Allow Peace to Reign: Musical Genres of Fújì and Islamic Allegorise Nigerian Unity in the Era of Boko Haram

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
DEBRA L. KLEIN
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Boko Haram ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Praise Poetry ◽  
Cultural Fusion

AbstractA proliferation of popular music genres flourished in post-independence Nigeria: highlife, jùjú, Afrobeat, and fújì. Originating within Yorùbá Muslim communities, the genres of fújì and Islamic are Islamised dance music genres characterised by their Arabic-influenced vocal style, Yorùbá praise poetry, driving percussion, and aesthetics of incorporation, flexibility, and cultural fusion. Based on analysis of interviews and performances in Ìlọrin in the 2010s, this article argues that the genres of fújì and Islamic allegorise Nigerian unity—an ideology of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and equity—while exposing the gap between the aspiration for unity and everyday inequities shaped by gender and morality.

The Dance Chorus in Recent Top-40 Music

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Barna
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
Electronic Dance Music ◽  
Production Techniques ◽  
Top 40

Contemporary trends in popular music incorporate timbres, formal structures, and production techniques borrowed from Electronic Dance Music (EDM). The musical surface demonstrates this clearly to the listener; less obvious are the modifications made to formal prototypes used in rock and popular music. This article explains a new formal section common to collaborative Pop/EDM songs called the Dance Chorus. Following the verse and chorus, a Dance Chorus is an intensified version of the chorus that retains the same harmony and contains the hook of the song, which increases memorability for the audience. As the name implies, the Dance Chorus also incorporates and acknowledges the embodiment performed in this section.

scholarly journals The social positions of taste between and within music genres: From omnivore to snob

2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942110060
Author(s):  
Jean-François Nault ◽  
Shyon Baumann ◽  
Clayton Childress ◽  
Craig M Rawlings
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
The Social ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Status Position ◽  
Middle Status

Are higher status cultural tastes in the modern United States better described as being inclusive and broad or exclusive and narrow? We construct an original dataset in response to conflicting answers to this question. We fill a major gap in the literature on cultural tastes by simultaneously considering taste for both musical genres and artists within genres. By examining the compositional balance of respondents’ taste portfolios, we reconcile seemingly incommensurate theoretical frameworks of class homology and omnivorousness. The results indicate that an omnivorous disposition to music is a relatively middle-status position in the social structure. In contrast, positions characterized by higher levels of cultural capital map onto exclusive and narrower tastes for consecrated culture.

Rhythm Quantization: Notes on the History of a Technocultural Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 340-365
Author(s):  
Landon Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Sound Technology

This chapter sketches a general history of rhythm quantization as a widespread practice in popular music culture. Quantization—a sound technology that automatically maps microrhythmic fluctuations onto the nearest beat available within a predefined metric grid—challenges traditional notions of musicking as an embodied activity that is grounded in the co-presence of human agents. At the same time, it encapsulates cultural and cognitive processes that are entirely human, fitting into a broader historical shift towards chronometric precision in Western music. Questions arising from this apparent contradiction are taken up in this chapter, which situates rhythm quantization as an emergent technocultural practice, examining its attendant technologies and requisite structures of music-theoretical knowledge, as well as its reception within the context of different musical genres.

Hybrid in Form, Socialist in Content: The Formal Politics of Chŏlga in the North Korean Revolutionary Opera Sea of Blood

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-445
Author(s):  
STEPHEN JOHNSON
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
The North ◽  
Kim Jong Il ◽  
Analytical Standards ◽  
Korean Nation

AbstractKim Jong Il considered the 1971 premiere of the opera Sea of Blood a watershed moment in opera history. He lauded its innovative use of chŏlga (‘stanzaic song’) rather than aria and recitative. By Western analytical standards, however, chŏlga is simple and predictable, so scholars have thus far glossed over its conventions and their signification. This article instead argues that chŏlga conventions exhibit cultural hybridity and that Kim leveraged such hybridity to advocate a modern, popular, and national sound for North Korea. I begin by outlining hybrid characteristics of colonial-era popular music that chŏlga inherited. I then explore Kim's engagement with such trends in his speeches on chŏlga and demonstrate that cultural hybridity was central to his understanding of sonic modernity. Finally, I analyse a scene from Sea of Blood that pits chŏlga against other music genres, leading to a symbolic victory for the form and for the Korean nation.

Music for Socialism, London 1977

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-93
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN PIEKUT
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Good Time ◽  
Arts Funding ◽  
National Front ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
Rock Band ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Means Of Production

AbstractMembers of the rock band Henry Cow co-founded Music for Socialism in early 1977 with the assistance of several associates in London's cultural left. Their first large event, a socialist festival of music at the Battersea Arts Centre, gathered folk musicians, feminists, punks, improvisers, and electronic musicians in a confabulation of workshops, performances, and debates. The organization would continue to produce events and publications examining the relationship between left politics and music for the next eighteen months. Drawing on published sources, archival documents, and interviews, this article documents and analyzes the activities of Music for Socialism, filling out the picture of a fascinating, fractious organization that has too often served as a thin caricature of abstruse failure compared with the better resourced, more successful, and well-documented Rock Against Racism. As important as the latter was to anti-racist activism during the rise of the National Front, it was not concerned with the issues that Music for Socialism considered most important – namely, how musical forms embody their own politics and how musicians might control their means of production. Affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party (UK), Rock Against Racism produced massive benefit concerts and rallies against the fascist right, drawing together musicians and audiences from punk and reggae. The much smaller events of Music for Socialism enrolled musicians from a range of popular music genres and often placed as much emphasis on discussion and debate as they did on having a good time. The organization's struggles, I will suggest, had less to do with ideological rigidity than it did with the itineracy and penury of musicians and intellectuals lacking support from the music industry, governmental arts funding, labor organizations, or academia.

Music in Mexico City, 1880–1960

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Pérez Montfort
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Urban Center ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
The Way ◽  
Musical Styles

From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, Mexican popular music underwent a significant transformation, thanks to the growth of Mexico City as an urban center and to the influence of both regional and international music genres. At the same time, the Mexican public experienced a profound shift in the way music was consumed. Over the course of five generations, traditional modes of encountering music gave way to a more cosmopolitan enjoyment of new and old musical styles.

Coexistence and/or Confrontation?: Towards a Reappraisal of Christian-Muslim Encounter in Contemporary Ethiopia

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Contemporary Situation ◽  
Muslim Communities

AbstractThis article deals with the genesis and development of Christian-Muslim relations in Ethiopia from the earliest times to the present, with an emphasis on the post-1974 developments in the country. It seeks to demonstrate that these relations were both consensual and conflictual, and that the conventional over-emphasis on the former has obscured—and marginalized and distorted—the occasional confrontational aspects of the relations that also need to be historicized, contextualized and assessed. Examples of both aspects of relations are presented and discussed, and their relevance to the contemporary situation analyzed. In summary, the paper challenges the validity of the concept of peaceful coexistence as the only defining feature of the relations between the Christian and Muslim communities of Ethiopia.

The Swedishness of Swedish Popular-Music Genres

2018 ◽  
pp. 48-115
Author(s):  
MISSING-VALUE MISSING-VALUE
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Genres

The power ballad

Popular Music ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Metzer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Culture Media ◽  
The Other ◽  
Music Genres ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThe power ballad has become a mainstay of popular music since the 1970s. This article offers a history of the songs and discusses their place in the larger field of popular music genres. The songs are defined by the use of both a musical formula based on constant escalation and an expressive formula that combines the euphoric uplift created by rousing music with sentimental themes and ploys. Contrary to views that power ballads first appeared in 1980s rock and are primarily rock numbers, the songs emerged in the 1970s pop recordings of Barry Manilow and others, and from early on crossed genre lines, including pop, rock and R&B. These crossings result in an exchange between the fervour of the power ballad and the distinct expressive qualities of the other genres. This article also places the power ballad in the larger history of the ballad. The songs are part of a shift toward more effusive and demonstrative styles of ballads underway since the 1960s. In addition, the emotional excesses of the power ballad fit into a larger change in the expressive tone of works across different popular culture media. With those works, emotions are to be large, ecstatic and immediate.

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