Sampling sexuality: gender, technology and the body in dance music

Popular Music ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Bradby
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Soap Opera ◽  
The Body ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Audience Research ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
Rock Bands ◽  
Considerable Work

Bayton (1992) is right to be preoccupied by the mutual blindness between feminism and popular music. For if pop music has been the twentieth-century cultural genre most centrally concerned with questions of sexuality, one would expect more feminist critique and engagement with it. It is undoubtedly true that feminists have often been suspicious of pop music as typifying everything that needs changing for girls in society (McRobbie 1978), and of rock music as a masculine culture that excludes women (Frith and McRobbie 1979). Conversely, those who wished to celebrate the political oppositionality of rock music have often had to draw an embarrassed veil around its sexual politics, and have had good reason to be wary of feminism's destructive potential. Nevertheless, Bayton's own bibliography shows the considerable work that has been done by feminists on popular music, and the problem is perhaps better seen as one of marginalisation of this work within both feminist theory and popular music studies. In addition, I would argue that the work of Radway (1987), Light (1984), Modleski (1984) and others, in ‘reclaiming’ the popular genres of romance reading and soap opera for women, does have parallels in popular music in the work of Greig (1989) and Bradby (1990) on girl-groups, or McRobbie on girls and dancing (1984). Cohen (1992) shows some of the mechanisms through which men exclude women from participation in rock bands, while Bayton's own study of women musicians parallels other sociological work on how women reshape work roles (1990). And the renewed interest in audience research in cultural studies has allowed a re-valorisation of girls' and women's experience as fans of popular music (Garratt 1984; Lewis 1992), and as creators of meaning in the music they listen to (Fiske 1989; Bradby 1990).

Dylan Goes Electric

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Kathryn Lofton
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Electric Guitar ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment

Within the study of rock music, religion appears as a racial marker or a biographical attribute. The concept of religion, and its co-produced opposite, the secular, needs critical analysis in popular music studies. To inaugurate this work this article returns to the moment in singer-songwriter Bob Dylan’s career that is most unmarked by religion, namely his appearance with an electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Dylan’s going electric became, through subsequent years of narrative attention, a secularizing event. “Secularizing event” is a phrase coined to capture how certain epochal moments become transforming symbols of divestment; here, a commitment writ into rock criticism as one in which rock emerged by giving up something that had been holding it back. Through a study of this 1965 moment, as well as the history of electrification that preceded it and its subsequent commentarial reception, the unreflective secular of rock criticism is exposed.

Fragments of a Queer Feminist Rock and Pop History in Vienna

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Fürnkranz
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Rock Band ◽  
Music Scenes ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
Rock N Roll

The historical development of Viennese rock and pop music started with rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, continued with beat music and the “dialect wave” in the late 1960s, punk in the 1980s, the popular Viennese electronic music scene in the 1990s, and is currently enjoying a renaissance of the “dialect wave.” Artists like the Rosée Sisters, Austria’s first all-female rock band founded in 1962, Topsy Girl, A-Gen 53, or SV Damenkraft were active in local music scenes. In retrospect, they are considered as exceptions in the historiography of Austrian popular music. This chapter discusses several feminist and queer artists and collectives in Austria, their position in popular culture, and in historical and geographical contexts. The author concentrates primarily on all-female bands, LGBTIQ+ artists, and queerpop projects to illustrate diverse approaches to music, feminism, and their position within the pop and rock music scenes in Vienna.

Campus Rock

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-72
Author(s):  
James Carter
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
College Campus ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Acid Rock ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Relationship

During 1967-8, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Animals, The Who, Richie Havens, Jefferson Airplane and the Iron Butterfly, performed in the gymnasium at the small, liberal arts Drew University in suburban New Jersey. Turns out, this experience was not unique to Drew. College campuses across the country were essential for the growth of popular music, and of rock music in particular in the mid- to late-sixties. The music industry took notice as booking agents, record shops, pop music promoters, radio stations, and industry magazines and newspapers all began to place more emphasis on the opportunities provided by the nation’s colleges. While we know a great deal about activism on college campuses during the sixties, we know little about that same environment and its relationship to the growth and development of rock culture. This essay will explore the relationship between the growth of rock culture, the college campus, and the broader sixties experience. The college campus proved crucial in the development of rock music as student tastes determined “rock culture.” Folk, pop, soul/R&B, folk rock, hard rock, and psychedelic/acid rock, thrived simultaneously on the college campus from 1967 to 1970, precisely the period of significant change in popular music.

The Master of Mystery

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-164
Author(s):  
Pat O’Grady
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Emergent Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
Production Techniques

Over the past twenty years, the field of popular music studies has significantly enhanced our understanding of pop music production. Studies have drawn from a range of industry discussions to explore, for example, the ways in which emergent technologies have led to distinctive production techniques and the important role that recording technologies play in shaping the sound of pop music. Whereas many industry discussions have provided productive sites of analysis, they can also obstruct research in some respects. This article focuses on an area of music production where such industrial discussions tend to hinder, rather than enhance, an understanding of its practices. It examines the ways in which industry discussions position the process of mastering as “mysterious.” This article argues representations of mastering as “mysterious” work to reinforce the importance of this practice and also safeguard it from new technologies that might challenge its dominance. These representations can function to reproduce and secure social hierarchies within the field.

Structural relationships of music and images in music video

Popular Music ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alf Björnberg
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
The Body ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
General Applicability ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
Structural Relationships ◽  
State Of Exhaustion

In the course of the last decade, the body of writing on music video has grown to sizeable proportions. The reason for the present addition to this bulk of literature, in spite of the subject seemingly approaching the state of exhaustion, is that musical semiotics are still rarely applied to the field. It is a fact that pop and rock music have always been heavily infused with socially determined meaning such that an autonomous musical aesthetics appears clearly insufficient to explain their significance; however, to what extent and how this significance is linked in with particular musical structures as such is still largely uninvestigated. In my view, music video may perhaps be less interesting as a phenomenon in itself than as source material for an ‘empirical semiotics’ of popular music, shedding light on signification processes of a more general applicability. Furthermore, the distinctive features of music video may arguably be better explained on the basis of an understanding of the syntactical characteristics of popular music than by prevalent theories of postmodernism; the latter appear problematic not only due to their speculative and unsubstantiated nature with regard to media reception processes (cf. Frith and Horne 1987, p. 11), but their explanatory value as regards syntactic features of music video also seems to be limited (cf. Frith 1988, p. 207).

You can't rid a song of its words: notes on the hegemony of lyrics in Russian rock songs

Popular Music ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yngvar B. Steinholt
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
The Core ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Characteristics

From the mid-1980s, rock music emerged as the leading musical culture in the major cities of the Soviet Union. In writings and research on this ‘Soundtrack of Perestroika’, attention has been primarily paid to the words rather than the sounds. Russian rock critics and academics, as well as those who participate in Russian rock culture, persistently emphasise the literary qualities of Russian rock music and most still prefer to approach rock as a form of musical poetry - ‘Rok poèziya’. This seems out of step with the growing emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach within popular music studies. The aim of this article is to investigate and discuss some of the core arguments that underpin notions of Russian rock music's literary qualities. This may help to uncover some specific national characteristics of rock in Russia, whilst at the same time questioning the need for, and value of, a literary approach to the study of Russian rock.

Yes, ‘Awaken’, and the progressive rock style

Popular Music ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN R. PALMER
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Rock Bands ◽  
Progressive Rock ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Musical Styles

Going for the One was a good rebirth of Yes at that time, to find its feet and really know what it wanted to do. And we made ‘Awaken’ . . . (Morse 1996, p. 58).Since the release of their third recording, The Yes Album, in March 1971, the music of the English band Yes has been associated with the rock music substyle called ‘progressive rock’. The first two Yes albums showcase a very capable, inventive group of musicians who drew freely from the multitude of sounds around them, emulating aspects of the various musical styles they found engaging. However, it was not until they composed the works appearing on The Yes Album that the band coupled this eclecticism with a quest for originality to develop a voice highly idiosyncratic when judged against prevailing popular music styles. Subsequent albums reveal a predeliction for experimentation and expansion, and successful record sales in both the UK and US encouraged further development in the same direction. Although not members of the ‘first wave’ of progressive rock bands, Yes became ‘codifiers’ and for many, especially later detractors, the flagship of the ‘progressive' fleet. Before I go on to describe and illustrate, through the analysis of a particular song, aspects of Yes's musical language, I will briefly describe the environment in which it appeared and flourished.

scholarly journals The gendered carnival of pop

Popular Music ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Railton
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Gender And Genre ◽  
Predominantly Female ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
The Way

One of the ironies of popular music studies is that the music that is the most popular, in terms of contemporary chart success, is rarely discussed by academics writing in the field. In this article I want to suggest that this is because some forms of ‘mainstream’ chart pop music, and the discourse of the magazines that promote this type of music, pose a threat to the certainties of both gender and genre that underpin ‘serious’ popular music. The music I am concerned with here is that provided by ‘boy bands’ like Boyzone, Westlife or Five, and ‘girl groups’ like The Spice Girls, Atomic Kitten or Precious, as well as mixed-sex groups such as Steps, SClub7 and Hear'Say, and singers such as Britney Spears and Billie – music that is the mainstay of magazines such as the UK publications Smash Hits, Top of the Pops and Live and Kicking. I shall argue that this music, and the way of enjoying music promoted by the magazines that support it, can best be understood in terms of a carnivalesque disruption that challenges all stable ideas about what makes music good, and what popular music should be about. Furthermore, I shall argue that, just as this music is perhaps the only form of popular music to have a predominantly female audience, the threat that it poses is the threat of the feminine, and of female encroachment into what is still predominantly a male, and masculine, world.

Rocking the Closet

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent L. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
World War ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
Gay Activism

Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathias Queered Pop Music examines the way four popular male musicians who emerged in the 1950s, Johnnie Ray, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace challenged post-World War II masculine conventions. Rocking is a critical close reading that fuses queer literary theory, musicology, and popular music studies frameworks to develop its argument. Recent scholarship in queer theory and literary history constitutes a key strand of the book’s discussion of queer ambivalence regarding identity. Notably, the book explores how the four artists challenged male gender and sexual conventions without overtly identifying their respective sexual orientations or necessarily affiliating with gay activism, identity politics, or community tropes. The book outlines the emergence of postwar social expectations of male figures and employs these expectations to define a unique a set of five “queering” tools the four musicians employed in various combinations, to develop their public personae and build audiences. These tools include self-neutering, self-domesticating, spectacularizing, playing the “freak,” and playing the race card. Despite the prevalence of postwar gender norms, their deft use of these tools enabled each artist to develop sexually ambiguous personae and capitalize on the postwar audiences’ attraction to novelty and difference. These “queering” tools endure among contemporary musicians who challenge masculine conventions in popular music.

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