In a 2010 interview, Alpert discussed his philanthropic goals, especially that of supporting educational programs that move beyond a focused concentration on the technical aspects of the musical art.
“There’s two ways to approach jazz,” he said, “you can approach it from the outside point of view where you have chords that are a little remote from the actual melody, or you can stay within the context of the song and play it from that angle. I don’t try to force any notes or rely on techniques that I’ve learned through the years. I try to just let it happen as it happens—which is the only way to approach jazz.”
This according to “In the name of imagination” by Don Heckman (Jazz education guide 2009–2010, pp. 20–26).
Today is Herb Alpert’s 80th birthday! Above, receiving the National Medal of Arts from President Obama in 2013; below, back in the day.
There are specific musical gestures with which listeners can identify in camp ways, or use to explain the presence of camp. Even if these are not inherently camp, they may invite a camp interpretation of the text by a performer or a camp reading by a listener.
This according to “Notes on musical camp” by Freya Jarman-Ivens, an essay included in The Ashgate research companion to popular musicology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) pp. 189–203.
Thanks to Improbable Research for bringing this article to our attention! Above, Ms. Minnelli in action; below, Liberace in 1969.
In 2014 Taylor & Francis launched Rock music studies, which publishes articles, book and audio reviews, and opinion pieces on rock music and its numerous subgenres three times a year.
To best focus this international journal, which evolved from Popular music and society, the editors limit the often all-inclusive definition of rock to exclude other genres such as doo-wop, country, jazz, soul, and hip hop, but include roll and roll, rockabilly, blues rock, country rock, jazz rock, folk rock, hard rock, psychedelic rock, prog rock, metal, punk, alternative, and other subgenres of rock.
The editors welcome articles on rock’s interaction with other styles and are receptive to all disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical approaches.
All research articles undergo a rigorous peer review process by at least two anonymous referees, based on an initial screening by the editors. The journal is also open to special issues focusing on an artist, a subgenre, or a topic.
Below, Bob Dylan in the 1960s, the subject of an article in the inaugural issue.
Popular records often include accidents, indicating something about the flexibility of musical practices and the limits of theories. Musical hooks provide useful test-cases because they are normally considered the least accidental part of a song.
One imagines the hook emerging fully formed in a moment of inspiration—the catchy phrase that comes into a songwriter’s head—or at least of calculation: But hooks sometimes incorporate accidents or happen accidentally. If hooks are less than completely determinate, then every aspect of a popular record must be subject to contingency.
This according to “Accidents, hooks, and theory” by Charles Kronengold (Popular music XXIV/3 [October 2005] pp. 381–397).
Above and below, Pérez Prado’s Cherry pink and apple blossom white, one of the examples cited in the article. The intended hook was the prominent trumpet lip slurs; the accidental hook, which made the record a number one U.S. hit in 1955, was Prado’s occasional interpolated vocalizations.
On this Valentine’s Day let’s look at how two ways of performing Cole Porter’s So in love illustrate how musical language can be used strategically to represent and signify constructs of gender and power.
The customary torch-song presentation, as used in the 1953 Hollywood film version of Kiss me Kate directed by George Sidney, is a traditional patriarchal narrative; k.d. lang’s 1991 video cover, by contrast, clearly defies traditional societal gender values.
This according to “Genre, gender, and convention revisited: k.d. lang’s cover of Cole Porter’s So in love” by Lori Burns (repercussions VII–VIII [spring–fall 1999–2000] pp. 299–325).
Above, a still from lang’s video; below, Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel in the 1953 film; further below, lang’s version.
Launched byEquinoxin 2014, Journal of world popular music is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes research and scholarship on recent issues and debates surrounding international popular musics, also known as world music, global pop, world beat, or, more recently, world music 2.0.
The journal provides a forum for exploring the manifestations and impacts of post-globalizing trends, processes, and dynamics surrounding these musics today. It adopts an open-minded perspective, including in its scope any local popularized musics of the world, commercially available music of non-Western origin, musics of ethnic minorities, and contemporary fusions or collaborations with local traditional or roots musics with Western pop and rock musics.
Placing specific emphasis on contemporary, interdisciplinary, and international perspectives, the journal’s special features include empirical research and scholarship on the global creative and music industries, the participants of world music, the musics themselves, and their representations in all media forms today, among other relevant themes and issues, alongside explorations of recent ideas and perspectives from popular music, ethnomusicology, anthropology, musicology, communication, media and cultural studies, sociology, geography, art and museum studies, and other fields with a scholarly focus on world music.
Along with regular articles that focus on the study of world music in all its forms from a variety of academic and other perspectives, the journal also features alternative means of representing research and scholarship through creative and visual means such as photography, poetry, and artwork, and audio and video means through an accompanying website. It also includes reviews of relevant books, special issues, magazines, CDs, websites, DVDs, online music releases, exhibitions, artwork, radio programs, and world music festivals.
Below, a performance by Yothu Yindi, the subject of one of the articles in the inaugural issue.
Throughout Bob Marley’s life, and perhaps even more since his death at the age of 36, his music has demonstrated a unique ability to combine with almost any cultural setting, no matter how different the elements might at first appear. Through his adaptable yet enduring musical messages, he represents an especially articulate type of singer-songwriter.
Marley released a large quantity of introspective, autobiographical material at the height of his success, providing a deep understanding of who he was and what he hoped to achieve through his life and music. Salient themes include protest, revolution, love, hate, biblical concepts, and Rastafari culture.
This according to The words and music of Bob Marley by David Vlado Moskowitz (Westport: Praeger, 2007).
Today would have been Marley’s 70th birthday! Above, a photo by Ueli Frey from 1980, a year before Marley’s death; below, performing with The Wailers the same year.
The aesthetics of musical mashups lie in a particular kind of technical virtuosity and set of listening skills, rather than in the creation of something entirely new or original. The art is to succeed in finding two tracks that fit together musically, resulting in successful songs in their own right.
Mashups are characterized by two underlying principles: contextual incongruity of recognizable samples and musical congruity between the mashed tracks.
Contextual incongruity often creates a humorous effect, which explains why many listeners react with smiles and laughter when hearing a new mashup. In successful mashups, the combination of musical congruity and contextual incongruity results in the paradoxical response: “these two songs should definitely not work together…but they do!”
This according to “Contextual incongruity and musical congruity: The aesthetics and humour of mash-ups” by Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Paul Harkins (Popular music XXXI/1 [January 2012] pp. 87–104).
Most rock critics view Elvis Presley’s career as a progressive sell-out to the music industry, a transition from folk authenticity (the Sun singles of 1954–55) to a sophisticated professionalism epitomized by the ballads and movies of the 1960s.
This Faustian view is in essence just as romantic as the rags-to-riches American success legend—its apparent obverse—but there are major problems with such an analysis. In reality, the processes of creation, production, and consumption in modern mass societies are too dynamic and interactive to permit rigid historical, typological, or evaluative dividing lines.
In post-war America, a pure “folk” role, untouched by commercial influences, had become impossible. The performers that the young Elvis heard and learned from—gospel singers, bluesmen, and country and western stars—were commercial artists. Presley was a commercial artist from the start, and the continuities in his vocal style are more important than any rupture. His two most notable contributions to the language of rock and roll singing are the assimilation of romantic lyricism and a technique referred to here as boogification.
Contrary to most blues singers, Presley’s tone is full and rich, his intonation is precise, and his phrasing is legato. However, this lyrical continuity is subverted by boogification—producing syncopation and cross-rhythms—where he adds extra off-beat notes not demanded by words or vocal lines, splits up syllables or even consonants, and slurs words together, disguising the verbal sense.
This according to “All shook up? Innovation and continuity in Elvis Presley’s vocal style” by Richard Middleton, an essay included in Elvis: Images and fancies (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1979, pp. 151–161).
Today is Presley’s 80th birthday! Below, live in his home town in 1956.
Heavy metal, a genre once considered a dangerous and transgressive force in popular culture, is now increasingly constructed as a light-hearted source of fun, comedy, and entertainment in a growing number of popular cultural forms.
Nowhere is this development clearer than in the recent phenomenon of the heavy metal cookbook, whereby domestic cookery is (sometimes seriously, sometimes comically) reimagined as part of a metal identity. Such cookbooks reveal not only how transgressive cultural forms can become incorporated and domesticated by the mainstream, but also how transgression can be repurposed to suit the changing lives of music fans as they age.
This according to “Hamburgers of devastation: The pleasures and politics of heavy metal cooking” by Michelle Phillipov (International journal of community music VII/2 [2014] pp. 259–72).
Above, the cover of Hellbent for cooking; below, the members of Warrant discuss a popular dessert with a friend.
The main entrance to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition Lou Reed: Caught between the twisted stars opens up on Lincoln Plaza, directly adjacent to the The Metropolitan Opera house. On a sunny day, the Met’s … Continue reading →
Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)* For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound, The first string I touch is for thee. The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound, The song from my heart … Continue reading →
Introduction: Dr. Philip Ewell, Associate Professor of Music at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, posted a series of daily tweets during Black History Month (February 2021) providing information on some under-researched Black … Continue reading →
For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
