US Radio Research Articles

Meeting in the Middle: Sociophonetic Convergence of Bad Bunny and J Balvin’s Coda /s/ in Their Artistic Performance Speech

The artistic performance of identity by top Latin music artists can be heard on many Top-40 US radio stations, since, as of July 2023, 20% of the Billboard Hot 100 is (Spanish language) Latin music. This study aims to determine the variants found in the pronunciation of coda /s/, a robust phonetic differentiator of regional and social dialects, in the top songs versus in the spontaneous speech of the two top Latin music artists in the global market. Are Bad Bunny and J Balvin holding to the pronunciation of their respective regional variety in their artistic performance speech (APS, my term) or are they shifting to a different pronunciation? What motivations might cause a difference in the pronunciation of their APS and spontaneous speech? Bad Bunny and J Balvin’s pronunciation of coda /s/ is analyzed in depth as sociophonetic data: their performances of songs from 2018 to 2020 that charted at the top of the Hot Latin Songs Billboard chart as well as on The Billboard Hot 100 chart, and their spontaneous speech from their most-viewed Spanish-language interviews and Instagram Live recordings on YouTube recorded between 2018 and 2020. Bad Bunny overwhelmingly used deletions (∅) in his spontaneous speech—which is typical of an island Puerto Rican—but used a statistically significant amount of maintenance of the sibilant [s] and its aspirated variant [h] in his APS (p < 0.0001). J Balvin primarily used [s] in his spontaneous speech—which is typical of Medellín, Colombia—but used about 50/50 [s] and (∅) in his APS. They are both shifting to a different pronunciation in their APS and converging towards each other, and the difference is statistically significant (p < 0.0001). This dialect convergence could be the beginning of an identity-based pan-Latinx dialect leveling that is, on the one hand, the “in-crowd” pronunciation with covert prestige but, on the other hand, is part of the formation of an evolving multi-regional connector variant diffused through popular music and pop culture.

ERNST TOLLER SPEAKS AT THE WORLD CONGRESS OF WRITERS IN NEW YORK, 8–10 MAY 1939

ABSTRACTThis article investigates Ernst Toller's last public speech, ‘How Can Culture Survive Exile?’, which he delivered at the World Congress of Writers on 9 May 1939, in New York City. I first discuss the context of the speech, the writers’ congress, which took place alongside the World's Fair in New York and was organised under the auspices of the American PEN Centre and its president, Dorothy Thompson. Following that I describe Toller's relationship with Thompson. I then investigate Toller's speech and his arguments about German culture in exile, the duties and difficulties of exiled writers, and his calls to action. The last part of the article compares the published version of the speech with a later manuscript that has not been published to this day. It was broadcast on 16 May 1939, on the US radio station WNYC. Some passages in the later version differ from the speech that Toller had delivered a week earlier, most importantly by proposing a new initiative to support exiled writers. This change in the later manuscript is interpreted as a response to discussions at the World Congress of Writers. It also shows that after Franco's victory in Spain, Toller continued to develop new initiatives for the future.

THE ROLE OF THRASH METAL IN THE FORMATION OF EXTREME HEAVY MUSIC (BASED ON THE INTERVIEW OF MUSICIANS)

The article is devoted to defining the role of thrash metal music in the foundation of extreme heavy music in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Attention focused on the importance of a separate sub-genre of heavy metal music in forming a new style of heavy music, including new vocal techniques, building more complex compositions, and expanding the lyrics' themes. Analyzed the criteria by which extreme heavy music can attribute among other sub-genres of heavy metal and defined thrash metal as a transitional stage between heavy metal and extreme music. The work is interdisciplinary, which manifested in the use of methodological approaches to history and cultural studies. The article examined various areas of development of thrash metal music, particularly the United States, where the phenomenon has appeared; Germany and Switzerland, which differed qualitatively from the American scene; and Brazil, whose musicians have set recording standards for much of the extreme music. The article identified the reasons for the popularity decline of thrash metal in the early 1990s in the context of the general development of rock music and identified the features of the evolution into extreme metal. In addition to the musical component, the article outlined the social and behavioral elements of thrash metal fans during bands' performances, which also formed the image of the extremity of metal music. Special attention in the article is devoted to the Slayer and Megadeth bands, the foundation of controversy in the subject of lyrics, which, in turn, is characterized by extreme metal. Evolving from the New Wave of British heavy metal, American thrash metal develop new features in heavy music, including fast, aggressive riffs, and sharpened the lyrics' themes, primarily political and anti-religious. Rebelled against the dominance of glam metal, thrash metal fans developed their image, which consisted of aggression and appropriate behavior during concerts. Developed in the United States, thrash metal has gained popularity in other parts of the world, whose scenes have developed their characteristics, which, in the future, influenced the formation of extreme heavy music. In the late 1980s, the US radio format shifted the demand for grunge, which supplanted thrash metal from the radio. The sub-genre began to decline and was replaced by death and black metal in the heavy metal music underground.

Feeling at home: Sound, affect and domesticity on radio soap operas

This article introduces the concept of ‘the everyday implausible’, asserting that, between 1930 and 1960, US radio serial aesthetics produced a tug-of-war between the familiar and the unfamiliar that was simultaneously radical and reactionary. This aesthetic created a space for the listener to place new versions of herself within the narrative, inviting the imagined woman-at-home to re-envisioning the possibilities of reality. However, re-envisioning reality produced its own set of limitations. The sonic features of the radio serial soundscape created imaginary spaces within the home, but these imaginary spaces were – as often as not – also homes, making the potential of escape wholly illusory. In giving attention to the specific aesthetic features of these programmes, this article interrogates the meaningful work produced by a sparse soundscape, alongside an emphasis on domesticity and emotional conversation.

Parade: A La Recherche De Nouveaux Sons

By 1986, the Prince-pioneered Minneapolis sound had become increasingly coopted by copycat musicians and was a familiar presence on US radio. Yet Prince had already shifted focus, relocating the sonic home of his eighth release to Continental Europe; arguably creating his most diverse album in the process. This paper explores how Parade was the first Prince record to consciously embrace a more international fan base. I discuss how the use of French language and ambience throughout the album draw on the "prestige" associated with the Gallic lifestyle, adding a cosmopolitan flavor that helped Parade connect with European audiences. I argue that Prince capitalized on the cultural currency of France and its language to create a more elevated style of music and purposely distance himself from the Minneapolis sound. The paper contextualizes Parade against the musical backdrop of 1986 and considers the subsequent critical responses of the music press and biographers. I contend that the album was part of a strategic move to reach beyond traditional US notions of "rock and roll" stardom and establish himself as a truly global performer. In achieving this goal, Prince willingly sacrificed some of his American fan base, yet secured his credentials as a bona fide international artist in return. Parade marks a pivotal point in Prince's career, ultimately shaping his future output and forever altering how the world viewed him and his music.

Foreword: Television Music Studies at the Crossroads

Research Article| December 01 2019 Foreword: Television Music Studies at the Crossroads Shawn VanCour Shawn VanCour Shawn VanCour is assistant professor of media archival studies in UCLA’s Department of Information Studies. His research explores the history, technologies, production practices, aesthetic norms, and preservation strategies for US radio and television. He is the author of Making Radio: Early Radio Production and the Rise of Modern Sound Culture (Oxford University Press, 2018) and has published articles on media history and preservation in Media, Culture & Society, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Journal of Radio and Audio Media, Journal of Material Culture, and Modernist Cultures and in various edited collections and online forums. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Music (2019) 37 (4): 398–399. https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.37.4.0398 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Shawn VanCour; Foreword: Television Music Studies at the Crossroads. American Music 1 January 2019; 37 (4): 398–399. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.37.4.0398 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 PressAmerican Music Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Of lizards and ideological entrepreneurs: Alex Jones and Infowars in the relationship between populist nationalism and the post-global media ecology

This contribution analyses the nexus between contemporary US populist nationalism and the post-global media ecology through the case of US radio show host and ‘most paranoid man in America’ Alex Jones and his Infowars. It evaluates the role of Alt Right alternative/activist media and global digital platforms in the success of Jones as ideological entrepreneur. To this end, it looks at Jones’ and Infowars' message (mostly Falls Flag conspiracy theories and pseudo-science-meets-popular-culture fantasy), persona as celebrity populist spectacle, business model, political alliances with Alt Right and Trump, audience as diverse mix of believers and ironic spectators and, most of all, media. In particular, we analyse the mix of legacy and social media and their respective role in his rise and alleged downfall. We evaluate Jones’ efforts as effective ideological entrepreneur, pushing his counter-hegemonic ideology from the fringes to the mainstream.

Tribal radio stations as key community informants and sites of resistance to mainstream media narratives

Abstract Rural US Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by digital divides, insufficient infrastructures, and health disparities, so that community radio still represents a key medium in the lean mediascapes of these communities. The first US radio stations licensed to American Indian/Alaska Native tribes began broadcasting in 1971, about 50 years after the rise of rural radio in the US, which until then had almost entirely ignored Indigenous news, concerns, and voices. This paper draws on interview data from 2016 fieldwork conducted in Alaska and Arizona with two community radio stations serving the local, mostly Indigenous audience, to highlight how its historical ties to social activism continue to play a role in how tribal radio functions as a medium today. Tribal radio stations value not only traditional journalistic standards, but also advocacy for the community, combating stereotypes, and view themselves as distinct from mainstream and other community media.

STRUCTURAL-SEMАNTICAL PECULIARITIES IN THE FUNCTIONING OF ENGLISH GEMERONYMS

The article is dedicated to the analysis of structural and motivational peculiarities of gemeronyms, namely the proper names of radio news, a subclass of ideonyms. According to the different ratings of online and offline press, one hundred US radio programs have been chosen as the material of this research. Gemeronyms are divided into one-component, two component and multicomponent structures; simple, complex and compound. One component gemeronyms are without or with derivational affixes. Compound gemeronyms are subdivided into composites, affixational composites and abbreviations. Two-component and multicomponent gemeronyms are related to word combinations and sentences. Motivation is presented in two different ways: formal and semantical link between words as signs (relative motivation) and a link between signs and their referents (absolute motivation). Having analyzed gemeronyms we established the types of their motivation. Combined motivation which unites possessive and substantial motives take the leading place in English gemeronyms. English gemeronyms` peculiarity lies in the use of compound multicomponent onyms with possessive and substantial motivation.

Therapeutic Horror? Olga Druce, House of Mystery and the Controversy over Children's Radio Thrillers

From the 1930s to the 1950s, parents, educators, psychologists and others hotly debated the impact of US radio’s sensational genre programming on young listeners. While many condemned radio thrillers and chillers for subjecting children to excessive emotional arousal, or for encouraging juvenile delinquency, more progressive authorities argued for their cathartic potential. Drawing on a wide range of materials from contemporary newspapers, magazines, trade journals and radio shows, this article examines the post-World War 2 revival of this controversy over sensational programming. It explores the efforts of child education experts such as Josette Frank to contest the emotive denunciation of children’s radio, and children’s culture more broadly, as well as their attempt to develop child-centered programming that combined thrills with socially-enlightened content. The popular and award-winning House of Mystery (1945-49) was a key exemplification of this strategy. Building on the success Frank and producer Robert Maxwell enjoyed with the acclaimed juvenile serial The Adventures of Superman (1940-51), Maxwell’s House of Mystery was an audacious program that tailored horror scenarios to young listeners. Under the stewardship of visionary writer-director Olga Druce, this popular and award-winning program sought a strategic compromise between the pleasures and the perils of audio horror. While delivering the stimulation children desired from genre fare, House of Mystery served as a therapeutic intervention that countered both the morbid sensations peddled by crime and horror dramas and the predictable condemnation of youth programming.

US–Cuban Relations, American Identities and the 1946 North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement

By 1946, Cuban–US relations had become strained over radio. Broadcasting from each nation repeatedly crossed borders and interfered with radio reception in the other country. The 1946 North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA) attempted to remedy that problem. This account of the impassioned reactions and heated rhetoric surrounding the 1946 NARBA underscores the enduring strength of national and regional identities in a globalizing world. Encounters with US radio programming in Cuba inspired Cubans to fight for distinctly Cuban radio interests. The resulting 1946 NARBA, which imposed new restrictions on US broadcasting to benefit Cuba, provoked farmers from California and Arizona, who – as those who believed they were the most affected by the new restraints imposed on US radio – railed against their government’s acquiescence. Their reactions, in fact, were deeply entangled with the complex history of US identity formation, which had from the nation’s earliest years privileged specific regional loyalties that coexisted alongside both local and national ones. It is, in sum, a story that shows how in certain contexts audiences can and will resist globalizing influences by leaning on their existing national, regional, and local identities that provide meaning in their world.

Black, white, and red all over: the US radio and television blacklist as annotated index

Black, white, and red all over: the US radio and television blacklist as annotated index

Tuning the Black Voice: Colour-Deafness and the American Negro Theatre’s Radio Dramas

In September 1945, the New York radio station WNEW engaged Harlem’s celebrated American Negro Theatre (ANT) to perform a series of weekly radio plays, beginning with Arthur Laurents’s drama The Face. It was an anomalous venture in US radio, which rarely broadcast black voices. In order to avoid controversy, WNEW attempted to regulate the political significance of the series by advertising it using language couched in the modern rhetoric of colour-blind casting. However, despite these limitations applied to their efforts, the ANT infused their performances with an unexpected challenge to the racial status quo in the country. Defying stereotypes of black aurality, they subverted expectations of how African Americans were supposed to sound. They did so by destabilizing the essentialist concept of the “black voice” and exploiting the disembodied medium of radio. This article reinstates this undervalued moment in both theatre and radio history by examining The Face in detail and considering how race functions on the radio.

Effects of Mergers in Two-Sided Markets: The US Radio Industry

This study examines mergers in two-sided markets using a structural supply-and-demand model that employs data from the 1996–2006 merger wave in the US radio industry. In particular, it identifies the conflicting incentives for merged firms to exercise market power on both listener and advertiser sides of the market, and disaggregates the effects of mergers into changes in product variety and advertising quantity. Specifically, it finds 0.2 percent listener welfare increase (+0.3 percent from increased product variety, and −0.1 percent from decreased ad quantity) and 21 percent advertiser welfare decrease (−17 percent from changes in product variety, and −5 percent from decreased ad quantity). (JEL G34, L13, L82, L88, M37)

Norman Corwin's The Lonesome Train (Live Broadcast) CBS 1944: a critical reflection

The Lonesome Train was a commercial half-hour ‘ballad opera’ or folk cantata, transmitted in 1944, about the funeral train bearing President Abraham Lincoln’s body home after his assassination in the Ford Theatre of Washington D.C. in 1865. This became culturally resonant in 1945 on the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when the Decca recording of the show became a sort of ‘media requiem’, played over and over again on US radio stations. The live production, directed by Norman Corwin, is a hybrid between drama and documentary, but goes further with its use of music and poetry… perhaps a musical modernist montage of traditions as varied as George Gershwin, Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson. Corwin has been characterised as the American Shakespeare of radio, his We Hold These Truths (1941) possibly attracting the highest audience for any radio play in human history. The central narrative character in The Lonesome Train is a reporter, a 20th century chronicler, a journalistic oracle representing the role of the freedom and significance of the US media under the First Amendment. And he narrates with style, dignity, sensitivity, subtlety and deploys the art of a storytelling aesthetic with a knowing understated language when describing Abraham Lincoln’s assassination: ‘and along about the middle of the evening something happened that wasn’t in the program. I guess you all know what that was. The news spread pretty fast…’ When the radio medium engages in any form of grieving and memorialising, with the full commitment of musical expression, poetic exposition and the rallying of an ethical belief system against threat and danger in the context of war, emotiveness, empathy and sympathy will be engendered with full force. Here, its cultural power and significance travels vertically and horizontally through the sociological vectors of state and federal power and people power. It can be argued that The Lonesome Train is the American equivalent of Handel’s Messiah. Reviewer TIM CROOK is Reader in Media & Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London and Visiting Professor in Broadcast Journalism in the faculty of English, Media and Performance, Birmingham City University, UK. He is also an award-winning journalist, author, and program maker in a career spanning four decades. His publications span history, radio studies, journalism and media law and ethics. They include Radio Drama: theory & practice (1999) and The Sound Handbook (2011) both published by Routledge.

Taste clusters of music and drugs: evidence from three analytic levels

This article examines taste clusters of musical preferences and substance use among adolescents and young adults. Three analytic levels are considered: fixed effects analyses of aggregate listening patterns and substance use in US radio markets, logistic regressions of individual genre preferences and drug use from a nationally representative survey of US youth, and arrest and seizure data from a large American concert venue. A consistent picture emerges from all three levels: rock music is positively associated with substance use, with some substance-specific variability across rock sub-genres. Hip hop music is also associated with higher use, while pop and religious music are associated with lower use. These results are robust to fixed effects models that account for changes over time in radio markets, a comprehensive battery of controls in the individual-level survey, and concert data establishing the co-occurrence of substance use and music listening in the same place and time. The results affirm a rich tradition of qualitative and experimental studies, demonstrating how symbolic boundaries are simultaneously drawn around music and drugs.

‘Barbed Wire and Forget-Me-Not’: The radio adventures of Laura (1944)

This article explores the audio rendition of films within the movie adaptation series that proliferated on US radio from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. Focussing on several versions of the 1944 film Laura, the article examines the institutional, ideological and representational negotiations involved in translating this property from the cinema screen to the airwaves. A celebrated example of film noir, Laura reveals an unusual handling of questions of gender and sexuality as well as highly eccentric storytelling strategies and a distinctive visual style. Drawing on a range of critical approaches, reviews and trade materials, as well as offering detailed textual analysis of filmic and radio material, the article considers what happens when such a distinctive film is adapted to a medium that communicates exclusively through sound and which operates within more tightly regulated commercial and institutional imperatives.

An Interview with H M Naqvi

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. An American rapper, widely regarded as one of the most influential and most skilled MCs. 2. An influential left-wing intellectual, revolutionary poet, one of the most famous Urdu language poets from Pakistan. 3. A world-renowned Pakistani musician, primarily a singer of Qawwali, the devotional music of Sufis. He was considered one of the greatest singers ever recorded. Possessing a six-octave vocal range, he could perform at a high level of intensity for several hours. 4. A combination of traditional Yoruba music, jazz, highlife, funk and chanted vocals fused with percussion and vocal styles, popularised in Africa in the 1970s. Its main creator was the Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Fela Kuti, who gave it its name. 5. Niggaz Wit Attitudes, an American hip hop group from Compton, California, widely considered one of the seminal acts of the gangsta rap sub-genre, at times even credited as the most important group in the history of hip hop. Active from 1986 to 1991, the group endured controversy due to the explicit nature of their lyrics and was subsequently banned from many mainstream US radio stations. In spite of this, the group has sold over 10 million CD units in the US alone. 6. Part of a hip hop duo with Rakim. 7. From ‘The Hour of Faithlessness’ by Faiz Ahmad Faiz. In The True Subject: Selected Poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Trans. Naomi Lazard. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988. 8. An American DJ from the South Bronx, New York, instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. 9. Josh Malihabadi (5 Dec. 1894–22 Feb. 1982), born as Shabbir Hasan Khan, was a noted Urdu poet born in British India, who was an Indian citizen until 1958 when he emigrated to Pakistan and became a Pakistani citizen. He wrote ghazals and nazm under the takhallus (Urdu for nom de plume) Josh (literally ‘passion’ or ‘intensity’). 10. Iqbal (9 Nov. 1877–21 Apr. 1938), also known as Allama Iqbal, was a philosopher, poet and politician in British India who is widely regarded as having inspired the Pakistan Movement. He is considered one of the most important figures in Urdu literature, with literary work in both the Urdu and Persian languages. 11. Ice Cube is the stage name of O'Shea Jackson (born 15 June 1969), an American rapper, record producer, actor, screenwriter, film producer and director. He began his career as a member of the group CIA and later joined the rap group NWA. After leaving NWA in 1989 he built a successful solo career in music, and also as a writer, director, actor and producer in cinema. He was ranked eighth on MTV's list of the Ten Greatest MCs of All Time.

Radiolab - three different approaches

The three papers in this ‘suite’ have a special background and context. At the 2010 conference SoundActs in Aarhus the three panellists were each given the task to provide a paper with an analysis of the same sound object, thus exhibiting and contrasting different scholarly approaches to sound studies. The object was selected by Torben Sangild, who was familiar with the chosen context: the signature of the US radio programme and podcast Radiolab. The two other participants did not know the context and chose to analyse the sound object without further contextual investigation. This object was chosen for several reasons. First of all, it is brief (less than 17 seconds), which meant that it was possible to make a detailed analysis; at the same time, though, it is relatively complex, which means that it can accommodate three different analyses. It is a sound object with a global audience, taken from one of the most popular podcasts worldwide, accessible on the internet. Finally, it is a piece of functional sound design, rather than a work of art, which raises the question of context more clearly. The result is three rather different approaches: 1) a process analysis, observing analytical listening strategies towards the constructed object, 2) a vocal analysis, regarding the sound object as a polyphony of voices, and 3) a contextual analysis, framing the sound object as a radio signature. Ola Stockfelt analyses the sound object as something that is constructed via his own repeated listening process – as a scholarly-analytical analysis of the subjective act of creating meaning. He draws on presumptions and prejudices, demonstrating the impossibility of a purely structural listening. The analysis relates these hermeneutical reflections to formal musicological observations of harmony, timbre, space and rhythm in some detail. Ansa Lønstrup’s paper analyses the sound object as a polyphony of voices. Her analysis is inspired by two phenomenologists: Don Ihde, whose notion of ‘voice’ is understood in a more general sense as the voices of all things, and Lawrence Ferrara, who methodologically operates within tree levels of investigation: 1) the syntax, 2) the semantic and 3) the ontology level. Accordingly, this analysis is conducted, as if the sound object was performed by a vocal ensemble oscillating ‘between a musical and a speech act’. Torben Sangild’s paper focuses on the concrete function of the sound object as a radio signature. This prompts a generic analysis and a semantic model of radio signatures in general, eclectically employing formal, indexical, gestural, discursive and contextual levels of meaning. The analysis of the Radiolab signature focuses on the overall gesture of tension and release as well as the semantic elements in a constellation with the content and style of the radio programme. After the three individual contributions, a brief summary and conclusion will follow, answering any questions that may arise in the process.

Radio promotion history: Crafting image and loyalty via philatelic ephemera

When radio was in its golden age, so was the hobby of stamp collecting. This article explored the way that philatelic ephemera were used in the promotion of US radio between the 1920s and 1960s. Philatelic programmes used the natural affinity of their audience for collectibles as an opportunity to provide cheap premium prizes and to create offers connected with programme sponsors. Non-philatelic programmes, stations and a manufacturer also took advantage of opportunities to use philatelic items to promote customer and listener loyalty and growth. Promotions represented efforts to enhance listenership, build station image and reach out to new audiences.