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The Eurovision Song Contest is famous for its camp spectacles and
political intrigues, but what about its actual music? With more
than 1,500 songs in over 50 languages and a wide range of musical
styles since it began in 1956, Eurovision features the most
musically and linguistically diverse song repertoire in history.
Listening closely to its classic fan favorites but also to songs
that scored low because they were too different or too far ahead of
their time, this book delves into the musical tastes and cultural
values the contest engages through its international reach and
popular appeal. Chapters discuss the iconic fanfare that introduces
the broadcast, the supposed formulas for composing successful
contest entries, how composers balance aspects of sameness and
difference in their songs, and the tension between national genres
of European popular music and musical trends beyond the nation's
borders, especially the American influences on a show that is
supposed to celebrate an idealized pan-European identity. The book
also explores how audiences interact with the contest through
musicking experiences that bring people together to celebrate its
sounds and spectacles. What can seem like a silly song-and-dance
show offers valuable insights into the bonds between popular music
and cosmopolitan values for its many followers around the world.
From dance parties to flashmobs, parodies to plagiarisms, and
orchestras to artificial intelligence, Another Song for Europe will
be of particular interest to Eurovision fans, critics, and scholars
of popular music, popular culture, ethnomusicology, and European
studies.
Why is gender inseparable from pop songs? What can gender
representations in musical performances mean? Why are there strong
links between gender, sexuality and popular music? The sound of the
voice, the mix, the arrangement, the lyrics and images, all link
our impressions of gender to music. Numerous scholars writing about
gender in popular music to date are concerned with the music
industry's impact on fans, and how tastes and preferences become
associated with gender. This is the first collection of its kind to
develop and present new theories and methods in the analysis of
popular music and gender. The contributors are drawn from a range
of disciplines including musicology, sociology, anthropology,
gender studies, philosophy, and media studies, providing new
reference points for studies in this interdisciplinary field. Stan
Hawkins's introduction sets out to situate a variety of debates
that prompts ways of thinking and working, where the focus falls
primarily on gender roles. Amongst the innovative approaches taken
up in this collection are: queer performativity, gender theory, gay
and lesbian agency, the female pop celebrity, masculinities,
transculturalism, queering, transgenderism and androgyny. This
Research Companion is required reading for scholars and teachers of
popular music, whatever their disciplinary background.
This book will be of interest to scholars, students and
practitioners in the fields of ethnomusicology, music education,
social learning and community music. It applies concepts and
approaches from these disciplines with ethnographic data to
identify a pedagogy for the learning and teaching of traditional
music in community-based organisations.
The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead is a
multifaceted study of tragedy in the group's live performances
showing how Garcia brought about catharsis through dance by leading
songs of grief, mortality, and ironic fate in a collective
theatrical context. This musical, literary, and historical analysis
of thirty-five songs with tragic dimensions performed by Garcia in
concert with the Grateful Dead illustrates the syncretic approach
and acute editorial ear he applied in adapting songs of Robert
Hunter, Bob Dylan, and folk tradition. Tragically ironic situations
in which Garcia found himself when performing these songs are
revealed, including those related to his opiate addiction and final
decline. This book examines Garcia's musical craftsmanship and the
Grateful Dead's collective art in terms of the mystery-rites of
ancient Greece, Friedrich Nietzsche's Dionysus, 20th century
American music rooted in New Orleans, Hermann Hesse's Magic
Theater, and the Greek Theatre at Berkeley, offering a clear
prospect on an often misunderstood phenomenon. Featuring
interdisciplinary analysis, close attention to musical and poetic
strategies, and historical and critical contexts, this book will be
of interest to scholars and researchers of Popular Music,
Musicology, Cultural Studies, and American Studies, as well as to
the Grateful Dead's avid listeners.
This book investigates the phenomenon of queering in popular music
and video, interpreting the music of numerous pop artists, styles,
and idioms. The focus falls on artists, such as Lady Gaga, Madonna,
Boy George, Diana Ross, Rufus Wainwright, David Bowie, Azealia
Banks, Zebra Katz, Freddie Mercury, the Pet Shop Boys, George
Michael, and many others. Hawkins builds his concept of queerness
upon existing theories of opacity and temporality, which involves a
creative interdisciplinary approach to musical interpretation. He
advocates a model of analysis that involves both temporal-specific
listening and biographic-oriented viewing. Music analysis is woven
into this, illuminating aspects of parody, nostalgia, camp,
naivety, masquerade, irony, and mimesis in pop music. One of the
principal aims is to uncover the subversive strategies of pop
artists through a wide range of audiovisual texts that situate the
debates on gender and sexuality within an aesthetic context that is
highly stylized and ritualized. Queerness in Pop Music also
addresses the playfulness of much pop music, offering insights into
how discourses of resistance are mediated through pleasure. Given
that pop artists, songwriters, producers, directors,
choreographers, and engineers all contribute to the final composite
of the pop recording, it is argued that the staging of any pop act
is a collective project. The implications of this are addressed
through structures of gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, and
sexuality. Ultimately, Hawkins contends that queerness is a
performative force that connotes futurity and utopian promise.
The Eurovision Song Contest is famous for its camp spectacles and
political intrigues, but what about its actual music? With more
than 1,500 songs in over 50 languages and a wide range of musical
styles since it began in 1956, Eurovision features the most
musically and linguistically diverse song repertoire in history.
Listening closely to its classic fan favorites but also to songs
that scored low because they were too different or too far ahead of
their time, this book delves into the musical tastes and cultural
values the contest engages through its international reach and
popular appeal. Chapters discuss the iconic fanfare that introduces
the broadcast, the supposed formulas for composing successful
contest entries, how composers balance aspects of sameness and
difference in their songs, and the tension between national genres
of European popular music and musical trends beyond the nation's
borders, especially the American influences on a show that is
supposed to celebrate an idealized pan-European identity. The book
also explores how audiences interact with the contest through
musicking experiences that bring people together to celebrate its
sounds and spectacles. What can seem like a silly song-and-dance
show offers valuable insights into the bonds between popular music
and cosmopolitan values for its many followers around the world.
From dance parties to flashmobs, parodies to plagiarisms, and
orchestras to artificial intelligence, Another Song for Europe will
be of particular interest to Eurovision fans, critics, and scholars
of popular music, popular culture, ethnomusicology, and European
studies.
Who are pop dandies? Why are stars like David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker,
Pete Doherty and Robbie Williams so dandified? Taking up a wide
range of British pop stars, Hawkins seeks to find out why so many
have cast themselves in roles that often take style to absurd
extremes. In this study, male pop artists are mapped against a
cultural and historical background through a genealogy of
personalities, such as Oscar Wilde, W.H. Auden, Andy Warhol, NoA"l
Coward, Derek Jarmen, David Beckham and countless others. A
critical analysis of issues and approaches to musical performance
through masculinity becomes the focal point of this fascinating
study. Ranging from the sixties to beyond the twentieth century,
The British Pop Dandy considers the construction of the male pop
icon through the spectacle of videos, live concerts and films. Why
do we derive pleasure from the performing body, and how is
entertainment linked to categories of gender and sexuality? The
author insists that pop performances can be understood through
human characteristics that relate to the particulars of dandyism,
camp and glamour, and this he theorizes through the work of Charles
Baudelaire. One of the political objectives of the dandy is to
liberate himself through a denial of the structures that assume
fixed identity. Not least, it is acts of queering in pop music that
characterize entire generations of male artists in the UK. Setting
out to discover what distinguishes the British pop dandy, Hawkins
considers the role of music and performance in the articulation of
hyperbolic display. It is argued that the recorded voice is a
construction that idealizes self-representation, and absorbs the
listener's attention. Particularly, camp address in singing
practice is taken up in conjunction with a discussion of intimacy,
which forms part of the strategy of the performer. In a range of
songs and videos selected for music analysis, Hawkins points to the
uniqueness of the voice as it expresses a transgressive quality
that often comes across 'put-on', naive and vulnerable. To this
end, vocal performativity is considered part of music's discursive
disciplining through some of the greatest pop tracks, videos,
concerts and films of our time. It is also argued that shifting
signs of masculinity can be understood through musical process and
style. While musicological in its main focus, this study is
interdisciplinary and sets out to open new modes of thinking on the
complex issues surrounding how masculinity, music and culture have
developed in the UK.
This collection of original essays is in tribute to the work of
Derek Scott on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. As one of the
leading lights in Critical Musicology, Scott has helped shape the
epistemological direction for music research since the late 1980s.
There is no doubt that the path taken by the critical musicologist
has been a tricky one, leading to new conceptions, interactions,
and heated debates during the past two decades. Changes in
musicology during the closing decades of the twentieth century
prompted the establishment of new sets of theoretical methods that
probed at the social and cultural relevance of music, as much as
its self-referentiality. All the scholars contributing to this book
have played a role in the general paradigmatic shift that ensued in
the wake of Kerman's call for change in the 1980s. Setting out to
address a range of approaches to theorizing music and promulgating
modes of analysis across a wide range of repertories, the essays in
this collection can be read as a coming of age of critical
musicology through its active dialogue with other disciplines such
as sociology, feminism, ethnomusicology, history, anthropology,
philosophy, cultural studies, aesthetics, media studies, film music
studies, and gender studies. The volume provides music researchers
and graduate students with an up-to-date authoritative reference to
all matters dealing with the state of critical musicology today.
This book investigates the phenomenon of queering in popular music
and video, interpreting the music of numerous pop artists, styles,
and idioms. The focus falls on artists, such as Lady Gaga, Madonna,
Boy George, Diana Ross, Rufus Wainwright, David Bowie, Azealia
Banks, Zebra Katz, Freddie Mercury, the Pet Shop Boys, George
Michael, and many others. Hawkins builds his concept of queerness
upon existing theories of opacity and temporality, which involves a
creative interdisciplinary approach to musical interpretation. He
advocates a model of analysis that involves both temporal-specific
listening and biographic-oriented viewing. Music analysis is woven
into this, illuminating aspects of parody, nostalgia, camp,
naivety, masquerade, irony, and mimesis in pop music. One of the
principal aims is to uncover the subversive strategies of pop
artists through a wide range of audiovisual texts that situate the
debates on gender and sexuality within an aesthetic context that is
highly stylized and ritualized. Queerness in Pop Music also
addresses the playfulness of much pop music, offering insights into
how discourses of resistance are mediated through pleasure. Given
that pop artists, songwriters, producers, directors,
choreographers, and engineers all contribute to the final composite
of the pop recording, it is argued that the staging of any pop act
is a collective project. The implications of this are addressed
through structures of gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, and
sexuality. Ultimately, Hawkins contends that queerness is a
performative force that connotes futurity and utopian promise.
Who are pop dandies? Why are stars like David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker,
Pete Doherty and Robbie Williams so dandified? Taking up a wide
range of British pop stars, Hawkins seeks to find out why so many
have cast themselves in roles that often take style to absurd
extremes. In this study, male pop artists are mapped against a
cultural and historical background through a genealogy of
personalities, such as Oscar Wilde, W.H. Auden, Andy Warhol, NoA"l
Coward, Derek Jarmen, David Beckham and countless others. A
critical analysis of issues and approaches to musical performance
through masculinity becomes the focal point of this fascinating
study. Ranging from the sixties to beyond the twentieth century,
The British Pop Dandy considers the construction of the male pop
icon through the spectacle of videos, live concerts and films. Why
do we derive pleasure from the performing body, and how is
entertainment linked to categories of gender and sexuality? The
author insists that pop performances can be understood through
human characteristics that relate to the particulars of dandyism,
camp and glamour, and this he theorizes through the work of Charles
Baudelaire. One of the political objectives of the dandy is to
liberate himself through a denial of the structures that assume
fixed identity. Not least, it is acts of queering in pop music that
characterize entire generations of male artists in the UK. Setting
out to discover what distinguishes the British pop dandy, Hawkins
considers the role of music and performance in the articulation of
hyperbolic display. It is argued that the recorded voice is a
construction that idealizes self-representation, and absorbs the
listener's attention. Particularly, camp address in singing
practice is taken up in conjunction with a discussion of intimacy,
which forms part of the strategy of the performer. In a range of
songs and videos selected for music analysis, Hawkins points to the
uniqueness of the voice as it expresses a transgressive quality
that often comes across 'put-on', naive and vulnerable. To this
end, vocal performativity is considered part of music's discursive
disciplining through some of the greatest pop tracks, videos,
concerts and films of our time. It is also argued that shifting
signs of masculinity can be understood through musical process and
style. While musicological in its main focus, this study is
interdisciplinary and sets out to open new modes of thinking on the
complex issues surrounding how masculinity, music and culture have
developed in the UK.
This collection of original essays is in tribute to the work of
Derek Scott on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. As one of the
leading lights in Critical Musicology, Scott has helped shape the
epistemological direction for music research since the late 1980s.
There is no doubt that the path taken by the critical musicologist
has been a tricky one, leading to new conceptions, interactions,
and heated debates during the past two decades. Changes in
musicology during the closing decades of the twentieth century
prompted the establishment of new sets of theoretical methods that
probed at the social and cultural relevance of music, as much as
its self-referentiality. All the scholars contributing to this book
have played a role in the general paradigmatic shift that ensued in
the wake of Kerman's call for change in the 1980s. Setting out to
address a range of approaches to theorizing music and promulgating
modes of analysis across a wide range of repertories, the essays in
this collection can be read as a coming of age of critical
musicology through its active dialogue with other disciplines such
as sociology, feminism, ethnomusicology, history, anthropology,
philosophy, cultural studies, aesthetics, media studies, film music
studies, and gender studies. The volume provides music researchers
and graduate students with an up-to-date authoritative reference to
all matters dealing with the state of critical musicology today.
What defines pop music? Why do we consider some styles as easier
listening than others? Arranged in three parts: Aesthetics and
Authenticity - Groove, Sampling and Industry - Subjectivity,
Ethnicity and Politics, this collection of essays by a group of
international scholars deals with these questions in diverse ways.
This volume prepares the reader for the debates around pop's
intricate historical, aesthetic and cultural roots. The
intellectual perspectives on offer present the interdisciplinary
aspects of studying music and, spanning more than twenty-five
years, these essays form a snapshot of some of the authorial voices
that have shaped the specific subject matter of pop criticism
within the broader field of popular music studies. A common thread
running through these essays is the topic of interpretation and its
relation to conceptions of musicality, subjectivity and aesthetics.
The principle aim of this collection is to demonstrate that pop
music needs to be evaluated on its own terms within the cultural
contexts that make it meaningful.
The analysis of popular music forces us to rethink the assumptions
that underpin our approaches to the study of Western music. Not
least, it brings to the fore an idea that many musicologists still
find uncomfortable - that commercial production and consumption can
be aligned with artistic authenticity. Reading pop texts takes
place through dialogue on many levels, which, as Stan Hawkins
argues, deals with how musical events are shaped by personal
alliances between the artist and the recipient. The need for a
critical approach to evaluating popular music lies at the heart of
this book. Hawkins explores the relationships that exist between
music, spectatorship and aesthetics through a series of case
studies of pop artists from the 1980s and 1990s. Madonna,
Morrissey, Annie Lennox, the Pet Shop Boys and Prince represent the
diversity of cultures, identities and sexualities that
characterised the start of the MTV boom. Through the interpretation
of aspects of the compositional design and musical structures of
songs by these pop artists, Hawkins suggests ways in which
stylistic and technical elements of the music relate to identity
formation and its political motivations. Settling the Pop Score
examines the role of irony and empathy, the question of gender,
race and sexuality, and the relevance of textual analysis to the
study of popular music. Interpreting pop music within the framework
of musicology, Hawkins helps us to understand the pleasure so many
people derive from these songs.
The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead is a
multifaceted study of tragedy in the group's live performances
showing how Garcia brought about catharsis through dance by leading
songs of grief, mortality, and ironic fate in a collective
theatrical context. This musical, literary, and historical analysis
of thirty-five songs with tragic dimensions performed by Garcia in
concert with the Grateful Dead illustrates the syncretic approach
and acute editorial ear he applied in adapting songs of Robert
Hunter, Bob Dylan, and folk tradition. Tragically ironic situations
in which Garcia found himself when performing these songs are
revealed, including those related to his opiate addiction and final
decline. This book examines Garcia's musical craftsmanship and the
Grateful Dead's collective art in terms of the mystery-rites of
ancient Greece, Friedrich Nietzsche's Dionysus, 20th century
American music rooted in New Orleans, Hermann Hesse's Magic
Theater, and the Greek Theatre at Berkeley, offering a clear
prospect on an often misunderstood phenomenon. Featuring
interdisciplinary analysis, close attention to musical and poetic
strategies, and historical and critical contexts, this book will be
of interest to scholars and researchers of Popular Music,
Musicology, Cultural Studies, and American Studies, as well as to
the Grateful Dead's avid listeners.
The career of the prolific pop artist Prince has become
inextricably intertwined with the history of popular music since
the late 1970s. This multi-instrumental icon, who remains one of
the highest-grossing live performers in America, has been called a
genius for his musicianship, composition and incredible
performances. But Prince holds iconic status for more than his
music. Best known for his racial blurring and extravagant sexual
persona, Prince's music and visual iconography has always chimed
with the ambiguity of subjectivity at any given moment. 'Prince'
the sign offers a space for fans to evaluate and reconfigure their
attitudes towards their own identities, and towards their position
as subjects within the socio-cultural sphere. This much-needed
interdisciplinary analysis is the first of its kind to examine
critically Prince's popular music, performances, sounds, lyrics and
the plethora of accompanying visual material such as album covers,
posters, fashions, promotional videos and feature films.
Specifically, the book explores how and why he has played such a
profoundly meaningful and significant role in his fans' lives.
The career of the prolific pop artist Prince has become
inextricably intertwined with the history of popular music since
the late 1970s. This multi-instrumental icon, who remains one of
the highest-grossing live performers in America, has been called a
genius for his musicianship, composition and incredible
performances. But Prince holds iconic status for more than his
music. Best known for his racial blurring and extravagant sexual
persona, Prince's music and visual iconography has always chimed
with the ambiguity of subjectivity at any given moment. 'Prince'
the sign offers a space for fans to evaluate and reconfigure their
attitudes towards their own identities, and towards their position
as subjects within the socio-cultural sphere. This much-needed
interdisciplinary analysis is the first of its kind to examine
critically Prince's popular music, performances, sounds, lyrics and
the plethora of accompanying visual material such as album covers,
posters, fashions, promotional videos and feature films.
Specifically, the book explores how and why he has played such a
profoundly meaningful and significant role in his fans' lives.
Why is gender inseparable from pop songs? What can gender
representations in musical performances mean? Why are there strong
links between gender, sexuality and popular music? The sound of the
voice, the mix, the arrangement, the lyrics and images, all link
our impressions of gender to music. Numerous scholars writing about
gender in popular music to date are concerned with the music
industry's impact on fans, and how tastes and preferences become
associated with gender. This is the first collection of its kind to
develop and present new theories and methods in the analysis of
popular music and gender. The contributors are drawn from a range
of disciplines including musicology, sociology, anthropology,
gender studies, philosophy, and media studies, providing new
reference points for studies in this interdisciplinary field. Stan
Hawkins's introduction sets out to situate a variety of debates
that prompts ways of thinking and working, where the focus falls
primarily on gender roles. Amongst the innovative approaches taken
up in this collection are: queer performativity, gender theory, gay
and lesbian agency, the female pop celebrity, masculinities,
transculturalism, queering, transgenderism and androgyny. This
Research Companion is required reading for scholars and teachers of
popular music, whatever their disciplinary background.
Music videos promote popular artists in cultural forms that
circulate widely across social media networks. With the advent of
YouTube in 2005 and the proliferation of handheld technologies and
social networking sites, the music video has become available to
millions worldwide, and continues to serve as a fertile platform
for the debate of issues and themes in popular culture. This volume
of essays serves as a foundational handbook for the study and
interpretation of the popular music video, with the specific aim of
examining the industry contexts, cultural concepts, and aesthetic
materials that videos rely upon in order to be both intelligible
and meaningful. Easily accessible to viewers in everyday life,
music videos offer profound cultural interventions and negotiations
while traversing a range of media forms. From a variety of unique
perspectives, the contributors to this volume undertake discussions
that open up new avenues for exploring the creative changes and
developments in music video production. With chapters that address
music video authorship, distribution, cultural representations,
mediations, aesthetics, and discourses, this study signals a major
initiative to provide a deeper understanding of the intersecting
and interdisciplinary approaches that are invoked in the analysis
of this popular and influential musical form.
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