pop production and gender in a transcultural context · pop production and gender in a...
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POP PRODUCTION AND GENDER IN A TRANSCULTURAL CONTEXT
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MUS4605 FORSKNINGSSEMINAR I POPULÆRMUSIKK
2014
Forelesere: Eirik Askerøi ([email protected]) Jon Mikkel Broch Ålvik ([email protected])
WHAT CAN I EXPECT FROM THIS COURSE?
• Gain greater insight in central terms and problem areas in the field of popular music studies, and a greater comprehension about a specific field of popular music research.
• Be able to apply analytical and theoretical perspectives, and critically reflect about and discuss the different perspectives.
• Provide relevant readings of music and culture.
• Develop a relevant hypothesis/research question, and write an independent and problematizing text in relation to this.
• Improved my abilities in written and oral presentation
WHAT CAN I EXPECT FROM THIS COURSE?
WHAT AM I EXPECTED TO PRODUCE?
• Project presentation: Maximum 10 minutes presentation of your semester assignment (title, hypothesis/research question, background for your choice of assignment, musical material etc.)
• Exam: A written semester assignment of 15 pages). Title and hypothesis is chosen by the student in collaboration with the teachers. Deadline: 17 November
• The assignment shall be delivered in Fronter
WHAT AM I EXPECTED TO PRODUCE?
HOW IS THIS COURSE STRUCTURED?
HOW IS THIS COURSE STRUCTURED?
WHAT IS POPULAR MUSIC?• ‘Popular music’ (or whatever) can only be properly viewed
within the context of the whole musical field, within which it is an active tendency; and this field, together with its internal relationships, is never still - it is always in movement (Middleton 1990: 7)
• According to Richard Middleton popular music must be understood relationally - in relation to a given context, other texts and so on
• not normative (from some kind of value judgement - popular music is worth less than ‘serious’ classical music)
• not as a negation (from something it is not - art music, folk POP PRODUCTION AND GENDER IN A TRANSCULTURAL CONTEXT
EARLY POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES
CULTURAL STUDIES VS.
MUSICOLOGY
• Sociology/cultural studies: The music’s historical influence, social and cutural importance, questions connected to the meaning and value of the music
• Musicology: The music is being analysed on musical premises, questions connected to how the music can be read outside a contextual framework - the music itself
Non (anti)-musicological perspectives
• Developing a critical approach to popular music
• However: serious problems with connecting this to the music
• Greil Marcus, Simon Frith, Lester Bangs, Nik Cohn
Cultural studies did not manage to fill the gap despite its dominating position in the 1980s.
• Musical specificities were not addressed properly
• To strong gravity towards different forms of consumption - the performative in the background
• Ends up in a tension between sociology and music without a clear principal for organisation.
Hawkins (2002): Settling the Pop Score: Pop Texts and Identity Politics
PHILIP TAGG: ANALYSING POPULAR MUSIC• “…why and how does who communicate what to whom and with what
effect?” (Tagg 1982: 3)
• Pioneer in applying a musicological approach to popular music - and a main reason that it is at all possible to study popular music in academic institutions today.
• Semiotic approach to the music (the study of signs/symbols/codes)
• Two main methodological moves:
• Interobjective comparison (IOC)
• Hypothetical substitution (HS)
EKS: EMMERDALE FARM
PHILIP TAGG: ANALYSING POPULAR MUSIC
• The relationship between sound and the moving image in order to focus on the affective qualities of the music. Same picture - different music - different effect
• Opens for new perspectives almost to the same extent as he answers the questions he raises.
• Central to Tagg’s work is the potential effect of the music within different contextual frameworks (that is: movies/videos)
• Are these methods applicable to popular music?
MCCLARY/WALSER: START MAKING SENSE:• Confronts the challenges by applying traditional musicological methodologies to popular music
• Argues that the problems are neither situated within popular music nor traditional musicology as such, but rather by forcing popular music into a ‘classical’ theoretical paradigm (harmony, tonality, form etc)
• Unhealthy dichotomies: Classical vs popular music - highbrow vs. low brow - serious vs unserious
• The idea of the autonomous work: “that it works in accordance with abstract patterns of organization that have nothing to do with the outside world” (p.281) - the greatness of work itself is taken for granted
• Med en slik ideologisk forankring er metodene for studien av klassisk musikk derfor lite egnet for studien av populærmusikk
• Representasjon/performance
POP PRODUCTION AND GENDER IN A TRANSCULTURAL CONTEXT
MCCLARY/WALSER: START MAKING SENSE:Representasjon:
Partitur - fremføringspraksis - det autonome verk
Johan Sebastian Bach: Brandenburgerkonsertene
Innspilling: Berliner Philharmoniker, Edith Picht-Axenfeld & Herbert von KarajanInnspilling: Trevor Pinnock & European Brandenburg Ensemble
POP PRODUCTION AND GENDER IN A TRANSCULTURAL CONTEXT
Prince: When Doves Cry (1984)
POP PRODUCTION AND GENDER IN A TRANSCULTURAL CONTEXT
POP PRODUCTION AND GENDER IN A TRANSCULTURAL CONTEXT
!SENTRALE BEGREPER:
• Diskurs og tekst/Discourse and text
• Pop produksjon/pop production
• Musikk og kjønn/music and gender
• Transkulturalisme/transculturalism
• Autentisitet/authenticity
• Intertekstualitet/intertextuality
POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES• Main perspectives:
• Music analytical/interpretation/reading
• Anthropological/ethnographic
• Historical
• Sociological
• The study of popular music is by definition interdisciplinary, and it is rather a rule than an exception that two or more of these perspectives appear in the same study
Example: ’Svennebanan’:
“By ‘convention’ we usually mean a procedure that has ossified into a
formula that needs no further explanation” (McClary 2000: 3).
“Whatever we label these structures, they are intensely ideological
formations: whether noticed or not, they are the assumptions that allow
cultural activities to ‘make sense’” (ibid.: 5).
Konvensjoner:
Promoe• Strong political engagement!
• Looptroop/Looptroop Rockers!
• «Svennebanan», Kråksongen (2009)
Background
!!
Svenne is a derogatory term for a person living as a so-called medelsvensson, a stereotype
who lives a sad and conventional life, which in this case is not considered desirable.
Svenne can also cover Swedish in the negative sense, in much the same way as the term
blatte can be used to disparage a person of non- Swedish origin.
!!
Svenne(banan)
Jag tycker låten handlar mest om at försöka fly ifrån nånting som man inte, så
där, tycker om hos sig själv genom at supa eller att fly in i dålig underhållning. [I think the song is about trying to escape from something that one does not
like in oneself through drinking or fleeing into bad entertainment.]
Jamen, för hela låten är ju svenne. Ljuden, liksom. Allt. Man får lust å hoppa runt
på nått sån där billigt disco med heltäckningsmatta när man hör den.
[Well, because the whole song is svenne. The sound, in a way, everything. One
wants to jump around in some sort of cheap disco with floor-covering carpets
when listening to it.]
Reception
“The four-on-the-floor groove and endless snare-roll crescendi ubiquitous in house, techno, and everything that followed come from the [TR-]808 and 909”. (Shapiro 2000)
Production
Production
Production
Tack som fan kap kun kap
Koh pangan koh tao khao lak
Fuck it i phuket pingpong show
Kalla folket för tjingtjonghoes
Lyrics:
Music video
Discursive formation through different forms of representation
• Negotiating discourses on normality, white masculinity in a Scandinavian context?
• Precondition: White masculinity as a hegemonic power structure - the flip side of the coin on display…
• The overt play with humour and taste as central to the meaning of the music
• Constructing sonic markers through re-contextualisation of generic codes
• This forms a complex narrative tied together by the artist’s biography, vocal performance, lyrics, production aesthetics, music video etc.
Discursive formations through different forms of representation