No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Paul Simon's Graceland, South Africa, and the Mediation of Musical Meaning
Abstract
The presence of style indicates strong community, an intense sociability that has been given shape through time, an assertion of control over collective feelings so powerful that any expressive innovator will necessarily put his or her content into that shaping continuum and no other. (Keil 1985:122)
... When, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, members of a white audience beat Nat "King" Cole on a Birmingham, Alabama, stage, some in the African-American community claimed his politics had been compromised by performing for a segregated audience (Monson 1999, 187-88). Louise Meintjes highlights the challenge of voicing allegiance across the reception of Paul Simon's 1986 album, Graceland, which features both white American and Black South African artists, but is silent on apartheid despite the ongoing cultural boycott of South Africa (Meintjes 1990). ...
This essay considers the musical stakes of boycotts, basing my work on the close analysis of the actors’ boycott during Polish martial law in the 1980s. Attuned to the heightened importance of scrutiny— even paranoia—and restraint that is generated by boycotts and imposed upon the boycotted, I understand this form of protest action as a reconfiguration of everyday social life and, by extension, listening techniques and aural culture. First, I define and theorize the boycott as a form of collective action in which ideas about the political possibilities of sound/music in relation to silence percolate. Second, I show a genealogy of musical boycotts in which writing on music, such as music criticism and musicology, is also implicated. This theoretical backdrop paves the way for my turn to the Polish actors’ boycott of state media. I trace modes of listening and performing across live and recorded articulations of the boycott by artists to show how different modes of collaboration reveal music and sound as the means of activating political intensities. Archives of cassette tapes circulated through the opposition’s unofficial publishing networks provide glimpses into the sound and music of home theater, church concerts, and other sonic mediations of recusal.
... In contrast to Cohen, Simon has only been the subject of relatively limited scholarly research. Most studies focus on his controversial decision to circumvent the cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1980s (e.g., Meintjes 1990). Simon's songwriting is characterized by his understated style and focus on the small, poignant moments of life (Bennighof 2007)-qualities that are distinctly different from the grandeur often associated with Cohen's work. ...
By analyzing the musical works of Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen, this study examines the theological expressions of secular Jews in the diaspora who retain elements of belief. Drawing on contemporary theories of lived religion and post-secular spirituality, it explores how their lyrics articulate distinctive forms of Jewish spirituality outside traditional frameworks. Through a close textual analysis of their final albums, this study reveals complex theological narratives that intertwine Protestant-oriented individual spirituality with collective Jewish religious and cultural memory. The findings indicate that Cohen and Simon demonstrate distinct approaches to divinity. Cohen adopts a more traditional theistic stance, whereas Simon develops a pantheistic theology. These narratives offer viable and meaningful models for secular-believer Jewish identity and suggest possible foundations for a contemporary secular Jewish existence in the diaspora.
... The diverse linguistic ability of her experience was equally impressive, with Mawela's vocals gracefully embracing a spectrum of South African languages, including Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Venda, Tsonga, Pedi, Ndebele, and Tswana. In doing so, she not only paid homage to these marginalised languages but also showcased her remarkable ability to transcend linguistic boundaries, adding an extra layer of depth to her artistry ( Mambazo as a formidable force in the global music landscape, securing for them a prominent and enduring place in the annals of musical achievement (Meintjes 1990). ...
... After independence, FRELIMO sought to project a cultural model based on rural music at the expense of 11. For an in-depth analysis of this album and the limits of its allegedly "collaborative nature," see Meintjes 1990. 12. ...
This article analyzes the internationalization of Mozambican music within the “World Music” market during the country’s transitional period from a single-party socialist-led system to a multiparty, liberal one (1987–1994) in relation to the country’s nation-building process. The comparative examination of three cases—Orchestra Marrabenta Star de Moçambique, the song “Baila Maria” by Grupo RM (Amoya), and Real World Records’ albums by Eyuphuro and Ghorwane—shows that the “World Music” market not only served as an escape valve from the country’s lethargic phonographic industry but also emerged as a privileged channel to promote Mozambique’s official musical policy abroad during a crucial civil war-torn period.
... The album's producers had failed to ask Raghu for his permission-apparently it had seemed too difficult to ask or even to send him a copy of the album. As we have learned from Feld (1996), Meintjes (1990), Fitzgerald et al. (2011), and others, these are not isolated instances of communication breakdown but an instance of good people doing nothing, the quiet and efficient workings of the colonial machinery. ...
Palghat Raghu was a master of the mridangam and one of the leading figures in South Indian Carnatic music. In this article, I want to contribute a perspective on his musical life and, through my reflections on my time with him, contribute insights toward a fuller understanding of Carnatic music and Western engagements with it. I do so by drawing on fieldwork I conducted in Chennai, India, at various times between 2005–2013. Specifically, I use examples of solkattu from my lessons with him to illustrate Raghu's approach to rhythm and the general rhythmic approach within Carnatic music, including the kinds of musical-cognitive skills involved in rhythmic production within the Carnatic system. By describing aspects of his practice and his various interactions with other musicians, I also reflect on his position as a culture-bearer and on the relationships between musical cultures.
... Again, the overall power structure in the project contrasts with a typical studio-production power structure in which the producer (the researcher, in this case) would be responsible for the major creative decisions (Meintjes 1990). Instead, significant choices stemmed from the band and, as mentioned earlier, the researcher constantly checked his creative decisions with the band throughout the project's stages. ...
This article discusses reciprocity in research as engaged scholarship and, more specifically, applied ethnomusicology. It draws on two ethnographic studies and their associated activism in Cape Town, South Africa and Lagos, Nigeria. The article investigates the histories of engaged scholarship and applied ethnomusicology and suggests that each community requires a method of engagement based on its contextual specifics. Hence, the case studies may be seen to animate workable approaches in different socio-cultural contexts. The paper concludes that these methods may serve as frameworks for developing site-specific strategies of engaged scholarship in other parts of Africa.
... Este disco contó con la colaboración de músicos de Sudáfrica, fusionando y visibilizando la riqueza cultural de las comunidades negras del país en pleno apartheid. Una primera dimensión significativa relacionada con la trascendencia del significado musical reconoce la música como un lenguaje universal que se sobrepone a las barreras culturales, mientras que un punto de vista diametralmente opuesto afirma que la música solamente puede entenderse en términos culturalmente específicos (Meintjes, 1990 O cuando utilizó la melodía de Gnossiene Nº 1 de Erik Satie para musicalizar una intensa letra que habla sobre la soberbia de occidente ante la inmigración de otros pueblos y culturas, en su canción "La Flor de Estambul" (Javier Ruibal, 1994) perteneciente a su disco Pensión Triana del año 94. ...
... My aim in this article is to contribute to our understanding of how local rap worlds evolve by describing the successive processes of the decline and revitalization of rap music in Gabon between 2009 and 2020 and by questioning the technologies and mediations (Meintjes 1990;Hennion 2015) employed for that purpose. At the same time, this article considers how these transformations overlap with a history of complex relationships between music and leading to a pure 'e-ethnography' but rather an 'extension of a fieldwork approach whose primary object is the universe, experience, history and practices of people whose lives are largely played out offline' (Pastinelli 2011: 48, translation added). ...
The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of how local rap worlds evolve by describing the successive processes of the decline and revitalization of rap music in Gabon between 2009 and 2020, and by questioning the technologies and mediations employed for that purpose. This article considers how these transformations overlap with a history of complex relationships between music and politics, arguing that the revitalization of the rap world was related to a broader attempt at social healing and reconciliation after a violent political conflict. It stems from a long-term ethnography study conducted in Libreville and the Gabonese diaspora from 2008 to 2016 and on the analysis of two recent rap projects launched in Libreville: ‘Bwiti Gang Cypher’ and ‘Catalogue Challenge’. Through the analysis of these two performances, I highlight how the attempt at revitalization was relying on a complex mix of mediations and technologies, including original hip hop conventions and local healing rituals and how it has allowed for the transformation of divisive conflicts into a cathartic moment of collective listening. This article finally proves the double dimension of musical revitalization, one where music rebirth and social healing overlap, and it shows how the embeddedness of music and politics can be permanently transformed through the agency of social actors who develop a creative play between different technologies and mediations.
... L'une des premières controverses de haut niveau que la world music a suscité -même avant d'avoir reçu ce nom -est apparue en 1986 avec la publication de l'album Graceland de Paul Simon, que l'artiste nord-américain avait enregistré avec des artistes sud-africains. Si l'album est devenu un énorme succès commercial, ses implications idéologiques ont provoqué de nombreuses critiques aussi bien dans les milieux journalistiques qu'académiques (Feld 1988 ;Hamm 1989 ;Meintjes 1990). Dans l'un des travaux académiques pionniers sur le phénomène des musiques du monde, Steven Feld (1988) prenait l'exemple de Graceland pour interroger les complexités des processus d'appropriation culturelle lors des rencontres entre stars de la pop occidentale et musiciens non occidentaux. ...
Depuis le début du nouveau siècle, on assiste dans toute l’Amérique latine à l’émergence d’un courant musical où les traditions populaires et folkloriques autochtones sont réinterprétées et réactualisées à travers le prisme de la musique électronique. Dans des villes comme Buenos Aires ou Lima, des scènes locales alternatives se sont développées autour de ces expérimentations musicales, menées par de jeunes DJs et des producteurs électroniques qui se situent dans la confluence entre tradition et modernité. Ces artistes se sont tournés d’abord vers la cumbia, un genre d’origine colombien associé aux classes populaires et migrantes partout dans le continent, pour entamer ses premières tentatives d’hybridation avec les sons électroniques. La cumbia digitale, le genre le plus représentatif de ce nouveau folklore latino-américain du XXIe siècle, a suscité très tôt l’intérêt du public tant à l'intérieur qu’à l'extérieur du continent, s’incorporant ainsi à la nouvelle constellation toujours grandissante de nouvelles musiques issues du Sud global qui a reçu le nom de world music 2.0. À la fois témoignant d’un désir de cosmopolitisme et d’un souci d’ancrage dans l’espace culturel latino-américain, ces musiciens affichent avec audace une forme propre de modernité qui cherche à s’affranchir des schémas eurocentrés. Outre leurs innovations musicales, les artistes de la cumbia et le folklore digital se sont appuyés depuis le début sur une forte dimension visuelle. Plus particulièrement, les vidéoclips de ces musiciens ont joué un rôle central dans la construction de représentations audiovisuelles hybrides, marquées par la cohabitation de références locales et globales, où l’ancestral côtoie le futuriste, un imaginaire complexe et foisonnant qui rend compte des tensions et des contradictions de l’Amérique latine contemporaine. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse vise à étudier les manières dont les vidéoclips de cumbia et folklore digital articulent des expressions d’une modernité latino-américaine alternative. Quelles sont les formes esthétiques privilégiées dans ce type de productions audiovisuelles et comment ces artistes s'en servent-ils pour construire leurs imaginaires ? Dans quelle mesure contribuent-elles à satisfaire ou subvertir les attentes d’exotisme de leur public international ? Comment l’avènement du numérique et de plateformes comme YouTube a-t-il multiplié les possibilités de création et de diffusion de ces représentations ? Nous soutenons que ces productions audiovisuelles sont porteuses d'un potentiel utopique et émancipateur, ouvrant des espaces du possible pour la construction de nouveaux imaginaires et identités latino-américains. Les formes et les modes de représentation qu'ils mobilisent s’inscrivent ainsi dans une quête d'autonomisation qui dépasse le simple choix esthétique. En analysant ces vidéoclips, nous comptons démontrer que la cumbia et le folklore digital offrent un vaste terrain d'expérimentation pour imaginer et pour fabriquer des visions d’un monde nouveau.
... Critics such as Feld (1994 a andb, 2000) and Meintjes (1990) have drawn attention to issues of 'ownership' and 'cultural equity' in world music. Pop artists supported by transnational recording companies 'appropriate' the performance styles, beats, and genres of musicians from other parts of the world but the ultimate recording belongs to the pop artist. ...
... Investigating the interactions between these disparate creative subjectivities offers an ideal means of understanding the distinct dynamics of sustained encounters between different creative practices and the ways in which they transform the contours of these practices in unpredictable and often volatile ways. While scholars have long drawn attention to the ways in which experimental musicians incorporate diverse stylistic practices ranging from jazz to non-Western traditions such as Javanese gamelan (Lewis 2001:101;Miller and Lieberman 1999;Piekut 2014), with few exceptions (most notably , Meintjes 1990;Rodriguez 2015;Stanyek 2004) they mostly examine instances in which individual musicians are influenced by other practices, and rarely investigate the creative ramifications of in-person collaboration across styles, particularly in the context of a highly networked musical culture in which this phenomenon occurs on a large scale. The latter process plays a central role in shaping the experimentalist impetus in the São Paulo scene, where invention arises first and foremost as a result of sustained, direct engagement between practitioners themselves. ...
This dissertation investigates the interrelated dynamics of creativity, cultural politics, and cultural production in the context of an independent experimental music scene in São Paulo, Brazil. The participants in this scene hail from a variety of institutional backgrounds and incorporate creative practices that draw from a range of musical styles, from free improvisation to experimental hip hop to local practices such as capoeira and forró. Over the past decade, these musicians have created a collaborative network of artists, organizational leaders, and independent performance spaces and record labels dedicated to the production of experimentally oriented sound. Drawing from fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a period of five years, the dissertation proposes a framework for understanding musical experimentalism in terms of hybrid, collaborative social practice. The study argues for investigating cross-stylistic experimental musical creativity as a distinct phenomenon motivated by multiplicity, situated in opposition to established institutional supporters of experimental music, and complicated by the tensions that arise from encounters between diverse perspectives, identities, and practices. I further examine the social ramifications of this process, focusing on how participants seek to develop more egalitarian forms of discourse, performance, and community in the face of increasing stratification and authoritarianism in the contemporary Brazilian public sphere. The dissertation’s chapters follow a general narrative of cause and effect, beginning with a discussion of the role of previous cultural movements in shaping the scene’s current form, continuing through the ways in which individuals negotiate and transform these ideas within the context of creative and organizational practice, and finally turning to the ways in which the resulting practices sound back into broader urban and aesthetic contexts beyond the immediate milieu of the scene. Chapter One discusses the historical and ideological context of the São Paulo scene, focusing on the emergence of Brazilian independent experimentalism and the ways in which the DIY ethos pioneered in punk culture motivates experimental musical creativity. The second chapter addresses the ways in which the scene’s rhizomatic network dynamics foster ideal conditions for cross-stylistic collaboration and the strategies musicians employ to create the conditions for effective collaborative performance in the face of obstacles such as divergent idiomatic norms and onstage expressions of machismo. In the third chapter, I address the organizational and institutional context of collaborative creativity in the scene, focusing on how musicians have established a network of independent spaces and employed alternative media in order to respond to systemic institutional marginalization and create lasting connections between artists from different backgrounds. Chapter Four addresses the urban context of the scene’s creative and institutional dynamics, concentrating on the ways in which musicians employ public performance as a means of facilitating material engagements with urban space and sound. In Chapter Five, I investigate the ways in which members of the São Paulo scene engage with broader aesthetic structures, focusing on how musicians symbolically contest genre standards and song forms in order to create less hierarchical means of musical expression and develop more immediate responses to resurgent authoritarianism in the Brazilian political sphere.
... Connell and Gibson (2003) suggest that mediated music is crosscut by opposing dynamics of "fixity" and "fluidity," which shift and change in relation to technological and legal regimes. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of commercial "world music," whose aesthetics, power dynamics, and complex interrelations with ethnic and national imaginaries reveal globalization's "increasingly complicated pluralities, uneven experiences, and consolidated powers" (Feld 2000: 146; see also Meintjes 1990Meintjes , 2003Guilbault 1993;Taylor 1997;Stokes 2004;Ochoa Gautier 2006). ...
Zahid Ahmad is one of Malaysia’s most accomplished drummers. He experienced the transnational mobilities and success of Malaysia’s popular music industry, recording and touring as a drummer with Sheila Majid and Zainal Abidin in Indonesia and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. He recently published the book Tuk Tak: Cerita Zahid Ahmad tentang muzik Malaysia [Tuk Tak: Zahid Ahmad’s story about Malaysian music] (2021) that details such experiences and his professional development as a musician in Malaysia’s music industry. This article draws on narrative insights provided in his biography and examines key moments in Zahid’s career; supporting and contributing to the live performances and recorded works of two Malaysian popular music icons. In reviewing the existing literature on interculturalism and race in Malaysia, this article applies a conceptual framework of musical mobility and interculturalism to analyse Malaysian popular music in the 1980s and 1990s. How might the concept of musical mobility be deployed to explain the unique transnational accomplishments of Malaysian popular music artists? What were the cultural conditions, collaborative musical relationships and creative processes that contributed to their local and transnational appeal? Zahid Ahmad's career as a professional musician, his transnational experience performing and his collaborations with musicians in Indonesia and Malaysia effectively set the stage for an intercultural approach to analyse the production of music that draws from the diverse rhythms and sounds of local, regional and global musical styles; ultimately contributing to the commercial success and creative flourishing of Malaysian music across borders in the 1980s and 1990s.
À la croisée entre ethnomusicologie et science de l’ingénierie sonore, cet article propose une lecture des musiques ouest-africaines au prisme des lieux et des technologies de la production musicale. Octobre 2022 : le studio Bogolan de Bamako ferme définitivement ses portes. Quatre ans auparavant à Abidjan, c’est JBZ qui disparaissait. Ces deux grands studios hérités de l’ère analogique qui ont « fait » la musique ouest-africaine des années 1980-2010 n’ont plus leur place dans l’écosystème de la musique à l’ère post-globale, caractérisé par une profusion de petits studios basés sur des stations audionumériques. À travers un itinéraire biographique de ces deux studios de légende et de leurs principaux protagonistes (propriétaires, réalisateurs, producteurs, arrangeurs et ingénieurs du son), cet article entend brosser le portrait d’une époque et d’un milieu, celui d’une première industrie musicale indépendante des pouvoirs étatiques, initiant là le mouvement ouest-africain de la world music. Mais la trajectoire et l’activité de ces studios révèlent aussi des différences notables dans les politiques culturelles et économiques des deux pays : quand Bogolan privilégie le folklore malien et les collaborations avec des musicien·ne·s et ingénieurs du son des pays du Nord, JBZ attire les plus grandes vedettes des musiques urbaines d’Afrique de l’Ouest et d’Afrique centrale. Ce texte montre enfin les conséquences des choix différents de Bogolan et JBZ sur la culture des studios numériques dans chacun des pays : continuité de la transmission des savoirs de l’analogique au numérique à Abidjan dont la production musicale est aujourd’hui connectée au marché global, contre peu d’échanges et une rupture entre un « studio live » international et les studios numériques à Bamako, largement déconnectés de l’industrie globale.
The current buzz surrounding West African popular music in the moniker of Afrobeats has placed a global spotlight on West African artists and their music. Afrobeats was popularized among mainstream North American audiences in 2016 when world-renowned musician Drake featured Nigerian musician, Wizkid, on his song “One Dance.” The term has gone under scrutiny in various debates between critics and advocates. What exactly is Afrobeats? Is it a musical genre with distinct sonic signifiers or a socially generated term for a panoply of West African popular music genres? Is it a synonym for West African popular music? Afrobeats is an ambiguous term because it evades a definition. Perhaps, the conundrum stems from the fact that it shares the same name with a precedent (and different) musical style–Afrobeat without an ‘s’–often associated with the world-renowned Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. This article traces the trajectory of the term from its conception as a hypernym circulating within West African communities outside Africa to its construction as a genre in the mainstream global music industry. By analyzing the operative distinctions between Afrobeats as a hypernym and Afrobeats as a genre, I explore the amalgamation of diverse genres as Afrobeats and the ensuing genrefication of Afrobeats. I argue that Afrobeats has been conceptualized differently within various contexts in the Global North. Through a critical analysis of conventional and alternative modes of circulation and consumption of music, I expatiate on how and why the term was constructed as well as its significance. Finally, by discussing the various ways in which the distinct modes of global circulation intersect, I suggest that Afrobeats is a social and aesthetic category within a diasporic cultural framework on the one hand, and a marketing category operating within what Dave Laing (2009) calls a “genre-market” on the other.
This article reviews literature that followed from a political turn, starting in the 1980s, when new epistemological and disciplinary norms were established for articulating music and sound with politics. In an age of impotence, when neoliberal expansion led to pervasive political exhaustion, music and sound took on added potency as political forces in and of themselves. This wager rests on the presumption of music's capacity for politicization (its entry into and effect on the sphere of normative politics) under conditions of increasing depoliticization (the constraints placed on political participation). I have organized research on the politicization of music and sound into four primary categories: resistance and dissent, identity and recognition, affect and belonging, and power and dominance. The article concludes with recent wagers on music and sound to mitigate life's perils in the present and model “otherwise” possibilities for the future.
Este artigo analisa a internacionalização de música moçambicana no âmbito da categoria de mercado “World Music”, durante o período de transição de um sistema de partido único e socialista, para um sistema multipartidário e liberal (1987-1994), enquadrado no processo de “construção da nação”. A análise comparativa de três casos – Orquestra Marrabenta Star de Moçambique, a canção “Baila Maria” do Grupo RM (Amoya), e os discos de Eyuphuro e Ghorwane (Real World Records) – confirma o recurso à World Music enquanto alternativa à letargia da indústria fonográfica do país e como veículo para promover internacionalmente a política musical de Moçambique durante a guerra civil.
Challenging traditionally-conceived narratives surrounding the dialectic of Apartheid, many Afrikaners became facilitators of in-state resistance alongside their black peers after becoming disillusioned with the South African regime’s foreign policy initiatives during the 1970s and 1980s. Afrikaner men were conscripted to fight in their country’s dirty wars in Rhodesia and Angola, which destabilized the regime’s legally-enshrined white privilege and fueled resistance expressed through musical movement. This idea connects to tactics used by the American government to assert racialist sovereignty as a tenet of stratifying South Africa’s domestic society through soft power. This paper demonstrates through semantic and musical deconstructions how and why Paul Simon’s “Graceland” project and the Voëlvry punk movement worked to dismantle tenets of racial governance at the grassroots level in South Africa. From the usage of the English language to the usage of Western instrumentation with “reclaimed” rhythm, these cases show a broader yet calculated transgression from mediatic expressions of Apartheid through moral entrepreneurship.
Ce texte questionne le statut et le rôle de l’enregistrement sonore dans l’histoire de l’ethnomusicologie, c’est-à-dire les rapports que les ethnomusicologues ont noué au fil du temps avec l’enregistrement, à la fois outil et objet, voire finalité parfois, de leur discipline. Cette réflexion critique conduira à formuler un certain nombre de propositions théoriques pour réaliser le passage d’une ethnomusicologie des cultures enregistrées à une ethnomusicologie des cultures de l’enregistrement, c’est-à-dire déplacer l’objet principal de la discipline vers les musiques enregistrées localement et leur écosystème. Au final, on verra les conséquences de ce déplacement dans la pratique, les outils et les enjeux de l’ethnomusicologie, mais aussi dans le positionnement, et plus encore l’autorité du chercheur vis-à-vis de son objet.
Este libro presenta algunas ideas que buscan contribuir a la identificación de brechas y oportunidades para la circulación de las músicas del Pacífico colombiano. Los resultados aquí expuestos se derivan de una revisión de literatura realizada a finales de 2020, sobre acciones implementadas desde la política pública y el sector privado en la región (incluyendo la institucionalidad cultural y cámaras de comercio, donde fue posible hacerlo), y sobre las investigaciones, informes o estudios realizados por instituciones académicas de la región o nacionales, en relación con la circulación de las músicas del Pacífico y con campos de acción asociados. Este proceso se llevó a cabo por invitación del Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia y estuvo en cabeza de un equipo de investigadores adscritos a la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali: los profesores Manuel Sevilla y Paola Cano, y los asistentes de investigación Yurani Guevara, Fabián Bolaños y Ana Lucía Cortés. El análisis de la información contó con la valiosa colaboración de tres de consultores independientes basados en los departamentos de Chocó, Nariño y Cauca, los maestros Leonidas Valencia, Paola Navia y Claudia Cruz, respectivamente.
This is the first introductory survey of western twentieth-century music to address popular music, art music and jazz on equal terms. It treats those forms as inextricably intertwined, and sets them in a wide variety of social and critical contexts. The book comprises four sections – Histories, Techniques and Technologies, Mediation, Identities – with 16 thematic chapters. Each of these explores a musical or cultural topic as it developed over many years, and as it appeared across a diversity of musical practices. In this way, the text introduces both key musical repertoire and critical-musicological approaches to that work. It historicises music and musical thinking, opening up debate in the present rather than offering a new but closed narrative of the past. In each chapter, an overview of the topic's chronology and main issues is illustrated by two detailed case studies.
In 2002, less than a year after releasing her first album, Afrikaans rocker Karen Zoid gained a level of notoriety then unheard of among Afrikaans female musicians. She achieved this when she enacted the overtly masculine rock ritual that Aerosmith's Joe Perry has labelled “the ultimate statement of anarchy” (Perry, quoted in Christensen 2004): she smashed her guitar. While frequently interpreted as an attention-getting strategy (which it undeniably was), Karen Zoid's performance was also an act of political positioning, locating her within the already passé tropes of international rock, but also on the margins of the Afrikaans music industry. It also, ironically, allowed her to appropriate some of the rock “authenticity” connected with this display of overt masculinity, despite the fact that her performance can be read as a deliberate (perhaps even camp) parody of this masculinity. This is because, as I will argue in this article, Zoid's legitimacy as the “voice of her generation” and a vocalizing representative of New South African identity has hung precariously off her performed masculinity, despite her destabilization of this image through a variety of queer performances. In this article, I will examine the interlinked history of South African music (with a focus on Afrikaans rock) and national identification that has created a normative masculinity in post-apartheid South Africa (1994-present). I will present Karen Zoid's performance style as an example of resistance to this norm, paying particular attention to the vocal characteristics of gendered South African sound as a site of normativity and resistance. Finally, I will consider the extent to which, in order to enact this resistance, Zoid has been obliged to perform the gendered national norm or has been interpreted in normative terms in order that audiences are able to comprehend her national identifications. By these means I aim to make visible the normally hidden gender bias that undermines South Africa's apparently representative post-apartheid nationalism.
A matrix number is an alphanumeric code that is inscribed into the run-out area of commercially recorded gramophone discs. In this article, I argue that orienting our scholarly listening around matrix numbers—what I call “matrix listening”—can help us reframe our engagement with historical sound recordings as primary sources and thereby lend valuable insights into any number of scholarly questions. It can also help us revisit the issue of materiality in recorded sound specifically and music in general, approaching sound recordings not only as container technologies for “music” as a purified domain but as complexly agentive material things.
This article considers the recent efforts of a Britain-based record label to license and remix field recordings collected in Malawi by Hugh Tracey. In particular, I argue that the initiative’s charitable ends should be weighed against musical production and marketing practices that shortchange Malawi and Malawians. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews, and discourse analysis in Malawi and South Africa, I ask how the project portrays the source materials it utilises and the uptick in cultural awareness it seeks to engender. Factors I focus on include: characterisations of Tracey and his archive, the musical production process, strategic publicity that accompanied the album’s release, and the project’s charitable and musical impacts in contemporary Malawi. Altogether, the article articulates and advocates for a critical approach to musically tinged humanitarian projects in the global South.
En 1986, l’album Graceland de Paul Simon provoque un engouement mondial pour les musiques extra-occidentales, en particulier la pop music sud-africaine : ce succès sans précédent et le bourgeonnement parallèle d’autres collaborations musicales multiculturelles permettent la création d’une nouvelle catégorie commerciale, la world music. Mais cette catégorie ne reflète pas un style unifié et ses définitions mouvantes posent de nombreux problèmes de classement musical, de détermination artistique, esthétique, voire sociologique et politique. L’étude des albums Graceland (1986), The Rhythm of the Saints (1990) et Songs from the Capeman (1997) permet toutefois de saisir trois approches différentes de la world music, tout en mettant en lumière le travail de créateur-enquêteur de Paul Simon. Ce dernier joue avec l’ambiguïté définitionnelle de la world music pour proposer différentes productions musicales, chacune centrée sur une problématique intrinsèque à cette catégorie : l’articulation pop locale/pop internationale dans Graceland, le brouillage des pistes entre pop music, folk music, et musique savante dans The Rhythm of the Saints et la déconstruction puis la réactualisation d’influences considérées comme pleinement assimilées à la musique nord-américaine dans Songs from the Capeman.
Das Sound-Design bildet in der Popmusik eine entscheidende Komponente der kreativen Gestaltung und des ästhetischen Empfindens. Nicht der Ton macht die Musik, sondern dem Sound verdankt die Popmusik einen Großteil ihrer emotionalen Wirkung und ihres kommunikativen Gehalts. Zugleich ist Sound ein wichtiges Mittel zur sozialen Positionierung von Musikern und Hörern. Im vorliegenden Band wird erstmals der Versuch unternommen, dieser weitreichenden Bedeutung von Sound auf die Spur zu kommen und damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zur bislang ungeschriebenen Sound-Geschichte zu leisten - mit Beispielen, die von den Beatles und Stones über Kraftwerk, Ramones und Nirvana bis hin zu Blumfeld, den Strokes oder zur so genannten Weltmusik reichen.
Drawing upon Rancière's argument that aesthetics instigates politics, Latour's rethinking of agency as relational, and Ortiz's work on Afro-Cuban music aesthetics, this article explores how the experience of aesthetic pleasure in Cuban timba grooves makes politics audible and affective in novel ways. Through a combination of ethnographic and musical analyses of Havana D'Primera's performance of ‘Pasaporte’ live at Casa de la Música in 2010, it unpacks the political affordances of call-and-response singing and polyrhythmic timba grooves among participating listeners in Havana. In contrast to the recurrent tendency to exclude musical details from research into the politics of music, this article suggests that engaging grooves and catchy melodies do important political work as musical actants by creating affective communities and new expressions of political critique. The concept of musical actants serves as a lens through which to view these pregnant interactions between rhythmic, melodic, social, and political meanings in time.
Made in Nusantara serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, ethnography, and musicology of historical and contemporary popular music in maritime Southeast Asia.
Each essay covers major figures, styles, and social contexts of genres of a popular nature in the Nusantara region including Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, and the Philippines. Through a critical investigation of specific genres and their spaces of performance, production, and consumption, the volume is organised into four thematic areas: 1) issues in Nusantara popular music; 2) history; 3) artists and genres; and 4) national vs. local industries.
Written by scholars working in the region, Made in Nusantara brings local perspectives to the history and analysis of popular music and critically considers conceptualisations developed in the West, rendering it an intriguing read for students and scholars of popular and global music.
- CONTENTS -
Introduction - Popular Music as a Means of Conceptualising the Nusantara - Adil Johan, Mayco A. Santaella; Issues in Nusantara Popular Music; 1 - Revisiting the ‘traditional’ and the ‘popular’ in Maritime Southeast Asia: Towards a Nusantara Popular Praxis -Mayco A. Santaella; 2 - Colonialism and Identity: A Short History of Popular Music in the Philippines - Felicidad A. Prudente; 3 - The (De-) and (Re-) Mythification of OPM: Decentering a Popular Music Sign - Krina Cayabyab; 4 - Popularizing Malaysian Cultures through the Music Industry and Music Education - Shahanum Mohd. Shah; History; 5 - Revisiting Post-Cultural Imperialism: Singing Vernacular Modernity and Hybridity through the Lagu Melayu in British Malaya - Tan Sooi Beng; 6 - Acoustic Epistemologies and Early Sound Recordings in the Nusantara Region: Phonography, Archive, and the Birth of Ethnomusicology - meLê yamomo; 7 - Bodabil Music in the Rise of the American Empire - Arwin Q. Tan; 8 - Songs for and of the Youth: Mapping Trends in Philippine Popular Music, 1900-2000 - Verne de la Peña; Artistes and Genres; 9 - Singapore Arts Icon or Malay Nationalist? Mobilising Zubir Said Across the Causeway - Adil Johan; 10 - The Popularisation and Contestation of Dangdut Koplo in the Indonesian Music Industry - Michael H.B. Raditya; 11 - KL Sing Song: Alternative Voices in the Kuala Lumpur Singer-Songwriter Circuit (2000 – 2009) - Azmyl Yusof @ Azmyl Yunor; 12 - Hijrah and the rise of Nasyid Kontemporari in Malaysia - Raja Iskandar Bin Raja Halid; National vs Local Industries; 13 - Branding the Nation Through Ahmad Nawab’s "Malaysia Truly Asia" - Shazlin Amir Hamzah; 14 - The Indonesian Popular Music Industry: Navigating Shadows of Politics and Cultural Uncertainty - Citra Aryandari; 15 - More than Mimicry: Alternative Modernities in the Birth and Development of Iban Popular Music - Connie Lim Keh Nie; 16 - Transcultural Commodities: A Comparative Analysis of Sama-Bajau Popular Musics in Maritime Southeast Asia - Bernard Ellorin; Coda Global Movements, Local Sounds: Nusantara Music and Artistes Overseas - Paul Augustin, Adil Johan; Afterword Bercerita (Sharing Stories) with M. Nasir, Joey Ayala, Dwiki Dharmawan and Pra Budi Dharma on Nusantara Popular Music - Raja Iskandar Bin Raja Halid, Mayco A. Santaella
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
Since 1750, the world has become ever more connected, with processes of production and destruction no longer limited by land- or water-based modes of transport and communication. Volume 7 of The Cambridge World History, divided into two books, offers a variety of angles of vision on the increasingly interconnected history of humankind. The second book questions the extent to which the transformations of the modern world have been shared, focussing on social developments such as urbanization, migration, and changes in family and sexuality; cultural connections through religion, science, music, and sport; ligaments of globalization including rubber, drugs, and the automobile; and moments of particular importance from the Atlantic Revolutions to 1989.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.