Idealizacja obrazu gór w polskiej piosence turystycznej

The article is devoted to songs which are rarely the subject of literature studies owing to the multi-code nature of their message and the fact that they are part of popular culture. Tourist songs are on the margin of scholars’ interest, because of their limited artistic value. They are commonly regarded as pieces about the beauty of nature, charms of hiking, sense of community and friendship. The simplicity of the text is matched by the simplicity of the melodic line, which facilitates memorisation and singing together. Polish tourist songs have attracted interest primarily of activists from the Polish Tourism and Sightseeing Society, scholars studying tourism or authors and performers of such songs. The origins of the songs should be placed in the context of song transformations and emergence of organisational forms of tourism at the turn of the twentieth century, beginning of the scouting movement in Poland as well as the development of tourism in the communist Poland period. The lineage of tourist songs brings together several song genres, popular songs, folk and patriotic songs, scouting and Gypsy songs; pieces from this repertoire accompanied hikers. An important stage in the development of tourist songs came in the late 1960s. This was the period of the first National Tourist Song Festival in Szklarska Poręba. Scholars studying student culture see mountain treks accompanied by songs as a manifestation of alternative student culture emerging as a result of dissatisfaction with forms of political and social life in communist Poland. The most outstanding representative of the movement is Wojciech Bellon, founder of the Wolna Grupa Bukowina band, whose poetic songs present an idea of existence based on a search for authentic values, especially a space of freedom and a sense of community, challenging the falsified reality of communist Poland. Bellon and the performers collaborating with him created in the songs an aesthetic of “the land of gentleness” located in the mountains modelled on the landscape and history of the Bieszczady and Beskid Niski ranges. Despite transformations of tourist songs, analysed together with poetic songs or sung poetry, this “land of gentleness” aesthetic is still present, in a niche form, represented by numerous groups or soloists. Its main features when it comes to the thematic layer include idealisation of mountain landscape, presented as a natural environment for human beings, as a home space, marked by both signs of the tragedy of the Lemkos and sings of transcendence. The mountains make it possible to fulfil dreams of freedom, of an ideal community of wanderers, and provide an authentic experience of the world.

Towards a Measure for Characterizing the Informational Content of Audio Signals and the Relation between Complexity and Auditory Encoding

The accurate description of a complex process should take into account not only the interacting elements involved but also the scale of the description. Therefore, there can not be a single measure for describing the associated complexity of a process nor a single metric applicable in all scenarios. This article introduces a framework based on multiscale entropy to characterize the complexity associated with the most identifiable characteristic of songs: the melody. We are particularly interested in measuring the complexity of popular songs and identifying levels of complexity that statistically explain the listeners’ preferences. We analyze the relationship between complexity and popularity using a database of popular songs and their relative position in a preferences ranking. There is a tendency toward a positive association between complexity and acceptance (success) of a song that is, however, not significant after adjusting for multiple testing.

How the Titles of Popular Songs have Changed over the Last 60 Years

Billboard magazine has been keeping track of the 100 hottest (most popular) songs of the year since 1958. Lists of the Hot 100 titles from 1960 to 2019 (6001 titles) were used to study the way in which popular song titles changed over time. Based on significant polynomial regression trends and significant results from a discriminant function analysis, it is concluded that there were three main phases in titles (early, middle, and late) and that these phases differ in predictable manners in terms of stylistic features such as length, abstraction, activity, and the use of the word “love”. Early phase titles are longer, more concrete, more passive, and they do not use the word “love” often; middle phase titles are of medium length, more abstract, of medium activation, and use the word “love” frequently. Titles of the last phase are shorter, more concrete, more active, and do not often employ the word love. A possible factor contributing to these differences is the rise in popularity of rock and roll and hip-hop respectively and their different periods of ascendency.

A Response to Stuart Hall: Towards a Creative Decoding

The three positions of decodings proposed by communication theorist Stuart Hall have become a starting point for contemporary cultural studies. He insists that receivers of cultural products are not necessarily passive but can be ‘oppositional’. Media scholar John Fiske has further advanced the theory, suggesting that receivers can turn to be ‘producerly’ in their reception of cultural products. The present paper sheds light on the possibility of a more active, even creative position on the part of receivers, particularly in relation to popular songs and other interactive texts. Receivers of cultural products are powerful others to the ‘producing elite’. Jürgen Habermas’s idea of ‘com-subjectivity’ provides a theoretical foundation for the validity and desirability of such ‘creative decoding’.

USING POP SONGS IN TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE TO STUDENTS MAJORING IN MUSIC ARTS. PHONOLOGICAL ASPECT

In the process of foreign language acquisition, students can face various obstacles, which can prevent them from achieving the desired goal. English pronunciation is traditionally considered one of the most challenging issues, which require special approach and teaching techniques to tackle. Teaching English language using popular songs appears to be a very effective method as songs provide students with plethora of pronunciation patterns they can master in an effective and at the same time enjoyable way. Moreover, music influences students' feelings thus developing their emotional intelligence, ensure relaxed atmosphere in the classroom, thus motivating them to learn various aspects of English language. Another indisputable argument for using songs and music in the process of EFL/ESL teaching is that these two notions have a lot in common. Both language and music have acoustic parameters like pitch, duration, stress and intonation. Having analyzed the research works of domestic and foreign scholars and practitioners, it was concluded that popular songs can be used to practice all language skills – grammar, vocabulary, reading, listening, writing and most importantly, pronunciation skills. It is clear that inadequate phonetic interpretation of the vocal text can cause deviation from the original (authentic) content and result in total misunderstanding or spoilt aesthetic perception of a song. In the process of mastering pronunciation with vocalists, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of vocal speech too. The article focuses on the methodological value of popular songs in the development of phonetic abilities in students majoring in music arts. The article also outlines the difficulties students face in the process of honing phonological skills such as certain consonant sounds and diphthongs as well as connected speech and provides the methodological approach to using songs in the classroom. It is strongly advised that language instructors carefully select the songs, taking into account many factors such as the students' level of English, age, and interests, as well as the complexity of the songs and their rhythm. It is recommended to follow a certain sequence of activities when working on the song material in order to facilitate the process of improving pronunciation of English sounds

Performance as Transformation: The Laughing Songs of “Death in Venice” in Literature, Film, and Opera

This paper takes as its starting point a scene from the fifth chapter of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice (1912). While Venice is threatened by an outbreak of cholera, a group of Neapolitan street musicians plays in front of Aschenbach, Tadzio, and the other hotel guests. The leader of the band—a buffonesque guitarist-singer with red hair and a wrinkled, emaciated face—is an ominous figure whose facetious, sexually charged performance eventually turns into blatant mockery of the audience, whom he infects with his contagious laughter. Using the concept of “performance as transformation” (Erika Fischer-Lichte) as a lens through which to investigate the filmic and operatic adaptations of the scene in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1970) and Benjamin Britten’s eponymous opera (1973), I focus on the various renditions of the laughing song to trace the particular transformative power it unfolds across media. Both adaptations use music to ironically comment on Aschenbach’s infatuation. Yet, their approach to the scene at large is distinct from one another: While the opera turns the performance into an interiorized space of moral interrogation, the film evokes the sound of the past through the insertion of pre-existent popular songs from the time, including Berardo Cantalamessa’s Neapolitan laughing song “’A risa.” As I argue, the latter served as a model for the uproarious comical number described by Mann which thus constitutes a “phono-graphic” adaptation itself. Finally, I discuss the recurrences of demonic laughter throughout the film as part of Visconti’s intertextual strategy to create motivic relationships between Death in Venice and Doctor Faustus (1947).

The Forgotten Soundtrack of Maoriland: Imagining the Nation Through Alfred Hill’s Songs for Rewi's Last Stand

<p>Alfred Hill’s songs based on collected Māori musical materials and narrative themes are artefacts of cultural colonisation that represent individual identities and imagined communities. They are tangible evidence of the site of identity formation known as Maoriland within which Pākehā construct imaginings of ‘Māoriness’ to create their own sense of indigeneity and nationhood. Although early twentieth-century Maoriland has been discussed widely in the arts and literature, scholars have not addressed the music of Maoriland, perhaps because it is heard today as the cultural form that most clearly expresses racialised sentimentality and colonial hegemony. However, Maoriland music can tell us much about New Zealand society if it is recognised as inhabiting an ‘in-between’ place where Pākehā fascination for the racial other was often inseparable from an admiration for Māori promoted by a knowledgeable group of Māori and Pākehā cultural go-betweens. This thesis presents a critical cultural analysis of the ethnic, racial, gendered, and national identities represented in Hill’s ‘Māori’ songs, viewed through the lens of his use of these in his score for Rudall Hayward’s film Rewi’s Last Stand (1940). This analysis shows that these popular songs contributed, and continue to contribute, to the nexus of Māori, war, and music in Pākehā narrations of the nation. By applying a bicultural approach to the study of Hill’s Maoriland songs, this research also shows these ‘in-between’ songs represent individual, tribal, and national Māori identities too. While this work adds music to the discourse of Maoriland, and Maoriland to the discourse of New Zealand music and national identity, Hill’s ‘Māori’ music, early twentieth-century New Zealand music, and New Zealand film music all remain severely under-researched areas of New Zealand music studies.</p>

The Forgotten Soundtrack of Maoriland: Imagining the Nation Through Alfred Hill’s Songs for Rewi's Last Stand

<p>Alfred Hill’s songs based on collected Māori musical materials and narrative themes are artefacts of cultural colonisation that represent individual identities and imagined communities. They are tangible evidence of the site of identity formation known as Maoriland within which Pākehā construct imaginings of ‘Māoriness’ to create their own sense of indigeneity and nationhood. Although early twentieth-century Maoriland has been discussed widely in the arts and literature, scholars have not addressed the music of Maoriland, perhaps because it is heard today as the cultural form that most clearly expresses racialised sentimentality and colonial hegemony. However, Maoriland music can tell us much about New Zealand society if it is recognised as inhabiting an ‘in-between’ place where Pākehā fascination for the racial other was often inseparable from an admiration for Māori promoted by a knowledgeable group of Māori and Pākehā cultural go-betweens. This thesis presents a critical cultural analysis of the ethnic, racial, gendered, and national identities represented in Hill’s ‘Māori’ songs, viewed through the lens of his use of these in his score for Rudall Hayward’s film Rewi’s Last Stand (1940). This analysis shows that these popular songs contributed, and continue to contribute, to the nexus of Māori, war, and music in Pākehā narrations of the nation. By applying a bicultural approach to the study of Hill’s Maoriland songs, this research also shows these ‘in-between’ songs represent individual, tribal, and national Māori identities too. While this work adds music to the discourse of Maoriland, and Maoriland to the discourse of New Zealand music and national identity, Hill’s ‘Māori’ music, early twentieth-century New Zealand music, and New Zealand film music all remain severely under-researched areas of New Zealand music studies.</p>

The Bass-less Trio

<p>Miles Davis asserts in his autobiography, that "a great artist needs to be able to stretch" [Davis, Troup, 1990]. While I may not a great artist, I aspire to make art with my music, and in my own musical journey I have been interested in trying out new ideas. Jazz musicians, because of their various skills (and in particular, in the art of improvisation) find themselves straddling musical boundaries and genres, just to pay the rent. In my own projects however, this musical adroitness was born just as much out of artistic curiosity as it was necessity, leading me to compose and perform in a variety of contexts and styles for a broad range of instrumentation. These contexts and styles include: duos for saxophone and piano accordion; Bach sonatas with string ensembles; improvising live dance music with DJs; organ trios; in electronica contexts; art and poetry collaborations. The need for creativity has expressed itself in all of my work, to varying degrees. On reflection, it's the need to create something new and fresh out of work and ideas that are already explored to some extent. This desire is consistent with the jazz legacy I have inherited. In much the way Louis Armstrong began transforming popular songs into jazz vehicles, Charles Mingus took ideas from older African American musical traditions and transformed them to offer a fresh perspective on those traditions, and Miles Davis borrowed ideas from rock and soul music to pioneer new directions in jazz during the 1960s and 1970s, I too am looking for new avenues of expression for jazz musicians.</p>

The Bass-less Trio

<p>Miles Davis asserts in his autobiography, that "a great artist needs to be able to stretch" [Davis, Troup, 1990]. While I may not a great artist, I aspire to make art with my music, and in my own musical journey I have been interested in trying out new ideas. Jazz musicians, because of their various skills (and in particular, in the art of improvisation) find themselves straddling musical boundaries and genres, just to pay the rent. In my own projects however, this musical adroitness was born just as much out of artistic curiosity as it was necessity, leading me to compose and perform in a variety of contexts and styles for a broad range of instrumentation. These contexts and styles include: duos for saxophone and piano accordion; Bach sonatas with string ensembles; improvising live dance music with DJs; organ trios; in electronica contexts; art and poetry collaborations. The need for creativity has expressed itself in all of my work, to varying degrees. On reflection, it's the need to create something new and fresh out of work and ideas that are already explored to some extent. This desire is consistent with the jazz legacy I have inherited. In much the way Louis Armstrong began transforming popular songs into jazz vehicles, Charles Mingus took ideas from older African American musical traditions and transformed them to offer a fresh perspective on those traditions, and Miles Davis borrowed ideas from rock and soul music to pioneer new directions in jazz during the 1960s and 1970s, I too am looking for new avenues of expression for jazz musicians.</p>