Music Scene Research Articles

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

THE FORM OF THE DYNAMICS OF CIVILIZATION CHANGES IN GIG BEBEGIG'S DANCE WORK: A STUDY OF DANCE THROUGH CHARLES SEMIOTICS. S. PEIRCE

Globalization has positive implications with ease through the development of technology. In line with technological developments, this also has an impact on the regeneration of farmers where young people no longer choose farming jobs. This problem was communicated by Farhan Apriadhi Ghazaly through the dance work of Gig Bebegig. This study uses a qualitative method that is described descriptively through the semiotic analysis of Charles S. Peirce and a socio-cultural perspective. The results of this study reveal the Representament-Object-Interpretant from wardrobe, music, property, and dance scenes, as well as see through a socio-cultural perspective.

“A Man Is Practically the General Norm” – A Case Study of Gender Inequality and Whiteness in the Classical Music Scene in Finland

ABSTRACT In this article I show how generally accepted forms of performance practice and performances by generally idealized performance figures reveal gendered and racialized imaginaries that prevail in the Finnish classical music culture. The research material for this article was gathered through thematic in-depth interviews with fourteen white cis women professional Finnish classical pianists, violinists, violists, and cellists between the ages of 25 and 45. I ask how gendered and racialized constructions are conveyed in performance ideals maintained by widely acclaimed performers and traditionally accepted ways of performing musical works. Further, I ask how gendered and racialized constructions associated with idealized performers and performance ideals shape, intertwine in, and influence the embodied experience of Finnish women musicians. I argue that the performers that are widely seen as quintessential form a canon of performers, that have a crucial role in maintaining the oppressive status quo of classical music by reaffirming and maintaining the idealized aesthetics through the very fleshy act of performing Eurocentric, gendered and racialized social imaginaries. These social imaginaries partly shape musicians’ embodied subjectivity and affect their self-esteem as well as their understanding of gendered and racialized bodies, and their social value.

Tourism-Dependent Local Music Ecosystems under COVID-19

This article aims to examine the changing atmosphere of Lisbon’s fado live music scene during the COVID-19 crisis. In particular, it focuses on the effects of the lockdown measures and other public health restrictions on the casas de fado, a distinctive type of local institution where music, tourism and the quest for experiences of authenticity intersect. Drawing on in-person and remote interviews with venue owners, local association representatives, musicians and patrons, as well as on content analysis of local media sources and participant observation, this article argues that the pandemic has revealed the fragility of a local music ecosystem overly dependent on foreign tourism and institutional support for its survival. Moreover, it discusses how the changes brought about by the pandemic has impacted fado practice itself.

Cultural Spaces as Political Spaces: The Musical Field of the German Democratic Republic

This article examines the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), departing from the crucial role the State played there in organizing, and controlling all fields of cultural production. Much of the literature on the subject either depicts the interaction between the State and artists as unidirectional or represents their relationship as highly conflictual due to contrasting understandings of culture and its functions. In both cases, this tendency to dichotomize makes it hard to explain, for instance, how music genres that had arisen in Western countries could flourish in the GDR despite the official understanding of ‘socialist music’ propagated by the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Conversely, by adopting a field perspective, this article aims to highlight how musicians, the State, and Party representatives competed to shape the symbolic space of the GDR musical field. Hence, instead of understanding Party and State decisions as merely applications of ideological principles, a field perspective enables us to consider them as resulting from strategies, depending on both the objective position occupied in the musical field and its spatial-material dimension, and as aimed at maintaining their own power within it. The political elite succeeded, then, in actualizing its strategy of legitimating emerging music genres which were potentially disrupting until it was able to provide musicians with physical cultural spaces for developing their careers and, at the same time, expressing criticisms. On the other hand, from the 1950s, localized music scenes were created which proposed an alternative understanding of music to the official one without, however, refusing the core principles which structured the GDR musical field. After the end of the 1970s, though, new music scenes were formed which positioned themselves outside the institutionalized music spaces and places, refusing in this way the rules of the GDR musical field and questioning its very existence.

Contributors’ Notes

Contributors’ Notes

Local Garage Psychosis Rockabilly Disease: Glocalization and the Athenian Psychobilly

Music is an art that permeates every human society. It is used for such diverse social purposes as ritual, worship, coordination of movement, communication, or entertainment. There are no limits to music as it can move freely in space through sound waves, radio, cinema, television, and the new digital technologies. Music is directly related to subcultures in that cultural identities and lifestyles can be mediated through music. This article aims to use the development of music scenes such as psychobilly to establish a link between music, subcultures, globalization, and the global-local dialectic.

Music as an Adaptation Strategy: The Hruby Family’s Voyage from Cehnice to Cleveland

Abstract This article looks at the history of the Hruby family as an example of how immigrants to the US adapted and acquired social status through music. The family originated in the village of Cehnice in South Bohemia. Frank Hruby, the family patriarch, started his career there as a musician playing in various circuses across Europe. During his travels, he visited Cleveland, Ohio, and in 1883 settled there with his wife and oldest son. Hruby joined several musical ensembles and gradually became an important personality in the local music scene. His children studied music as well and followed their father’s musical path. They moved from playing in marching bands to founding their own orchestra, which toured across the United States as well as Europe. Using archival sources, I show how musical versatility and professionalism helped the Hruby family to integrate into American society and to reach a certain social status. Their history also illustrates how the family’s music activities balanced their Czech heritage with the requirements of the new-world audience.

"Avec Picasso, ce matin..."

The current music scene is manifold in its means of expression. As music becomes more diverse and embraces other art forms it makes room for a new type of performers to flourish. My academic path, comprising jazz theory lessons and an uncomplete bachelor’s in composition beyond my classical piano studies, gave me the opportunity to develop a set of artistic skills that go beyond the standard performer curriculum. I saw in this artistic research the perfect chance to apply this knowledge. In my work I explore three distinct approaches to a specific piece of music: Constança Capdeville’s Avec Picasso, ce matin… (1984), starting from a more traditional analysis and progressively diverging from this path towards a subversive approach inspired by the concept of anamorphosis. Capdeville’s score is essentially an open work with a set of guiding instructions. However, the lack of documentation, clear instructions and reliable sources concerning the piece made the notated score more ambiguous than expected. This possible setback in its reconstruction turned out to be the perfect context to put my expertise to the test. While dabbling with Capedeville’s score I resorted to experimental processes, to my experience with composition, my transcription and editing skills, archive work and the use of different media in contemporary performance practice. I approached the score as a “script” rather than a “text” (Cook, Nicholas). In this research the score is no longer an end in itself, but rather an excuse towards the development of a musical project larger than it.

La Basse de Violon

About this exposition Nowadays we can find a vast amount of information about the history of the cello. But do we know anything of its larger ancestor? What was its purpose in the music scene in France in the 17th century? And why did it disappear? Little attention has been paid to the basse de violon, an instrument of great importance before the arrival of the cello. In my presentation, I will discuss these questions as well as other matters that concern the basse de violon, starting with what is it, going through its development, its role as a solo instrument, and as the bass of the ensembles, and finishing with the reasons for its decay and ultimately complete disappearance in France. Also, as part of my artistic presentation, I will base my conclusions by using videos of my experimentations on a surviving basse de violon from 1715 and a cello from the 19th century.

Jonas Otterbeck: The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music. In the series Music and Performance in Muslim Contexts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. 220 pages.

Something has happened to the Islamic music scene since the turn of the twenty-first century. A gradual change towards increased diversity seems to be underway: new forms of musical expressions, including instruments and popular musical tropes, and new kinds of musicians who are stylish and savvy perform their music to enthusiastic audiences, who dig their idols and share their concert experiences in social media as fans all over the world do, but with an added, faith-based flavour. This music is not merely intended to entertain and sell, even if it is orchestrated by the commercial laws of the global music industry – it also has “the goal of being perceived and accepted as Islamic” (p. 4). By experimenting with sounds, formats and styles of performance, the agents of Islamic pop or pop-nashid (nashid being an old, Arabic term for Islamic song) challenge conceptions of legitimate Islamic art, pushing the limits of what can be regarded as purposeful, ethical and authentic ways of expressing Islam in music. In his recent book, Jonas Otterbeck explores this dynamic musical context based on rich ethnographic data (interviews, participant fieldwork) and multi-media analyses, placed in dialogue with central concepts and analytical frameworks from classical Islamic theology and philosophy, ethnomusicology and various strands of the study of contemporary religion and culture.

Sonification of Computer Processes: The Cases of Computer Shutdown and Idle Mode.

Software is intangible, invisible, and at the same time pervasive in everyday devices, activities, and services accompanying our life. Therefore, citizens hardly realize its complexity, power, and impact in many aspects of their daily life. In this study, we report on one experiment that aims at letting citizens make sense of software presence and activity in their everyday lives, through sound: the invisible complexity of the processes involved in the shutdown of a personal computer. We used sonification to map information embedded in software events into the sound domain. The software events involved in a shutdown have names related to the physical world and its actions: write events (information is saved into digital memories), kill events (running processes are terminated), and exit events (running programs are exited). The research study presented in this article has a “double character.” It is an artistic realization that develops specific aesthetic choices, and it has also pedagogical purposes informing the causal listener about the complexity of software behavior. Two different sound design strategies have been applied: one strategy is influenced by the sonic characteristics of the Glitch music scene, which makes deliberate use of glitch-based sound materials, distortions, aliasing, quantization noise, and all the “failures” of digital technologies; and a second strategy based on the sound samples of a subcontrabass Paetzold recorder, an unusual and special acoustic instrument which unique sound has been investigated in the contemporary art music scene. Analysis of quantitative ratings and qualitative comments of 37 participants revealed that the sound design strategies succeeded in communicating the nature of the computer processes. Participants also showed in general an appreciation of the aesthetics of the peculiar sound models used in this study.

Ragnar Kjartansson and the Art of Pleasure

Ragnar Kjartansson and the Art of Pleasure

Performing Turtle Island: Indigenous Theatre on the World Stage

Performing Turtle Island: Indigenous Theatre on the World Stage

Democracy and Theatre in Catalonia Since 1975

Democracy and Theatre in Catalonia Since 1975

This party is political: the moving politics of the queer dancefloor in 120 BPM (2017)

ABSTRACT This article addresses the connection between the activism of AIDS advocacy group ACT UP and the house music scene of 1990s Paris as presented in 2017 AIDS drama 120 BPM. The article mobilizes Jacques Rancière’s political and aesthetic philosophy alongside a phenomenological reading of dance and music to reveal how 120 BPM’s cinematic dancefloors construct cinematic politics. My reading suggests that the club scenes’ mobile camerawork and soundscape of remixed queer club anthems engages viewers in an affective, queer ‘club time’ that ruptures the straightforward, linear timeline of the film’s fictional narrative. Although Campillo has questioned his film’s capacity to ‘mobilise people today’, this article suggests that a phenomenological approach to the ‘queer time’ effected by the music and movement in the film’s club scenes reveals 120 BPM’s dancefloors as sites of embodied politics that transcend the specificity of the film’s cultural and historical context.

Metamorphosis of the dragon: the collectivist reconfiguration of Hong Kong-Taiwan pop in the reform era

ABSTRACT With the advent of the reform era and its relaxation of cultural and economic restrictions, Gang-Tai pop (i.e. pop music from Hong Kong and Taiwan) gained popularity in the music scene of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Recent scholarship regards Gang-Tai pop primarily as an individualistic and individualizing force that could potentially resist the persisting cultural and political hegemony of the collectivistic ideology. However, it overlooks the occasions in which Gang-Tai pop and collectivistic politics developed a symbiotic and complicit relationship. Tracking the trans-regional transmutations of a pop song, “Descendants of the Dragon” (Long de chuanren), from Taiwan and Hong Kong to Mainland China, this article shows how the circulation, reception, and revision of the song were embedded in and driven by two forms of collectivistic cultural-political forces: the state-run propaganda machine and the anti-state social movement. The appropriations of the song served as an affective technology of power through which both pro-state and anti-state collective politics were articulated, performed, and communicated. The examination of Hong Kong and Taiwan (Gang-Tai) pop thus allows us to grasp this coexistence and continuous dialogues on market individualism, state hegemony, and the revolutionary cultural tradition, all of which underlay the cultural landscape of Chinese society in the reform era.

Learning to make noise: toward a process model of artistic practice within experimental music scenes

ABSTRACT Emerging at the intersection of industrial, punk, electronic music, and avant-garde jazz, noise music represents a niche subgenre reliant on loud, discordant, and arrhythmic sounds to make music. Yet despite its place within the (broadly defined) experimental music tradition, research into experimental music education has largely overlooked the genre. In response, I explore noise music through the lens of situated learning theory by addressing the following research question: how do noise musicians develop their artistic practice? To do so, I present findings from a comparative case study centered on two intertwined experimental music concert and workshop series focused on noise music. I begin by analyzing interview data from seventeen featured artists to construct a process model of artistic practice shared between musicians. I then employ bidirectional artifact analysis to trace the development of one novice participant in the series through this model. In turn, these findings not only illuminate how experimental musicians learn within informal settings but provide a potential model of learning for informal education communities more broadly. This study also holds implications for situated learning theory by asserting the influence of non-anthropocentric actors within communities of practice.

Renewal of the domestic Symphonism of the 1960s in the works of young Leningrad composers

The subject of the study is the period of Russian symphonic music of the 1960s. A new generation of "sixties" composers has entered the Soviet music scene, imperiously declaring themselves with bright creative achievements, fresh and modern musical language. The epoch of the turning point dictated a new reality, required new artistic thinking, generated diverse creative ideas. The panorama of Russian music was quite colorful, many things in art appeared and disappeared very rapidly, stylistic pluralism, lost at the dawn of Soviet power, returned to the music scene. Special attention is paid to the works of composers of the Leningrad school — S. Slonimsky, Y. Falik, L. Prigozhin and V. Gavrilin. All of them opened new stylistic horizons and absorbed into their sound orbit the main trends of modern music, including the conquests of the Western avant-garde.  The scientific novelty of the work consists in the fact that the author examines the bright and original works of young Leningrad authors in the context of stylistic and linguistic innovations of the 1960s. The article analyzes the role and place of "Sixties" composers in the struggle for "new music". The main conclusion of the article is the idea that the period of musical renewal of the 1960s under consideration turned out to be extremely saturated with the most complex and diverse problems: ideological, general aesthetic, musical style. S. Slonimsky, Y. Falik, L. Prigozhin, V. Gavrilin became undisputed leaders in the renewal of Russian music of the second half of the twentieth century, and their works-"symbols" fully reflected the intense search of the post-war generation of Soviet composers.

A (Mexican) Native American Rock Band: Redbone, Racial Legibility, and Native-Chicanx Intimacy

A (Mexican) Native American Rock Band:Redbone, Racial Legibility, and Native-Chicanx Intimacy Jedediah Kuhn (bio) Redbone is one of the most successful Native American bands in the history of rock 'n' roll. They emerged onto the U.S. music scene in 1970 with music that spoke directly to the burgeoning Red Power movement.1 Hits such as "Come and Get Your Love" and "The Witch-Queen of New Orleans" topped the charts in the United States, Canada, and Europe and still receive regular airplay today.2 Brothers Patrick (Pat) and Candido (Lolly) Vegas founded the band and served as its core members. In his memoir, Come and Get Your Love: A Celebratory Ode to Redbone (1939-Present), Pat Vegas traces his and Lolly's ascent to rock stardom. Vegas also reveals something perhaps unexpected in the memoir of a Native American musician: in addition to being Native, Pat Vegas is Mexican American. In fact, several of the band's members are both Native and Mexican American, and Vegas's memoir as well as the band's music, albums, and performances point to continual intimacies between Native Americans and Mexican Americans.3 Pat Vegas's Mexican American heritage as well as that of Redbone's other band members rub against both popular and scholarly notions of "authentic" Native American and Indigenous identity and presents a new vantage point from which to think about Native American-Chicanx relationality. Whereas scholars have examined the numerous overlaps between these groups in the nineteenth century and earlier, work examining the twentieth century often focuses on one group or the other. Further, in the few places where scholars do examine relations between these groups, they focus on analyzing the Chicano Movement's claim of Indigenous status, a claim many scholars, especially those [End Page 11] working under the rubric of critical Latinx indigeneities and critical ethnic studies, have problematized as perpetuating the marginalization of Indigenous peoples on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Indeed, in the interest of supporting Indigenous rights in the United States and Mexico, this study agrees with this emerging scholarship that it is important not to conflate Indigenous status—which pertains to a political category designating the first peoples within settler states—and Indigenous descent in the way that the Chicano Movement has done in the past. What this study problematizes, however, is the collapsing of all discussion of Native-Chicanx relationality into the question of the Chicano Movement's (mis)uses of indigeneity. Instead, this essay turns to intimacy as a framework to rethink Native American-Chicanx relations. I argue that the case of Redbone reveals glimpses of a long, continual history of intimacy between Native Americans and Mexican Americans as well as the oppressive demands for authenticity that delimit Native American identity and render such intimacies illegible. This study explores traces of intimacy between Native Americans and Chicanxs through an analysis of a sampling of cultural texts produced by Redbone and Pat Vegas during the band's 1970s heyday, including music, lyrics, performances, and visual representation on album covers as well as Pat Vegas's 2017 self-published memoir Come and Get Your Love: A Celebratory Ode to Redbone (1939-Present). Vegas's memoir moves chronologically, tracing his and Lolly's early years and family life, their time as backing musicians in Los Angeles, and their rise (and fall) as members of Redbone. The memoir emphasizes these early years, covering the post-1970s period, including Lolly's passing in 2010, in one brief chapter. The final portion of the book includes appendices written by friends and former band members, such as Pete DePoe and Butch Rillera, and argues explicitly for the band's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Scholars have long turned to popular culture, popular music in particular, as a critical site where marginalized groups articulate difference to resist the dominant national culture's attempts to assimilate them.4 Redbone is particularly appropriate for this study because, as a prominent Native American band emerging at the height of the Red Power movement, they can easily be read as articulating Native American resistance to U.S. oppression; however, they also gesture to something more...