Traditional jazz and the mainstreaming of authenticity

Abstract

This article sets forth a grounded theory of ‘mainstreaming’ with reference to traditional jazz, the mainstreaming of authenticity, and the relevant popular music studies literature. It considers ‘British traddy pop’ (the ‘trad fad’)—a major force in British popular music between 1959 and 1963—in terms of a phased trajectory of mainstreaming. Mainstreaming is considered as a generic social process which subsumes a number of Janus-faced major sub-processes: those of ‘sourcing’, ‘selecting’, ‘adopting/adapting’, ‘commodifying’, and ‘progressing’. The dimensions of each sub-process are examined in terms of musical style, instrumentation, personnel, and repertoire, and their various properties. It is suggested that the conceptual framework detailed in the article might provide the foundations for a comprehensive theory of mainstreaming in popular music studies, more generally.