Andrew N. Weintraub
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195395662
- eISBN:
- 9780199863549
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395662.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, Popular
Dangdut Stories is a social and musical history of dangdut, Indonesia's most popular music, within a range of broader narratives about social class, gender, ethnicity and nation in post-independence ...
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Dangdut Stories is a social and musical history of dangdut, Indonesia's most popular music, within a range of broader narratives about social class, gender, ethnicity and nation in post-independence Indonesia (1945-present). The book shows how dangdut evolved from a debased form of urban popular music to a prominent role in Indonesian cultural politics and the commercial music industry. Throughout the book the voices and experiences of musicians take center stage in shaping the book's narrative. Quoted material from interviews, detailed analysis of music and song texts, and ethnography of performance illuminate the stylistic nature of the music and its centrality in public debates about Islam, social class relations, and the role of women in post-colonial Indonesia. Dangdut Stories is the first musicological study to examine the stylistic development of dangdut music itself, using vocal style, melody, rhythm, harmony, form, and song texts to articulate symbolic struggles over meaning in the realm of culture. The book illuminates historical changes in musical style, performance practice, and social meanings from the genre's origins to the present day. Developed during the early 1970s, an historical treatment of the genre's musical style, performance practice, and social meanings is long overdue.Less
Dangdut Stories is a social and musical history of dangdut, Indonesia's most popular music, within a range of broader narratives about social class, gender, ethnicity and nation in post-independence Indonesia (1945-present). The book shows how dangdut evolved from a debased form of urban popular music to a prominent role in Indonesian cultural politics and the commercial music industry. Throughout the book the voices and experiences of musicians take center stage in shaping the book's narrative. Quoted material from interviews, detailed analysis of music and song texts, and ethnography of performance illuminate the stylistic nature of the music and its centrality in public debates about Islam, social class relations, and the role of women in post-colonial Indonesia. Dangdut Stories is the first musicological study to examine the stylistic development of dangdut music itself, using vocal style, melody, rhythm, harmony, form, and song texts to articulate symbolic struggles over meaning in the realm of culture. The book illuminates historical changes in musical style, performance practice, and social meanings from the genre's origins to the present day. Developed during the early 1970s, an historical treatment of the genre's musical style, performance practice, and social meanings is long overdue.
Peter Van der Merwe
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780198166474
- eISBN:
- 9780191713880
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198166474.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, Western ‘art’ music has grown out of, and drawn on, popular models. This book traces this recurring process. Again and again simple patterns have been ...
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From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, Western ‘art’ music has grown out of, and drawn on, popular models. This book traces this recurring process. Again and again simple patterns have been refined and elaborated, eventually to the point of decadence, whereupon the search begins anew for further raw folk-stuff. A remarkable instance is the evolution of classical tonality, beginning with the tonic-and-dominant patterns of Italian dance music of about 1500, and ending with the extreme chromaticism of 1900. Other topics discussed in this book are: the Oriental influence on Western music; the waltz and other 19th-century dances; Italian opera and other popular genres; Wagner and early Modernism; and the roots of the 20th-century popular idiom. Throughout, the focus is on the simple, the commonplace, and even the hackneyed. Though due attention is paid to the historical and cultural background, this is mainly a study of musical patterns (generally melodic or harmonic, sometimes rhythmic or formal). It is as much theoretical as historical, the basis of the theory being melodic dissonance, essentially the tension between notes of different pitch. This explains both modes and scales (extensively discussed) and harmony, regarded as simultaneous melody. Other important concepts are self-similarity (maximised in classical tonality); musical ambiguity, in the sense of multiplicity of meaning; and tonal counterpoint, or the counterpoint between tonalities rather than melodies.Less
From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, Western ‘art’ music has grown out of, and drawn on, popular models. This book traces this recurring process. Again and again simple patterns have been refined and elaborated, eventually to the point of decadence, whereupon the search begins anew for further raw folk-stuff. A remarkable instance is the evolution of classical tonality, beginning with the tonic-and-dominant patterns of Italian dance music of about 1500, and ending with the extreme chromaticism of 1900. Other topics discussed in this book are: the Oriental influence on Western music; the waltz and other 19th-century dances; Italian opera and other popular genres; Wagner and early Modernism; and the roots of the 20th-century popular idiom. Throughout, the focus is on the simple, the commonplace, and even the hackneyed. Though due attention is paid to the historical and cultural background, this is mainly a study of musical patterns (generally melodic or harmonic, sometimes rhythmic or formal). It is as much theoretical as historical, the basis of the theory being melodic dissonance, essentially the tension between notes of different pitch. This explains both modes and scales (extensively discussed) and harmony, regarded as simultaneous melody. Other important concepts are self-similarity (maximised in classical tonality); musical ambiguity, in the sense of multiplicity of meaning; and tonal counterpoint, or the counterpoint between tonalities rather than melodies.
Ennis Barrington Edmonds
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195133769
- eISBN:
- 9780199834167
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195133765.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
Jamaican popular music started with ska in the early 1960s, evolved into rock‐steady in the mid‐1960s, and eventually into reggae in the late 1960s. This development was driven and facilitated by ...
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Jamaican popular music started with ska in the early 1960s, evolved into rock‐steady in the mid‐1960s, and eventually into reggae in the late 1960s. This development was driven and facilitated by Jamaica's sound systems – mobile discos – and the emerging recording industry. The influences on Jamaican popular music are quite diverse, including African sensibilities mediated through Jamaican folk genres, British popular and religious music, American rhythm and blues, Trinidadian calypso, and Latin rhythms. As the music evolved into reggae, the Nyabinghi rhythms of Rastafari – adopted from Burru drumming – became the characteristic sound, and the Rastafarian philosophy pervaded the lyrics. The influence of Rastafari on the development of Jamaican popular music (reggae) has been the most salient factor in moving Rastas from the margins toward the center of Jamaican cultural life.Less
Jamaican popular music started with ska in the early 1960s, evolved into rock‐steady in the mid‐1960s, and eventually into reggae in the late 1960s. This development was driven and facilitated by Jamaica's sound systems – mobile discos – and the emerging recording industry. The influences on Jamaican popular music are quite diverse, including African sensibilities mediated through Jamaican folk genres, British popular and religious music, American rhythm and blues, Trinidadian calypso, and Latin rhythms. As the music evolved into reggae, the Nyabinghi rhythms of Rastafari – adopted from Burru drumming – became the characteristic sound, and the Rastafarian philosophy pervaded the lyrics. The influence of Rastafari on the development of Jamaican popular music (reggae) has been the most salient factor in moving Rastas from the margins toward the center of Jamaican cultural life.
Peter van der Merwe
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780198166474
- eISBN:
- 9780191713880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198166474.003.0017
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter, which takes the story up to about 1914, deals first with the late 19th-century vernacular (and its early twentieth-century successor), demonstrating what this ‘light’ music had in ...
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This chapter, which takes the story up to about 1914, deals first with the late 19th-century vernacular (and its early twentieth-century successor), demonstrating what this ‘light’ music had in common with the ‘serious’ music of the same period. It then proceeds to the blues and early jazz, pointing out its links to the same vernacular.Less
This chapter, which takes the story up to about 1914, deals first with the late 19th-century vernacular (and its early twentieth-century successor), demonstrating what this ‘light’ music had in common with the ‘serious’ music of the same period. It then proceeds to the blues and early jazz, pointing out its links to the same vernacular.
Andrew N. Weintraub
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195395662
- eISBN:
- 9780199863549
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395662.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, Popular
This chapter establishes the topic, justification, theoretical framework, and methodology for the book. Dangdut Stories situates the production and circulation of meanings about a popular music genre ...
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This chapter establishes the topic, justification, theoretical framework, and methodology for the book. Dangdut Stories situates the production and circulation of meanings about a popular music genre within particular social (political and economic) and cultural (ideological) conditions.In a series of brief examples drawn from ethnographic fieldwork in Java, Sumatra, and Kalimantan, the author shows how dangdut participates in social discourses, or “stories,” about social class relations, national belonging, and gendered power and difference in contemporary Indonesia.Less
This chapter establishes the topic, justification, theoretical framework, and methodology for the book. Dangdut Stories situates the production and circulation of meanings about a popular music genre within particular social (political and economic) and cultural (ideological) conditions.In a series of brief examples drawn from ethnographic fieldwork in Java, Sumatra, and Kalimantan, the author shows how dangdut participates in social discourses, or “stories,” about social class relations, national belonging, and gendered power and difference in contemporary Indonesia.
Philip V. Bohlman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195178326
- eISBN:
- 9780199869992
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178326.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
The cultural and historical tensions between East and West are among the most complex forces in Jewish history. Jewish music has historically embodied this tension, and it is one of the ways in which ...
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The cultural and historical tensions between East and West are among the most complex forces in Jewish history. Jewish music has historically embodied this tension, and it is one of the ways in which modernity emerges as a quality of Jewish music. In the synagogue, prayer and song are directed toward the altar at the eastern end of the sanctuary. Several styles and repertories of modern popular music in Israel are designated as musica mizrahit, literally “eastern music.” In modern Europe East and West also formed along a cultural fault line between Jews speaking Yiddish as a vernacular language in Eastern Europe and Jews speaking other vernaculars in Central Europe, especially German. As Jewish musicians increasingly entered the domains of popular and entertainment music in the late nineteenth century, East and West came to represent two different, even contested, identities in the Diaspora.Less
The cultural and historical tensions between East and West are among the most complex forces in Jewish history. Jewish music has historically embodied this tension, and it is one of the ways in which modernity emerges as a quality of Jewish music. In the synagogue, prayer and song are directed toward the altar at the eastern end of the sanctuary. Several styles and repertories of modern popular music in Israel are designated as musica mizrahit, literally “eastern music.” In modern Europe East and West also formed along a cultural fault line between Jews speaking Yiddish as a vernacular language in Eastern Europe and Jews speaking other vernaculars in Central Europe, especially German. As Jewish musicians increasingly entered the domains of popular and entertainment music in the late nineteenth century, East and West came to represent two different, even contested, identities in the Diaspora.
Christina L. Baade
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195372014
- eISBN:
- 9780199918287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372014.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
Chapter 1 offers a contextual account of BBC broadcasting between the wars; discusses the infusion of jazz and dance music from America into British musical life; and situates the book in relation to ...
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Chapter 1 offers a contextual account of BBC broadcasting between the wars; discusses the infusion of jazz and dance music from America into British musical life; and situates the book in relation to discourses of mass culture, modernity, and the popular. Its examination of the BBC is concerned particularly with its ideologies of cultural uplift, promotion of active listening, advocacy for (classical) music appreciation, and conceptualization of its listeners through audience research. The more comprehensive discussion of dance bands and jazz in interwar British culture (necessary because of their unfamiliarity to most North American readers) is focused through the lens of broadcasting. It gives particular attention to the problem of song plugging and the BBC's turn to lighter programming during the late 1930s: these cases distilled the BBC's ambivalence about popular music, with its ties to the commercial and the American, even as it prepared for war.Less
Chapter 1 offers a contextual account of BBC broadcasting between the wars; discusses the infusion of jazz and dance music from America into British musical life; and situates the book in relation to discourses of mass culture, modernity, and the popular. Its examination of the BBC is concerned particularly with its ideologies of cultural uplift, promotion of active listening, advocacy for (classical) music appreciation, and conceptualization of its listeners through audience research. The more comprehensive discussion of dance bands and jazz in interwar British culture (necessary because of their unfamiliarity to most North American readers) is focused through the lens of broadcasting. It gives particular attention to the problem of song plugging and the BBC's turn to lighter programming during the late 1930s: these cases distilled the BBC's ambivalence about popular music, with its ties to the commercial and the American, even as it prepared for war.
Jennifer C. Lena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691150765
- eISBN:
- 9781400840458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691150765.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter expands our view to include music produced in other countries. A preliminary survey of the popular music of countries with widely differing political economies, music cultures, and ...
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This chapter expands our view to include music produced in other countries. A preliminary survey of the popular music of countries with widely differing political economies, music cultures, and levels of development revealed that the four genre forms (avant-garde, scene-based, industry-based, and traditionalist) do exist to greater or lesser degrees across the globe. However, there proved to be another widely distributed form that was not found in the U.S. sample: the government-purposed genre. Musics in this genre receive substantial financial support from the government or oppositional groups with a direct interest in the ideological content of popular music. There are two major types: those sponsored directly by governments, which benefit from national distribution and legal protections, and an antistate type supported by an opposition party or constituency. The chapter examines four nation-cases to advance the argument: the People's Republic of China, Chile, Serbia, and Nigeria.Less
This chapter expands our view to include music produced in other countries. A preliminary survey of the popular music of countries with widely differing political economies, music cultures, and levels of development revealed that the four genre forms (avant-garde, scene-based, industry-based, and traditionalist) do exist to greater or lesser degrees across the globe. However, there proved to be another widely distributed form that was not found in the U.S. sample: the government-purposed genre. Musics in this genre receive substantial financial support from the government or oppositional groups with a direct interest in the ideological content of popular music. There are two major types: those sponsored directly by governments, which benefit from national distribution and legal protections, and an antistate type supported by an opposition party or constituency. The chapter examines four nation-cases to advance the argument: the People's Republic of China, Chile, Serbia, and Nigeria.
David Brown
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199231829
- eISBN:
- 9780191716218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231829.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter explores the aesthetics of pop music in general and then focuses on how specific artists might facilitate religious experience. It examines not just ‘light’ popular music, but also the ...
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This chapter explores the aesthetics of pop music in general and then focuses on how specific artists might facilitate religious experience. It examines not just ‘light’ popular music, but also the various types to which Christians have sometimes taken most exception, among them hard rock and rap. Artists considered include the Beatles, Madonna, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Nick Cave, and The Bad Seeds.Less
This chapter explores the aesthetics of pop music in general and then focuses on how specific artists might facilitate religious experience. It examines not just ‘light’ popular music, but also the various types to which Christians have sometimes taken most exception, among them hard rock and rap. Artists considered include the Beatles, Madonna, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Nick Cave, and The Bad Seeds.
Christina L. Baade
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195372014
- eISBN:
- 9780199918287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372014.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
Chapter 3 examines Music While You Work (MWYW), created by the BBC in response to the production drives spurred by the retreat at Dunkirk in June 1940. The half-hour program united ideologies of ...
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Chapter 3 examines Music While You Work (MWYW), created by the BBC in response to the production drives spurred by the retreat at Dunkirk in June 1940. The half-hour program united ideologies of music as a force for cultural uplift with research in industrial efficiency in service of the war effort. As the program developed, it reflected concerns with the new female workforce, for the apathetic and unruly bodies of conscripted women workers threatened to slow production, detract from the nation's war effort, and even undermine “the health of all democracy.” Prized for its tonic qualities, MWYW was a powerful tool for factory discipline. Producers harnessed popular and light music, not according to entertainment or artistic values but for their effect on production, audibility, and impact on worker morale. Nevertheless, the program also evoked practices of dancing and background listening, which had become mass leisure activities during the preceding decades.Less
Chapter 3 examines Music While You Work (MWYW), created by the BBC in response to the production drives spurred by the retreat at Dunkirk in June 1940. The half-hour program united ideologies of music as a force for cultural uplift with research in industrial efficiency in service of the war effort. As the program developed, it reflected concerns with the new female workforce, for the apathetic and unruly bodies of conscripted women workers threatened to slow production, detract from the nation's war effort, and even undermine “the health of all democracy.” Prized for its tonic qualities, MWYW was a powerful tool for factory discipline. Producers harnessed popular and light music, not according to entertainment or artistic values but for their effect on production, audibility, and impact on worker morale. Nevertheless, the program also evoked practices of dancing and background listening, which had become mass leisure activities during the preceding decades.
Eamonn Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265390
- eISBN:
- 9780191760440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265390.003.0015
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter examines the ways in which the Black Panther Party (BPP) used popular music as a means to represent its ideology and politics to potential supporters during the peak of its activism in ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which the Black Panther Party (BPP) used popular music as a means to represent its ideology and politics to potential supporters during the peak of its activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following an initial discussion of the ways in which the traditions of the U.S. left and popular music impacted upon the BPP, it explores the idea of black nationalism as understood and represented by the Panthers, its relationship to the traditions of Marxism, and the ways in which this relationship informed the cultural practice of the BPP. Finally, there is an examination of the ‘three moments’ alluded to in the title, a series of musical performances and recordings sponsored by the party.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which the Black Panther Party (BPP) used popular music as a means to represent its ideology and politics to potential supporters during the peak of its activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following an initial discussion of the ways in which the traditions of the U.S. left and popular music impacted upon the BPP, it explores the idea of black nationalism as understood and represented by the Panthers, its relationship to the traditions of Marxism, and the ways in which this relationship informed the cultural practice of the BPP. Finally, there is an examination of the ‘three moments’ alluded to in the title, a series of musical performances and recordings sponsored by the party.
Louis Niebur
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195368406
- eISBN:
- 9780199863853
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368406.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
In 1965 the first synthesizers arrived at the Workshop. Chapter 4 discusses the impact of their arrival, with a detailed discussion both of the features of these early synthesizers and of the ways ...
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In 1965 the first synthesizers arrived at the Workshop. Chapter 4 discusses the impact of their arrival, with a detailed discussion both of the features of these early synthesizers and of the ways they were used by composers such as Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson. It also discusses how, for the first time, “nonspecialist” composers like Dudley Simpson were allowed to use the facilities of the Workshop in their BBC commissions. One of the fundamental shifts in composition resulting from the use of synthesizers rather than tape techniques was the move away from abstract sounds toward fixed pitches, resulting in even more tonally centered works. Pieces no longer blurred the boundaries of sound effect and music, tending instead to imitate traditionally composed tonal music in an electronic idiom.Less
In 1965 the first synthesizers arrived at the Workshop. Chapter 4 discusses the impact of their arrival, with a detailed discussion both of the features of these early synthesizers and of the ways they were used by composers such as Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson. It also discusses how, for the first time, “nonspecialist” composers like Dudley Simpson were allowed to use the facilities of the Workshop in their BBC commissions. One of the fundamental shifts in composition resulting from the use of synthesizers rather than tape techniques was the move away from abstract sounds toward fixed pitches, resulting in even more tonally centered works. Pieces no longer blurred the boundaries of sound effect and music, tending instead to imitate traditionally composed tonal music in an electronic idiom.
Benjamin Piekut
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195336641
- eISBN:
- 9780199868551
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336641.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
This chapter discusses traces the path taken by the maverick composer, philosopher and activist Henry Flynt in the early 1960s, from a position at the heart of New York's downtown avant‐garde ...
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This chapter discusses traces the path taken by the maverick composer, philosopher and activist Henry Flynt in the early 1960s, from a position at the heart of New York's downtown avant‐garde community, to his radical repudiation of the avant‐garde under the influence of the Marxist‐Leninist Workers World Party (WWP). The WWP both shaped the rhetoric of Flynt's attacks on the avant‐garde, and (through its militant advocacy of civil rights) encouraged his growing interest in black popular music. Paradoxically, this was to lead to tension with the WWP itself, which shared the culturally conservative outlook of Soviet communism. Flynt, by contrast, viewed “street‐Negro music” as representing the vanguard of musical evolution through its resourceful use of electric instruments and recording and broadcasting technology.Less
This chapter discusses traces the path taken by the maverick composer, philosopher and activist Henry Flynt in the early 1960s, from a position at the heart of New York's downtown avant‐garde community, to his radical repudiation of the avant‐garde under the influence of the Marxist‐Leninist Workers World Party (WWP). The WWP both shaped the rhetoric of Flynt's attacks on the avant‐garde, and (through its militant advocacy of civil rights) encouraged his growing interest in black popular music. Paradoxically, this was to lead to tension with the WWP itself, which shared the culturally conservative outlook of Soviet communism. Flynt, by contrast, viewed “street‐Negro music” as representing the vanguard of musical evolution through its resourceful use of electric instruments and recording and broadcasting technology.
Louis Niebur
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195368406
- eISBN:
- 9780199863853
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368406.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
This book chronicles how in the late 1950s, the BBC established Britain's own electronic music studio, the Radiophonic Workshop, in opposition to famous academic studios in Continental Europe and ...
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This book chronicles how in the late 1950s, the BBC established Britain's own electronic music studio, the Radiophonic Workshop, in opposition to famous academic studios in Continental Europe and America. Rather than compete with these other studios, however, the BBC built a studio initially to provide its own avant‐garde dramatic productions with “special sound,” experimental sounds that were “neither music nor sound effect.” Very quickly, however, from the ashes of highbrow BBC radio drama emerged a popular lowbrow kind of electronic music in the form of quirky tonal jingles, signature tunes such as the one for Doctor Who, and incidental music for hundreds of programs lasting until the studio's closure in 1998. These influential sounds and styles, heard by millions of listeners over decades of operation on television and radio, have served as a primary inspiration for the use of electronic instruments in popular music. This history focuses on engineers, composers, directors, producers, bureaucrats, equipment, and locations to construct a narrative of the shifting perception toward electronic music in British culture. By combining a historical discussion with an analysis of specific works, this book derives new hermeneutical models for understanding how the output of the Radiophonic Workshop fits into the larger history of electronic music.Less
This book chronicles how in the late 1950s, the BBC established Britain's own electronic music studio, the Radiophonic Workshop, in opposition to famous academic studios in Continental Europe and America. Rather than compete with these other studios, however, the BBC built a studio initially to provide its own avant‐garde dramatic productions with “special sound,” experimental sounds that were “neither music nor sound effect.” Very quickly, however, from the ashes of highbrow BBC radio drama emerged a popular lowbrow kind of electronic music in the form of quirky tonal jingles, signature tunes such as the one for Doctor Who, and incidental music for hundreds of programs lasting until the studio's closure in 1998. These influential sounds and styles, heard by millions of listeners over decades of operation on television and radio, have served as a primary inspiration for the use of electronic instruments in popular music. This history focuses on engineers, composers, directors, producers, bureaucrats, equipment, and locations to construct a narrative of the shifting perception toward electronic music in British culture. By combining a historical discussion with an analysis of specific works, this book derives new hermeneutical models for understanding how the output of the Radiophonic Workshop fits into the larger history of electronic music.
Kiri Miller
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199753451
- eISBN:
- 9780199932979
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199753451.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This book is about play, performance, and participatory culture in the digital age. It shows how music, video games, and social media are bridging virtual and visceral experience, creating dispersed ...
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This book is about play, performance, and participatory culture in the digital age. It shows how music, video games, and social media are bridging virtual and visceral experience, creating dispersed communities who forge meaningful connections by “playing along” with popular culture. Miller reveals how digital media are brought to bear in the transmission of embodied knowledge: how a Grand Theft Auto player uses a virtual radio to hear with her avatar’s ears; how a Guitar Hero player channels the experience of a live rock performer; and how an amateur guitar student translates a two-dimensional, pre-recorded online music lesson into three-dimensional physical practice and an intimate relationship with a distant teacher. Through ethnographic case studies, Miller demonstrates that our everyday experiences with interactive digital media are gradually transforming our understanding of musicality, creativity, play, and participation.Less
This book is about play, performance, and participatory culture in the digital age. It shows how music, video games, and social media are bridging virtual and visceral experience, creating dispersed communities who forge meaningful connections by “playing along” with popular culture. Miller reveals how digital media are brought to bear in the transmission of embodied knowledge: how a Grand Theft Auto player uses a virtual radio to hear with her avatar’s ears; how a Guitar Hero player channels the experience of a live rock performer; and how an amateur guitar student translates a two-dimensional, pre-recorded online music lesson into three-dimensional physical practice and an intimate relationship with a distant teacher. Through ethnographic case studies, Miller demonstrates that our everyday experiences with interactive digital media are gradually transforming our understanding of musicality, creativity, play, and participation.
Peter van der Merwe
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780198166474
- eISBN:
- 9780191713880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198166474.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter introduces the main concern of the book: the interaction of ‘rude’ (‘folk’), ‘vulgar’ (‘popular’), and ‘polite’ (‘art’) music, from about 1760 on. It deals, first, with the ...
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This chapter introduces the main concern of the book: the interaction of ‘rude’ (‘folk’), ‘vulgar’ (‘popular’), and ‘polite’ (‘art’) music, from about 1760 on. It deals, first, with the differentiation of these categories at this period, then with the neoclassical ethos and its ideal of the simple, natural, and (as we should now say) ‘accessible’, all of which entailed a new attitude to popular music. Whatever its ideals, in practice neoclassicism was highly eclectic. Its music made constant use of the popular, habitually setting it off against the learned.Less
This chapter introduces the main concern of the book: the interaction of ‘rude’ (‘folk’), ‘vulgar’ (‘popular’), and ‘polite’ (‘art’) music, from about 1760 on. It deals, first, with the differentiation of these categories at this period, then with the neoclassical ethos and its ideal of the simple, natural, and (as we should now say) ‘accessible’, all of which entailed a new attitude to popular music. Whatever its ideals, in practice neoclassicism was highly eclectic. Its music made constant use of the popular, habitually setting it off against the learned.
Robert Adlington
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265390
- eISBN:
- 9780191760440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265390.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter sketches key contexts (both global-political and scholarly) for the research presented by this book. By way of introduction to the individual chapters in the book, a number of connecting ...
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This chapter sketches key contexts (both global-political and scholarly) for the research presented by this book. By way of introduction to the individual chapters in the book, a number of connecting preoccupations are identified: debates over artistic experiment and populism, and over the handling of cultural difference; the diverse motivations for communist organisations to become involved in music, and their anxieties about such an involvement; attempts made to evade the grasp of political and economic structures (state and commerce especially) that communists typically opposed; and experimentation in alternative forms of musical practice that were imagined better to reflect communist ideology. The irreducible plurality of positions staked out by communist musicians and groups is emphasised.Less
This chapter sketches key contexts (both global-political and scholarly) for the research presented by this book. By way of introduction to the individual chapters in the book, a number of connecting preoccupations are identified: debates over artistic experiment and populism, and over the handling of cultural difference; the diverse motivations for communist organisations to become involved in music, and their anxieties about such an involvement; attempts made to evade the grasp of political and economic structures (state and commerce especially) that communists typically opposed; and experimentation in alternative forms of musical practice that were imagined better to reflect communist ideology. The irreducible plurality of positions staked out by communist musicians and groups is emphasised.
Christina L. Baade
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195372014
- eISBN:
- 9780199918287
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372014.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
This book examines how the British Broadcasting Corporation mobilized popular music to support the war effort on the home front and among the forces overseas. To an unprecedented degree, the wartime ...
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This book examines how the British Broadcasting Corporation mobilized popular music to support the war effort on the home front and among the forces overseas. To an unprecedented degree, the wartime BBC programmed popular music and studied its audiences in order to build national unity, boost morale, and increase industrial production. The BBC also used popular music and jazz to promote the wartime values of virile masculinity, greater public participation for women, Anglo-American friendship, and pride in a common British culture. At the same time that it developed special programming for women factory workers and male soldiers, however, the BBC also came into uneasy contact with the threats of (ef)feminized sentimentality, Americanization, and new representations of nonwhite, racialized “Others.” It responded by regulating and even censoring popular music repertories and performers while listeners, the press, and Parliament energetically debated its decisions. Throughout the war, broadcast performances by singers like Vera Lynn and Anne Shelton; bandleaders including Geraldo, Victor Silvester, Harry Parry, and Glenn Miller; and theater organists like Sandy Macpherson helped reshape and reframe prewar understandings of gender, race, class, and nationality for the nation at war. This book argues that, rather than providing the soundtrack for a unified “People’s War,” popular music broadcasting at the BBC exposed the divergent ideologies, tastes, and perspectives of the nation.Less
This book examines how the British Broadcasting Corporation mobilized popular music to support the war effort on the home front and among the forces overseas. To an unprecedented degree, the wartime BBC programmed popular music and studied its audiences in order to build national unity, boost morale, and increase industrial production. The BBC also used popular music and jazz to promote the wartime values of virile masculinity, greater public participation for women, Anglo-American friendship, and pride in a common British culture. At the same time that it developed special programming for women factory workers and male soldiers, however, the BBC also came into uneasy contact with the threats of (ef)feminized sentimentality, Americanization, and new representations of nonwhite, racialized “Others.” It responded by regulating and even censoring popular music repertories and performers while listeners, the press, and Parliament energetically debated its decisions. Throughout the war, broadcast performances by singers like Vera Lynn and Anne Shelton; bandleaders including Geraldo, Victor Silvester, Harry Parry, and Glenn Miller; and theater organists like Sandy Macpherson helped reshape and reframe prewar understandings of gender, race, class, and nationality for the nation at war. This book argues that, rather than providing the soundtrack for a unified “People’s War,” popular music broadcasting at the BBC exposed the divergent ideologies, tastes, and perspectives of the nation.
Daniel B. Cornfield
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160733
- eISBN:
- 9781400873890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160733.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter examines the subjective orientations and pathways of an earlier generation of Nashville artists who helped shape the community of Nashville's increasingly entrepreneurial, popular-music ...
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This chapter examines the subjective orientations and pathways of an earlier generation of Nashville artists who helped shape the community of Nashville's increasingly entrepreneurial, popular-music musicians. As an artistrtist activist engaged primarily in individual action, the enterprising artist thrives on self-expression, continuous self-instruction in a widening skill portfolio of artistic and support functions, self-promotion, and on maintaining mutually beneficial relations with colleagues. Enterprising artists sustain their ongoing relations with colleagues, as the profiles in this chapter show, by maintaining trusting and equitable, collegial relations, relations that may succumb to interpersonal animosity, rivalry, jealousy, and betrayal. Sociologically, this chapter depicts the subjective orientations toward success, audience, and risk and the career pathways taken by four individual representatives of what is here referred to as the “transformative generation of enterprising artists” of the changing Nashville music scene.Less
This chapter examines the subjective orientations and pathways of an earlier generation of Nashville artists who helped shape the community of Nashville's increasingly entrepreneurial, popular-music musicians. As an artistrtist activist engaged primarily in individual action, the enterprising artist thrives on self-expression, continuous self-instruction in a widening skill portfolio of artistic and support functions, self-promotion, and on maintaining mutually beneficial relations with colleagues. Enterprising artists sustain their ongoing relations with colleagues, as the profiles in this chapter show, by maintaining trusting and equitable, collegial relations, relations that may succumb to interpersonal animosity, rivalry, jealousy, and betrayal. Sociologically, this chapter depicts the subjective orientations toward success, audience, and risk and the career pathways taken by four individual representatives of what is here referred to as the “transformative generation of enterprising artists” of the changing Nashville music scene.
Ross McKibbin
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206729
- eISBN:
- 9780191677298
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206729.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Social History
The great majority of the English were attached to two forms of music — middlebrow and popular. This chapter traces the historical development of a middlebrow ‘canon’ of music, popular music, and ...
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The great majority of the English were attached to two forms of music — middlebrow and popular. This chapter traces the historical development of a middlebrow ‘canon’ of music, popular music, and dancing after the First World War. The middlebrow canon, aside from its native origins, was drawn largely from European influences, but outside influences on popular music were almost entirely American. The chapter assesses how far English popular music succumbed to or withstood America and looks more generally at the part dancing played in people's lives. Throughout this period there were three musical publics. There was a very small public for ‘serious’ music, a considerably larger one for ‘middlebrow’ music, and a much larger one for ‘popular’ music.Less
The great majority of the English were attached to two forms of music — middlebrow and popular. This chapter traces the historical development of a middlebrow ‘canon’ of music, popular music, and dancing after the First World War. The middlebrow canon, aside from its native origins, was drawn largely from European influences, but outside influences on popular music were almost entirely American. The chapter assesses how far English popular music succumbed to or withstood America and looks more generally at the part dancing played in people's lives. Throughout this period there were three musical publics. There was a very small public for ‘serious’ music, a considerably larger one for ‘middlebrow’ music, and a much larger one for ‘popular’ music.
