An introduction to the concept of the “national-popular” through the songs of Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso (original) (raw)

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches

Routledge, 2017

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches widens the scope of analytical approaches for popular music This study endeavors to create a new analytical paradigm for examining popular music by taking the perspective of developments in contemporary art music as a point of departure to open up multiple new paradigms. " Expanded approaches " for popular music analysis is broadly defined as any compositional, analytical, or theoretical concept outside the domain of common practice tonality that shapes the pitch-class structures, form, timbre, rhythm, or aesthetics of various forms of popular music. The essays in this collection investigate a variety of analytical, theoretical, historical, and aesthetic com-monalities popular music shares with 20th and 21st century art music. From rock and pop to hip hop and rap, dance and electronica, from the 1930s to present day, this companion explores these connections in five parts: With contributions by established scholars and promising emerging scholars in music theory and historical musicology from North America, Europe, and Australia, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches offers nuanced and detailed perspectives that address the relationships between concert and popular music.

Musiikki, 2. ISSN 03551059, 2010

‘What Is Popular Music’ was the title of the Second International Conference on Popular Music Studies, held in Reggio Emilia (Italy) in 1983. IASPM (the International Association for the Study of Popular Music) already existed then, but IASPM’s Executive Committee members didn’t find it inappropriate to ask scholars from many countries to reflect about ‘what popular music really is’. Later on, it appeared that the question had found an answer: not just in the names and titles of institutions and journals, but especially in the common sense of scholars. At some point, PMS (Popular Music Studies) became a familiar acronym, indicating an interdisciplinary practice that didn’t seem to need any further explication. ‘We all know what popular music studies are’, one could hear saying. So, there came to be not only a commonsense recognition of what popular music is, but also of the dominant practices involved in its study. However, under the thin crust of such an apparently wide agreement, magmatic currents are still moving and clashing, and emerge here and there during scholarly meetings, in blogs and mailing lists, in institutional debates. This article addresses a number of issues that seem to me to be related both to that surface agreement and to those deep streams of disagreement about the identity of the popular music universe. Here are a few examples: 1. The linguistic issue: how does the expression ‘popular music’ translate into other languages? Although it is clear that many communities of scholars accepted to use the English expression anyway, how do ‘local’ terms (like música popular, musica popolare, populäre Musik, musique populaire, musique de varietés, etc.) affect the perception of this/these ‘kinds of music’? 2. The ethnocentric vs. multicultural issue: is popular music just the Anglo-American pop-rock mainstream? What is ‘world music’, then? 3. The ‘popularity’ issue: is popular music just any kind of mainstream? Does ‘unpopular popular music’ really exist? 4. The ‘modern media’ issue: is popular music just media-related music? What about nineteenth century fado, Stephen Foster’s Ethiopian songs, ‘classic’ Neapolitan song? What makes ‘media music’ popular? And is the concept of ‘media’, accepted when the expression ‘popular music’ was adopted, still valid now? 5. The socio-conceptual issue: what is ‘the people’, and what is ‘popular’? My approach to these issues will be based mainly on: 1) a cognitive/semiotic critique of musical concepts and categories; 2) a close conceptual examination of the evolution of music dissemination (and/or ‘popularity’) in the past three decades. I don’t think that it would be easy (or useful) to find a new name for the music that until thirty years ago, and in some countries much more recently, wasn’t studied in academic institutions: ‘popular music’ for me is still probably the best conventional term to indicate such a complex set of musical cultures and practices. However, I suggest that its conventional character shouldn’t be underemphasized, and that quiet assumptions about what popular music is and what popular music studies are should be treated very carefully.

The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music

should be applauded for taking on the massive task of compiling the 35 specially commissioned essays for The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music. The authors include scholars in music, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, communication, media, literature, dance and sociology, most of them working in North America, Britain and Australia. Their essays are gathered under nine headings that the editors regard as the major themes in current popular music studies: Theory and Method; The Business of Popular Music; Popular Music History; The Global and the Local; The Star System; Body and Identity; Media; Technology; and Digital Economies. Much like other handbooks on specific scholarly fields, Bennett and Waksman aim to give a sense of the current state and future directions of the field, as well as to introduce the area of study to beginners. Also, much like other handbooks, this dual aim is hard to achieve, and while many chapters in this Handbook provide good overviews for beginners, few develop substantial discussions on theoretical or methodological 'frontlines' of their sub-fields.

Twenty First Century Popular Music Studies

This paper introduces the IASPM Journal special edition entitled Twenty-First Century Popular Music Studies (PMS), in which a number of papers respond to Philip Tagg’s paper “Caught on the Back Foot: Epistemic Inertia and Visible Music” (2011). Respondents discuss a lack of ethnographic methodology in three prominent journals, Popular Music, Popular Music and Society and Journal of Popular Music Studies; the success of PMS in Australasia and the role of ethnomusicology there; the potential of ecomusicology for PMS; the proliferation of PMS courses in new universities in the UK; gender and sexuality within PMS; differences between the concepts of invisible and of ubiquitous music; and the need for addressing corporeality within PMS. The common threads of these discussions are brought out, and a number of key issues emerge. Interdisciplinarity is emphasized and the interactions of classical and popular music, ethnomusicology as well as recording and production are examined. It is suggested that PMS might consider tactical alignments with other relevant bodies in order to overcome epistemic inertia, including ethnomusicology organisations, the Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production, and academics and practitioners involved in teaching and making popular music.

Perspectives in Popular Musicology

Taking as a starting point the exploration of music itself, analysts of pop music have had to confront the experiences, ideologies and theories unique to the specific musical style under study.

Editorial Introduction Journal of World Popular Music 4.1 (2017)

To open the fourth volume of the Journal of World Popular Music, we present a rich issue that brings together a significant number of scholars working on different areas related to popular music studies in the world, and who offer their expertise from a variety of academic disciplines. We see this issue as further demonstrating the contemporary wealth of research in the interdisciplinary study of world popular music, and the essential work conducted around the globe to shed light upon the vital role that popular music takes in contemporary societies and cultures. Thus, besides the geographical reach of JWPM, which here materializes through the investigations of the processes of production, distribution, dissemination and preservation of popular music in Mali, Madagascar, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Turkey, the US and Hungary, the journal is deeply committed to the publication of research that generates innovative perspectives on different fields and areas of research in world popular music. Issue 4.1 demonstrates this commitment, exploring such current and diverse issues as the role of the internet, the state, identity, citizenship, heritage, museum and archive studies in the construction and circulation of world popular music. The range of contributions featured in this issue of JWPM further posits the journal as an essential outlet for scholars interested in (world) popular music studies, or enthusiasts who wish to hear about and engage in current and cutting-edge debates surrounding popular music forms worldwide.

2012

Latin American scholars of the 1980s generation have been strongly criticised for their supposed uncritical adoption of models from European and North American musicology. Thirty years after the start of IASPM, and after a little more than ten years of Latin-American IASPM, it might be fruitful to examine this assumption and offer a reassessment. This is even more appropriate considering the fact that the "founding fathers" of Latin American IASPM received their doctorates in the late 1980s and early 1990s in North America and Europe, which means that they were aware of the establishment of popular music studies, and of the classic texts of the field, especially those in ethnomusicology, musicology, history and anthropology, with some touches of literary criticism and sociology. However, after receiving their degrees, Latin American music scholars rolled up their sleeves in order to plan and initiate graduate courses and, more importantly, establish research groups in order to construct a field for popular music studies within the academy. The results of this endeavour form the essential focus of this paper.

The Philosophy of Popular Music: Aesthetical Categories and Cultural Relevance

Ph. D. dissertation defended at the University of Huddersfield, U.K. A commentary on my publications on 1) Music and Society in Italy; 2) A psychoanalytical interpretation on myths on the origins of music, and the minimalist turn of the 1980s; 3) Bob Dylan and American culture; 4) Italian singer-songwriters; 5) Popular music as a planetary experiment.

An introduction to the concept of the “national-popular” through the songs of Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso (original) (raw)

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