“A Song Calling for You”

Soul in Seoul ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 43-88
Author(s):  
Crystal S. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Music ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Black American ◽  
Korean Music ◽  
Dynamic Image ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Asian Stereotypes

Korean pop groups cite the R&B tradition by emulating R&B musical and vocal elements in catchy pop songs and enhance the tradition through Korean music strategies that infuse multiple genres with R&B elements. Korean pop groups emulate the R&B tradition by citing elements of funk, club, and urban R&B. Moreover, Korean and African American producers infuse K-pop with different varieties of R&B. These artists also enhance the R&B tradition by mixing pop genres with R&B within individual songs and over the course of their careers. In music videos, they cite the choreography and styles of African American performance in ways that provide alternatives to Asian stereotypes. This intertextuality is driven by promotions that focus on image and music quality; strategies that mirror those employed by Black American music producers. The combination of dynamic image and quality music production fuels K-pop’s cultural work and global crossover, thereby making it part of a global R&B tradition.

Soul in Seoul

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal S. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Korean Music ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
Musical Production ◽  
Music Aesthetics ◽  
American Popular Music

Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop examines how K-pop cites musical and performative elements of Black popular music culture as well as the ways that fans outside of Korea understand these citations. K-pop represents a hybridized mode of Korean popular music that emerged in the 1990s with global aspirations. Its hybridity combines musical elements from Korean and foreign cultures, particularly rhythm and blues-based genres (R&B) of African American popular music. Korean pop, R&B and hip-hop solo artists and groups engage in citational practices by simultaneously emulating R&B’s instrumentation and vocals and enhancing R&B by employing Korean musical strategies to such an extent that K-pop becomes part of a global R&B tradition. Korean pop groups use dynamic images and quality musical production to engage in cultural work that culminates the kind of global form of crossover pioneered by Black American music producers. Korean R&B artists, with a focus on vocals, take the R&B tradition beyond the Black-white binary, and Korean hip-hop practitioners use sampling and live instrumentation to promote R&B’s innovative music aesthetics. K-pop artists also cite elements of African American performance in Korean music videos that disrupt limiting representations. K-pop’s citational practices reveal diverse musical aesthetics driven by the interplay of African American popular music and Korean music strategies. As a transcultural fandom, global fans function as part of K-pop’s music press and deem these citational practices authentic. Citational practices also challenge homogenizing modes of globalization by revealing the multiple cultural forces that inform K-pop.

The Black Chicago Renaissance

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
American Music ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Gwendolyn Brooks ◽  
International Context ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Chicago Renaissance ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

Beginning in the 1930s, Black Chicago experienced a cultural renaissance that lasted into the 1950s and rivaled the cultural outpouring of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. This book analyzes this prolific period of African American creativity in music, performance art, social science scholarship, and visual and literary artistic expression. Unlike Harlem, Chicago was an urban industrial center that gave a unique working-class and internationalist perspective to the cultural work being done in Chicago. The chapters discuss the forces that distinguished the Black Chicago Renaissance from the Harlem Renaissance and place the development of black culture in a national and international context. The chapters also provoke explorations of renaissances in other cities. Among the topics discussed in this volume are Chicago writers Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Wright, The Chicago Defender and Tivoli Theater, African American music and visual arts, and the American Negro Exposition of 1940.

Culture-specific production and performance characteristics: An interview study with ‘Teutonic’ metal producers

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Peter Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Qualitative Interview ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Performance Characteristics ◽  
Specific Production ◽  
Music Production ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Original Interpretation ◽  
Distinguishing Features

Viking metal, Teutonic metal, Mesopotamian metal – labels of this kind are common in fan discourse, media and academia. Whereas some research has investigated such labels and related them to the artist’s stage presentation, music videos, artwork and lyrics, there is still a lack from the perspectives of music production and performance as to how such culturally and geographically associated labels differ musically. This article explores culture-specific production and performance characteristics of Teutonic metal, focusing on how metal from Germany differed from British and US-American productions in the 1980s and 1990s, during which time metal spread to Continental Europe and German speed metal achieved an international reputation for its original interpretation of metal. The study is based on a qualitative interview design with three record producers who were crucial for the rise of German metal labels and their bands: Harris Johns for Noise Records, Siggi Bemm for Century Media and Charlie Bauerfeind for Steamhammer. The findings suggest that performances differed between bands from Germany, America and Great Britain regarding timing, rhythmic precision, ensemble synchronization and expressiveness. Likewise, production approaches varied due to distinct preferences for certain guitar amplifiers, drum tunings, microphone techniques, mixing concepts and studio acoustics. Despite such culture-specific differences, it proved difficult for the interviewed producers to identify distinguishing features. Genre conventions seem to have a stronger impact than cultural origin overall.

scholarly journals Stanley Péan et l’interculturalité en diaspora

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiana Fianco
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
American Music ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Intercultural Exchange ◽  
Young Writer

In spite of being viewed as a young writer until the ’90s, Stanley Péan is now known as one of the most distinctive and established voices in the Haitian-Canadian literary scene. The pivotal moment in his career happened in 1996, when Zombi Blues was published. This novel displays a cultural space in which Haitian traditions and Canadian modernity converge and allow intercultural exchange to take place. Drawing from this perspective, the following article aims to analyse how Péan creates a fictional universe through the blending of cultural elements. Using the collection of myths and beliefs that permeate the Haitian and African cultural panorama as a reference point, we will investigate the ways in which Péan adapted and transposed these traditions to the Haitian diasporic context. Particular attention will be given to the use of jazz and African American music, as well as to the reinterpretation of mythological creatures such as the zombie and the marasa twins. Hence, the article tries to show how Péan’s cultural crossroad contributes to the foundation of a new literary interpretation of Haitianity.

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