Musical Labor Research Articles

Conceptualizing Creativity and Strategy in the Work of Professional Songwriters

Drawing upon interviews conducted as part of the Sodajerker on Songwriting podcast this paper explores professional songwriting as musical labor. It explores how songwriters conceptualize creativity and what strategies they employ for the delivery of original songs. It argues that individuals evince a faith in their own autonomy in the face of the demands of form and industry, expressing intuitive concepts of inspiration and practical insights into the nature of their work as work. The paper suggests that achieving and maintaining success is affirmed in a conjunction of value that is both economic and aesthetic, personal and public.

Effect of Education and Musical Therapy Given During Labor on the Process of Birth in Induced Primipara Pregnant Women

Objective: This study as a experimentals research, was planned to determine of effects of musical thearpy and labor education at first pregnancy with induction. Methods: The study has been carried out at the largest obstetrics and childhood diseases hospital that in the Anatolian coast of Istanbul from July 2005 to July 2006. There subjects included total of 80 pregnants, half of pregnants were control and remaining half were experimentals ones. Inclucion criterias of choosen pregnants; primipara, gestasionel age (37 week and ­), succesfull pregnancy induction, to be voluenter for study. In this study, the test group receiving Rehavi music used a tape recorder and earphones to listen to the music, with 20 minute each hour; the control group did not listen to any music. The control group had the standard care during labor. Main Outcome Measures: Data was collected by surveys. In the study group; Survey 1 was applied descriptive characteristics of the pregnants, Survey 2 was applied their knowledge with labor, Survey 3 was applied their relations with music and Survey 6 was applied in order to evaluate their labors. Survey 4 and Survey 5 were applied in order to behavioural and physical reactions of pregnancy. In the control group we applied Survey1, Survey 2, Survey 3 (without 8 and 9 questions ) and Survey 4, Survey 5 and 6 (only 1 and 2 questions). Results: When we evaluated the contraction frequency and times, pupil dilatation, anxiete, crying/screaming and lip beating in the study, there was a statistical difference between the study groups and control groups (p

Artistic work intermediaries as value producers. Agents, managers, tourneurs and the acquisition of symbolic capital in popular music

This article aims to increase our understanding of cultural intermediaries, their activities and the way they set up the relationship between the production and consumption of symbolic goods, with a specific focus on intermediaries of artistic work. Among them, in France, agents, tourneurs and managers are intermediaries of the music labour market who aim to develop artists’ career. What role do these underestimated yet more and more numerous intermediaries play in achieving pop artists’ recognition? Statistical data show a strong relation between the amount of symbolic capital of artists and having at least one of these intermediaries work for them. In order to analyse how they can help further the artist's access to recognition, I develop a specific use of the concept of symbolic capital that allows a better understanding of social mechanisms of value production. The analysis of qualitative data discloses the various resources and strategies intermediaries use in the artists’ acquisition of symbolic capital. They do promotional work, but also take calculated risks to how to place their artists in the market, and constantly work on their social network to create opportunities.

From Torrent to Stream

Music production in the 21st century shifted from a largely commodified industrial model to a radically decentralized one, technologically facilitated by new efficiencies in search of functionality, delivery, and peer-to-peer connectivity. In the older music economy, the media of music (its tangible forms—vinyl, cassette, compact disc, etc.) were fused with its contents (its sounding forms—songs, pieces, etc.), thereby facilitating their efficient circulation as physical commodities (grounded in licensing agreements, copyright protections, and so on). In the newer economy, medium and content are increasingly delinked; the former is effectively dematerialized (or, more accurately, micro-materialized as virtualized format), thereby posing new challenges to law and policy governing musical creation, distribution, and consumption. In the context of music’s new technological prostheses (digital recording studios, on-demand streaming services, algorithmic aggregators, and the like) the question of equitable sources of revenue for musical labor has re-surfaced as a central debate in our times. The article assesses the promise of disintermediation in relation to new formations of labor, characterized by increased entrepreneurial reliance on flexible and globalized networks of production and distribution.

Alternative Filmmusik zu einem Ausschnitt aus The Grapes of Wrath. Filmmusik zu Hangmen Also Die ed. Johannes C. Gall (review)

FILM MUSIC BY HANNS EISLERHanns Eisler. Alternative Filmmusik zu einem Ausschnitt aus The Grapes of Wrath = Alternative Film Music to an Excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath. Filmmusik zu Hangmen Also Die = Film Music to Hangmen Also Die. Herausgegeben von = Edited by Johannes C. Gall. (Hanns Eisler Gesamtausgabe = Hanns Eisler Complete Edition / Edited by the Internationale Hanns Eisler Gesellschaft, Serie VI: Filmmusik, Bd. 10.) Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 2013. [Pref. in Ger., Eng., p. vii-x; introd. in Ger., Eng., p. xi-xxx; scoring, p. 2; score, p. 3-79; appendices, p. 80-84; facsims., p. 85-96; crit. report in Ger., p. 99-125. ISMN 979-0- 004-80330-1; pub. no. SON 508. i120.]Eisler's authorship (or at least his authorization) is the focus of our attention (p. xxix), signals Johannes C. Gall to frame this ambitious critical edition, which appears as part of the series devoted to film music within the Hanns Eisler Complete Edition. As an authority on Eisler's theory and practice of music for films, Gall is the ideal scholar to take on the uneven terrain of the composer's film scores of the 1940s. Here he extends his valuable annotation of the benchmark text coauthored by the composer with Theodor W. Adorno, Com - posing for the Films (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947; Komposition fur den Film, ed. Johannes C. Gall, with accompanying DVD [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006]), to provide a constructive overview of Eisler and film-style and idea-in the United States. The focus upon authorial intent is borne out as Gall painstakingly reassembles two film scores from dozens of sources, many of which are fragmentary, to address the twin questions of compositional process and music's dramatic function as they pertain to Eisler. His work is laid out in performable editions of these extant scenes with extensive philological commentary and careful substantiation in the pages that follow. In both the comprehensive introduction and detailed critical remarks, Gall impressively synthesizes and builds upon the renaissance of scholarly interest in Eisler since the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic. A clear and precise English translation of the introduction by the Swiss-based musicologist Chris Walton further extends the accessibility of Gall's work.It is probably true that, above all, Eisler scholars will cherish and appreciate the detailed, evidence-oriented exactitude of Gall's editorial work with Eisler's music for The Grapes of Wrath and Hangmen Also Die, both of which I discuss in detail below. The volume promises to be a resource, however, for a broad range of academics. Film historians, scholars of music and the moving image, Brecht experts, and editors grappling with the shifting status of print in the twenty-first century have something to be gained by immersing themselves in the diverse subjects upon which Eisler's musical labor touches. The Eisler Society (Inter - nationale Hanns Eisler Gesellschaft) makes explicit its goal to publish user-friendly scores as a part of its mission to make this historically ostracized composer better known in concert as well as in the academy. With Gall's keen focus, the volume at hand not only realizes this objective, it provides an example of the unique contributions scholarly editions of film music can make to the robust discourse on music and visual media. Like Colin Matthews's edition of Benjamin Britten's 1936 music for Rowland Lee's thriller Love from a Stranger (London: Chester Music, 2000), Gall's reconstructed scores are clean, inviting concert performance for the first time since their recording at the studios of Sound Services, Inc., in late 1942 (The Grapes of Wrath) and early 1943 (Hangmen Also Die). When possible, the editor includes the orchestral scores' original time stamps. He has undertaken much of the work necessary to screen the films with live music: within the critical commentary he supplies descriptive protocols, styled after industry cue sheets, that line out the timing of each shot. …

Music (as) Labour: Professional Musicianship, Affective Labour and Gender in Socialist Yugoslavia

This article strives to broaden existing approaches in music scholarship, which, despite a long history of thinking about the role of music in shaping labour, have resulted in only sporadic attention to music labour itself. Drawing on Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's notions of affective labour as work intended to produce or modify peoples' emotional experiences, the article treats professional music-making as embodied labour, exploring its specific conditions—in particular, in relation to gendered practices of work. Based on empirical research into the values and concepts of music labour in socialist Yugoslavia, this article attempts to provide insight not only into the geographically and temporally specific context of socialism but also more generally, pointing to its shared somatic, gendered and affective aspects. Such an approach draws on recent calls for empiricism in the wake of critical deliberations of the ahistorical and decontextualised nature of existing approaches to affective labour. Through a case study of the material working conditions and work subjectivities of female professional singers, its aim is to emphasise music-making as both material practice and sensorial experience, taking into account that both are in constant and heterogeneous flux.

Another Music, A Time to Forget: Reflections on Edward Said's Late Style

Using the West-Eastern Divan orchestra as a central referent, this essay outlines a modest utopian claim for music in our times. Set against the postmodern belief that music can only be understood responsibly by contextualizing it within the densely particularized networks of its specific localities, the essay argues for musical labor as a productive site for overcoming dangerously ossified sets of social relations. The essay detects in the late work of Edward Said a new vigilance toward the limits of ‘worldliness’, a conceptual orientation with which Said had become widely associated. Instead of merely indicating another site of cultural production, musical performance in the West-Eastern Divan orchestra, also becomes a site of productive forgetting. Against the identity-based forms of belonging and origin characterizing the stalemate of Israeli–Palestinian relations, Said found in music a mechanism for setting adrift identity from its contextualized locale.

The Rock Counterculture from Modernist Utopianism to the Development of an Alternative Music Scene

This essay analyzes rock music’s countercultural status from the perspective of musicians’ and fans’ aspirations to a utopian transfiguration of everyday life. Relying on Fredric Jameson’s and Ihab Hassan’s reflections on (post)modernism, the present argument locates rock among the movements within modern culture seeking to counter alienation and reification. On this basis, the article investigates how aspirations to utopian transfiguration may empower rock to develop a full-fledged alternative to dominant culture. Taking into account the difficulties involved in using counterculture as a socio-historical keyword, this argument acknowledges that rock cannot fulfill its utopian promise. Yet the music makes possible the development of what Pierre Bourdieu calls a field of restricted production: musicians, fans, and journalists define codes and practices tracing out a perimeter of autonomy differentiating rock from commercial mass culture. This social space may in specific contexts serve as hub for a counterhegemonic coalition aiming to redraw the social field according to goals broader than those pursued by fragmented subcultures. The final section of the article investigates one of the channels through which rock’s sphere of restricted production gives a durable shape to its empowering agenda: the representation of labor practices eschewing the alienation of professional life. Rock, it is argued, stakes out its autonomy with regard to the capitalist labor market by making musical labor an area of personal fulfillment.

The business of authenticity: a false relation?

PurposeThe purpose of this research paper is to consider the aesthetic and commercial success of the “early music” or “historically informed performance” (HIP) movement during the 1970s and 1980s in the UK. Particular attention is given to the relationship between HIP performers and “the authenticity business” (i.e. the market‐driven commercial exploitation of this form of musical performance).Design/methodology/approachThrough applying the metaphor of the “false relation” (a musical compositional device characteristic of the renaissance period), the paper explores the contradictory relationship between HIP and the market. The research is based on a detailed literature review relating to the emergence of the early music labour market, and interviews with 40 experts in the field (including HIP music directors, performers, agents, broadcasters, record company directors and instrument makers in the UK).FindingsFar from being a mere backdrop to the ideologically driven practice of HIP, the paper demonstrates the close connection between market‐led entrepreneurial activity of some performers, and the subsequent success of early music performance. Particular attention is brought to the mediating role of authenticity discourse in bridging the art‐commerce divide and marketing early music successfully.Originality/valueThe paper offers a novel perspective from which to understand the artistic and commercial development of this cultural movement. It is suggested that the emphasis on the mediating role of authenticity discourse; and the closeness of the relationship between performance ideology and market‐based practices warrants further research across artistic and cultural movements more broadly.

Beale Street Blues? Tourism, Musical Labor, and the Fetishization of Poverty in Blues Discourse

Research Article| September 01 2011 Beale Street Blues? Tourism, Musical Labor, and the Fetishization of Poverty in Blues Discourse Jennifer Ryan Jennifer Ryan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnomusicology (2011) 55 (3): 473–503. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.55.3.0473 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jennifer Ryan; Beale Street Blues? Tourism, Musical Labor, and the Fetishization of Poverty in Blues Discourse. Ethnomusicology 1 January 2011; 55 (3): 473–503. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.55.3.0473 Download citation file: 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 Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressEthnomusicology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Notes on Practices of Musical Exchange in Colombia

Practices of musical exchange have been at the vanguard of the contemporary disjuncture between the nature of artistic objects, economic practices (or business models through which the trade of musical objects is enacted), and their legal status. Today the debate between the celebration of diversity and the anxieties of unequal exchange has increasingly moved to a legal terrain. At the economic level, this tension is often presented as a struggle between two opposing economic models. On the one hand, one would find open business practices, that is, those that rely upon an economy of sharing and, on the other, business practices that rely upon monetary remuneration in which every person doing intellectual work owns the “product” and by exercising “property” control they are able to obtain a profit that remunerates the individual effort. However, if we understand listening as “a historical relation of exchange” (Novak, 2008, p. 16) that has been crucial for the development of musical genres and ideas of creativity and production, then the moment of trade is not located solely at the site of consumption but also at that of creation and production of the musical work. In this paper we would like to explore the idea that paying attention to the practices of musical recording and production complicate this dual economic model. As such, struggles about musical recognition, labor, and circulation are not only struggles about the status of music as property but also about the way listening as a site of exchange is inscribed into productive and creative practices.

Working musicians: exploring the rhetorical ties between musical labour and leisure

This essay explores the implications of a common but rarely examined trope about music, leisure and labour. The idea that music should appear effortless – that its execution should not require work – has shaped critical and consumer interpretation in a wide variety of historical settings. The trope of effortless music suggests that music is an outgrowth of one’s individual genius, heritage or social identity rather than a product of one’s labour. Close attention to the work involved in learning and performing music can expand our understanding of the multiple ways in which music creates value, and the historical ways in which the dialectic between conception and execution in modern capitalism have paralleled the distinctions between composition and performance in the Western music scholarship. Two historical case studies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth‐century US provide the evidence for my argument. I examine the overlapping discourses of musical effort and work in the world of female parlour pianists in the middle‐class home and among academic folksong collectors and some of the southern musicians whom they courted as informants. I conclude by suggesting what music history might look like if we chose to place the work of learning and performing music at the centre of the story.

Recording Studios: Relational Spaces of Creativity in the City

This article discusses recording studios as urban spaces that have intimate relationships with music. The various human actors involved in the recording of music (musicians, studio engineers, producers), and its consumption (broadcasters, audiences), in addition to numerous non-human actors (recording technologies, acoustic spaces, city landscapes) are all in some way connected through affective relations in recording studios. Changing recording technologies have challenged earlier meanings and uses of recording studios, and altered the format and terms of musical labour. In a digital era where home recording and cheaper mastering technologies are prevalent, studios have re-orientated themselves towards other non-music industries, or become transformed into tourist sites. The history of recording studios thus reveals much about how music, space and musicians interact: it is through a composite and always evolving way that recording studios come to be viewed as vital spaces of music in the city.

From ?Dancing with Porcupines? to ?Twirling a Hoe?: Musical Labor Transformed in Sukumaland, Tanzania

In the Sukuma area of northwest Tanzania, farmer-musicians, or farmers who compose and perform music, introduce themselves in public interactions fi rst as farmers, with the phrase am a farmer, I hold a hoe, and second as performers, with the phrase am also a dancer, I twirl a hoe. Identifi cation with music operates on many psychological and cultural levels from childhood to old age, and is reinforced and expressed most cogently in their use of song during cotton farming. Cotton farming is a relatively recent chapter in Sukuma history, a result of (and creative response to) British colonial government requirements between the two world wars. A new farming class emerged, which drew on prior musical labor fraternities such as medicinal societies, hunting societies, porters, and military organizations for their personnel, musical repertory, and dance paraphernalia. The Sukuma made the imposition of long-distance migrant labor and cotton cropping their own by making these labors musical. The author discusses how Sukuma farmers developed musical farming from these prior musical labor practices, and provides several examples of this transformation.

From "Dancing with Porcupines" to "Twirling a Hoe": Musical Labor Transformed in Sukumaland, Tanzania

From "Dancing with Porcupines" to "Twirling a Hoe": Musical Labor Transformed in Sukumaland, Tanzania