scholarly journals Summer’s Gone: Late Style and Popular Music

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
STEPHEN GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Late Style ◽  
Beach Boys ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Dual Relationship ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Two Sides

Abstract The Beach Boys’ 2012 album That’s Why God Made the Radio is typically nostalgic, filled with seemingly sunny reminiscences and retreads that hark back to the 1960s. And yet other parts of the album look back in a more critical fashion, exploring unresolved melancholy through a rich musical language. What makes this even more complicated is the fact that it is possible to hear these two ‘sides’ of the album differently, for the retreads to feel like eerie simulations and the melancholy parts to align with earlier, similarly complicated Beach Boys music. This ambivalence embodies the album’s dual relationship with what I describe as the primary strains of late style: Goethean serenity and Adornian intransigence. In exploring this contention and in applying late style to other examples of popular music, notably David Bowie’s 2016 album Blackstar, I argue that the late-style lens helps to shed new light on popular music’s increasingly complicated knots of nostalgia, ageing and death.

Early Music and Popular Music

2020 ◽  
pp. 508-529
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Randell Upton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Music ◽  
The Past ◽  
Beach Boys ◽  
Rolling Stones ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, recordings and performances of preclassical music brought new sounds to musical performers, creators, and audiences. Through play with new sounds and with ideas about the past, medievalist popular music helped to shape the range of meanings associated with “the medieval” for scholars as well as audiences. At first, early music sounds, especially that of the harpsichord, were used for their novelty, becoming fashionable and hip by the mid-1960s, first in London (as seen in recordings by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, and Procol Harum; this trend fed into 1970s prog rock) and then, following the British Invasion, in the United States (particularly the Left Banke in New York and the Beach Boys and the Doors in Los Angeles). Some folk-rock performers used early music sounds to signal the past, drawing on tropes of nostalgia and medievalist fantasy (e.g., Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” [1966] and the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” [1967]).

A Look Back: Computers in the classroom, as covered in Kappan

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (6) ◽  
pp. 6-7
Author(s):  
Teresa Preston
Keyword(s):  
Computer Assisted Instruction ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Assisted Instruction

The potential of computers to transform schools has been a significant concern of educators since at least the 1960s. Teresa Preston explores how Kappan authors covered the computer age, beginning with explorations of computer-assisted instruction in the 1960s and continuing through the development of microcomputers in the 1980s. Although authors had great hopes for how computers could provide more engaging and individualized experiences, they also acknowledged that implementing technology would not be easy and that changes might be more gradual than technology advocates hoped.

SOUND, MEANING AND MUSIC-DRAMA IN LACHENMANN'S DAS MÄDCHEN MIT DEN SCHWEFELHÖLZERN

Tempo ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (268) ◽  
pp. 20-33
Author(s):  
Laurence Osborn
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Search For Meaning ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Music Drama ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Unique Approach ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Musique Concrete ◽  
Cultural Baggage

AbstractThis article argues that Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern demonstrates a unique approach to music-drama that stems from the perceptual capacities of listeners, and their desire to search for meaning in what they hear. Beginning with the claim that Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern can be viewed as the culmination of an aesthetic project begun at the point of Lachenmann's emergence as a distinctive voice of the European avant-garde during the 1960s, the article first examines two major aspects of Lachenmann's aesthetics – musique concrète instrumentale and aura – outlining a composing philosophy that has been at the heart of Lachenmann's practice throughout his career. The article claims that Lachenmann sought to establish a rejuvenated semiotics, freed from cultural baggage and tied to the perceptual and cognitive capacities of listeners. Drawing upon the studies of Naomi Cumming and Luke Windsor, it outlines a theoretical framework that takes into account this composing philosophy and its implications, applying it in analyses of various excerpts from Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern. My analysis illuminates a music-drama that forms around the interplay of internally represented images and sensations, the emergence of which is facilitated by a musical language that prepares sounds to take on certain types of meaning. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible implications this has for audience members.

A Look Back: Preschool perspectives in Kappan

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-7
Author(s):  
Teresa Preston
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
High Quality ◽  
General Consensus ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The 1960S

In this monthly column, Kappan managing editor Teresa Preston looks back at how the magazine has covered early childhood education. Since the 1960s, authors have largely agreed about the benefits of high-quality early childhood education, and there has been general consensus about what such a program should look like. However, expanding access to such programs has remained a challenge.

Gendered and Censored Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soojin Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the ways in which a juxtaposition of two definitions of modernity are reflected in the two female singers, Yi Mi-ja and Patti Kim, who actively performed in postwar South Korea, particularly between the 1960s and the 1970s. While different social values and cultural practices constituted the modernity of South Korea, most scholarship on Korean popular music gives particular attention to the cultural products of modernity that have been influenced by the West, mostly by the U.S. This chapter, however, suggest that the different cultures from Korea, Japan, and the U.S. together constitute the modernity of Korea. Also, different collective memories from the Japanese colonial experience, the Korean War, and the Korean government-led economic development project shape the ideal form of modernization. Modernity in South Korean popular music shows that the periods between the 1960s and the 1970s juxtapose what the Korean society was facing and seeking at the time. Focusing on the Yi and Kim’s music and their performance styles, this chapter explores how different musical cultures and social values are reflected in their music as a way to construct gendered and censored modernity.

‘Illiterate’ musicians: an historic review of curriculum and practice for student popular musicians in Australian senior secondary classrooms

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (02) ◽  
pp. 155-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Carroll
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Secondary Classrooms ◽  
Western Art ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Senior Secondary

AbstractThis article examines curriculum and practice in Australian secondary classroom music education, in order to trace the inclusion of, and provision for, students with learning orientations based on popular music forms. A 60-year period of curriculum reform, matriculation statistics and literature is surveyed with a focus on the state of New South Wales (NSW), where the ‘non-literate’ student musician was first acknowledged in curriculum documents dating from the late 1970s at the senior secondary level (Music Syllabus Year 11 and 12: New 2 Unit A Course. Draft Document). Three overlapping eras frame discussion. The first discusses the original post–World War II school curriculum established for Western art music (WAM); the second discusses the period of curriculum reform beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, which leads to the inclusion of popular music at junior secondary levels; and the third is the present era from roughly 1980 onwards, where separate pathways of instruction are maintained for WAM and students with interests in popular and contemporary musics. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) from the sociology of education is employed, with analysis unveiling a series of historic code shifts and clashes with implications for present practice. An unveiling of these codes explains the cause of ongoing tensions surrounding the inclusion of popular music and musicians in Australian music classrooms and provides foundation for much-needed curriculum development in the NSW context, and potentially elsewhere, where similar dynamics underpin practice in secondary classrooms.

Adopting imports: new images and alliances in Brazilian popular music of the 1990s

Popular Music ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Magaldi
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Electronic Apparatus ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
Bossa Nova ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Musical Styles

Anyone visiting Brazil today in search of an idealised ‘Brazilian Sound’ might, at first, be disappointed with the popular music scene. The visitor will soon realise that established musical styles such as bossa nova and MPB (Música Popular Brazileira (Brazilian Popular Music)), with their well-defined roles within the Brazilian social and political scene of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, have lost their immediate appeal with some contemporary audiences, and especially with Brazilian urban youth. In the 1990s, Brazilian radio and TV are saturated with a variety of new local genres that borrow heavily from international musical styles of all kinds and use state-of-the-art electronic apparatus. Hybrid terms such assamba-rock, samba-reggae, mangue-beat, afro-beat, for-rock(a contraction of forró and rock),sertaneja-country, samba-rap, andpop-nejo(a contraction of pop andsertanejo), are just a few examples of the marketing labels which are loosely applied to the current infusion of international music in the local musical scene.

Remembrance of Things Past: Marxism and the Study of Popular Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
SIMON FRITH
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Commercial Music ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Ideology ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThis article considers the role of Marxism in the history of popular music studies. Its approach combines the sociology of knowledge with a personal memoir and its argument is that in becoming a field of scholarly interest popular music studies drew from both Marxist theoretical arguments about cultural ideology in the 1950s and 1960s and from rock writers’ arguments about the role of music in shaping socialist bohemianism in the 1960s and 1970s. To take popular music seriously academically meant taking it seriously politically. Once established as an academic subject, however, popular music studies were absorbed into both established music departments and vocational, commercial music courses. Marxist ideas and ideologues were largely irrelevant to the subsequent development of popular music studies as a scholarly field.

‘Funky Drummer’: New Orleans, James Brown and the rhythmic transformation of American popular music

Popular Music ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Stewart
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
World War ◽  
Related Development ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
Rock N Roll ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Reverse Development

The singular style of rhythm & blues (R&B) that emerged from New Orleans in the years after World War II played an important role in the development of funk. In a related development, the underlying rhythms of American popular music underwent a basic, yet generally unacknowledged transition from triplet or shuffle feel (12/8) to even or straight eighth notes (8/8). Many jazz historians have shown interest in the process whereby jazz musicians learned to swing (for example, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra through Louis Armstrong's 1924 arrival in New York), but there has been little analysis of the reverse development – the change back to ‘straighter’ rhythms. The earliest forms of rock 'n' roll, such as the R&B songs that first acquired this label and styles like rockabilly that soon followed, continued to be predominantly in shuffle rhythms. By the 1960s, division of the beat into equal halves had become common practice in the new driving style of rock, and the occurrence of 12/8 metre relatively scarce. Although the move from triplets to even eighths might be seen as a simplification of metre, this shift supported further subdivision to sixteenth-note rhythms that were exploited in New Orleans R&B and funk.

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