Indiepop was, and is, a musical genre that coalesced around UK punk and post-punk in the early 1980s. From punk, indiepop borrowed certain ideas about the politics of cultural production. What differentiated it from punk was its sound: a decidedly pop emphasis on short, melodic song structures and seemingly simple instrumentation. In embracing independent production, indiepop staked a claim for subculture authenticity over the inauthentic mass products of the mainstream music industry. Yet the defining musical elements were characteristic of the historically feminine pop idiom. The result was indiepop, where masculine authenticity and feminine pop forms melded together and created a music scene that fit uneasily within traditional definitions of subculture. This thesis explores the means by which participants in indiepop, through a concerted project to write their version of musical history, made sense of their particular scene and its place within the larger sphere of (masculine) rock culture.

No description available.

This dissertation is an ethnography centered around two bands based in Guangzhou and their relationships with one of China’s largest record companies. Bridging ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural geography, media studies, vocal anthropology, and the anthropology of infrastructure, it examines emergent forms of musical creativity and modes of circulation as they relate to shifts in concepts of self, space, publics, and state instigated by China’s political and economic reforms. Chapter One discusses a long history of state-sponsored cartographic musical anthologies, as well as Confucian and Maoist ways of understanding the relationships between place, person, and music. These discussions provide a context for understanding contemporary musical cosmopolitanisms that both build upon and disrupt these histories; they also provoke a rethinking of ethnomusicological and related linguistic theorizations about music, place, and subjectivity. Through biographies of seven musicians working in present-day Guangzhou, Chapter Two outlines a concept of “musical subjectivity” that looks to the intersection of personal histories, national histories, and creativity as a means of exploring the role of individual agency and expressive culture in broader cultural shifts. Chapter Three focuses on the intertwining of actual corporeal mobilities and vicarious musical mobilities, and explores relationships between circulations of global popular musics, emergent forms of musical creativity, and an evolving geography of contemporary China. Chapter Four extends these concerns to a discussion of media systems in China, and outlines an approach to “sonic infrastructures” that puts sound studies in dialogue with the anthropology of infrastructure in order to understand how evolving modes of musical circulation and the listening practices associated with them are connected to broader economic, political, and cultural spatialities. Finally, Chapter Five examines the intersecting aesthetic and political implications of popular music sung in local languages (fangyan) by focusing on contemporary forms of articulation between music, language, listening, and place. Taken together, these chapters explore musical cosmopolitanisms as knowledge-making processes that are reconfiguring notions of self, state, publics, and space in contemporary China.

published_or_final_version / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis explores some of the ways in which listening to South African popular music allows individuals to enter into imaginative engagements with others in South Africa, and in so doing, negotiate their place in the social landscape. Taking as its starting point the notion of the "musical imaginary" - the web of connotational meanings arising out of the interaction between music and society, rendering it a particularly suitable medium through which to imagine social actors - it focuses specifically on the role of music in constructions of 'race' and, to a lesser extent, of 'nation'. It examines some of the ways in which dominant discourses exert pressure on what is imagined, as well as highlighting the creativity of listeners who appropriate the musical imaginary for their own ends of identification. It attempts to depict the complexity of musical identification in postapartheid South Africa, in which individuals must negotiate multiple boundaries marking difference, including categories of 'race', ethnicity, gender and class. It also investigates perceptions of the role of music in generating new identities and modes of social interaction, and offers some speculations as to how an analysis of these perceptions may contribute to current theoretical models of change in multicultural societies. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

This thesis examines the musical cultures associated with extreme-right politics, considering not only what this music projects about extreme-right ideology, but also the various ways in which music functions as part of a political subculture. This analysis extends beyond the stereotypical extreme-right music associated with the skinhead subculture, often referred to as Oi!, to incorporate extreme-right engagement with genres such as metal, folk, country and classical music. The chapters explore various aspects of identity—including race, sexuality, gender and class—and their significance to and reflection through extreme-right music, as manifested in genre choices, lyrics, album artwork and the features of the music itself. The thesis also considers the way in which less explicit content is produced and the motivation behind this, the importance of myth and fantasy in extreme-right music, and the way that the conspiracist mindset—which is prevalent, albeit not homogeneous, in extreme-right culture—is articulated both in extreme-right music and in the interpretation of mainstream music as antagonistic to extreme-right goals. Music is significant to extreme-right politics for a number of reasons. It is generally understood to be an effective tool in the indoctrination and recruitment of individuals into extreme-right ideology and politics, which is why music is sometimes freely distributed, particularly to youths. The very existence of this music can act to legitimise extreme-right views through the implication that they are shared by its producers and audience. Music also acts as an important tool for the imagining of an extreme-right community through its creation of a space to meet and create networks, a function consolidated by the media surrounding music, particularly websites, forums and magazines. As well as constructing the spaces for extreme-right communities, this music plays an important role in identifying the characteristics of those communities, in articulating what it is to be “us” as contrasted to “them.” Analysis of this music suggests that it has the ability to resolve the ideological contradictions which define the extreme right, even as this analysis reveals such contradictions.

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.

Thesis (MPhil (Music))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the role of natural or realistic audio recordings in popular music in the context of the different nature of popular music where the goal is not necessarily the recreation of the original acoustic space. Traditional microphone techniques are investigated from the perspective of the identifiable characteristics of popular music to establish the role of microphone techniques to obtain a desired outcome. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die rol van natuurlike of realistiese klankopnames in populêre musiek in die lig daarvan dat die aard van populêre opnames verskil van reproduksie wat poog om die opnameruimte akoesties te herskep. Tradisionele mikrofoontegnieke word bestudeer vanuit die hoek van die identifiseerbare eienskappe van populêre musiek om te bepaal watter rol mikrofoontegniek kan speel om ’n verlangde uitkoms te bewerkstellig.

This thesis studies the development of the British recording studio from the mid-1960s to the early-1990s. Although there are now a growing number of academic studies of popular music they have, so far, largely failed to study the evolving process by which artists were able to reproduce their music for mass distribution. Consequently, this dissertation investigates the image portrayed of the studio and its utilisation and representation by a combination of human, technological and locational factors. The first part of the thesis constructs an overview of the recording studio industry, as based on contemporary trade journals, in order to produce a traditional historical narrative, so far absent from music’s historiography, which provides the framework in which to place more detailed research. The prominence given by the industry to the ‘progress of technology’ is then compared to the public perception of the recording studio, as shown by the extent and content of its inclusion in the popular culture media of the period, both print and film based. How far the process of producing recorded music managed to permeate through the presentation of a music industry that was becoming increasingly reliant on the image and personality of the artists themselves is then analysed. The second part of the thesis is based on Latour’s concept of actor-networks and deconstructs the recording studio into three main components; technology, architecture and the human element within it. Using one particular studio (Strawberry Recording Studios in Stockport) as being representative of the increasing proportion of small independents in the industry, the further deconstruction of these three components into their constitutional networks, provides the key theme of the dissertation. Consequently, studio technology can be viewed not simply in terms of functional machinery in the studio setting (of Latourian ‘black boxes’) but more as a confusing and intrusive element that was developed, shaped and created by the requirements of those in the studio. And, whilst contemporary society has always elevated the status of the performer in the music industry, the human element in the studio can also be shown to comprise the industrial and social interaction between a wide range of support staff, whose roles and importance altered over time, and the artists themselves. Finally, studio buildings were not just backdrops to the work taking place in them but were seen to extend their boundaries and influence beyond their immediate location through their architecture, interior design and geography. In other words, the recording studio might be seen as the combination of a number of fluctuating networks rather than just as a passive element in the production of recorded music. As a result of the content of the subject being studied, this thesis utilises a number of sources that, in Samuel’s terminology, moves the study away from a ‘fetishization’ of the traditional historical archive towards those of ‘unofficial learning’. Given the immediacy of the period being studied, the personal accounts of those involved in the studio, mainly through the use of oral history, form a major part of the research material.

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts