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.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur sångpedagoger inom de klassiska respektive de populärmusikaliska sångtraditionerna förhåller sig till enskild sångundervisning, samt hur de designar sin undervisning. Data har samlats in genom intervjuer med fyra sångpedagoger, samtliga verksamma på eftergymnasial nivå. Två av informanterna arbetar i huvudsak inom den klassiska genren, de andra två inom pop-genren. Intervjuformen var kvalitativ intervju med öppna följdfrågor. Analysen av materialet är gjord utifrån ett designteoretiskt perspektiv. Resultatet visar att informanternas val av resurser är liknande oavsett genretillhörighet. De lägger alla stor vikt vid förmågan att designa förutsättningarna för lärande utifrån det enskilda mötet med varje elev. Resultatet visar också att språkbruket skiljer sig åt beroende på vilken genre informanterna tillhör, samt att skillnaderna i klangligt ideal genrerna emellan leder till skillnader i arbetssätt och musikaliskt fokus. I diskussionen förs ett resonemang kring genrernas ideal och dess påverkan på kunskapsförmedlingen. / The purpose of this study is to examine how voice teachers, when following the Classical and Popular vocal traditions, approach private singing, and how they design the instruction. Data has been collected through interviews with four voice teachers, all of whom are active at the post-secondary school level. Two of the informants primarily teach the Classical tradition, while the other two teach the Popular music tradition. The interview form used was the qualitative interview, with open follow-up questions. The analysis was performed from a perspective of design theory. The result shows that the resources used by the informants are similar regardless of genre. Emphasis is placed on the ability to design the conditions for learning in the encounter of each individual student. The result also shows that vocabulary varies according to genre, and that the difference in preferred sound between genres leads to differences in methods, as well as musical focus. The discussion reflects on the ideals of the two genres, and how they affect the transfer of knowledge.

As the popularity of mashups attests, individual songs and their increasingly irrelevant prepackaged albums no longer seem to constitute a finished product to many who listen to them. Instead individual songs often serve as raw ingredients for use in another recipe – the playlist, the mix, the mashup – which those who buy the songs make and exchange. The strict division between producers and consumers, which the music industry exploited very productively throughout the twentieth century, seems to be breaking down, and I conclude that the mashup models a different, more fluid relationship between musical consumption and production. In this dissertation, I examine mashups from a music theoretical point of view. I argue that the mashup represents an important musical genre with distinguishing characteristics and its own historical development. Chapter 1 defines the mashup and devises a typology that classifies the genre based on two characteristics: number of songs combined and the mode of their combination (vertical or horizontal). This typology leads to the division of the mashup into four distinct subtypes. Chapter 2 discusses significant legal challenges raised by the mashup, especially with respect to copyright. Mashups – at least in recorded form – began as an underground, largely non-commercial phenomenon, due to the cost and difficulty of obtaining permission to use another artist’s recording. I also examine various pertinent musical lawsuits and discuss their influence on the way mashup artists make and distribute their works. Chapter 3 probes the historical factors that led to the development of mashups, including sampling in hip hop music (both recorded and live), collage techniques in art music, and looping and mixing by club DJs. Chapter 4 investigates the aesthetics of the mashup. Critics in the popular press and on the internet judge mashups without specifying the musical characteristics that make a particular mashup successful. This chapter seeks to locate the aesthetic principles that govern mashup production. Using commentary by mashup artists as well as transcription and analysis of several mashups, I divide these aesthetic principles into two categories: construction and meaning. I then develop a list of characteristics that mashup artists aim for when creating their tracks. / text

Humans thrive on placing everyday perceptions into discrete categories. These categories, including genres in popular music, help us understand the world around us and process new information in a relatively efficient way. But music theorists often take genre for granted, by which I mean most scholars rarely unpack how social and musical categories work together to codify and reinforce often racial and gendered lines placed between categories of people and music. In Reconceiving Genre, I address some the methodological issues around genre in popular music. This dissertation argues for a reframing of genre and what these labels can convey. Through different generic case studies in each chapter, I develop a framework for analyzing genre from multiple musical and cultural traditions. I critically examine social and commercial constructions of popularity and authenticity in relation to artist’s presentations of gender, race, class, and sexuality— positionalities that are often taken for granted in popular music analysis. This dissertation’s most distinctive contribution to both music theory and popular music studies is that it dismantles the idea that genre is only a marketing label that conveys details about an artist’s musical style, and challenges assumptions that genre is “dead” or beyond repair to be a meaningful tool. These assumptions dull the transgressive force of how we can use genre to understand issues of authenticity, popularity, and society more broadly. In short, my project demonstrates that genre categories can reveal as much about an artist’s identity as they can about a piece’s musical features. Thus, theories of genre need to account for identities like race, gender, and sexuality of artists, listeners, and even analysts in order to be fully inclusive, meaningful, and accessible.

A content analysis of Leonard Karikoga Zhakata’s sungura music unpacks shared experiences of Zimbabweans during a decade of crises.Various musicians composed music pregnant with cultural meaning. These genres defied the ruling Zanu PF party‘s propaganda. The ZANU P.F. flagged enemy was imperialist history, whose characteristic was bankrupt in civil justice. Common sense ‘umunthu’ (‘Humaness)’ philosophy could have witnessed the ruling party stand by the people at the height of economic decline. This dissertation argued that the sungura genre became a formidable force. The music had dramatic effect of unifying citizens of different distinct cultural traditions, often which set Shona, Manyika, Korekore, Changana and Ndebele apart. ‘Mugove’ ‘(Reward) and ‘Hupenyu mutoro’ (Life is a burden) lyrics manifested thought processes, ideas and actions which projected popular unity against ruling elite hegemony. Zimbabweans’ collective cultural awareness that could have defined social experiences indirectly or directly motivated formations of oppositional political establishments. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was the brainchild of political disillusionment chorused in “Hupenyu Mutoro’ (Life is a burden) and ‘Mugove’ (Reward) lyrics. The musical texts unravelled the hidden sin of gross graft by the powerful built on self aggrandisement at the expense of the vulnerable subalterns. The sungura genre manifested an art of aggressive entertainment and enjoyment yet passively and remotely awakening citizens to the obtaining dire economic hardships. The genre’s scholarly fabric and dynamics, cut deep into life sensibilities as exemplified by ‘Hupenyu Mutoro’. The deplorable life style experienced by the suffering majority epitomised by political repression and economic meltdown became catalyst for political participation and opportunities for plural voices.This dissertation argues that academic curricula harnesses the influential sungura genre in teaching a people’s story. Sungura music authenticates national historical versions that comfortably orbits around official realities of civil governance processes, what Fanon refers to as ‘a zone of occult instability (Fanon, 1963 p. 253). Unemployment, hyper-inflation, cholera out breaks, empty shelves in shops compounded with a ravaging parallel market prices became food for thought. Disllusionment nagged Zimbabweans below and above the poverty datum peg vis a viz the material power index of a handful citizens in the ruling party. Hence Zhakata’s ‘Hupenyu mutoro’ (Life is a burden) and ‘Mugove’ (Reward) became a classical and contested terrain that motivated the teaching and learning of Zimbabwean history. / Communication / M.A. (Communication)