Dana International and the politics of nostalgia

Popular Music ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
YOSSI MAUREY
Keyword(s):  
Popular Song ◽  
Eurovision Song Contest ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
Specific Identity

AbstractThis paper focuses on the musical discourse of nostalgia evidenced in the songs of Dana International, an Israeli transsexual singer who took First Prize in the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest. It is organised around several songs featuring various compositional strategies, beginning with remakes of older songs and leading into new ones. Through quotation of music and/or lyrics, and the alteration and departure from the original, Dana premiers, transforms and renews songs in a way unique to her: she forces the audience to rethink what is natural and what is historically constructed, blurs distinctions between the sexes, past and present, the national and international, and draws on nostalgia as a powerful device to unsettle and question received truths. Her songs often mock and parody the masculinist, nationalist myths of mainstream Israeli culture, exposing the ideology of its artefacts. By promoting various types of blending, Dana challenges the notion of fixed borders. Despite the musical surface of popular song, which sounds international and without specific identity, the deep structures of these songs are in fact very much about complex questions of identity.

scholarly journals The politics of power, pleasure and prayer in the Eurovision Song Contest

Muzikologija ◽  
2007 ◽  
pp. 39-67
Author(s):  
Filip Bolman
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Eurovision Song Contest ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Complex Forms ◽  
Point Of Departure

Since the first annual Eurovision Song Contest in 1956, politics and popularity have intersected to influence the ways in which Eurovision songs have reflected the complex forms of European nationalism. With the Eurovision victory of Marija Serifovic?s ?Molitva? at the 52nd Eurovision in Helsinki the politics of regionalism and nationalism fully enveloped Southeastern Europe, creating the impression that old and new European alignments, from Habsburg nostalgia to an emerging Balkan brotherhood, overwhelmed the criteria that would otherwise mean that the grand prix would go to the best song. Taking Marija Serifovic?s ?Molitva? 2007 as a point of departure, this article examines the extremely complex set of networks that intersect at the Eurovision Song Contest and the national rituals and competitions that transform the power and pleasure driving European popular song in the twenty-first century.

Early Cinema in Scotland

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Audience

This collection of essays, drawn from a three-year AHRC research project, provides a detailed context for the history of early cinema in Scotland from its inception in 1896 till the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. It details the movement from travelling fairground shows to the establishment of permanent cinemas, and from variety and live entertainment to the dominance of the feature film. It addresses the promotion of cinema as a socially ‘useful’ entertainment, and, distinctively, it considers the early development of cinema in small towns as well as in larger cities. Using local newspapers and other archive sources, it details the evolution and the diversity of the social experience of cinema, both for picture goers and for cinema staff. In production, it examines the early attempts to establish a feature film production sector, with a detailed production history of Rob Roy (United Films, 1911), and it records the importance, both for exhibition and for social history, of ‘local topicals’. It considers the popularity of Scotland as an imaginary location for European and American films, drawing their popularity from the international audience for writers such as Walter Scott and J.M. Barrie and the ubiquity of Scottish popular song. The book concludes with a consideration of the arrival of sound in Scittish cinemas. As an afterpiece, it offers an annotated filmography of Scottish-themed feature films from 1896 to 1927, drawing evidence from synopses and reviews in contemporary trade journals.

Korngold and His World

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
American Film ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Erich Wolfgang Korngold ◽  
American Popular Song

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957) was the last compositional prodigy to emerge from the Austro-German tradition of Mozart and Mendelssohn. He was lauded in his youth by everyone from Mahler to Puccini and his auspicious career in the early 1900s spanned chamber music, opera, and musical theater. Today, he is best known for his Hollywood film scores, composed between 1935 and 1947. From his prewar operas in Vienna to his pathbreaking contributions to American film, this book provides a substantial reassessment of Korngold's life and accomplishments. Korngold struggled to reconcile the musical language of his Viennese upbringing with American popular song and cinema, and was forced to adapt to a new life after wartime emigration to Hollywood. The book examines Korngold's operas and film scores, the critical reception of his music, and his place in the milieus of both the Old and New Worlds. It also features numerous historical documents—many previously unpublished and in first-ever English translations—including essays by the composer as well as memoirs by his wife, Luzi Korngold, and his father, the renowned music critic Julius Korngold.

When Culturally Significant Songs are Decontextualised: The Initiation Song Somagwaza, A Case Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
T Dowling ◽  
Somikazi Deyi ◽  
Anele Gobodwana
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Ritual Music ◽  
Constant Comparative Method ◽  
Small Focus ◽  
Over Time

While there have been a number of studies on the decontextualisation and secularisation of traditional ritual music in America, Taiwan and other parts of the globe, very little has been written on the processes and transformations that South Africa’s indigenous ceremonial songs go through over time. This study was prompted by the authors’ interest in, and engagement with the Xhosa initiation song Somagwaza, which has been re-imagined as a popular song, but has also purportedly found its way into other religious spaces. In this article, we attempted to investigate the extent to which the song Somagwaza is still associated with the Xhosa initiation ritual and to analyse evidence of it being decontextualised and secularised in contemporary South Africa. Our methodology included an examination of the various academic treatments of the song, an analysis of the lyrics of a popular song, bearing the same name, holding small focus group discussions, and distributing questionnaires to speakers of isiXhosa on the topic of the song. The data gathered were analysed using the constant comparative method of analysing qualitative research.

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