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The re-emergence of Black Nationalist thought in black popular culture is most evident in the music of such rap groups as Public Enemy and Wu-Tang Clan. Together with groups such as Brand Nubian, and X-Clan, Public Enemy and Wu-Tang Clan have played a central role in introducing the tenets of Black Nationalism to what Michael Eric Dyson has termed 'the hip-hop generation'. Public Enemy and Wu-Tang Clan utilise highly selective 'sampling strategies' that draw upon a wide variety of Black Nationalist ideologies. This thesis aims to examine the impact of these groups' pluralistic 'sampling strategies' on various monolithic traditions of Black Nationalism and to consider the effect of these strategies on the formation of nationalist communities in hip-hop music and culture. Chapter One provides a methodological context for understanding rap within the context of African American cultural criticism. This chapter begins by providing an overview of the assimilationist and separatist responses to and perspectives on black marginality in the United States. Discussion then moves to an analysis of the founding principles of African American Studies, before finishing with an examination of the way in which Black American critics have interpreted rap. Chapter Two provides a comparison of the different ways in which the key notions of appropriation and authenticity as they pertain to black music and to hip-hop are addressed within African American and Black British cultural criticism. This chapter argues that the Black British approach, rooted as it is in `diaspora aesthetics' provides a more useful approach both for the globalisation of rap and the globalisation of blackness than the essentialism of African American critics. Chapter Three offers a comparative analysis of the respective linguistic and discursive strategies employed by hip-hop nationalists and their gangsta counterparts in their construction of community and identity. These hip-hop communities are highly selective in the language they use to describe themselves and others. The choices that these artists make, moreover, say a great deal about their specific takes on notions of identity. Chapters Four and Five provide detailed case studies of Public Enemy and Wu-Tang Clan's distinctive takes on Black Nationalism. These chapters contrast Public Enemy's 'sixties-inspired nationalism', which is steeped in well-established histories of black resistance, with the Wu- Tang's playful postmodern approach to Post-Nationalism expressed most obviously in their use of Hong Kong-made kung fu cinema of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Chapter Six provides a summary of the points outlined in previous chapters and considers the potential futures for Black Nationalism(s) in the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

The term 'underground music' in my account, connects various forms of music-making that exist largely outside 'mainstream' cultural discourse, such as Drone Metal, Free Improvisation, Power Electronics, and DIY Noise, amongst others. Its connotations of concealment and obscurity indicate what I argue to be the music's central tenets of cultural reclusion, political independence, and aesthetic experiment. In response to a lack of scholarly discussion of this music, my thesis provides a cultural, political, and aesthetic mapping of the underground, whose existence as a coherent entity is being both argued for and 'mapped' here. Outlining the historical context, but focusing on the underground in the digital age, I use a wide range of interdisciplinary research methodologies, including primary interviews, musical analysis, and a critical engagement with various pertinent theoretical sources. In my account, the underground emerges as a marginal, 'antermediated' cultural 'scene' based both on the web and in large urban centres, the latter of whose concentration of resources facilitates the growth of various localised underground scenes. I explore the radical anti-capitalist politics of many underground figures, whilst also examining their financial ties to big business and the state(s). This contradiction is critically explored, with three conclusions being drawn. First, the underground is shown in Part II to be so marginal as to escape, in effect, post-Fordist capitalist subsumption. Second, the practice of 'co-determination' is seen to allow politically engaged underground artists to channel public and private funds into various practices of contestation. Third, and finally, I argue across Part III that in its distinctive musical and iconographic forms, the underground offers a kind of profaning, deforming, sublimating aesthetic 'counter-magic', where radical aesthetic modes and radical practices of representation communicate a kind of 'reconfiguration of the sensible' to audiences. I argue that this 'reconfiguration' might yield emancipatory political readings, whilst also reflecting the kinds of experimental and exploratory musical practices typical in the underground.

Baile funk is a music scene historically associated with blackness and impoverished areas of Rio de Janeiro. This music has been gaining in visibility over the last three decades. Nevertheless, stigmatization and official repression co-exist with its popularity. Funk’s pervasiveness, even among the upper classes, does not seem to eradicate prejudice against producers and fans. This thesis investigates struggles for equal rights and full citizenship using funk by looking at the mediation and appropriation of funk music by the government, journalists, activist groups and funk creators themselves. This investigation refers to interviews, documents, videos and photographs. Hence, the methodology employed relies on a combination of ethnographic methods, including visual ethnography, and the analysis of semi-structured interviews. Sociologists have associated popular culture with a lack of legitimacy and autonomy, opposing it to pure art and its disinterested approach to worldly life. Indeed, the creation of baile funk music is not a disinterested activity. While funk producers may have commercial interests, they do, nevertheless, also get involved in political matters and local community issues, dealing with structural constraints through their bodies, political activism and affective labour. Lastly, those creating funk demand the freedom to create, the possibility of occupying different spaces of the city and recognition as aesthetic agents.

4 Sätze für Akkordeonorchester, Gesamtspieldauer: etwa 12 Minuten:Partitur und 6 Stimmen (1.2.3.4. Akk.- Bass - Drums) 1. Hora 2. Song 3. Groovy Waltz 4. Milonga

Electronically-produced dance music has only recently achieved as much visibility in the global pop music industry as ‘live’ or instrumental pop. Yet the fascination of cultural scholars and sociologists with dance music predates its rise as a product of mass culture. Much of this interest derives from early associations of dance music with marginalised groups and oppositional ideologies. It therefore follows that many explorations of dance music focus on the ways in which techno, house and practices of ‘raving’ are expressions of dissent. As a result, the cultural aspects of dance music are necessarily the focus of these studies, with few musicologists addressing musical features and fewer dance scholars considering the specifics of dance movement. What is more, these differing approaches tend to compete rather than collaborate. In my thesis, I seek to address this divergence and to draw attention to the ways that contrasting disciplinary approaches can complement and enrich the study of any music. I use contemporary techno club nights in Edinburgh as a focal point for addressing musical and social triggers for dancing. I explore subjective experiences of dancing, DJing and producing by interspersing a review of existing literature with my own ethnographic research and musical analysis. Subsequently, I consider how the philosophies of techno are embodied within the movements and postures of the dancing body and social interaction. Participants in techno settings adopt strikingly similar attitudes to the institutionalised classical music world, despite the fundamental differences between the practices of composition, performance and listening. Moreover, these attitudes are repeatedly disseminated by participants, journalists and scholars. My enquiry into social and musical dancing triggers leads me to question the perpetuation of these ideas.

The thesis explores the complex relationship between modern audio technologies and the art of popular music through close scrutiny specific artefacts, a largely neglected area of musicological research. The detailed analyses presented here reveal the ways in which particular analogue and digital audio technologies are used, and how these have tended to shape and inform the musical and sonic characteristics of popular music recordings and related artefacts.

There can be little doubt that the usage of the concept of genre remains widespread in discourses around music, cinema, theatre, literature. However, for a long period of time, musicologists have paid little attention to genre which is considered to be an outdated legacy of positivism: a concept belonging to amateurish criticism or daily musical practice – and incompatible with the hegemonic ideology of ‘absolute music’. In the commentary that follows, the history of my own efforts to bring genre back to the theoretical core of musicological debate is outlined, and intertwined with the work of other scholars (sociologists, cultural theorists, anthropologists) who helped re-define genre as a useful concept in the scholarly study of music. Popular music, as a set of genres from which paramusical elements – and related social conventions – were never expelled as spurious (as formalist musicology did with respect to Western art music), was obviously my main focus, although in some writings I deal with classical music, electronic music and traditional (folk) music. After examining at some length the development of my theory of genre (definitions, ‘rules’ and conventions, inter-genre relations and intra-genre diachronic development), the commentary focuses on a number of studies of specific (mostly popular) genres, music scenes, forms, artists, where genre is an underlying concept. One of the most delicate aspects of any theory about genre, and one that has been at the centre of my investigation for so long, is that of diachronic development; as a consequence, the history of popular music became at some point a favourite subject for my study – my contributions are outlined in the commentary which can be read in conjunction with my writings on the subject. Finally, a section is dedicated to my writings on music technology, music industry, and media. In the conclusions my work on genre is contextualised nationally and internationally, with some considerations on linguistic issues; the commentary ends with a brief outline of my future research plans.