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

Making the Scene: An Investigation of the Rock and Roll Scenes of Nashville, Tennessee, and Athens, Georgia, takes a look at the ways in which both the identities of a music scene and the individuals taking part in that scene are created and maintained. Issues of identity are addressed by examining the roles performed by various members of the scene (musicians, soundmen, club owners, etc . . .), by focusing on the influence of landscape, and looking at the ways a scene’s members identify with the cultural region that surrounds their particular scene (in this case both scenes are located in the American South). Data for this thesis was gathered in two ways: through traditional, ethnographic interview with musicians from Athens, and Nashville, and from the author’s personal experience as a member of the Nashville rock Scene from 1990 to 2001. Secondary sources were also consulted. Having analyzed the data, the author concludes that the scene is a function of culture; it is created and sustained through personal interaction and cultural imagination—individuals create and sustain it. Once it is created, once it is constructed, and named, the scene has an affect on the individuals that come to take part in it. It helps to shape their identities. Individuals, however, continue to exert influence over the scene, constantly altering its character.

The song " Montreal ", by Ariane Moffatt, has achieved a great success in the Summer of 2006. This thesis scrutinizes the causes of this popularity. After a review of the diverse existing methods in popular music research, three modes of analysis are presented. First, the study shown here describes the song through a music-theoretical approach; it observes the rules governing the voice, the melody, the rhythm, the phrases, the bass, the tonality, the chords, and the instruments used, supported by a precise transcription of the song. Then, this paper studies the musical codes that are found in "Montreal". In this section, the musical message of the piece is analyzed, while taking in consideration the sociohistorical context of the Summer of 2006, the national history that preceded the release of this piece, and the lyrics of the song. Finally, this study investigates the issue of national identity in Quebec, the place of "Montreal" into the collective imagination of Quebeckers, and the popular music tradition of the province.

The Eighties were a time in Western popular music that seemed to exist only by virtue of it coming after something else---namely, the 1960s counterculture and the punk rock of the 1970s. Inheriting both the failure of permanent cultural revolution and the intense cynicism that is punk's strongest legacy, youth cultures in the 1980s found it increasingly difficult to live in the present. This thesis labels this historical dilemma postmodern. It will show how SPIN magazine attempted to move past this dilemma in order to assert a unique identity for 1980s popular music and youth cultures. In particular, John Leland, a columnist for SPIN, appropriated a pop aesthetic as an identity marker and, in the process, questioned the supposed ineffectiveness of pop music for a political postmodernism. An analysis of Leland's writing uncovers what accounts of this era tend to ignore: the social function of postmodernism.

Through an examination of the album The Wall by the group Pink Floyd, the intention of this study was to answer questions such as tale following in hopes that a clearer understanding of The Walls popularity might be obtained. What are the major and minor events in this musical narrative? Who are the main characters in -111ne narrative? What cause-and-effect relationships are established in the narrative? now did The Wall function rhetorically in achieving a sense of identification with contemporary listeners?The study found that The Wall achieved identification through the use of its themes which centered around war, derisive school systems, parental overprotection. collapse, and extreme alienation.The study notes that The Wall contained substantial social commentary, and states that the rock music form, often belittled as nothing more than hedonistic escapism, is capable of producing work worthy of scholarly examination. / Department of Speech Communication

Abstract: This ethnographic study compares and contrasts performative masculinities of the overwhelmingly male heavy metal (HM) and hardcore (HC) subcultures. Conclusions derived from this research indicate the following: identities associated with HM and HC conflate masculinity with working-classness, HM and HC identities (and thus masculinities) are merging at present; participation in HM and HC enclaves can serve to symbolically marginalize constituents, and this symbolic marginalization can result in repercussions in the lived world outside of subculture; the hegemonic masculinity of HM and HC subcultures is subsidiary hegemonic masculinity, meaning that it supports the male-dominated structure of mainstream culture without empowering HM and HC males in an extra-subcultural sense; and that despite these negative ramifications, HM and HC participants still find the shared identities and community interaction of these enclaves to be empowering. Keywords: heavy metal, hardcore, subculture, masculinity, performativity, gender, class, ideology, rock music, identity

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.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin -- La Crosse, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-45).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2005. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Bibliography: leaves 348-412.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-265).