Category Archives: Popular music

by | September 12, 2016 · 6:00 am

Prince and patriarchy

miles davis - prince

Prince’s push-pull interactions with Miles Davis in his 1987 Sign o’ the times tour were emblematic of two interrelated tensions in his career.

One is the question of how wind and brass instruments fit into Prince’s music. His decision to give horns a central place in his 1980s and 1990s bands showed the same curious ambivalence as his relationship to Davis.

The second tension that Prince’s onstage interaction with Davis demonstrated is the issue of patriarchy. Prince spent the 1980s playing the part of the androgynous sexual imp, the 1990s found him engaging the exaggerated machismo of hip hop, and by the 2000s he was sporting natty suits, openly exploring jazz, and avoiding any discussion of queer identity.

These two spheres, the biographical and the musical—Prince’s fraught relationships with masculinity and with the musical styles of his father’s generation—all came together in the bell of Miles Davis’s trumpet. Prince used horns to act out two conflicts at the same time: They enacted the tension between the musical past and the present, and they served symbolically to resolve a conflict between two different versions of traditional masculinity—one violent and hypersexual, the other restrained and mature. Prince was ultimately using his horn section as a tool to leverage his own position in the black musical patriarchy.

This according to “Prince, Miles, and Maceo: Horns, masculinity, and the anxiety of influence” by Griffin Mead Woodworth (Black music research journal XXXIII/2 [fall 2013] pp. 117–150. This issue of Black music research journal, along with many others, is covered in our new RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text collection.

Above, Prince and Miles in 1987.

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by | August 18, 2016 · 6:00 am

Rumba and racial politics

 

The Afro-Cuban music and dance genre rumba has historically been considered una cosa de negros (a black thing) and reviled due to racialized stereotypes that link the practice with el bajo mundo (the low life), excessive alcohol use, and violence. Nevertheless, the socialist government has sought to elevate rumba’s status during the past half century as part of a larger goal of foregrounding and valorizing the African contributions to Cuban identity and culture.

Rumba is the most significant and popular black-identified tradition in Cuba; in addition to its association with blackness, it is often portrayed as a particularly potent symbol of the masses and working-class identity, another reason why the government has aimed to harness rumba to its cultural nationalist discourse.

Despite the discursive valorization of the practice found in much Cuban scholarship and political rhetoric, rumba continues to be identified with a particular and marginalized sector of the population. In many ways, the complex situation of rumba performance conforms to the more general trend of contemporary racial politics on the island.

This according to “National symbol or ‘a black thing’? Rumba and racial politics in Cuba in the era of cultural tourism” by Rebecca Bodenheimer (Black music research journal XXXIII/2 [fall 2013] pp. 177–205). This issue of Black music research journal, along with many others, is covered in our new RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text collection.

Above and below, street performances of rumba.

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by | August 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Electro hop and Afrofuturism

Uncle Jamm's Army

Most narratives on Los Angeles hip hop begin with gangsta rap, but recordings, videos, news articles, photographs, interviews, fliers, and memories detail a different story.

Electro hop, or techno hop, was the direct precursor to gangsta rap. This multifaceted and complex period emerged in the early 1980s and was developed on the streets of Los Angeles by adolescent black males.

Expanding from mobile disk jockey crews, electro hop artists produced a musical soundscape and cultivated a cultural landscape that drew from both electro funk and hip hop, demonstrating both how intramusical components are linked to extramusical factors and how Afrofuturist concepts (re)envision (sur)realities. Electro hop sounds off on other/outer ways of reconsidering and reinvigorating planet rock.

This according to “Something 2 dance 2: Electro hop in 1980s Los Angeles and its Afrofuturist link” by Gabriela Jiménez (Black music research journal XXXI/1 [Spring 2011] pp. 131–144). This issue of Black music research journal, along with many others, is covered in our new RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text collection.

Above, Uncle Jamm’s Army, a seminal electro hop group, in the 1980s; below, UJA’s signature hit Dial-a-freak.

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by | July 4, 2016 · 6:00 am

Stephen Foster and nostalgia

 

The dates of Stephen Foster’s life bracket the transformation of U.S. culture from a patrician society with a stable hierarchical structure to a democratic society stressing individual responsibility and freedom.

The dynamic interaction of individual alienation, cultural idealism, and popular culture assumed a particularly vivid dimension in music; the portrayal of bittersweet emotions stimulated by the contemplation of something lost to the narrator became the favorite device of 19th-century songwriters.

Nostalgic topics in Foster’s songs include the middle-class domestic woman, the Old South, and traditional Celtic ballads.

This according to “Sound and sentimentality: Nostalgia in the songs of Stephen Foster” by Susan Key (American music XIII/2 [summer 1995] pp. 145–166).

Today is Foster’s 190th birthday! Below, Gentle Annie, one of the songs discussed in the article.

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by | June 20, 2016 · 6:00 am

Detroit, Techno City

Detroit is known internationally as Techno City, named after the dance music genre pioneered by DJ/producers like Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson.

In the 1980s local DJs melded Detroit funk, European synth-pop, and avant-garde composition into a unique futuristic sound. Techno, however, went largely unappreciated in the American marketplace. Mirroring the career trajectory of American jazz musicians in the 1960s, the creators of techno made their living by touring Europe extensively, and became superstars on that continent.

This according to “A tale of two cities” by Mike Rubin (Spin XIV/10 [October 1998] pp. 104–109). Below, Atkins’s Techno city from 1984.

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by | June 9, 2016 · 6:00 am

Cruise showbands

cosmic band cruise ship

Cruise ships are among the most visible postmodern tourism products, and cruise tourists are the antithesis of cultural tourists.

Within the physical cocoon of the ship, a social and cultural cocoon is constructed by the cruise line, sheltering the temporary inhabitants of the ship from the realities of the ports visited. Despite the portrayal of a cruise as an exotic holiday, on board the ships construct a representation of Western culture, with the assistance of musical performances.

The contribution of the showband is central to the construction of a Western and cosmopolitan music culture within a deterritorialized and mobile geography. Through performance mode and genre, appearance, repertoire, and nationality, the showband constructs a facade of music culture; but the reality behind the facade is quite different. If the ship may be considered an empty vessel into which culture is poured, it is the music of ensembles such as the showband that creates and defines this culture.

This according to “Corporately imposed music cultures: An ethnography of cruise ship showbands” by David Cashman (Ethnomusicology review XIX [2014]).

Above and below, Cosmic Band in action.

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by | May 30, 2016 · 6:00 am

Boogaloo’s influence

‘boogaloo

In the 1960s boogaloo, a dance akin to the jitterbug, leapt out of New York’s black and Latino communities and swept across the U.S. Boogaloo music and dance also captured the hearts of white teenagers, driving men like Berry Gordy and the founders of Stax Records to find musicians who could capitalize on this crossover appeal.

Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, and other rappers are anointed heirs of these R&B musicians, as hip hop is firmly rooted in boogaloo.

This according to Boogaloo: The quintessence of American popular music by Arthur Kempton (New York: Pantheon, 2003).

Below, James Brown demonstrates.

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by | May 21, 2016 · 6:00 am

Lydia Mendoza lived it

Lydia Mendoza

From the age of 12 through a career that spanned eight decades, Lydia Mendoza was a beacon to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, showing them that no matter how humble their situation was they had a culture worth celebrating.

In a 2004 interview, asked what happened to make her the first Mexican-American singing star, she replied “Whether I was singing a bolero or a waltz or a polka it didn’t matter. When I sang, I sang it so I felt like I was living that song. Every song I ever sang I did with the feeling that I was living that song.”

This according to “Lydia motion” by Garth Cartwright (fRoots XXVI/9:261 [March 2005] pp. 30–35, 41).

Today would have been Mendoza’s 100th birthday! Above, the singer in 1948; below, performing in 1975.

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by | May 8, 2016 · 6:00 am

Punta and Garífuna culture

Pen Cayetano and the Turtle Shell Band

The dance-song genre punta and its derivative, punta rock, are iconic of Garífuna ethnicity and modernity. Punta permeates performances of both secular and semisacred rituals, and it is the genre most often used for social commentary.

Punta rock arose from the need to create a new genre fusing elements of Garífuna culture and music that express both indigenous and urban social ideals. As such, it maintains its popularity because it incorporates both the traditional and the contemporary.

This according to “Ethnicity, modernity, and retention in the Garifuna punta” by Oliver N. Greene (Black music research journal XXII [fall 2002] pp. 189–216).

Above and below, Pen Cayetano and the Turtle Shell Band—the originators of punta rock.

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by | April 13, 2016 · 6:00 am

Al Green’s “Take me to the river”

Written and recorded by Al Green (guitarist Teenie Hodges gets a co-writing credit), Take me to the river straddles the line between sacred and secular—between sultry soul music and ecstatic gospel release. The sound is R&B with lashings of subtlety; it doesn’t sound like a band playing, it sounds like a lot of instruments humming.

Despite never being released as a single, Take me to the river was covered in turn by several other R&B musicians. Still, it took a band of CBGB-dwelling art school grads to fully realize the song’s potential.

Produced by Brian Eno, the Talking Heads version turns the original production inside out. In the original version, the strings, horns, organ, guitars, and Green’s wild-honey voice blend into a single swinging, winning thing, whereas the Heads/Eno version emphasizes open space and distinct sounds.

This according to “Take me to the river” by Tim De Lisle, an essay included in Lives of the great songs (London: Penguin, 1995 pp. 21–25; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1995-20152).

Today is Green’s 70th birthday! Above, Green in 2010 (photo credit: Kingkingphoto&celebrity-photos.com, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0).

Below, the original recording, followed by the Talking Heads version.

BONUS: Talking Heads in Stop making sense (1984).

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