Field Of Popular Music Studies Research Articles

Gender Sensitivity of Nueva Ecija, Philippines Cradle Songs

Gender is recently becoming a significant area of research in the field of popular music studies. As most studies focus on content analyses of popular music, there is still a need to research on the content of traditional songs, particularly, that which focuses on gender sensitivity. The idea that have appeared in most literatures that music phenomena are gendered, and that these phenomena are present in the musical “messages” with its gendered qualities imposed by the listener in the process of perception were the focal points of the study. The conclusion of the research provided information about the contents of lullaby in consideration of gender sensitivity. Data collection was through personal interviews and focus group discussions with elderly citizens groups of selected Nueva Ecija municipalities. The respondents were considered based on their age and initial claims that they have sung lullabies to their children. The more important results indicated that, most of the lyrics of cradle songs of Nueva Ecija are stereotypical with messages implying that mothers are usually left at home to take care of the children and fathers go work to provide the needs of the family. The backstories of the songs are connected to farm activities, market undertakings and advices for the child to grow worthy of their parents. Some songs deal with the merits of being a good and obedient child. It appeared that the cradle songs of Nueva Ecija are not highly gender-biased because most of the lyrics pertained to a child that for the time being is yet insensitive to gender roles.

Review: The Sonic Episteme: Acoustic Resonance, Neoliberalism, and Biopolitics, by Robin James

Review: <i>The Sonic Episteme: Acoustic Resonance, Neoliberalism, and Biopolitics</i>, by Robin James

LISTENER’S PERCEPTION ON SEXIST WORDS IN SELECTED MALAYSIAN HIP HOP LYRICS

The study on gender has always been an important research area in the field of popular music studies. While most studies focus on the content analysis of the popular music, there is still a need to research on listener’s perception of popular music lyrics. This study examined 30 listener’s perception on sexist words in selected 20 Malaysian hip hop lyrics. A total of 13 sexist words were analysed using text analysis. To further facilitate the data, the listeners were also given 9 random lyrics which contained sexist words and were asked to rank them from positive, negative or neutral. The data was then tabulated using Google Form. The results showed that listeners are aware of words that denote women to a lower level and yet the words are still used on women, perhaps due to dissatisfaction. The findings show that the respondents are merely going by the flow of what media puts forward which can be related back to the agenda set by the media

Remote Intimacy

Remote Intimacy

Across the Great Divide: Popular Music Studies and the Public

AbstractThis contribution reflects on the historical and present condition of the academic field of popular music studies' relationship to the non-academic public, particularly within the context of increased institutional demands for scholarly ‘public engagement'. I begin by discussing various reasons why a continued, sustained engagement with non-academic voices and communities should remain a central priority of popular music studies. I then move to a discussion of certain vantage points and modes of expertise that popular music scholars can offer to broader musical publics, particularly as relating to the political economy of commercial music media and urgent necessities of historical archiving and preservation. In closing, I argue that a renewed commitment to ‘public engagement' also offers a more robust engagement with our field’s own history, and might serve as a way of honouring its intellectual pioneers, many of whom did foundational work well outside the traditional boundaries of the academy.

The ambivalence of becoming a small business: Learning processes within an aspiring rock band

The process of becoming a rock musician strongly relates to the organisational form of the band (Bennett 1980; Green 2002; Behr 2010). At all levels of ambition and success, membership of a band provides the musician with a natural entry point for performing to an audience and forging a potential career (Smith 2013a). The ‘micro-organisational’ (Bennett 2001) development of a band, therefore, is an important career prerequisite for rock musicians (Behr 2015). However, the social and practical challenges of musicianship seem to be continuously underemphasised within the field of popular music studies (Cohen 1993; Kirschner 1998; Lashua 2017; Weston 2017; Kielich 2018). Therefore, in this article I will focus on an aspiring rock band's informal learning processes in becoming a small business together. The study provides insights into the educational and organisational aspects of band practices and contributes to the fields of popular music, education and organisation studies – fields that are converging in the emerging interdisciplinary research area of ‘organising music-making’ (Beech and Gilmore 2015).

Introduction: Reflections on the Past, Present and Future of Popular Music Scholarship

In 2018, the Popular Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology organized a roundtable that explored the development of popular music scholarship, not only within ethnomusicology but also in relation to the larger field of popular music studies. This special section, which includes transcriptions of each of the panelists’ spoken remarks, highlights reflections from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (including folklore and ethnomusicology, anthropology, American studies and history, and popular culture studies) and experiences (both within academia and in the public sector). The roundtable participants recognize the value and impact of scholarship on popular music and culture, for it contributes to our understanding of the powerful and meaningful ways in which people engage aesthetically with the world around them. By reflecting on the past and present context of popular music scholarship, the panelists offer suggestions for the future growth of the field, underscoring its role in challenging elitist and ethnocentric biases, contesting the institutional marginalization and dismissal of popular culture, fostering interdisciplinary conversations, and engaging in activist scholarship that exposes, critiques and helps to change structural inequities.

The Master of Mystery

Over the past twenty years, the field of popular music studies has significantly enhanced our understanding of pop music production. Studies have drawn from a range of industry discussions to explore, for example, the ways in which emergent technologies have led to distinctive production techniques and the important role that recording technologies play in shaping the sound of pop music. Whereas many industry discussions have provided productive sites of analysis, they can also obstruct research in some respects. This article focuses on an area of music production where such industrial discussions tend to hinder, rather than enhance, an understanding of its practices. It examines the ways in which industry discussions position the process of mastering as “mysterious.” This article argues representations of mastering as “mysterious” work to reinforce the importance of this practice and also safeguard it from new technologies that might challenge its dominance. These representations can function to reproduce and secure social hierarchies within the field.

Response to Elizabeth Lindau

It is a strange experience to read “‘Total Trash’: Analysis and Post-Punk Music” at a distance after all these years. When I originally wrote this article, I was a wide-eyed master’s student at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who had just discovered popular music studies

Concentration, diversity, and consequences: Privileging independent over major record labels

AbstractThe field of popular music studies has long been interested in the relationships between record labels and the music they make available to consumers. At the micro level, research on record labels provides insight into the tensions between art and commerce and those between individuals and institutions. At the macro level, this research illuminates changes in socio-economic trends, music industry structures and structural inequalities. A meta-analysis of this literature reveals an ‘indie prejudice’: a preference for (and even a bias in favour of) independent labels coupled with a dismissive approach to the study of major labels and musical mainstreams that impacts our ability, as a scholarly field, to speak with authority about the largest segments of the commercial record industries. What larger implications for our scholarship might confronting this prejudice reveal? What master narratives have structured popular music studies’ preference of independent over major record labels? In this article, I argue that the art/commerce dichotomy has remained influential, although it can have unintended and dangerous side effects if it becomes a guiding assumption.

Editor’s Note

Editorial| March 01 2018 Editor’s Note Diane Pecknold, Diane Pecknold Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Oliver Wang Oliver Wang Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Popular Music Studies (2018) 30 (1-2): 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2018.000008 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Diane Pecknold, Oliver Wang; Editor’s Note. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 March 2018; 30 (1-2): 1–2. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2018.000008 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of Popular Music Studies Search This is the first issue of our thirtieth year publishing the Journal of Popular Music Studies and it marks a new proverbial chapter for us. We have a new publisher—University of California Press—and we couldn’t be more excited to be working with them. JPMS, like the field of popular music studies itself, has changed dramatically over the past three decades, and we feel this new partnership marks a new era for where the journal can and will head. In that sense, Issue 30.1-2 is a soft relaunch. It’s not a dramatic shift—though we are quite fond of our new cover design—but as you’ll see in our table of contents, there’s new and expanded content that we see as a reflection of the new kinds of pop music work we want to champion. For one, our Amplifier section, created and edited by Karen Tongson, was always meant to include music criticism... You do not currently have access to this content.

Promotion anxieties

Definitions and roles of the promoter within the ecology of the music industries have over recent years become the subject of attention by academics working within the field of popular music studies. It has become accepted that precise definitions are difficult to apply, due to both the varied understanding of the term ‘promoter’, and the diverse nature of their activities. Where the promoter is the conduit between artist and audience, the ways and means by which this is manifested varies greatly between individuals. Rather than further attempting to provide distinct definitions as applied to the promoter, this paper aims to offer a nuanced examination of the motivations, professional networks, and occupational challenges that contribute to the self-perceptions of five promoters working in the context of a local jazz scene within an undisclosed city in the United Kingdom.

Review of Ron Moy, Authorship Roles in Popular Music: Issues and Debates (Routledge, 2015)

[1] On the surface, the question of authorship appears simple: the sole author of this review must be Robin Attas. However, thinkers such as Roland Barthes (1977) and Michel Foucault (1977) have famously complicated the sole-author idea for written texts, and film critics since the 1950s have raised further questions about how to assign authorship to an art form created by a group rather than an individual.(1) But what of the author in popular music, perhaps one of the most significant and pervasive art forms in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Ron Moy's Authorship Roles in Popular Music: Issues and Debates (hereafter, Authorship) joins a handful of prior studies in filling this gap.(2)[2] Moy is not a music theorist, and the genre of Authorship fits best within media and cultural studies. However, Moy is certainly a scholar of popular music, and his book reflects the interdisciplinary and wide-ranging nature of the field of popular music studies, while also including some detailed discussion of musical sounds that might pique a music theorist's interest. As a pop music theorist, I found myself grateful for the broader perspectives that Moy brings to the music I study. And even for music theorists not interested in popular music, this book can hold value. Our work relies upon an (often-unconscious) attribution of creative agency and authorship for the music we analyze. Studies such as Moy's force us to question our role in that attribution, and consider creative musical sources we may have overlooked.[3] Rather than suggesting a single overarching theory of authorship or drawing a neat conclusion, Moy raises a plethora of "issues and debates" and discusses a variety of short case studies that beg for expansion by scholarly specialists. This results in a unique writing style that mixes the personal anecdotes of a pop-music fan, academically-oriented summaries of centuries-long schools of thought compressed into a paragraph or two, and numerous brief discussions of songs, musicians, and record labels. While these examples appear to be drawn mostly from Moy's own personal playlist, and so do not cover the full gamut of pop-music history, there is still a considerable variety of genres, genders, races, and nationalities represented. Readers seeking a more straightforward academic text may be frustrated by the mixed tones and limited scope of examples, but if one adjusts one's expectations towards simply getting a taste of the range of "issues and debates" present in pop-music authorship, Moy's writing becomes more rewarding.[4] This approach also means that rather than presenting an absolute definition of author/auteur,(3) Moy touches on a number of possible definitions based on previous authors' work. He writes: "In an increasingly fragmented and pluralistic era . . . all unifying theories relating to authorship can be said to be, at the very least, open to challenge" (xi). Thus, Moy ends his introduction with a list of ten "key concepts" important to the remainder of the book. While on first pass the list seemed overly long and a disengaging style of prose, referring back to it when reading later sections was a helpful way for this reader to stay grounded in Moy's primary purpose.[5] Such back-and-forth reading was not necessarily encouraged by the book itself, since each chapter reads mostly as a stand-alone essay that tackles one aspect of the pop music author/auteur topic. Further, the title of each chapter only hints at the points Moy addresses. For instance, in the first chapter, "The Studio/Label as Auteur," Moy's exploration of whether the Motown studio can be considered an author/auteur embraces such diverse issues as the impact of location (both Detroit generally and Motown's Hitsville USA recording studio specifically); Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the "chronotope";(4) a list of defining characteristics of the "Motown sound" including instrumentation, studio mix, tempo, genre influences, and instrumental roles in the groove; a consideration of the influence (or lack thereof) of Motown's session players, collectively known as the Funk Brothers; a historical summary of the careers of the songwriting/producing team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland both during and after Motown; a similar exploration of the career of writer/producer Norman Whitfield; a discussion of how the 1980s British label PWL (Pete Waterman Ltd. …

Popular Music, Cultural Memory, and Heritage

The purpose of this special edition of Popular Music and Society is to bring together a series of articles from an international group of scholars who consider, in particular and locally specific ways, how popular music has become an object of memory and, in turn, a focus for contemporary renditions of history and cultural heritage. Popular music’s links to and evocation of the past have been evident for many years. Frith has highlighted popular music’s inherently nostalgic properties, a point reinforced by DeNora in her highly instructive work on the propensity of music both to link individuals with their past and to emotionally ground them in the present. In an everyday sense, the untimely deaths of rock and pop icons such as Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Kurt Cobain have triggered mass mourning that forcibly demonstrates the extent to which such artists come to signify the complex interplay of generational identification and collective generational memory (Gregory and Gregory; Elliott; Strong). However, it is not just popular music artists themselves but rather the vast array of music-related objects, images, texts, and places that become inscribed with memory (Bennett and Rogers, “In Search,” “In the Scattered”) by music fans and members of specific music scenes. While the study of cultural consumption is well established (see, for example, Miller; Dant; Woodward) in the field of popular music studies, a focus on memory and heritage is less so given the dominant emphasis in scholarship on artists, texts, performance, media, and industry. There are some notable exceptions, such as Waksman’s highly innovative work on the electric guitar and Hayes’s study of vinyl records. Similarly, there is an emerging focus on technological artifacts of popular music history (see, for example, Shuker, Wax). However, the broader field of popular music’s material legacy, and its connections to cultural memory, remains largely unmapped. A similar, if slightly more dynamic, situation obtains in relation to the significance of popular music as contemporary cultural heritage. Certainly, particular regions and cities have for a long time created robust tourist and leisure industries around their popular music histories, a notable example here being Chicago, which is an

AOTEAROA SONGLINES

In his discussion article, Mitchell foregrounds some of the themes that permeate each of the papers, reinforcing their contemporary importance in the field of popular music studies.

Gender messages in contemporary popular Malay songs

Gender has been an important area of research in the field of popular music studies. Numerous scholars have found that contemporary popular music functions as a locus of diverse constructions and expressions of gender. While most studies focus on content analyses of popular music, there is still a need for more research on audience’s perception of popular music’s messages. This study examined adult Malay listeners’ perceptions of gender messages in contemporary Malay songs. A total of 16 contemporary Malay songs were analysed using Fairclough’s (1992) method of text analysis. The content of the songs that conveyed messages about gender were the basis for analysis. The results showed that the messages revolve mainly around socially constructed gender roles and expectations in romantic relationships. Gender stereotypes are also used in the songs to reinforce men’s and women’s roles in romantic relationships. The results also showed that, while listeners acknowledge the songs’ messages about gender, their own perceptions of gender and what it means to be a gendered being in today’s world are neither represented nor discussed fully in the songs analysed. It is hoped the findings from this, particularly the mismatch between projected and perceived notions of gender, contribute to the field of popular Malay music studies in particular, and popular music studies in general where gender messages in popular songs and their influence on listeners’ perceptions of their own gender is concerned.

Popular Music Studies and Ethnomusicology in Australasia

A characteristic of the field of popular music studies in Australia and New Zealand (Australasia) is the strong and enduring presence of ethnomusicology and allied ethnographic approaches to popular music research in this region. In Australasia, ethnomusicology offers popular music researchers the opportunity to engage in a meaningful and direct way with a range of musical practices by Indigenous and migrant performers. Meanwhile, popular music studies provides ethnomusicologists with a way of demonstrating that they are interested in more than just traditional or ancestral musical practices. This article will provide a history of the interdisciplinary relationship between ethnomusicology and popular music studies in Australasia, and will examine the role of Indigenous and migrant music research in fostering links between these two disciplinary fields.

Popular Music Studies and Ethnomusicology in Australasia

A characteristic of the field of popular music studies in Australia and New Zealand (Australasia) is the strong and enduring presence of ethnomusicology and allied ethnographic approaches to popular music research in this region. In Australasia, ethnomusicology offers popular music researchers the opportunity to engage in a meaningful and direct way with a range of musical practices by Indigenous and migrant performers. Meanwhile, popular music studies provides ethnomusicologists with a way of demonstrating that they are interested in more than just traditional or ancestral musical practices. This article will provide a history of the interdisciplinary relationship between ethnomusicology and popular music studies in Australasia, and will examine the role of Indigenous and migrant music research in fostering links between these two disciplinary fields.

How did popular music come to mean música popular?

The field of popular music studies has grown to include participation from many different parts of the world, comprised of cultural-linguistic spaces that view popular music in a dissimilar and sometimes contradictory light. That said, there have been situations where two or more very different definitions of popular music exist side by side, further complicating the coherence of the field. Focusing on Spanish-speaking Latin America, we set out to examine what popular music and música popular have meant in some of their respective sociolinguistic spaces, and argue that disparities of legitimacy between institutions that are engaged in the study have contributed to a terminological confusion that must be further engaged with if it is to be overcome.

How did popular music come to mean música popular? &lt;br&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.5429/2079-3871(2011)v2i1-2.3en

The field of popular music studies has grown to include participation from many different parts of the world, comprised of cultural-linguistic spaces that view popular music in a dissimilar and sometimes contradictory light. That said, there have been situations where two or more very different definitions of popular music exist side by side, further complicating the coherence of the field. Focusing on Spanish-speaking Latin America, we set out to examine what popular music and música popular have meant in some of their respective sociolinguistic spaces, and argue that disparities of legitimacy between institutions that are engaged in the study have contributed to a terminological confusion that must be further engaged with if it is to be overcome.