scholarly journals “Gimme a Beat!”

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-117
Author(s):  
Christine Capetola
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Music Technology ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
The Senses

In 1986, Janet Jackson forever changed the direction of pop music and its music videos with the release of her third and breakthrough album, Control. Working with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, choreographer Paula Abdul, and director Mary Lambert, Jackson created songs and videos that conveyed a new kind of feminist affect that intertwined individual stories of endurance, the forcefulness of relatively new digital music technology, and Black and female collectivity. In this article, I chart how Jackson transmitted this feminist affect through what I call hyperaurality, or sounds and vibrations that work in excess of the limitations of visual representation. Through tracing the affective excesses of Jackson’s visuals, sounds, and movements, I unpack how hyperaurality both intensifies and reintegrates the senses of sight, hearing, and feeling. In the process, I posit that vibration, or sound’s materially felt oscillations, works as a point of connection across these three aspects of hyperaurality. By demonstrating its connective power, I assert that vibration is a source of affective politics within popular music, one with the power of repurposing capitalism's excesses.

“Funky fresh dressed to impress”

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Kreyer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Music Listening ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
Opposite Sex ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Considerable Body ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

Since the beginnings of modern popular music, listening to pop songs has been one of the major pastimes in Western countries, raising the question how popular music contributes to the shaping of beliefs and attitudes in general and gender roles and stereotypes in particular. While there is a considerable body of research concerning the depiction of men and women in pop music videos, the lyrics of pop songs, so far, have largely been neglected as a viable source of data. On the basis of two corpora of contemporary pop songs by male and female artists, respectively, the present paper explores discourses of femininity and masculinity as represented in the lyrics of pop songs. It is shown that although the two corpora behave surprisingly similarly in some respects, the way in which male and female artists refer to themselves or to the opposite sex might contribute to the consolidation of unfavourable roles for women.

Avant-Gardists and the Lure of Pop Music

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Vernallis
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Sound Image ◽  
Derek Jarman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joseph Cornell ◽  
Cultural Constraints ◽  
Experimental Films

This chapter provides methods and models for thinking about avant-garde and experimental films and videos that incorporate popular music. It sketches the history of intersections between avant-gardists and popular music. It also provides close readings of works by Kenneth Anger, Bruce Connor, Joseph Cornell, Derek Jarman, Tony Oursler, Pipilotti Rist, Andy Warhol and others. It claims that institutional, formal and cultural constraints not only limit the frequency with which avant-gardists participate with pop musicians and pop music, they also colour the audiovisual relations within the works themselves. Avant-garde films and videos with pop soundtracks emphasise particular kinds of audiovisual relation—relations that differ from sound-image connections in narrative films, YouTube clips, commercials and music videos. It is demonstrated that this experimental subgenre embodies a unique sort of sound-image relation and suggests, finally, that these videos can expand our knowledge of audiovisual relations more broadly.

scholarly journals ‘Dear Future Husband’: young people’s critical exploration of gender and sexuality in pop music videos

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-26
Author(s):  
Elly Scrine
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Critical Exploration ◽  
Primary Consumers ◽  
Insightful Analysis

This study aimed to explore how young people can critically engage with music videos to explore dominant constructions of gender and sexuality. As the primary consumers of popular music and music videos, adolescents are also a group who exist in a unique sociocultural space, where both misogyny and feminism are present in their highly media-driven lives. This study used focus group workshops with young people in high school to generate qualitative data based on the participants’ discussion and interpretations of gender and sexuality in two music videos. Seven groups of young people aged 14 – 16 analysed two popular music videos and reflected particularly upon discourses of expected femininity and female sexuality. Discussion elucidated insightful analysis around gendered subjectivity, and presented three complex and opposing themes, which are explored in detail. A cohesive thread emerged in the data in which young people demonstrated their capacity to identify hegemonic gender constructs, while also relying on these constructs to read and police the women shown in the music videos.

Garage band or GarageBand®? Remixing musical futures

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauri Väkevä
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Informal Learning ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Band Model ◽  
Music Pedagogy ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Rock Band

In this paper, I suggest that it is perhaps time to consider the pedagogy of popular music in more extensive terms than conventional rock band practices have to offer. One direction in which this might lead is the expansion of the informal pedagogy based on a ‘garage band’ model to encompass various modes of digital artistry wherever this artistry takes place. This might include: in face-to-face pedagogical situations, in other contexts of informal learning, and in such open networked learning environments as remix sites and musical online communities. The rock-based practice of learning songs by ear from records and rehearsing them together to perform live or to record is just one way to practice popular music artistry today. Such practices as DJing/turntablism; assembling of various bits and pieces to remixes; remixing entire songs to mash-ups in home studios; collective songwriting online; producing of one's own music videos to YouTube; exchanging and comparing videos of live performances of Guitar Hero and Rock Band game songs – all of these indicate a musical culture that differs substantially from conventional ‘garage band’ practices. The global eminence of digital music culture can be taken as one indication of the need to reconsider music as a transformative praxis. By examining the ways in which music is produced and used in digital music culture, we can prepare for new forms of artistry that have yet to emerge from the creative mosaic of digital appropriation. Thus, we expand and redefine our notions of informal music pedagogy. This paper concludes with consideration of several themes that Afrodiasporic aesthetics suggest to the understanding of this artistry.

Race, Latinidad, and Latin Pop

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra R. Rivera-Rideau
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Television Show ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Music Market ◽  
Latin Music ◽  
Latino Artists

Popular music is one site where the contributions of Afro-Latinos are widely recognized. However, few Afro-Latino musicians reach the top of the Latin music charts. Several authors have argued that music like mambo or salsa, which began with strong Afro-Latino representation, “whitened” once it entered the mainstream Latin music market. This whitening involved both a shift in aesthetics and in the prevalence and popularity of white Latino artists. This chapter examines the contemporary pop phenomenon reggaetón as the latest iteration of this shift. The author pays particular attention to the rise and popularity of CNCO, the “first reggaetón boyband” that emerged from a television show called La Banda on Univision. Through an analysis of CNCO’s self-presentation, performance, and music videos, the author examines the current trend toward whitening in reggaetón that has helped facilitate the genre’s growth in Latin and global pop music.

THINKING THROUGH INTERTEXTUALITY IN KOREAN POP MUSIC VIDEOS

2020 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-63
Author(s):  
CedarBough T. Saeji
Keyword(s):  
Music Videos ◽  
Pop Music

John Philip Sousa’s Historic Resistance to Technology in Music Learning

2021 ◽  
pp. 153660062110339
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Thibeault
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Music Technology ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Music Learning ◽  
Sound Recordings ◽  
Us Congress ◽  
The Us

In this article, I explore John Philip Sousa’s historic resistance to music technology and his belief that sound recordings would negatively impact music education and musical amateurism. I review Sousa’s primary arguments from two 1906 essays and his testimony to the US Congress from the same year, based on the fundamental premise that machines themselves sing or perform, severing the connection between live listener and performer and thus rendering recordings a poor substitute for real music. Sousa coined the phrase “canned music,” and I track engagement with this phrase among the hundreds of newspapers and magazines focused on Sousa’s resistance. To better understand the construction of Sousa’s beliefs, I then review how his rich musical upbringing around the US Marine Band and the theaters of Washington DC lead to his conception of music as a dramatic ritual. And I examine the curious coda of Sousa’s life, during which he recanted his beliefs and conducted his band for radio, finding that in fact these experiences reinforced Sousa’s worries. The discussion considers how Sousa’s ideas can help us better to examine the contemporary shift to digital music by combining Sousa’s ideas with those of Sherry Turkle.

Glocal riddim: cultural production and territorial identity in Caribbean music videos

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-111
Author(s):  
Murali Balaji ◽  
Thomas Sigler
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Territorial Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Musical Genres

Over the past two decades, several musical genres have transcended their Caribbean origins to achieve global recognition and success. Among these are soca, dancehall and reggaeton, all forms that had been inextricably tied to native cultural expressions, but have become increasingly popular as global commodities, particularly as web-based streaming platforms (e.g. YouTube) enhance their global audiovisual mobility. Numerous artists within these genres have become internationally recognized superstars, and many of the most recent tracks reflect an increasing co-mingling with American ‘pop’ music, as record companies seek to invigorate mainstream sounds with these ‘exotic’, yet widely popular artists. This article explores representations of scalar territorial identity as articulated in music videos from within these genres so as to evaluate how identity intersects with profit-driven models applicable to the contemporary music industry. By evaluating imagery from a regionally representative sample of music videos, they identify the intimate relationship between identity, scale and cultural production. Ultimately, we interrogate how place-based identity is commodified in these representations and whether certain images are constructed more for transnational consumption than an articulation of a coherent local national, or regional identity.

Digitale Musikedition und die Wissenschaft der Populären Musik

2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-393
Author(s):  
Rebecca Grotjahn ◽  
Joachim Iffland
Keyword(s):  
Western Music ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Cultural Behavior ◽  
Historical Objects

The term pop-music already claims to be artificial, just like "classical" western music. In this context, the article deals with the potentials of digital music edition, focusing on the necessity of a pop-music philology. In paying attention particularly to non-textual aspects of music, this seems one of the most important potentials of digital music edition in this area. Therefore, the need of a pop-music philology is emphasized here. This may include the edition of audiovisual objects, objects of cultural behavior and historical objects. We examine this using the example of the cover-version phenomenon, and recommend at least addressing copyright aspects.

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