‘Ethnic’ music traditions in the USA (black music; country music; others; all)

Popular Music ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Keil

This is a brief meditation on ethnicity as a source of all powerful musical styles, as a kind of curse in the contemporary world of nation states, and as an ever more complex puzzle for every student of popular music to solve.

Author(s):  
Richard Carlin

The Introduction explains that like all popular music styles, the best country music balances the personal with the commercial; it is both nostalgic and progressive, reflecting earlier influences while rejecting their limitations; and ultimately it is expressive of our cultural values—both the laudable and the lamented. Country music is the most “popular” of all musical styles in terms of sheer numbers. While it rises to the surface of America’s consciousness occasionally, it is country’s deep-rooted, almost subterranean, nature that has made it in many ways America’s most profound indigenous pop music. It is a music of timeless themes, telling stories of love gone wrong and families torn asunder.


Author(s):  
Timothy Freeze

The posthorn solos in the trios of the third movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony have polarised critical and scholarly opinion regarding their stylistic origins. My examination places the posthorn solos in the context of the popular music of Mahler’s day. Drawing on contemporary reviews, sheet music, and military band manuscripts in Austrian and German archives, I uncover palpable references, since forgotten or neglected, both to the genre of sentimental trumpet solos, common in salon music and band concerts, and to posthorn stylisations distinctive to popular music. Mahler demonstrably knew these repertoires, and critics often cited them in reviews. These allusions do not negate the solos’ likenesses to folk song and the sound of actual posthorns. Rather, Mahler’s score refers to multiple musical styles without being reducible to any one of them.


Popular Music ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 107-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toru Mitsui

The record and tape sales figures of the Japanese record industry have exceeded those of the industries of all other capitalist nations, except the USA, since the mid-seventies. In 1980, Japan's share amounted to 13.9 per cent of all sales in the capitalist sphere according to surveys by Billboard. The USA had 35.8 per cent, West Germany 11.6 per cent, the UK 11.6 per cent and France 7.3 per cent (Kawabata 1977, p. 22; 1982, pp. 91, 199). The output of foreign records, recorded and pressed by Japanese companies, to foreign records, pressed by Japanese companies from masters recorded by foreign companies primarily for their own consumers, has been about three to two. A good many of these foreign records are of American and European popular music, and in this field one can perceive a new and interesting tendency to promote and succeed with artists who are or were less successful in their own country. The tendency, whose background I am going to discuss here, started in the mid-seventies; one of the early examples is provided by Kiss, a New York group, which was shrewdly promoted and achieved wide popularity in Japan before succeeding nationwide in America.


2019 ◽  
pp. 355-363
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Golubkova ◽  
Elena Grunt

This paper explores the reasons for emergence and the features of ambient media in an urban socio-cultural space. Global socio-cultural changes in the contemporary world lead to informational oversaturation, trauma-generating factors and, as a consequence, search for new adaptive mechanisms for an individual to accept the social reality. Ambient media become an unobtrusive advertising communication built into the environment and people’s daily practices in the contemporary society. To analyze ambient media as a new form of communication, the authors applied the method of structural and functional analysis and a systemic approach. The paper argues that ambient media are a breakthrough, new and comparatively young advertising communication disproving traditional views of advertisement types, methods and forms. This is a communication offering innovative patterns of interaction with the consumer and the environment and changing individuals’ notions of a socio-cultural space where they exist. The authors identified the main features of ambient media, as well as the human trauma symptoms that can be caused by communication processes in the contemporary society: It is demonstrated that ambient media as a new type of communication are in all respects integrated into the urban space of European countries and the USA. For contemporary Russia, however, ambient media as a type of communication are a new trend in the socio-cultural space of Russian cities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 476-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Baker ◽  
Jez Collins

This article identifies the challenges community archives of popular music face in achieving medium- to long-term sustainability. The artefacts and vernacular knowledge to be found in community archives, both physical and online, are at risk of being lost ‘to the tip’ and, consequently, to ‘cultural memory’, due to a lack of resources and technological change. The authors offer case studies of the British Archive of Country Music, a physical archive, and an online Facebook group Upstairs at the Mermaid, to exemplify how and why such groups must strategize their practices in order to remain sustainable. By including both online and physical community archiving in the scope of this research, the authors find that despite key differences in practice, both archival communities face similar threats of closure. The article concludes with an overview of the general outlook for community archives, and possible solutions to this ongoing issue of sustainable practices and processes for this sector.


2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (11) ◽  
pp. 91-102
Author(s):  
I. Semenenko

Analyzing discourses on interethnic relations can contribute to a clearer understanding of the focal points of tensions in contemporary political communities sharing a common territory and common political institutions. These discourses represent the complex of problems related to nation-building and are generated both in the public sphere and in academic discussion. As such, they often develop separately one from the other. Assessing the current academic discourse on nations and nationalism, on nation-building and the nation-state, on citizenship, cultural diversity and interethnic conflict can contribute to the formation of the agenda of a politics of identity aimed at building a civic nation. Memory politics deserve special attention in this context, as the interpretation of historic memory has today become a powerful instrument that political elites can use to consolidate the nation and, in different contexts, to politicize ethnicity and deepen cleavages in existing nation-states. The affirmation of a positive civic (national) identity is a reference framework for modern democratic societies, and it is in meeting the challenges of politicizing ethnicity that political priorities and academic interests meet. However, the current domination of politics over academia in this conflict prone sphere contributes to its radicalization and to the formation of negative and exclusive identities that can be manipulated to pursue elitist group interests. Evaluating models of political organization alternative to the ones known today (such as “the nation-state”) does not aspire to “write off” the nation, but this can help to come up with visions and ideas politics can take up to overcome the conflict potential that contemporary societies generate over ethnic issues. Acknowledgements. This article was prepared with financial support provided by the Russian Science Foundation [research grant № 15-18-00021, “Regulating interethnic relations and managing ethnic and social conflicts in the contemporary world: the resource potential of civic identity (a comparative political analysis)”]. The research was conducted at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), RAS.


Author(s):  
Stephanie Vander Wel

Chapter 1 explores the theatrical context of 1930s country music on radio, specifically daily and weekly shows, including the National Barn Dance, on Chicago’s WLS. Similar to vaudeville, radio programmed the diverse strands of vernacular expression with music (including Western art music) that pointed to the high and popular aesthetics of the middle-class mainstream. With an emphasis on reception, this chapter demonstrates that listeners debated the merits of early country music as well as other musical styles and genres with a class-based understanding of aesthetics. The syncretic nature and theatrical characters of early country music (such as the singing mountaineer, the crooning cowboy, and the rustic buffoon) fit radio’s attempts to negotiate the crossing and blurring of the serious and the popular, the urban and the rural, and the sentimental and the parodic. Thus, through the technology of radio, early country music first secured a place in the American consciousness by rubbing against other styles and genres that transgressed cultural and musical divides.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
Marcelo Marques Miranda

The dichotomy between nature and culture in heritage and conservation is inappropriate in the case of indigenous peoples. Many natural sites are often considered sacred and consequently of both spiritual and biodiversity conservation significance. However, this dualist definition is the one usually imposed by nation states. Until 2002, Thailand’s development strategies involving indigenous peoples were mostly connected to what was referred to as the ‘hill tribes’ problems’. These strategies were designed without respecting indigenous peoples’ world views and concepts of good life. Consequently, a fragmentary world view was created among indigenous peoples. These issues are reflected in the establishment of national parks and ‘heritage sites’ as the lack of participation and consent generated many conflicts such as land tenure disputes, resettlement of the communities, difficulties in acquiring citizenship and cultural loss. As a counteracting measure, indigenous peoples have been creating community museums and organizations at local, regional and even transnational level to sustain their cultures and territories. This article suggests that heritage can play a role in a wide range of social, political and economic endeavours in our contemporary world and is used both by nation states to legitimize their interests and by indigenous peoples to legitimize struggles for self-determination.


Popular Music ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Magaldi

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.


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