies from 1965
– Black Panthers (1966)
• Militant opposition that reacts to continuing
violence against African-Americans
– Black Power
• positive force for resistance and social change

Soul
• Term replaces R&B in Billboard charts in 1969
• Characterizes emotional power of individual artists’ vocal style
– James Brown – Aretha Franklin
• Intended for a black music market
– Strong ties to black cultural nationalism
– Portrayal of strong black community
– Music as vehicle for social commentary – No pop sugarcoating but ‘realness’

“The Weight” (1969)


Funk
“All these parts jump around on each other maybe that’s why it makes you
dance; because these parts were bouncing off each other it was just one of those
things that all fit together perfectly. The horn line flowed across all of it.”
- Fred Wesley Jr, from James Brown’s band, describing the groove of funk

Funk: Origins
• Style/genre term that transformed over time
• James Brown’s style:
– Groove: overlapping layers of sound
that fit together
– Little to no harmonic complexity
– Short vocal phrases with a lot of repetition

“Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved” (JB 1971)


Funk
• Style/genre term that transformed over time
• Influence of James Brown’s style:
– Groove: overlapping layers of sound that fit together
• Horns: punctuate
• Drums: keep steady pulse • Bass: emphasizes off-beats • All together on
downbeat.

The Evolution of Funk: Developments

• Emerges from James Brown’s style but:
– Uses bass as percussion
– More dense and active – more instruments, more parts
– Grows out of a ‘free-for-all’ • Funk as ‘ethics’
– Sly and the Family Stone
• “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”


The Evolution of Funk
• Emerges from James Brown’s style but:
– Uses bass as percussion
– More dense and active – more instruments, more parts
– Grows out of a ‘free-for-all’ • Funk as ‘ethics’
– Sly and the Family Stone
• “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”
• Funk as escape
– George Clinton: Parliament and Funkadelic



Marvin Gaye and Motown
• Marvin Gaye (1939-1984)
– One of Motown’s most successful solo
recording artists through the 1960s – Began as a session drummer there
• What’s Going On (released 1971)
– Concept album that signaled a real departure from Motown
• Conceived as whole, without hits in mind
• Gaye took artistic control from Motown
• Recorded with the Funk Brothers, but sought a completely new sound
Week 8
The Mask(s) of
Performance:
Glam and Punk in the 1970s

Themes and Issues
• Genre
• Identity
• Centres and Peripheries

Dick Hebdige: Subculture: The Meaning of Style

• Subcultures have a pattern of moving from opposition to diffusion, from
resistance to incorporation.
• How and what do subcultural styles communicate?
– How does a subculture make sense of its members? – How is it made to signify
disorder?
• Style as intentional communication • Style as bricolage
– Bricolage: ‘construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things
which happen to be available’

Dick Hebdige: Subculture: The Meaning of Style • How does style relate to
subculture?
• Style as homology
– Homology: “structural ‘resonances’ or similarities... between the different
elements making up a socio-cultural whole.”

Dick Hebdige: Subculture: The Meaning of Style • How does style relate to
subculture?
• Style as homology
– Homology: “structural ‘resonances’ or similarities... between the different
elements making up a socio-cultural whole.”
• Style as signifying practice – Symbol
– Activity

The rock ‘mainstream’ in the 1970s
• Impact of technological improvements in
production/consumption of albums
• Unified album – a whole work
– use of narrative
– emotional/political/philosophical theme – musical structure
– musical texture
• Growth of subgenres (and subcultures) as alternatives
– Funk, Reggae, Heavy metal, Disco, Glam, Punk

Glam as Style
• Defined by appearance rather than musical style
• Developed as reaction against ‘the counterculture’
• Deliberate emphasis on style and pose over authenticity
• Use of elaborate characters and personae to accomplish this

Glam, Fashion, and Sexuality • Fashion:

– Style emphasized androgyny and sexual ambivalence
• Women’s clothes • Glitter
• Hair dye
• Makeup
• Sexuality
– Sexual orientation understood as a
performance
– Challenged hetero-normative ‘free-love’ culture

David Bowie and Glam


The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (RCA 1972)

Ziggy Stardust: “Hang on To Yourself”


The music of Ziggy Stardust
• “Hang On To Yourself”
– Simple on the surface
– Abrupt shifts from verse to chorus • Lyrics
• Vocal quality
– Nuanced instrumental accompaniment • Rhythmic complexity
• Unstable bass line

Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon

• Final concert of 1973 tour (London, July 3) • Music serves the spectacle


Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon
• Final concert of 1973 tour (London, July 3)
• Music serves the spectacle
• Bowie as feminized character in contrast to his masculine guitarist (Mick
Ronson)
• Announcement that this was his final performance
– Disposable identity (disposable mask)

Ramones – “I’m against It” (1978)

I don’t like sex and drugs I don’t like waterbugs
I don’t care about poverty All I care about is me
I don’t like playing Ping-Pong I don’t like the Viet Cong
I don’t like Burger King
I don’t like anything
Well I’m against it, I’m against it

Punk Aesthetics
‘The punk subculture... signified chaos at every level, but this was only possible
because the style itself was so thoroughly ordered.’ – Dick Hebdige
• ‘Back to basics’ revolt against perceived artifice/ pretension of corporate rock
• Cultural style and attitude reflected in musical style
• ‘Realness’ valued
• Definitive fashion choices:
– Torn jeans, ripped stockings, patches, safety pins, black leather jackets
– Use of fascist imagery and symbols (Swastika)

The Punk Rock Sound

• Tom Erdelyi (aka Tommy Ramone): “It took the rock sound into a psychotic
world and narrowed it down into a straight line of energy. In an era of
progressive rock, with its complexities and counterpoints, we had a perspective
of nonmusicality and intelligence that takes over for musicianship.”
• David Byrne: “Punk... was more a kind of do- it-yourself, anyone-can-do-it
attitude. If you only played two notes on the guitar, you could figure out a way to
make a song out of that, and that’s what it was all about.”

The Punk Rock Sound

• Style features: – Rawness – Minimalism – Noise – ‘Nonmusicality’ –
Dark/cynical lyrics
• Lasting influence on other subgenres and subcultures:
– New wave, metal, grunge, goth, etc.

Punk Rock Scenes: New York

• Underground scene:
– Solidifies around 1975 in Greenwich Village
– Influence of a few predecessors: Velvet Underground, The New York Dolls
– Small group of key players who interacted with each other consistently:
Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads
– Local-ness, informality emphasized
– 1976 England tour – ‘reverse British invasion’

Ramones: “Blitzkrieg Bop” (1976)


Punk Rock Scenes: the UK • The UK scene
– Develops in summer of 1976 in urban centres (London, Birmingham,
Manchester, Liverpool)
– Associated with white working-class youth
– More explicitly political than NYC bands
– More commercial success
– The Clash, The Pretenders, The Buzzcocks

Sex Pistols: real rebels or master manipulators?

Sex Pistols
• Malcolm McLaren - culture broker – Owner of Sex - ‘antifashion’ boutique –
Formed band from shop regulars
• Subvert norms of local scene
• Signed by EMI in 1976
– ‘Anarchy in the UK’ – Top-40 hit

Sex Pistols
• Malcolm McLaren - culture broker – Owner of Sex - ‘antifashion’ boutique –
Formed band from shop regulars
• Subverted
• Signed by EMI in 1976
– ‘Anarchy in the UK’ – Top-40 hit
– Dropped after ‘The Grundy Incident’


• Signed by Virgin in 1977
• ‘God Save the Queen’
– Reaches no.2 on the pop charts
• Only studio album released November ‘77

Sex Pistols: the meaning of style

• Style as intentional communication
• Style as bricolage
• Style as homology
• Style as signifying practice
Week 9
Themes and Issues
• Technology
• The Music Industry
The Industry in the early 1980s
– Crisis of late 70s
• Radio stations weren􏰀t selling records
• Emphasis on album-rock – not enough turnover for record companies
– Strategy for early 80s
• Marry 􏰀high rate of turnover and low production costs of disco... with the
career stability and longevity of white album rock.􏰀􏰀 (Will Straw, ‘Music Video
in its Contexts’, Popular Music , Oct 1988)

The Industry in the early 1980s

– New pop mainstream emerges 1982-1983
• Re-enfranchisement of younger teenagers as record-buyers
- Three important transformations
- Increase in rate of turnover of acts and records - Change in format – single as
basic unit
- New function of celebrity in pop culture

MTV– 1 August 1981

– ‘narrowcasting’ – specialized commerical channels aimed at particular
audience demographic
– cheap production
• Videos funded, provided, and owned by record
companies
– MTV– 24 hour advertisements?
• Increasingly seen as most important form of promotion of new music.

MTV– Expansion and Transformation – Videos

• Production budgets/aesthetic ambitions quickly increase
– Channels
• Both copycats and subsidiaries of MTV, some
aimed at even more specialised market – Function
• From a visual radio station to a ‘youth entertainment network’
– Genre programming – Reruns
– Reality tv

Precursors to Music Video

– Hollywood musicals
– Hollywood rock films from 1950s
– Beatles films –
• A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965)
• ‘promo films’ – ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields’
– Rock operas of the 1970s
– Queen - ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

Music Video: basic structures

– Visual narrative:
• Form of videos often relate to form of song • Narration, if it exists, is
fragmentary
- Imagery of musical performance - Stage performance re-created
- Other visual elements
- ‘Dreamlike visuals’
- Animation/special effects
- Visual thematics
- Visual quotations
- ‘Mickey-mousing’ – visuals connected to rhythm


Critical response to MTV – First wave: journalistic
• Music video makes image more important than the experience of music itself
• Music video would limit how an individual interprets a particular song
– Second wave: academic
• MTV (and television in general) embodies the structure of
knowledge/perception in the late 20th century – the postmodern

Music Video: the postmodern medium?

– The postmodern argument: Music video
• Displays a combination of elements from variety of sources
• Plays with intertextual references • Dismantles established codes of linear
visual
narration
– Other aspects to consider • Commercial functions
• Adapations of stage performance
• Genre conventions
• Structure serves musical form – not code-breaking

Music Video and Celebrity
– Revitalisation of ‘pin-up culture’
– Combination of agents contribute to these changes
– Emphasis on image meant that stars were not guaranteed long careers
– Two types of stars emerge:
• Performer as ‘cog-in-the-wheel’ (aka one-hit or
one-album wonder) • Performer as strategist

Michael Jackson, MTV, and Thriller

• First African-American artist to fully
crossover to a mainstream audience
• Music video as crucial mechanism for this crossover
– Thriller (Epic, 1982)
• Impact on MTV, which would start to focus on
genres outside of (white) rock music.
• Impact on music videos more generally, which began to have bigger budgets,
stronger artistic statements
• Demonstrated direct connection between music videos and album sales
Madonna and the Video Music Awards - VMAs: inaugurated 1984 – one of
MTV’s only
live, extravagent events
- Televisual nature of the‘live’ event
- Madonna’s performances up to 1990
- ‘Like a Virgin’ (1984)
- ‘Express Yourself’ (1989) - ‘Vogue’ (1990)





Madonna and the Video Music Awards
- VMAs: inaugurated 1984 – one of MTV’s only
live, extravagent events
- Televisual nature of the‘live’ event
- Madonna’s performances up to 1990
- ‘Like a Virgin’ (1984)
- ‘Express Yourself’ (1989) - ‘Vogue’ (1990)
- Madonna’s emergence as an icon traceable through these events
Week 10
Themes and Issues • Technology
• The Music Industry
• Authenticity and Appropriation
Hip Hop Origins
– Roots in West African griot tradition and
Jamaican ‘toasting’
– 1970s New York: live deejaying in African-
American community
– Basic Techniques: • Break spinning
• Scratching • Punch Phrasing
– Early pioneers: • Grandmaster Flash • Afrika Bambaataa
– Emcees

Early Hip Hop Records

– Sugar Hill Records – Englewood New Jersey
• Run by Joe and Sylvia Robinson
• Transferred the live practice to record
• 1979 ‘Rapper’s Delight’ by the Sugar Hill Gang reached No. 4 on the R&B charts
– “The Message” – Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (Sugar Hill Records,
1982)
• Emcee becomes more important than deejay • Use of session musicians
• Importance of name/connection


Hip Hop Culture
– Music emerges within a constellation of other urban styles and practices
• Graffiti
• Breakdance
• Double-dutch
– Early Hip Hop concert tours featured not just music, but the whole culture
– Emphasis on live practices, locality



Crossover: cultivating a white audience
– Def Jam Records (cofounded by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin)
• LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Fresh Prince
• Motown-esque: hit factory focused on bringing rap to a white audience
– Strategies
• The rap ballad (LL Cool J) • White rappers (Beastie Boys) • Diversifying
samples (Run-DMC)


Challenging the Mainstream I: Gangsta
– Artists like Ice-T, N.W.A., and Public Enemy mark a rejection of mainstream hip
hop in late 1980s
• Return to social message • Delivered in graphic, angry terms • Explicit titles
and lyrics • Glorification of gang life
• Street sounds
– Public Enemy
• It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (Def
Jam, 1988)
• Fear of a Black Planet (Def Jam, 1990)

Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (Def Jam, 1988)
- “Bring The Noise”

Public Enemy “Bring The Noise”


West Coast/East Coast: Gangsta Rap in the
1990s – West Coast:
• Death Row Records: Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tupac Shakur
• Relatively laid-back lyrical delivery • Associations with drug culture
– East Coast:
• Sean Combs and Bad Boy Records: Puff Daddy (P.
Diddy, Diddy), the Notorious B.I.G. • More aggressive, lyrically dexterous style •
Use of recognizable samples
– The Rivalry fueled stereotypes about hip hop’s relationship to gang life,
violence

Challenging the Mainstream II: Alternative Hip Hop

– Late 1980s response to both commercial and gangsta rap
• De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, the Pharcyde
• Incorporation of wide variety of samples
• Quirky, playful lyrics that often promoted peace/ equality
– De La Soul
• Humour in characters (Posdnuos, Trugoy)
• Return to emphasis on deejay (Prince Paul)
• D.A.I.S.Y. Age (Da Inner Sound Y’all)
• 3 Feet High and Rising
– Concept album
– Diversity of topics and samples

De La Soul: 3 Feet High and Rising (Warner Bros, 1989)

– “Intro”
– “Magic Number”
– “Change in Speak”
– “Cool Breeze on the Rocks”
– “Can U Keep a Secret”

‘Alternative’ goes ‘Underground’
– Diversity, originality in approaches
– Emphasis on producers (deejays)
– Emphasis on ‘old-school’ aesthetics
– Lyrics consciously avoid reference to gang culture, or directly respond to it
– Sponsored by independent labels such as Rawkus Records – resurgence in
innovation of the East Coast sound
• Black Star – Mos Def and Talib Kweli
– Chicago underground • Common, Kanye West

Black Star: Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star (Rawkus Records, 1998)
– “Intro”
– “Astronomy (8th
Light)”
– “Definition”
– “RE:DEFinition”
– “Children’s Story”


Sampling Ethics in Underground Hip Hop - Schloss, Making Beats
• Ethics as preserving hip hop essence • ‘No biting’ – nothing that’s recently
been used by someone else.
• Strategies for altering appropriated materials
– Flipping – creative/substantial alteration of material. Producing.
– Chopping – altering by smaller segments, reconfiguration.
– Looping – sampling longer phrase and repeating with no alternation.

Sampling Ethics in Underground Hip Hop - Schloss, Making Beats

• Records (vinyl) are only legitimate source for sampled material.
• Can’t sample from other hip hop.
• Can’t sample records one respects BUT
you can sample something you know.
• Can’t sample reissues or compilations.
• Can’t sample two things from same record.

Sampling Aesthetics in Underground Hip Hop Schloss, Making Beats

• the break
– provides underlying structure – the groove
– obscurity/recognizability
– heterogenous sound appeal (or textural density)
– history of sound recordings vs. history of musical form
• not formally innovative but innovative on micro- level of beat production.
• ‘not about playing music, about playing records...’
Week 11
Themes and Issues
• Technology
• The Music Industry
• Centres and Peripheries
What is a musical underground?
• Place:
– Urban / Cosmopolitan – Local
– Peripheral
• Music:
– Surface abrasion
– Syntactic destabilization – Recognizably esoteric
• Network:
– Community of insiders
– Extends beyond the local through media

What is a musical underground?

‘The term ‘underground’ connotes a sense of concealment, even of contraband,
and this sense is not dispelled by the fact that underground cultures are now
notionally open to all.’
(Stephen Graham, ‘Unpopular Avant-gardes: Underground Music and the Avant-
garde,’
Perspectives of New Music’ 48.2, p 10)

Nirvana’s ascent and the Seattle sound

– America’s Punk?
• Rejection of mainstream commercialism • Clear stylistic ties to punk
• Influence of other underground artists
– Seattle: scene and sound • Seattle as a periphery
• Sonic emphasis on liveness/rawness • ‘Grunge’ and conformity
– Nirvana in the studio • Bleach (Sub Pop, 1989) • Nevermind (DGC, 1991)


The Network, the Industry – Sub/Pop
• Founded by Bruce Pavitt as a fanzine in Olympia Washington

Sub/Pop Issue 3, Spring 1981

“Hi There –
“My Name is Bruce and we have to decentralize our society and encourage local
art and things and music. Sub/Pop can be an outlet for this kind of subversive
entertainment perspective but only if you help me by writing local gossip and
sending it in right away to me with money and photos of you and your friends
playing rock star. Send it in and I will print it. O.K.?
xBruce”

The Network, the Industry
– Sub/Pop
• Began as a fanzine in Olympia Washington • Record label of the Seattle scene
from 1986 • Sold 49% to Warner Brothers in 1995
– The ‘Grunge’ Community • Moved from local to international
• Appealed to youth fed up with mainstream
• Aesthetics (both musical and stylistic) were identifiable and adaptable

The grunge caricature


The Network, the Industry
– Sub/Pop
• Began as a fanzine in Olympia Washington • Record label of the Seattle scene
from 1986 • Sold 49% to Warner Brothers in 1995
– The ‘Grunge’ community • Moved from local to international
• Appealed to youth fed up with mainstream • Aesthetics (both musical and
stylistic) were
identifiable and adaptable
– Discourse of authenticity
• Evident among artists, labels, and listeners


D.I.Y.
‘But the underground is not simply about access, nor is it a mere description of
the physical context of the music. The underground is essentially a practice, a
cultural philosophy of music that exists outside of the mainstream.’
(Stephen Graham, ‘Unpopular Avant-Gardes’, 10)

D.I.Y. – Aesthetics as Practice

• Analog
– Instruments
– Cassettes
– Local Curation (zines, record shops)
• Digital
– Synthesizers – mp3s
– Online Curation (blogs, facebook/ bandcamp etc)

D.I.Y. in Dublin’s Underground

• “We’re making music that essentially wouldn’t be released by anybody but
ourselves, so independence is almost kind of an artistic necessity rather than a
lifestyle choice so to speak.” (Vinnie Darmody of The Jimmy Cake)
• “[DIY is] often born out of necessity and it's something that comes naturally to
us. I guess it's just the way that we operate. We're not always thinking that it has
to be this way, but... there's not many other options for a band like us.” (John
Breslin of Hands Up Who Wants to Die, Wild Rocket, Chirps, and Nippons)

Dublin Underground: Scene or Microscene? (Grazian)

• Post-industrial music scenes:
– happen in spatially peripheral neighborhoods
– draw on global or translocal cultural and economic flows for continued vitality
– rely on digital media technologies – establishing and sustaining participation
• Microscenes:
– feature spatial decentralization
– are DIY based and created almost entirely outside the context of the dominant
music industry...
– are oriented toward local cultural dynamics and processes



• Bands: Sylvan, Bridges of Madison County
• Bands: Elk, No Spill Blood
• A4 Sounds (collective art space)
• Designs posters
Paul (guitar)
John (drums)
Matt (bass)
Barry (vocals)
• Bands: Chirps, Nippons, Wild Rocket
• DCTV: COI, The Parlour
• Label: Richter Collective
• DCTV: COI, The Parlour
• Seven Quarters

The Joinery – Arbour Hill, Dublin 7

The Joinery – Performing Space

Hands Up Who Wants to Die Album Launch September 2014

The Joinery
Pé rigueux Gig November 2014

The Practice Tapes – Sean Zissou

I ♥ the Monster Hero – “Do Da”
The Practice Tapes – February 2014 - by Sean Zissou

DCTV: Community of Independents: Season 4 Episode 3, Nov. 2013


DCTV: Community of Independents: Hands Up interview with Aoife Barry, Nov.
2013

Places of the underground


Live/Traditional
• Whelan’s Upstairs (Wexford Street)
• The Joinery (Stoneybatter) • The Twisted Pepper (Henry St) • The Lower Deck
(Portobello) • Fibbers (Parnell Square)
Practice/Studio/Social
• Karate Club (Phibsboro) • Guerilla Studios (North Strand) • Block T
(Smithfield)
• A4 Sound (Phibsboro)
• Storm Studio (Rathmines) • Tenterhooks (Blackpits)
• The Barricade Inn (Parnell Square)
Curated
• Seven Quarters (in Whelan’s • The Practice Tapes
• DCTV
• Nialler9
• Thumped • Rabble • TheThinAir.net • Medium Presents
Online Prefabricated
• Facebook • Bandcamp
Week 12

Themes and Issues

• Identity
• Centres and Peripheries
• Authenticity and Appropriation

“World Music”
- Industry label for popular music from ‘other’ cultures
- Becomes prevalent in the 1980s
- Some musics more successful than others - African and Latin American musics
very popular - South and East Asian musics less popular
“In many ways the proliferation of World Music represents the aural equivalent
of the package holiday - at a superficial level, World Music is about impressions
of foreign places; the scents, sounds, and sights that linger in the mind after a
holiday far away from the West.” (Gerry Farrell)


Globalization and Music
– Globalization: accelerated global flow of people, capital, technology and culture
– In popular music: movement of mass mediated genres across the world
• Music cultures are unbound and uncontrollable by nation-states
• Hybridity in musical styles and genres often a result
• Redefined (or undefined) identity as a result of this movement

Globalization and Music

– Flows/Disjunctures:
• World characterized by circulation and flow
• Circulation is not consistent or convergent, but disjunct
– The Imagination:
• No longer passive fantasy but active faculty
• Places the consumer at the centre of inquiry
• Works to produce locality as a spatial fact and as a sensibility

Globalization and Music:

– Globalization and Representation – Globalization, Westernisation, and
Americanisation
– Globalization and Appropriation

Shakira and Wyclef, live at the Grammys, 2007


Musical Authenticity and Appropriation
• Authenticity – a claim to a ‘real’ or true relationship to a particular style of
music
– In music, the use of elements that ‘belong’ to you – Positive value in popular
music criticism
• Appropriation - Taking possession of or assigning use to a particular idea for a
specific purpose
– In music, the use of borrowed elements or styles – Usually seen as negative
value

Musical Appropriation and Borrowing

• Modes of musical appropriation/borrowing:
– Quotation
• Juxtaposition • Montage
– Paraphrase – Allusion
– Modeling

Paul Simon’s Graceland
(Warner Brothers, 1986)
- Inspired by South African pop
- Collaboration between Simon and a large group of South African musicians
- Incorporates a wide variety of styles and genres
- Recorded in New York and South Africa
- Not the first to incorporate African pop styles, however was the first major
success

Paul Simon, “Call Me Al” (live Zimbabwe, 1987)

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

- South African male choral group, founded in 1960 by Joseph Shabalala
- Specialized in two types of a capella singing, both associated with the Zulu
ethnic group and language
- Mbube – ‘lion’ – loud, powerful singing
- Isicathamiya – ‘walking softly’ – subtle harmonic blending

Collaboration/Authorship on Graceland
- Collaboration
- as musical act or practice - as social act
- Simon maintained an ambiguous political stance with regard to Apartheid
- Simon is credited as a songwriter on every track. His collaborators are only
listed as songwriters on less than half.
- Provided information, in liner notes, on the collaborative process of only 1
track

Paul Simon, “Homeless” (live Zimbabwe, 1987)

The Feedback Loop of Global Pop

- West African highlife and Afro-pop
- Origins in European music (Ghana, early 1900s)
- Musical hybridity:
- European instruments and forms - African elements:
- rhythms (dense, interlocking)
- Use of repeated musical cycles (loops) - More complex polyphony
- Example: King Sunny Ade “Sunny Special”

The Feedback Loop of Global Pop
- West African highlife and Afro-pop
- Origins in European music (Ghana, early 1900s)
- Musical hybridity:
- European instruments and forms - African elements:
- rhythms (dense, interlocking) - Use of ostinato
- More complex polyphony
- Example: King Sunny Ade “Sunny Special”
- Vampire Weekend “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”

Final Exam
• Part 1 – Keywords:
– definitions and contextual material for 8 out of
12 possible key terms from the module
– write at least 3-4 sentences on each, providing as much information as possible
– the types of words cross several categories:
– Musical terms – referring to technical aspects of form or
style
– Individual musicians, culture brokers, or labels
– Genre terms
– Significant songs, albums, events

Final Exam
• Part 2 – Essay Questions:
– choice of 1 essay from 3 possibilities
– topics address some of the bigger conceptual issues covered in class
– should be prepared to give 2 or 3 specific examples of artists that we’ve
discussed in the module in your essay, and talk about how they relate to the
concept