scholarly journals We are not a female band, we are a band!”: Female performance as a model of gender transgression in Serbian popular music

Muzikologija ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Iva Nenic

Instrumental performance, leadership, and authorship by women in music has historically been subjected to various repressive regimes, while many of the prejudices and restrictions regarding female musicking can still be discerned in contemporary popular music practices in Serbia. These mechanisms have been transferred into contemporary music with different ideological and stylistic inclination, such as indie music cohorts and folk- or tradition-based genres and scenes. The structural preconditions that articulate the subject position of female instrumentalists, regardless of genre or the scene they belong to are the lack of history of female playing and the requirement that they reach the supposedly higher standards of male musicians. This article starts with a brief genealogy of female instrumental music performance from late socialism to the diversity of contemporary popular music in its present neo-liberal context. Against that background it interprets the disciplining mechanisms restricting female musical creativity and performance, addressing the issues of identity and power through female agency in music.

Author(s):  
Dave Headlam

The information age has pushed music performance into the era of music informance, in which information and performance are combined in an integrated way. The types of presentation formats and analytical information found in public music theory are ideal for music informance, and present-day explorations of informance on the Internet have a history of noted musical informants including Leonard Bernstein and Glenn Gould. In order to continue to be relevant and to thrive in our connected world, live and recorded music scenarios need to develop ever more innovative ways to enhance music performance with information effectively presented in music informance.


Popular Music ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Homan

In a tiny inner city pubThe amps were getting stackedLeads were getting wound upIt was full of pissed Anzacs‘Got no more gigs for Tuesday nights’ said the barman to the star,‘We're putting pokies in the lounge and strippers in the bar’The star, he raised his fingers and said ‘fuck this fucking hole’But to his roadie said ‘it's the death of rock and roll’‘There ain't no single place left to play amplified guitarEvery place is servin' long blacks if they're not already tapas bars(TISM (This Is Serious Mum), ‘The Last Australian Guitar Hero’, 1998)Introduction: local music-makingA number of recent studies have focused upon the places and spaces of popular music performance. In particular, analyses of British live music contexts have examined the role of urban landscapes in facilitating production/consumption environments. Building upon Simon Frith's (1983) initial exploration of the synthesis of leisure/work ideologies and popular music, Ruth Finnegan's detailed examination of amateur music practices in Milton Keynes (1989) and Sara Cohen's account of the Liverpool scene (1991) reveal the benefits of engaging in detailed micro-studies of the local. Paul Chevigny's history of the governance of New York City jazz venues (1991) similarly provides a rich insight into performance contexts and the importance of hitherto unnoticed city ordinances in influencing the production of live music.


Author(s):  
Hee-sun Kim

Korean pop music, or K-pop, has emerged and taken its dominant place since the turn of this century, but its girl groups can trace their lineage back to the 1990s, while the dance music so characteristic of K-pop began in the dance music boom of the 1980s. This chapter examines the music, image, and performance styles of female dance divas from the 1980s into the 2000s. Its purpose is threefold: first, to properly historicize the female dance singers of Korean pop music within their socio-cultural contexts and trace how the image of sexuality has evolved from those early dance divas to the K-pop girl groups of today; second, to examine the ways in which multi-dimensional cultural meanings and voices are constructed through the music, performance styles, and images, atop discourses of body, gender, and sexuality; and third, to dispute earlier assumptions about Korean female dance singers as being merely innocent victims of the globalized commercial entertainment industry and patriarchal systems. This study seeks to reveal the female dance singers as major subjectivities in shaping modern Korean popular music, a role inevitably overshadowed by the strong critical discourse on K-pop girls that emphasizes their sexuality.


PeerJ ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. e1299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Visentin ◽  
Shiming Li ◽  
Guillaume Tardif ◽  
Gongbing Shan

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most often transmitted through aural traditions that include both verbal instruction and performance modeling. In most parts of the world, violin is taught in a manner virtually indistinguishable from that used 200 years ago. The current study uses methods from movement science to examine the “how” and “what” of left-hand position changes (shifting), a movement skill essential during violin performance. In doing so, it begins a discussion of artistic individualization in terms of anthropometry, the performer-instrument interface, and the strategic use of motor behaviors. Results based on 540 shifting samples, a case series of 6 professional-level violinists, showed that some elements of the skill were individualized in surprising ways while others were explainable by anthropometry, ergonomics and entrainment. Remarkably, results demonstrated each violinist to have developed an individualized pacing for shifts, a feature that should influence timing effects and prove foundational to aesthetic outcomes during performance. Such results underpin the potential for scientific methodologies to unravel mysteries of performance that are associated with a performer’s personal artistic style.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-69
Author(s):  
Alyssa N. Grey

Rote versus note beginning instrumental pedagogy has been an active topic for music educators. Traditional method books have often comprised a significant portion of beginning instrumental curricula, though content has varied and may have been based on convention. Advocates of a rote-before-note approach have recommended that singing, movement, developing aural skills, teaching expressiveness, and creativity may provide students with enhanced contextual knowledge and experiences to better learn to read notation. However, there may be gaps in research of music reading and teaching method. This literature review includes a discussion of the history of rote and note education in the United States, an overview of five major pedagogical approaches, and an examination of music reading and performance research. The article is intended to initiate a discussion of teaching methods, practices, and curriculum selection for developing literacy and performance skills in secondary instrumental music classrooms.


Muzikologija ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 163-186
Author(s):  
Manuel Ferreirа

This paper describes an on-going project, the collaborative Thematic History of Music in Portugal and Brazil; it details its context, rationale, concept, structure and the process that led to its public presentation and preliminary development at CESEM/FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. The importance of Africa in the understanding of some facets not only of modern popular music, but also of 16th- 18th century genres in Portugal and Brazil is particularly stressed; examples of both polyphonic and instrumental music are given to illustrate this early influence.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Visentin ◽  
Shiming Li ◽  
Guillaume Tardif ◽  
Gongbing Shan

Instrumental music performance ranks among the most complex of learned human behaviors, requiring development of highly nuanced powers of sensory and neural discrimination, intricate motor skills, and adaptive abilities in a temporal activity. Teaching, learning and performing on the violin generally occur within musico-cultural parameters most often transmitted through aural traditions that include both verbal instruction and performance modeling. In most parts of the world, violin is taught in a manner virtually indistinguishable from that used 200 years ago. The current study uses methods from movement science to examine the “how” and “what” of left-hand position changes (shifting), a movement skill essential during violin performance. In doing so, it begins a discussion of artistic individualization in terms of anthropometry, the performer-instrument interface, and the strategic use of motor behaviors. Results based on 540 shifting samples, a case series of 6 professional-level violinists, showed that some elements of the skill were individualized in surprising ways while others were explainable by anthropometry, ergonomics and entrainment. Remarkably, results demonstrated each violinist to have developed an individualized pacing for shifts, a feature that should influence timing effects and prove foundational to aesthetic outcomes during performance. Such results underpin the potential for scientific methodologies to unravel mysteries of performance that are associated with a performer’s personal artistic style.


Somatechnics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imogene Newland

Certain trends in the recital of Western art music composition and performance have embraced indeterminacy through an emerging sonic aesthetic that seeks to redefine the notion of failure. From Charles Ives' adoption of bi-tonality in the early twentieth century to the ‘glitch’ movement in contemporary computer music, this article traces ways in which musicians have sought to embrace the risk for failure in performance with special attention to virtuosic instrumental music ( Cascone 2006 ; Rodgers 2003 ; Godlovitch 1998 ; Rosen 2002 ). Drawing upon the author's recent interdisciplinary practice-led research ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ (2010) and adopting a choreographic approach to the re-appropriation of musical gesture, the author explores how the risk for failure contributes to live musical experience. This discussion is then extended to the process of corporeal acquisition necessary in rehearsing and performing a piece of music which, the author suggests, results in a degree of gestural self-simulation. In this way, the performer's personal authenticity is discussed as a potential locus of failure in which the physical manifestation of emotional expression helps to determine empathetic identification between performer, spectator and instrument ( Kivy 1995 ). Drawing upon Steven Baker's notion of ‘botched taxidermy’ (2000), the author suggests that this empathetic identification creates a space in which the potential risk for failure might be considered intrinsic to conceptions of corporeality in music performance. In this way, live musical experience is posited a site of risk in which the performer, as a desiring subject, emerges as the embodiment of failure. A short excerpt of the case study ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ may be viewed at: http://www.imogene-newland.co.uk/perf_women_md.php


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