Assembling ‘indigeneity’ through musical practices: translocal circulations, ‘tradition’, and place in Otavalo (Ecuadorian Andes)

This article addresses the relation between Andean ‘traditional music’ and circulations of people, objects, ideas and sounds. Although many studies on Andean indigenous music have explored such circulations, scholars still tend to understand musical practices in terms of ‘cultures’. The case of indigenous music from Otavalo, in the Ecuadorian Andes, encourages us to go beyond this approach. I make two arguments. First, by conceiving of the translocal/transnational flows that have shaped ‘traditional music’ from Otavalo through the concepts of ‘network’ and ‘music world’, I unsettle the link – underlying previous approaches – between a specific people, music and place. Second, through the concepts of ‘assemblage’ and ‘mediation’, I closely look at processes of ‘traditionalisation’ and ‘indigenisation’ to show how, in the context of multiple circulations, social actors nevertheless produce a specific link between people, music and place in order to make a musical practice ‘traditional’ and/or ‘indigenous’.

Kaitiakitanga, Whai Wāhi and Alien Weaponry: indigenous frameworks for understanding language, identity and international success in the case of a Māori metal band

New Zealand Māori metal band Alien Weaponry rose from local act to international prominence over the course of 2016–2018, lauded by critics and fans for their songs involving Māori history and culture, and with lyrics in the indigenous Māori language. This article examines Alien Weaponry's participation in Māori language revitalisation efforts and explores the use of indigenous frameworks for analysing these issues. Māori principles of kaitiakitanga (protection) and whai wāhi (participation) offer an understanding of the band's contributions to both Māori cultural preservation and global metal, and of how these contributions cooperate in the band's success. In addition to unpacking the issues of identity, indigenousness and language revitalisation inherent in understanding Alien Weaponry's output, this article also expands on previous work on nationhood and identity in both global metal music and Māori popular music.

Rethinking singing on screen: the case for contemporary American ‘screensong’ across the film musical, music television and the music video

The last 20 years have seen extensive scholarship on changing audiovisual aesthetics and the blurring boundaries between all screen media. This article draws on this scholarship and engages with critical debates around the musical genre to examine contemporary song-based screen media. While song and singing have a long history across film, television and video, the digital convergence era has engendered new types of song performance and song-based screen formats. To understand the complex connections and exchanges between different forms of singing on screen, this article develops a new evaluative and conceptual framework. I propose the term screensong to refer to audiovisual representations of singing performance across screen-based media. This article understands screensong as both a broad category of song-based screen texts, genres and formats and as a particular type of song-driven, highly commodified, audiovisual and narrative unit – the screensong – prevalent in contemporary American popular screen media.

Ghanaian highlife sound recordings of the 1970s: the legacy of Francis Kwakye and the Ghana Film Studio

There is a striking variance between the sounds of highlife music recorded in the 1950s and 1960s and that of the 1970s. This difference can be attributed partly to the advancement of recording technology, a shift from shellac to vinyl records as well as the advent of multi-track tape recorders in Ghana. The 1970s had a unique highlife sound that can be situated within and explained by the socio-cultural context of recording approaches embraced by studio engineers. This paper investigates the technological approaches to the production of highlife songs at the Ghana Film Studio (GFS) and how they reshaped the highlife soundscape in the 1970s. It also draws attention to the influence of Francis Kwakye, the then resident recording engineer of GFS as a case study to explore highlife sound on records within this period. Employing document review, audio review, observations and interview for data collection, the paper reveals that the engineering techniques and tools employed on the recordings were socio-culturally influenced and constructed to resonate with the Ghanaian identity of the time. It further argues that the recording activities have been guided largely by a new imagination of the highlife sound recordings framed within a certain Ghanaian nationalistic context. The paper concludes that the methods employed to record highlife music of the 1970s were masterminded essentially from a Ghanaian socio-cultural sound perspective.

Sonic branding and the aesthetic infrastructure of everyday consumption

Sonic branding – the sonic expression of a brand's identity – is the audio equivalent of a brand's logo, a sound that is both distinct and adaptable to diverse contexts, and serves to communicate a brand's narrative. Sonic branding has been a feature of marketing strategies for the past two decades, but more recently there has been increased commercial interest in sonic branding, a move from the ‘visual turn’ to the ‘sonic turn’, as voice activation technologies such as Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant immerse the consumer in a personal encounter across diverse sensory touch points. While there has been significant scholarly discussion in popular music studies of the ways that sound is employed to increase capital in commercial contexts, little has been written to address the ways in which popular music is courted and implicated in brand strategy specific to sonic branding. In this paper, we consider the ways in which sounds are embedded in contemporary brand practice and detail the ways in which popular musicians and genres are complicit partners in ‘branding to the senses’. Here, we focus on two sonic branding case studies – Mastercard and HSBC – which highlight the key role of popular music in constructing the way we ‘hear’ brands.

‘Freak Show Excess’: Steve Vai and his self-presentation in the media

This article attempts to uncover the complex relationship between musical expression, artist discourse and personae, by focusing on the way virtuoso guitarist Steve Vai presents himself and his music in the media. I analyse video and print interviews that span the three decades of Vai's career to trace patterns and contradictions in his views on his music and artistry. This is not to assume intentionality, but rather to ask what sort of gap there is between how Vai sees himself and presents himself as a musician, and whether he sees music as self-expressive, or as involving a constructed persona.

‘Comme une chanson de Bruant’: marginality, nostalgia and protest during the 1968 years

The ‘1968 years’ (1968–1981) witnessed a resurgence of interest in the late 19th-century singer-songwriter and cabaret performer Aristide Bruant (1851–1925). This article explores the social and cultural origins of this Bruant ‘moment’, arguing that it was linked both to a culture of marginality that emerged during the events of May–June 1968 and to a culture of nostalgia (‘la mode rétro’) first identified in 1973. It focuses on five performers who revived or renewed Bruant's legacy during the 1968 years: Mouloudji, Francesca Solleville, Marc Ogeret, François Béranger and Renaud.