The cultural crossings between music, new digital media,prison and postcolonial Philippine culture form the basis of Dangerous Mediations, which provides a close, intertextual reading of a contemporary prison performance to question the assumptions behind seemingly familiar, entertaining audiovisual media content. Through the lens of critical cultural studies, and ethno/musicology, I examine the interplay between Michael Jackson’s renowned hit Thriller (1983) and a specific interpretation of this work by a group of 1500 Filipino inmates at the Cebu Provincial Rehabilitation and Detention Centre (2007). Rereading Jackson’s impact on popular music and culture in light of postcolonialism, penology, popular music studies,YouTube theory, and in relation to Philippine culture, I trace the evolution of this contemporary music and dance practice within Cebuano culture, as it is transformed and mediated online. I address the prevalent idea of music as an innately positive power, and through a close reading of this irresistible performance, I deconstruct prevailing (dangerous) stereotypes regarding the ‘inherently musical Filipino.’ Reflecting on how, why, and to what effect popular performance can pollinate across cultures and nations, I demonstrate how audiovisual digital platforms such as YouTube can play an important role in shaping our understanding and experiences of the world we live in. Focusing on the performances made by inmates, by Filipinos, by amateurs, I show that we are able not only to historicise the effects of the disenfranchised, but through a close reading of the intertextual, hybridised mediated performance, we may also gain access to and gradually understand that which might otherwise have remained invisible.

On 2 July 2005, the Saturday before a summit of world leaders at Gleaneagles in Scotland, Live8 took place. Organised by Bob Geldof, the event brought together many high profile rock and pop performers to highlight the extreme famine conditions in Africa. Live8, however, was purportedly not in the business of promoting new albums, selling a range of merchandise or even raising charitable funds: indeed, tickets for the Live8 concerts were free. Rather, the event was intended to lead on to a rally in Edinburgh, forty miles from Gleneagles, calling on the summit attendees to cancel debt, double aid packages and remove trade barriers which hinder sustainable development on the African continent. As such, Live8 represents a strategic intent by rock and pop culture to ‘engineer’ a flow from the concert platform into the everyday. Conscious of the issues Live8 raises, this project looks at the different kinds of aesthetic event, from the contingent to the ‘pre-scripted’, which have over time become a feature of rock and pop culture. Through three distinctive case studies, whose subjects encompass both performers and their fan culture, concepts of narrative, spectacle and performance are discussed in order to understand, from a dramaturgical perspective, how rock and pop culture deals with representational schisms, particularly where the social world is implicated, and the role an aesthetic event (often a rock or pop concert) plays in the course of redress. Eschewing the limitations of musicology and media studies, which have often beset earlier investigations into rock and pop culture, this project’s overarching objective is to offer innovative thinking about the evolving state of the relationship it can, and does, facilitate between the ‘staged’ and the everyday.

The socio-musical practice of sampling is closely associated with the re-use of pre-existing sound recordings and the technological processes of looping. These practices, based on appropriation and repetition, have been particularly common within the genres of hip-hop and Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Yet early digital sampling instruments such as the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument (CMI) were not designed for these purposes. The technologists at Fairlight Instruments in Australia were primarily interested in the use of digital synthesis to imitate the sounds of acoustic instruments; sampling was a secondary concern. In the first half of the thesis, I follow digital sampling instruments like the Fairlight CMI and the E-mu Emulator by drawing on interviews with their designers and users to trace how they were used to sample the sounds of everyday life, loop sequenced patterns of sampled sounds, and sample extracts from pre-existing sound recordings. The second half of the thesis consists of case studies that follow the users of digital sampling technologies across a range of socio-musical worlds to examine the diversity of contemporary sampling practices. Using concepts from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this thesis focuses on the ‘user-technology nexus’ and continues a shift in the writing of histories of technologies from a focus on the designers of technologies towards the contexts of use and ‘the co-construction’ or ‘mutual shaping’ of technologies and their users. As an example of the ‘interpretative flexibility’ of music technologies, digital sampling technologies were used in ways unimagined by their designers and sampling became synonymous with re-appropriation. My argument is that a history of digital sampling technologies needs to be a history of both the designers and the users of digital sampling technologies.

La musique, moyen d’expression commun à toutes les civilisations, est au centre de l’explosion des productions culturelles et sociétales actuelles. Dans les Amériques, les années 1960 furent marquées par d’importantes luttes pour la conquête de l’égalité, la reconnaissance des cultures jusque-là considérées comme mineures, et par d’importantes migrations transrégionales et transcontinentales. Parmi ces luttes, celles des Noir-e-s ont retenu particulièrement mon attention, notamment les figures emblématiques comme Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Angela Davis, etc. mais aussi des organisations politiques et culturelles, comme les Black Panthers. Cependant dans la Caraïbe, ces luttes étaient déjà bien présentes, dans les années 1930, avec Marcus Garvey et son mouvement (UNIA). D’une manière générale, il a permis de mettre l’accent sur la disqualification sociale des Noir-e-s, des cultures dont elles/ils sont porteurs, leur « citoyenneté différée » (V. Lavou). Dans les sociétés caribéennes, hybrides par excellence, d’après les chercheur-e-s reconnu-e-s, le mouvement noir a, sans conteste, eu de fortes répercussions, déterminant par là même toutes les expressions folkloriques puis culturelles. Il en est de même du Reggaeton. Bien qu’identifié comme « latino », le Reggaeton reste, pour beaucoup, un avatar commercial, un « produit manufacturé » de l’industrie du spectacle. Mais, on remarquera néanmoins, l’adhésion collective à cette musique de la part de nombreux « latinos », tout comme les effets d’identification qu’elle suscite. Cette musique, c’est l’une des hypothèses que je partage, « reflète » les révoltes contre les injustices, la domination sociale, raciale, la pauvreté. En ce sens, le Reggaeton concentre toutes les caractéristiques de la musique populaire urbaine afro-latino-américaine, à l’instar des musiques populaires urbaines afro-américaines (USA). De ce point de vue, le « Reggaeton» constitue tout à la fois un «exutoire», un espace de « négociations identitaires » contradictoires (sexisme, machisme, homophobie, culte de la réussite individuelle, de la violence, etc.), un moyen permettant d’exister socialement à travers des codes spécifiques. En posant le Reggaeton comme un « analyseur » des contradictions socio-politiques de l’archipel caribéen et de ses diasporas, cette thèse vise à en restituer la complexité, au-delà des considérations purement moralisatrices. À l’aide d’outils conceptuels comme, l’Atlantique noir de Paul Gilroy l’interculturalité de Claude Clanet, et la créolisation d’Edouard Glissant, entre autres, j’analyse les dynamiques migratoires et sociales à l’origine de l’émergence du Reggaeton et par conséquent des tensions identitaires qu’il recèle. / Music, as a common means of expression to all civilizations, is at the center of the explosion of current societal and cultural productions. In the Americas, the 1960s were marked by important struggles for the conquest of equality, the recognition of cultures previously considered minor, and major trans-regional and transcontinental migrations. Among these struggles, those of the Black communities have caught my attention, including major figures like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, as well as political and cultural organizations, such as the Black Panthers. However, in the Caribbean, these truggles were already present in the 1930s with Marcus Garvey and his movement (UNIA). In general, it has led to focus on social disqualification of Black peoples, the cultures they carry, their "diferred citizenship" (V. Lavou). In Caribbean societies, ultimately hybrid , according to acknowledged scholars, the black movement has undoubtedly had a major impact, thereby determining all folklore and cultural expressions. It is the same with Reggaeton. Although identified as "Latin" Reggaeton, it remains for many a commercial avatar, a "manufactured product" of the entertainment industry. But, nevertheless it will be noted as the collective adherence to this music from many "Latino" as the identification effects it causes. One of the assumptions that I share is that this music "reflects" the revolt against injustice, social domination, racial, poverty. In this sense, Reggaeton gathers all urban African-Latin American popular music's features, like African-American urban popular music (USA). From this point of view, the "Reggaeton" is at at the same time an "outlet", a space of contradictory "identity negotiations" (sexism, homophobia, cult of individual success, violence, etc.), as a means to exist socially through specific codes. By questionning Reggaeton as a "analyser” of socio-political contradictions of the Caribbean archipelago and its diasporas, this thesis aims to restore its complexity, beyond purely moralistic considerations. Using conceptual tools like Paul Gilroy's "Black Atlantic", Claude Clanet's interculturality and the creolization concept of Edouard Glissant, among others, I analyze migration and social dynamics behind the emergence of Reggaeton and therefore identity tensions it contains.