Indie Music Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The focus of this comparative, pan-Iberian study is on the negotiation of identity and hybrid cultural production in early twenty-first-century Spain and Portugal. I identify here two subgenres of indie and electronic music scenes and... more

The focus of this comparative, pan-Iberian study is on the negotiation of identity and hybrid cultural production in early twenty-first-century Spain and Portugal. I identify here two subgenres of indie and electronic music scenes and analyze how the handful of musicians that comprise these burgeoning movements are fighting to keep their respective national cultural traditions alive in the face of iTunes, mp3s, and P2P filesharing that have universalized a certain form of pop music which cuts across languages and cultures. The hybrid musicians I interviewed for this project combine flamenco or fado with a variety of indie sounds: rock, pop, power pop, hip hop, trip hop, post punk, spaghetti western, shoegaze, or experimental electronic. The end result is a musical production which simultaneously attempts to voice their nationality as well as their generation. They are the torchbearers of tradition for an Iberian generation raised on The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, The Clash, The Replacements, Nirvana, and The Strokes. Their music references these and other global indie bands alongside those of twentieth century Iberian urban folk icons--Bambino, Camarón de la Isla, Enrique Morente, Amália Rodrigues, Alfredo Marceneiro, and Carlos do Carmo. I have developed a framework with which to contextualize and conceptualize the various issues addressed by these bands: authenticity, globalization, nostalgia, cultural capital, national-gender identity, and the economic crisis plaguing contemporary Europe.

An overview of the music video work of Danny Perez and Steve Hanft, their involvement with indie music, as well as how their music video work is related to their feature film production. The chapter relates their work to general trends in... more

An overview of the music video work of Danny Perez and Steve Hanft, their involvement with indie music, as well as how their music video work is related to their feature film production. The chapter relates their work to general trends in indie music videos and discusses the impact that digital technologies have had in low budget music video production and feature production. Music videos examined include works by Beck and Animal Collective.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A PROOF COPY

This chapter arose from a research project (Cheung, 2010) reporting on a linguistic study of song lyrics by Hong Kong musicians who composed in English. The study aimed to reveal the use of metaphor, both as a rhetorical technique and a... more

This chapter arose from a research project (Cheung, 2010) reporting on a linguistic study of song lyrics by Hong Kong musicians who composed in English. The study aimed to reveal the use of metaphor, both as a rhetorical technique and a linguistic phenomenon, in a small lyric database I compiled. The motivation of the project was both a linguistic and an educational one, in that the awareness of metaphor may improve language learners' reading comprehension and capacity to produce creative writing (e.g. Cardoso, 2005 ; Hashemian & Nezhad, 2007). Th at said, the original study did not address the broader topic of how the musicians, many of whom have English as a second language (ESL), position themselves in what Benson and Chik (2012) refer to as the "language question" in the Hong Kong popular music scene. Specifically, the language question refers to how language choices-Cantonese, Mandarin, English or a blend of these-potentially influence production and consumption of Hong Kong popular music. While English is one of Hong Kong's official languages and the main medium of instruction in tertiary education, as well as in English-medium primary and secondary schools, Cantonese remains the de facto language among the locals across everyday and institutional contexts, including the entertainment and music industry. In view of this, it would be necessary to investigate the factors contributing to their choice to use English, perhaps as a strategic move away from the "mainstream" music scene. In the following, I first explain briefly how language choice might be influenced by the development of Hong Kong popular music. Th is is followed by an explanation of the concept of "metaphor" and its relevance to an understanding of the language question. I then report on the findings from a corpus study of metaphor in English lyrics in Hong Kong independent (or "indie") music and those of a recent qualitative study in which indie musicians were interviewed and their lyrics examined. To conclude the chapter, I discuss the significance of the two studies in understanding how Hong Kong ESL users shape their identities through language. I also point to three potential directions for future research on Hong Kong independent music.

El glam ha sido, dentro de las músicas populares urbanas, una de las corrientes que ha demostrado mayor versatilidad y capacidad para articular discursos ligados a la performance de identidades de género no normativas. Su permeabilidad le... more

El glam ha sido, dentro de las músicas populares urbanas, una de las corrientes que ha demostrado mayor versatilidad y capacidad para articular discursos ligados a la performance de identidades de género no normativas. Su permeabilidad le ha permitido ser un elemento de transgresión, no sólo dentro del rock más canónico, sino también en géneros como el heavy o el indie. Este estudio es una aproximación a cómo el glam fue, en el contexto español, un instrumento útil para construir propuestas interesantes (y a veces contrapuestas) que giran tanto en torno al discurso de autenticidad del rock como a cuestiones relacionadas con la modernidad y el cosmopolitismo. Este libro es un recorrido por diferentes períodos (desde los años sesenta hasta la primera década del siglo XXI), en los que el glam ha estado presente en las escenas del pop y el rock español. Para su examen se ha tomado como fuente no sólo el propio texto sonoro (grabaciones), sino también materiales iconográficos (portadas, fotografías), audiovisuales (grabaciones de actuaciones en directo, videoclips) y literarios (prensa, letras de canciones y entrevistas). A través de un enfoque metodológico interdisciplinar, que combina el acercamiento a las músicas populares urbanas desde la musicología con los estudios culturales y de género, este trabajo pretende explicar por qué el glam ha sido una de las herramientas más eficaces a la hora de proponer discursos disruptivos de la masculinidad más normativa y del heteropatriarcado.

Montreal-based indie-rock band “Arcade Fire” have been lauded as the most important band of the last decade. In terms of their cultural and potentially theological significance it has been argued that Arcade Fire is to Gen Y what U2 is to... more

Montreal-based indie-rock band “Arcade Fire” have been lauded as the most important band of the last decade. In terms of their cultural and potentially theological significance it has been argued that Arcade Fire is to Gen Y what U2 is to Gen X. This chapter explores the music and content of their latest album Reflektor, released in October 2013. The main influences in this album are Haitian “rara” music, the 1959 film Black Orpheus, and an essay by Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard entitled ”The Present Age,” in which he contrasts the “passionate age” with the “reflective age.” These influences and the resultant themes are explored, with a final reflection framed by the Apostle Paul’s interaction with his contemporary culture, and using the work of Charles Taylor, to discover ways in which this important voice from the margins might speak to and help the contemporary church as it engages in mission in the postmodern world.

Este artículo propone una reformulación de las teorías sobre géneros musicales en músicas populares urbanas de acuerdo a la concepción de la genealogía que Michel Foucault establece en base a la obra de Friedrich Nietzsche. Para probar la... more

Este artículo propone una reformulación de las teorías sobre géneros musicales en músicas populares urbanas de acuerdo a la concepción de la genealogía que Michel Foucault establece en base a la obra de Friedrich Nietzsche. Para probar la pertinencia de estos acercamientos se aplicarán al desarrollo del post-rock desde su emergencia en los años 90 hasta la actualidad.

Australian Indie music is just one of the various global offshoots of the post 1980’s trend towards more localised, lived-experience based, cultural product creation (Cummings, 2008). A useful resource in conceptualising what constitutes... more

An essay in music criticism: 'John Maus is one of the most intriguing artists in the millennial wave of lo-fi pop, assembling his unique and intimate language from synth pop, disco, baroque classical and church music. Yet Maus’s work is... more

An essay in music criticism: 'John Maus is one of the most intriguing artists in the millennial wave of lo-fi pop, assembling his unique and intimate language from synth pop, disco, baroque classical and church music. Yet Maus’s work is much more than another exercise in retroist hybridity, and his overtures on truth and love are, upon further listening, no mere ironic posturing. Does Maus have something to teach us
about arriving at the truth through personal musical expression,or is he on a doomed Romantic adventure? Has he really discovered Heaven - and can he take us there?

The present-day impulse to slow down and embrace one's roots, as a reaction to internet-fuelled neurasthenia, is a foundational facet of indie neofado hybrid music production. However, this article explores a flipside of this phenomenon:... more

The present-day impulse to slow down and embrace one's roots, as a reaction to internet-fuelled neurasthenia, is a foundational facet of indie neofado hybrid music production. However, this article explores a flipside of this phenomenon: The indie neofado band Deolinda performs music that jolts as it mollifies. Deolinda's innocuous revolution is comprised of elliptical and ironic lyrics which whisper of an urgency in the forced stasis of national economic stagnation and which shout against an idle complacency in the self-imposed immobility of the Portuguese millennial generation known as geração à rasca (generation scraping by). The band's lyrics are written from the innocent perspective of a fictional cartoon girl named Deolinda as she observes twenty-first century Portuguese life. The child protagonist perceives the common sense we all share—those ideological structures which are invisible to us precisely due to their transparent and 'natural' position in the existing scheme of things—from a drastically different worldview, one that renders these ideological structures visible as profoundly uncommon and unnatural. Deolinda's adolescent insight has helped to form the foundation of an entire Portuguese youth movement which has taken to the street in protest over the turn-of-the-decade economic crisis and externally imposed austerity measures. Several national journalists have pointed to this protest movement as a template for the Spanish indignados and, therefore, the U.S. occupy movements.

Song-writing competitions are only apart of 'chuangzuo' cultural form, in which youths seek after identity construction, and also a settlement for their enthusiasm in their engagement in 'chuangzuo'. It is undeniable that they are keen on... more

Song-writing competitions are only apart of 'chuangzuo' cultural form, in which youths seek after identity construction, and also a settlement for their enthusiasm in their engagement in 'chuangzuo'. It is undeniable that they are keen on the pursuit of music cultivation with the approach in their engagement. On the other hand, they manifest a language of 'transnational culture', which is believed to grow in many parts of the world.

This chapter examines how social media platforms strengthen the independent scene in Chile by bringing artists closer to their fan base and helping them make decisions about their music in looking to international reach. Chile, isolated... more

This chapter examines how social media platforms strengthen the independent scene in Chile by bringing artists closer to their fan base and helping them make decisions about their music in looking to international reach. Chile, isolated by distance and geography, has a small population (17 million) compared to other Latin countries, and is not as attractive to investments from the music industry. Based on data gathered from different actors within the current scene (bands, solo projects, label personnel, fans) from three cities (Santiago, Valparaíso, and Concepción) (N: 30), we discusses the impact social media has on the promotion and consumption of music; and on the organization of the scene across local and international boundaries. We argue that Chile's indie scene centrally revolves around social media, not only for the promotion of music and gigs, but also to facilitate the exchange between music, fans, and labels. The centrality of social media has overcomes an otherwise sense of isolation from global music scenes. Indie values are configured around an entrepreneurial and adaptable spirit, and so has seen the most growth through social media, even though some tensions emerge for different actors of the scene in relation to selfpromotion, socialization, and precariousness.

This chapter examines the re-configuration of Jess Franco in the late 1980s and early 1990s as both a cult figure and an active agent in the changing coordinates of the Spanish cultural scene. For this purpose, we use a wide spectrum of... more

This chapter examines the re-configuration of Jess Franco in the late 1980s and early 1990s as both a cult figure and an active agent in the changing coordinates of the Spanish cultural scene. For this purpose, we use a wide spectrum of primary sources and a series of interviews with some key players in Franco’s revival—namely, music entrepreneur and fanzine publisher Carlos Galán, film producer Tomás Cimadevilla, Jess Franco historian Álex Mendíbil, and comic author and curator Borja Crespo. Through this analysis, we define the contours of cult filmmaking, more generally, and cult auteurism, more specifically, within the political, social, and cultural coordinates of Spain. We also scrutinize how fan-made Spanish publications circulating in alternative circuits, such as Subterfuge or Spiral, turned pivotal in the re-definition of the Spanish cult film canon. We compare these publications to official documents such as the 1993 Filmoteca Española’s retrospective (curated by Carlos Aguilar) brochure and mainstream press articles from daily national newspapers such as La Vanguardia or El País. In addition, we trace a series of connections between the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s Spanish underground and indie scenes, and Jess Franco. We analyze the intimate relationship between the indie music scene, concentrating on Franco’s music video for the Los Planetas rock band and the significant contribution of the music label and publishing house to the making of his film Killer Barbys (1996). Consequently, we study the concept of cult filmmaking as a cross-media phenomenon where diverse players, stemming from different disciplines, intervene. Finally, the chapter explores how Franco’s subcultural production has filtered into the Spanish cinematic mainstream through the work of filmmakers such as Álex de la Iglesia, Santiago Segura and Pablo Berger. We hope to demonstrate how Jess Franco became a privileged mentor and reference for a new breed of creators who aimed at superseding the existing status quo within the Spanish cultural scene.

This article discusses the notion of amiguismo within Chilean indie music circles. Amiguismo is the contention that indie music in Chile is produced through interpersonal favours, thus hamstringing the sector’s economic and artistic... more

This article discusses the notion of amiguismo within Chilean indie music circles. Amiguismo is the contention that indie music in Chile is produced through interpersonal favours, thus hamstringing the sector’s economic and artistic development. The article analyses how two indie music venues in Santiago are composed by interconnected musicians and media workers. It contends that complaints about amiguismo arise as participants seek to make their activities of musical production and circulation economically sustainable. The struggle over resources highlights the politics of sociality underlying music production, which clashes with historical understandings of art, the public sphere, and the market as a-social. The notion of amiguismo thus highlights the political dimension of musical and social life within the ideologies of capitalist modernity that deny such politics. The article argues for the importance of examining economic concerns in analyses of the formation of public culture and musical meaning, and suggests that musical study can contribute to understanding the contradictions of capitalism.

In “How to Disappear,” a song from her last album, Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey leads us to expect a how-to manual, but she gives us a poem instead: “Now it’s been years since I left New York / I got a kid and two cats in the... more

In “How to Disappear,” a song from
her last album, Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey leads us
to expect a how-to manual, but she
gives us a poem instead:
“Now it’s been years since I left New York /
I got a kid and two cats in the yard /
The California sun and the movie stars
I watch the skies getting light as I write / As I think about those years / As I whisper in your ear / I’m always gon’ to be right here / No one’s going anywhere.”
Such an unabashed display of sentimentality is compounded by the photographic and/or painterly image on the album’s cover, in which Del Rey clings to a man, a handsome man, and she clings to the American flag and Americana, and she clings to kitsch and she clings to melodrama and the problematic histories that each of these normative and patriarchal phenomena might provide, even as they all sink together. Staying with the doomed ship (loving the doomed ship, even) is an act of radical generosity.

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, 'lo-fi,' a term suggesting poor sound quality, the opposite of 'hi-fi,' became a characteristic perceived in certain popular-music recordings and eventually emerged as a category... more

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, 'lo-fi,' a term suggesting poor sound quality, the opposite of 'hi-fi,' became a characteristic perceived in certain popular-music recordings and eventually emerged as a category within independent or 'indie' popular music. It is typically taken to express the technical and technological deficiencies associated with amateur or 'DIY' musical production, namely at home using cheap recording equipment. However, this thesis rejects the assumption that lo-fi equates to a mode of production and charts it as a construction and a certain aesthetics within popular music discourse, defined as 'a positive appreciation of what are perceived and/or considered normatively interpreted as imperfections in a recording.' I chart the development and manifestation of lo-fi aesthetics, and the ways it focuses on various 'lo-fi effects' such as noise, distortion ('phonographic imperfections') and performance imperfections, in several decades of newspapers, magazines and websites covering popular music in the English-speaking world.
I argue that lo-fi aesthetics is not merely the unmediated, realist authenticity that it is often claimed to be, but one that is also fascinated with the distance from perceived commercial norms of technique and technology (or 'technocracy') that lo-fi effects signify. Lo-fi aesthetics derives from aesthetics of primitivism and realism that extend back long before phonographic imperfections were positively received. I also differentiate between lo-fi aesthetics and aesthetics of noise music, distortion in rock, glitch, punk and cassette culture. An appreciation for recording imperfections and the development of 'lo-fi' as a construction and a category is charted since the 1950s and particularly in the 1980s, 1990s and in the twenty-first century, taking in the reception of artists such as the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Hasil Adkins, the Shaggs, Jandek, Daniel Johnston, Beat Happening, Pavement, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Beck, Will Oldham, Ariel Pink and Willis Earl Beal.

Taiwanese indie bands are getting noticed for their actively crossing international borders and performing in various Asian and western countries.Using materials from a decade of research on Taiwan’s indie music development, the author... more

Taiwanese indie bands are getting noticed for their actively crossing international borders and performing in various Asian and western countries.Using materials from a decade of research on Taiwan’s indie music development, the author outlines three paths through which Taiwanese indie music has taken to establishing a foothold in the overseas markets:
(1) rising from indie music scene, crossing over to the mainstream market, and then embracing the global Mandopop market;
(2) rising from the indie music scene and connecting with comparable indie musicians and audiences through the East Asian DIY network;
(3) performing actively and translocally through the brokerage of entrepreneurial indie promoters.
Taking these three coexisting models into account, this chapter will illuminate the transnational development of Taiwanese indie music. Most crucially, indie music acts have apparently engaged in grassroots, bottom-up, transnational practices emerging outside of the mainstream music industry and the top-down governmental support.

This chapter appears in French translation in Culture et (in)dependences.: Discours et pratiques de l’indépendance dans les industries culturelles, edited by Sophie Noel, Olivier Alexandre, and Aurélie Pinto (Peter Lang, 2017). I argue... more

This chapter appears in French translation in Culture et (in)dependences.: Discours et pratiques de l’indépendance dans les industries culturelles, edited by Sophie Noel, Olivier Alexandre, and Aurélie Pinto (Peter Lang, 2017). I argue that conceptions of independent/indie media draw upon midcentury "mass" concepts -- mass society, mass culture, mass audience and mass media -- in contrasting indie with the mainstream, a new name for the old idea of mass culture. I refer mainly to movies and music, but also touch on other forms of indie culture.

This dissertation analyses the way independent labels, also known as indies, move within music industry, trying to outline their future identity in this business. To do so, this analysis will go through a study of the context in which... more

This dissertation analyses the way independent labels, also known as indies, move within music industry, trying to outline their future identity in this business. To do so, this analysis will go through a study of the context in which music business is nowadays (cultural, social, technological issues) and the way indies moved in the past and are moving in the present of the industry. These issues will be examined in the first section, while in the second one will be provided the business structure of the labels, to be put in comparison with different models within the music industry (major labels and self-produced artists). Then, the second chapter will outline a common history of independent record labels, in order to provide a unified vision of their work, despite of subjective contexts. The last section will point out, via speculations and theories on the near future of the music business, the prospected expectations of independent labels, aiming to detect the identity and the role of these companies in today’s and tomorrow’s business.
Finally, this research will explain how close is the relationship between the purely-economic model of independent labels and the artistic production, trying to determine a link between the success of these labels and the artistic freedom given to the artists.

Indie music in East Asia has experienced tremendous growth in popularity since the mid-2000s, especially in China and Taiwan. This trend has encouraged a number of indie bands to pursue more radical and alternative 'do-it-yourself' (DIY)... more

Indie music in East Asia has experienced tremendous growth in popularity since the mid-2000s, especially in China and Taiwan. This trend has encouraged a number of indie bands to pursue more radical and alternative 'do-it-yourself' (DIY) careers within their local underground music scenes. Taking two bands from Beijing and Taipei as case studies, this article argues that their DIY music careers help them both to survive through their aesthetic freedom and to confront the paradoxical government involvement in the local music market. P.K. 14, a band from China, practice a pragmatic DIY music career with an oblique resistance to political authorities. Touming Magazine, a band from Taiwan, pursue a DIY career through punk ethics to fight against an overwhelming neoliberal discourse and a promotional state policy of developing a cultural and creative industry. While DIY career practitioners have opened up alternative possibilities to preserve the autonomy of making music, such a career path is still challenged by an unsustainable market, a shortage of financing, and the continued dominance of major music companies' own platforms. The situations these musicians face illustrate a more ambivalent type of politics, beyond mere emancipation, in their pursuit of a DIY career.

Freak Scenes explores the increased licensing of indie music and representation of indie music cultures within American independent cinema since the 1980s. Indie music has, since the 2000s, become highlighted in some indie films as an... more

Charges of “selling out” and debates about the boundaries of cultural autonomy have played a pivotal role in the development of popular music as a legitimate and “serious” art form. With promotional strategies and commercial business... more

Charges of “selling out” and debates about the boundaries of cultural autonomy have played a pivotal role in the development of popular music as a legitimate and “serious” art form. With promotional strategies and commercial business practices now practically inseparable from the core activities previously associated with music making, the relevance of such concepts and the values that underpin them are questioned by industry experts, musicians, and fans. In this article, we explore how popular music making and perspectives on selling out have been shaped by digitalization, promotionalism, and globalization.

The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places” was help in Porto, Portugal, between 18th July and 21st July 2016. This edition was once again focused on underground... more

The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places” was help in Porto, Portugal, between 18th July and 21st July 2016. This edition was once again focused on underground music, but directing its attention this time towards the analysis of DIY cultures’ relationship to space and places. Thus, we challenged students, junior and senior teachers/researchers, as well as artists and activists, to come to the KISMIF International Conference and present works which explore the potential of the theoretical and analytical development of the intersection of music scenes, DIY culture and space under a multidimensional and multifaceted vision. Our intention was to enrich the underground scenes and DIY cultures analysis by producing innovative social theory on various spheres and levels, as well as focusing on the role of DIY culture in late modernity. Indeed, the role of music and DIY cultures is once more an important question — taking place in a world of piecemealed yet ever-present change. The space, spaces, places, borders, zones of DIY music scenes are critical variables in approaching contemporary cultures, their sounds, their practices (artistic, cultural, economic and social), their actors and their contexts. From a postcolonial and glocalized perspective, it is important to consider the changes in artistic and musical practices with an underground and/or oppositional nature in order to draw symbolic boundaries between their operating modalities and those of advanced capitalism. Territorialization and deterritorialization are indelible marks of the artistic and musical scenes in the present; they are related to immediate cosmopolitanisms, to conflicting diasporas, new power relations, gender and ethnicity.

This 2001 book chapter discusses the relations between, on the one hand, the 'Britpop' moment of indie/alternative rock in the 1990s and, on the other, electronic dance music and 'black British music'. It sees these relations as in part... more

This 2001 book chapter discusses the relations between, on the one hand, the 'Britpop' moment of indie/alternative rock in the 1990s and, on the other, electronic dance music and 'black British music'. It sees these relations as in part a product of white English anxieties about globalisation, and it provides a critical appraisal of the relations between popular music and nationalism.