Category Archives: Popular music
Patti Smith and Rimbaud
Patti Smith’s direct assimilation of Arthur Rimbaud’s work into hers presents a case of cultural cross-fertilization in which the poetry of a foreign high-cultural figure enters into and influences a popular and countercultural discourse, illustrating how a nonacademic reading of … Continue reading
Filed under Literature, Popular music, Reception
Liberace’s taste
Władziu Valentino Liberace’s Las Vegas home represented the democratization of aristocracy, a do-it-yourself coronation, the people’s palace. It is the apotheosis of décor as persona and persona as décor. The Moroccan Room (above, click to enlarge) is a tile-and-glass atrium … Continue reading
Filed under Architecture, Curiosities, Popular music
Bluegrass discography
Maintained since 1996 by Charley Pennell, a cataloguer at the D.H. Hill Library at North Carolina State University, Bluegrass discography lists bluegrass singles, LPs, tapes, CDs, and videos by label, performer, and album. Resources for obtaining these publications are also listed. Below, … Continue reading
Filed under North America, Popular music, Resources, World music
Air guitar and gender
Like real rock guitar playing, air guitar—miming electric guitar playing without an instrument—is heavily informed by gendered practices in rock, where the electric guitar functions as a signifier of masculine power and implied sexual prowess, and performing on it involves … Continue reading
Filed under Instruments, Popular music, Women's studies
Ragtime rants
A pair of brief unattributed articles appeared in the July 1901 issue of American musician to articulate opposing viewpoints on ragtime, which had become increasingly popular since the late 19th century. War on ragtime denounced the genre in no uncertain … Continue reading
Filed under Black studies, Jazz and blues, Popular music, Reception
Jimmie Rodgers and semiotics
Jimmie Rodgers’s recordings present nearly all of the yodel types used by hillbilly singers, including nonsense-syllable strands, breaking voice registers while singing words, and brief falsetto grace-note descents into his natural voice. His yodels contain influences from both African American (falsetto … Continue reading
Filed under Performance practice, Popular music
The American wind band
In 2010 Scarecrow Press launched the series The American wind band with A history of the trombone by David M. Guion; the book is a comprehensive account of the development of the instrument from its initial form as a 14th-century … Continue reading
Filed under Instruments, New series, Popular music
Mahler and Beyoncé
What could a late–19th-century Viennese symphonic genius and an early–21st-century African American pop star have in common? A blood line, according to recent research that has led to the conclusion that Beyoncé Knowles is Gustav Mahler’s eighth cousin, four times … Continue reading
Filed under featured, Popular music, Romantic era
Social media, celebrity, and popular music
Popular music has played, and continues to play, a central role in bringing aspects of celebrity culture into the mainstream world. Fame has been most consistently, deliberately, and insightfully thematized by popular music, which has also been at the center … Continue reading
Filed under Mass media, Popular music
