This dissertation develops the concept of generic mobility—which I will tentatively define as the capacity of a music maker to make music that falls into various generic categories. I am trying to understand the practicalities around making music that fits such a description, in the process asking what this says about genre and what it says about the nature of making music in the first place. To do so, I examine the compositional process of the renowned hip-hop producer, Otis Jackson Jr.—African American, male, born in 1973 in Oxnard, CA, known professionally as Madlib—during the years around the turn of the millennium when he becomes preoccupied with making music that fits such a criterion. Crucial to the understanding of generic mobility developed in this dissertation is that it is an ability. So, at its core, this project is about the means by a musician might develop such an ability; across the following pages, we see an evolution from a musician whose music and methods are unproblematically legible as “hip-hop” to one whose music and methods activate ambivalent zones across generic space. Each chapter looks at a different dimension along which the ability to do so is developed, and unpacks the generic, aesthetic, music-technical, economic, and political implications of that method. These range from an overview of what Jackson is doing while he is making music, to detailed examinations of his incorporation of magic mushrooms into his compositional process to his turn towards live instruments to his appropriations of Brazilian materials. So, the primary question this dissertation asks is: how might one go about making music that moves about genre? The primary argument this dissertation makes is that—in the case of Otis Jackson Jr. at least—one gains this capacity by altering the processes by which one makes music.

The censorship of popular music in South Africa during the 1980s severely affected South African musicians. The apartheid government was directly involved in centralized state censorship by means of the Directorate of Publications, while the South African Broadcasting Corporation exercised government censorship at the level of airplay. Others who assisted state censorship included religious and cultural interest groups. State censorship in turn put pressure on record companies, musicians and others to practice self-censorship. Many musicians who overtly sang about taboo topics or who used controversial language subsequently experienced censorship in different forms, including police harassment. Musicians were also subject to anti-apartheid forms of censorship,such as the United Nations endorsed cultural boycott. Not all instances of censorship were overtly political, but they were always framed by, and took place within, a repressive legal-political system. This thesis found that despite the state's attempt to maintain its hegemony, musicians sought ways of overcoming censorship practices. It is argued that the ensuing struggle cannot be conceived of in simple binary terms. The works of Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, in particular, are applied to the South African context in exploring the localized nuances of the cultural struggle over music censorship. It is argued that fragmented resistance to censorship arose out of the very censorship structures that attempted to silence musicians. Textual analysis brought to light that resistance took various forms including songs with provocative lyrics and titles, and more subtle means of bypassing censorship, including the use of symbolism, camouflaged lyrics, satire and crossover performance. Musicians were faced with the challenge of bypassing censors yet nevertheless conveying their message to an audience. The most successful cases negotiated censorial practices while getting an apparent message across to a wide audience. Broader forms of resistance were also explored, including opposition through live performance, counter-hegemonic information on record covers, resistance from exile, alignment with political organizations and legal challenges to state censorship. In addition, some record companies developed strategies of resistance to censorship. The many innovative practices outlined in this thesis demonstrate that even in the context of constraint, resistance is possible. Despite censorship, South African musicians were able to express themselves through approaching their music in an innovative way.

No description available.

The purpose of this research was to gather information about the production, marketing and distribution of Zambian contemporary music by Zambian musicians. Very little information has been documented about the development of the Zambian music industry, particularly from the perspective of those within the industry. As a result this study attempted to add to this knowledge. To achieve this Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of ‘fields’ and ‘habitus’ were used to gain an understanding of what affects the creation of art forms such as music as well as the structures and underlying processes within the music industry. The concept of ‘fields’ usefully framed an explanation of the struggles and connections within the various fields in the industry and a view of the Zambian music industry in relation to the international industry. To gather the data necessary for this research a qualitative approach was utilised involving semistructured in-depth questionnaires from twenty-three interviewees. These interviewees were selected from various sectors of the music industry in an attempt to gain a holistic perspective of the industry in the 21st century. There were four subgroups: the artists (singers, rappers and instrumentalists), managers, radio DJs, and a miscellaneous group made up of the remaining participants, a Sounds Arcade manager, a music journalist, the National Arts Council Chairperson, a Zambia Music Copyright Protection Society (ZAMCOPS) administrator, and the then President of the Zambia Association of Musicians (ZAM). With the limited exposure to formal musical, instrumental and production training, musicians, instrumentalists, managers and studio production personnel interviewed had had to learn their craft on-the-job. This limited knowledge appears to add to the hindrance of the development of careers and the industry, particularly in terms of how to register and distribute music correctly to earn royalties and protect their intellectual property against piracy. From an institutional level piracy is being addressed more forcefully with the introduction of holograms and the tightening of policies and structures to do with the music industry.

In my thesis, I focus on delineating 'The Cynic Sensibility' in British Popular Literature and Culture (1950-1987). Focusing primarily on literature and music (and, to a lesser extent, cinema/television), this works seeks to write a cultural history through analysing cultural texts. The sensibility has three key characteristics: I) it is a Bohemian sensibility; ii) it is apolitical, in that it does not endorse any political alternative to the status quo at any given time, and iii) it is popular, and exists across traditional high/low cultural lines. Connected to this last point is a tendency to oppose stylistic Modernism and its attendant obscurities. Underpinning my thesis are the work of the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk on cynicism as a philosophical phenomenon, and the cultural theory of Raymond Williams. Using this approach, I seek to not only connect spheres of culture which hitherto have been kept separate, but to provide a different insight into 20th century British cultural history.

Over the past decade, popular music in Iran has steadily gained recognition beyond its borders. The Western media has increasingly provided an idealised and romanticised view of music-making in the Iranian underground. These reports create an image of popular musicians united under the same political and social challenges, while struggling to be heard against an oppressive regime. Contrary to these often overly politicised accounts, the current Iranian youth generation continues to explore its identity through the creation of new hybridised forms of popular music. This dissertation utilises first-hand accounts of musicians and those involved in Iranian popular music to analyse the current state of popular music in Iran since 1979. By recognising the heterogeneity of the Iranian post-revolutionary pop world, this study distinguishes the individual voices and experiences that make up the dynamic and multifaceted popular music scene in young, urban Iran and the Iranian diaspora. Opening with a historical account of music’s fluctuating relationship with regime censorship, this dissertation illuminates the many contradictions of popular music practice in a controlled climate that are also embedded within youth identity. Dichotomies continually emerge during this discourse, including globalisation vs. localism, authentic vs. borrowed, and home vs. homeland. These themes are prolific throughout the discussions of the illegal underground music scene in Tehran, the complexities of music in exile, and the final discussion of the role of popular music in the 2009 presidential election and subsequent Green Movement. Popular music continues to serve as an outlet for pleasure and entertainment while simultaneously representing the diverse voices of the young generation of Iranians in the world, as they seek to assert their identity and establish a future of their own.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

From the release of their first single “Surfin’” in 1961 to the release of the album Pet Sounds in 1966, rock history traces the arc of the American rock group the Beach Boys in broad terms of the early-sixties Southern California surf music trend and the revolutionary effects of the Beatles’ stateside arrival in 1964. Typical claims for progress, autonomy, the significance of the album, and myths of authenticity in the study of the emergence of the rock concept, however, tend to promote an essentialist understanding of what rock music is about and what it is for. This study proposes an alternative narrative in which the regulating dichotomies of rock—art versus commerce, seriousness versus schlock, the authentic versus the inauthentic— are historicized, in the case of the Beach Boys’ transition from surf band to a complex studio recording project, as matters of creative practice and conflicting sensibilities. Questioning the conventional wisdom of rock history, this project suggests a counter-story about the significance of creative achievement, failure, and advancement

As the record industry’s fortunes decline, consumers experience increasing access to the world’s recorded music, legally and otherwise, through digital technologies. At the same time, recordings not only take up less physical space (on hard drives and MP3 players), they are compressed — not just as data, but in terms of dynamic range. While it allows for constant audibility in noisy environments like cars and offices, dynamic range compression has frustrated many listeners for limiting the impact of the music and causing “ear fatigue.” These listeners long for access to the purity of the original recording before it was “squashed,” but the problem is that the original recording does not, in a sense, exist. Producers and mastering engineers assemble the tracks recorded and create a particular sonic product that can later be revisited and “remastered.” Ostensibly this process is meant to get closer to the original sound, but in reality it simply comprises a different manner of interpreting the existing recording. Theodor Adorno had written of surprisingly similar phenomena more than half a century ago in essays like “The Radio Symphony” and the notes collected in Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction. Though infamous for his hostility toward popular music and its “infantile” listeners, Adorno’s writings on music contain much that is valuable for an understanding of how pop works in the digital age. Combined with a consideration of works on music and postmodernity by Fredric Jameson, Jacques Attali, François Lyotard and others, Adorno’s work helps one to consider how reification continues to work in an era where music is seemingly no longer a “thing.”

M.A., Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / While much has been written on black South African popular music (see, for example, Anderson, 1981; Coplan, 1985; Erlmann, 1991; Meintjes, 2003; Allen, 2004; Ansell, 2004; Muller, 2008), little has been written on Tsonga popular music. This dissertation interrogates ‘Tsonga music’, a category for naming Tsonga popular music used by many including the South African Music Awards (SAMAs); one of the few SAMA categories (others include Afrikaans, Venda and Pedi music categories) to be named by ethnicity. I question why the music is labeled the way it is and how these genre labels, which participate in global genre histories and local ethnic histories, interact with the Tsonga music category. In sum, this study explores what Louise Meintjes calls ‘genrefication’ (2003: 19) in popular Tsonga music and the meaning this has for its practitioners in a ‘glocalized’ music market (Robertson, cited in Steger, 2003). In chapter one I trace the origins of Tsonga music as it is known today. The chapter focuses on General MD Shirinda, considered the father of Tsonga music. I write about aspects of his life and the role he played in the development of contemporary Tsonga music. Chapter two pays close attention of one of the Tsonga music subgenres, ‘Tsonga traditional’ or neo-traditional music. The chapter interrogates the meaning of the Tsonga traditional label for its practitioners. Here I question the use of terms such as ‘Tsonga’ and ‘traditional’ for labeling Tsonga music. I end the chapter by discussing some characteristics of this subgenre. The third chapter follows the narrative of ‘Tsonga disco’ as told by my informants. Through the life stories of the musicians who have played major roles in the development of this subgenre, I explore how socio-political circumstances influenced the labeling of the subgenre. The chapter gives attention to the contribution to the subgenre by Paul Ndlovu, Peta Teanet, Joe Shirimani and Penny Penny. I end the chapter with a description of a live performance of Tsonga disco. Ethnicity is a recurring theme throughout the study. However, it is in chapter four that explicit attention is given to this identity marker. The chapter explores the role of ethnicity in shaping Tsonga music and how Tsonga musicians construct and affirm their ethnic and other identities in their music. Finally, I discuss the relationship between Tsonga music and the global music market.