The Quiet Rehabilitation of the Brick Factory: Early Soviet Popular Music and its Critics

Slavic Review ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Rothstein
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Recent Collection ◽  
Song Texts ◽  
The Revolution

A recent collection of Soviet song texts differs from its many predecessors in one interesting respect. It contains Pavel German’s “Pesnia o kirpichnom zavode,“ better known as “Kirpichiki,” one of the most popular songs of the late 1920s, and a song that for decades symbolized the survival of petit-bourgeois tastes andposhlosfafter the Revolution. This quiet rehabilitation can serve as the occasion to examine an aspect of Soviet cultural history that is rarely discussed outside the USSR, namely, the beginnings of Soviet popular music.

Perceived and Induced Emotion Responses to Popular Music

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 472-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yading Song ◽  
Simon Dixon ◽  
Marcus T. Pearce ◽  
Andrea R. Halpern
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Web Site ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Music Training ◽  
Emotional Quality ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Categorical Model ◽  
Musical Excerpts ◽  
Emotion Model ◽  
The Difference

Music both conveys and evokes emotions, and although both phenomena are widely studied, the difference between them is often neglected. The purpose of this study is to examine the difference between perceived and induced emotion for Western popular music using both categorical and dimensional models of emotion, and to examine the influence of individual listener differences on their emotion judgment. A total of 80 musical excerpts were randomly selected from an established dataset of 2,904 popular songs tagged with one of the four words “happy,” “sad,” “angry,” or “relaxed” on the Last.FM web site. Participants listened to the excerpts and rated perceived and induced emotion on the categorical model and dimensional model, and the reliability of emotion tags was evaluated according to participants’ agreement with corresponding labels. In addition, the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) was used to assess participants’ musical expertise and engagement. As expected, regardless of the emotion model used, music evokes emotions similar to the emotional quality perceived in music. Moreover, emotion tags predict music emotion judgments. However, age, gender and three factors from Gold-MSI, importance, emotion, and music training were found not to predict listeners’ responses, nor the agreement with tags.

scholarly journals Gender messages in contemporary popular Malay songs

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Collin Jerome
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Women's Roles ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
Content Analyses

Gender has been an important area of research in the field of popular music studies. Numerous scholars have found that contemporary popular music functions as a locus of diverse constructions and expressions of gender. While most studies focus on content analyses of popular music, there is still a need for more research on audience’s perception of popular music’s messages. This study examined adult Malay listeners’ perceptions of gender messages in contemporary Malay songs. A total of 16 contemporary Malay songs were analysed using Fairclough’s (1992) method of text analysis. The content of the songs that conveyed messages about gender were the basis for analysis. The results showed that the messages revolve mainly around socially constructed gender roles and expectations in romantic relationships. Gender stereotypes are also used in the songs to reinforce men’s and women’s roles in romantic relationships. The results also showed that, while listeners acknowledge the songs’ messages about gender, their own perceptions of gender and what it means to be a gendered being in today’s world are neither represented nor discussed fully in the songs analysed. It is hoped the findings from this, particularly the mismatch between projected and perceived notions of gender, contribute to the field of popular Malay music studies in particular, and popular music studies in general where gender messages in popular songs and their influence on listeners’ perceptions of their own gender is concerned.

Musical Borealism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip V. Bohlman
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Simple Concept ◽  
National Music ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Original Concept

The chapter develops an original concept of musical borealism, drawing from literatures on European music and cultural history and from orientalism. The chapter looks beyond the simple concept of borealism as an exotic gaze by opening up horizons and offering a series of nuanced distinctions. Basic categories discussed are Nordic myth, Nordic folk and popular music, Nordic global music, Nordic ultra-national music, and non-Nordic Nordic manifestations. The chapter expands the historical, spatial, and experiential dimensions of musical borealism and creates a historical foundation for the remaining chapters in the handbook.

Veiled Voices

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ameneh Youssefzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Reconstruction Period ◽  
Revolutionary Period ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines music censorship in post-revolutionary Iran, from the 1979–1989 revolutionary period to the reconstruction period (1989–1997), the period of political development (1997–2005), and up to the Ahmadinejād era (2005–2013). After providing a brief background on music censorship in Iran prior to the revolution of 1978–1979, the chapter chronicles developments in music censorship in the country, from Ayatollah Khomeini’s ban on all concerts, and especially the radio and television broadcasts of foreign and Iranian classical and popular music, to the relaxation of strict policies on music under President Hāshemi Rafsanjāni. It also discusses Iran’s cultural policy under President Mohammad Khātami and the emergence of a new regime of censorship under President Mahmud Ahmadinejād.

Remapping Hong Kong popular music: covers, localisation and the waning hybridity of Cantopop

Popular Music ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiu-Wai Chu ◽  
Eve Leung
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
New Media ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
World City ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Global Status ◽  
Popular Music Industry ◽  
Original Songs ◽  
Radio Campaign

AbstractEver since its sovereignty reverted to China, Hong Kong has been torn between its national (in terms of China and its ‘soft’ power) and global status (as ‘Asia's World City’). In this special context, Hong Kong's singular, ambiguous but prolific existence ceased. This paper endeavours to map ‘Cantopop’ (Chinese popular songs) on the new media landscape and examine its decline in the context of the rise and fall of cover versions. Cantopop was once very popular, not only in Hong Kong but also in its neighbouring regions. Its rise in the 1970s was a result of its typical hybridity, an important aspect of which was influenced by the use of cover versions that changed its soundscape. In the mid-1990s, the Cantopop market started to shrink significantly. A radio campaign for localisation advocated the release of original songs aimed at enhancing the development of Cantopop, but in the end proved to have the opposite effect. In the new millennium, ‘Mandapop’ (Mandarin popular songs) has taken on the role as the trend setter of the Chinese popular music industry. We argue in this paper that Cantopop's decline is the result of Hong Kong's loss of hybridity.

Young Listeners’ Music Style Preferences

2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth V. Brittin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Grade Level ◽  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Cultural Identification ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Preference Ratings ◽  
Style Preferences ◽  
Asian Language ◽  
Musical Styles ◽  
At Home

Listeners ( N = 543) in grades 4, 5, and 6 rated their preference for 10 instrumental and vocal selections from various styles, including four popular music selections with versions performed in English, Spanish, or an Asian language. Participants estimated their identification with Spanish/Hispanic/Latino and Asian cultures, the number of languages they spoke, and the number of musical styles the adults in their family listened to at home. There were significant but small correlations between degree of identification with pinpointed cultures and preference for the four popular songs chosen to represent those cultures and significant, small correlations between preference for those and number of languages spoken. However, results on how degree of cultural identification corresponded with preference when responding to English or non-English versions of songs were mixed. There was a significant, small correlation between the number of musical styles adults at home were estimated to like and overall preference, providing data with which to consider the issue of musical omnivorousness. Overall, there was a significant interaction between mean preference ratings by grade level, gender, and selection. With specific vocal selections, girls rated female performances higher than did boys, and boys rated male excerpts higher than did girls, with interesting grade-level patterns.

Frank Tannenbaum and the Mexican Revolution

2010 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-153
Author(s):  
Alan Knight
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Social Program ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Politics And Education ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractThis article examines Frank Tannenbaum's engagement with Mexico in the crucial years following the Revolution of 1910–1920 and his first visit to the country in 1922. Invited—and feted—by the government and its powerful labor allies, Tannenbaum soon expanded his initial interest in organized labor and produced a stream of work dealing with trade unions, peasants, Indians, politics, and education—work that described and often justified the social program of the Revolution, and that, rather surprisingly, continued long after the Revolution had lost its radical credentials in the 1940s. Tannenbaum's vision of Mexico was culturalist, even essentialist; more Veblenian than Marxist; at times downright folkloric. But he also captured important aspects of the process he witnessed: local and regional variations, the unquantifiable socio-psychological consequences of revolution, and the prevailing concern for order and stability. In sum, Tannenbaum helped establish the orthodox—agrarian, patriotic, and populist—vision of the Revolution for which he has been roundly, if sometimes excessively, criticized by recent “revisionist” historians; yet his culturalist approach, with its lapses into essentialism, oddly prefigures the “new cultural history” that many of these same historians espouse.

‘Play it again Sam’: Some notes on the productivity of repetition in popular music

Popular Music ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 235-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Fredric Jameson

Repetition, as a component of musical structure in popular songs, has long played an important part in ‘popular common-sense’ definitions, and criticisms, of the music. ‘It's monotonous’; ‘it's all the same’; ‘it's predictable’: such reactions have probably filtered down from the discussions of mass culture theorists. From this point of view, repetition (within a song) can be assimilated to the same category as what Adorno termed standardisation (as between songs). Of course, the significance of the role played by such techniques in the operations of the music industry – their efficacy in helping to define and hold markets, to channel types of consumption, to pre-form response and to make listening easy – can hardly be denied; it is, however, equally difficult to reduce the function of repetition simply to an analysis of the ‘political economy’ of popular music production and its ideological effects. Despite Adorno's critical assault (see Adorno 1941), despite later twists to the theory by, for instance, Fredric Jameson (1981), who argues that rather than being a negative quality of mass culture, repetition is simply a fundamental characteristic of all cultural production under contemporary capitalism, the question of repetition refuses to go away. Why do listeners find interest and pleasure in hearing the same thing over again? To be able to answer this question, which has troubled not only mass cultural theory but also traditional philosophical aesthetics, as well as more recent approaches such as psychoanalysis and information theory, would tell us more about the nature of popular music, and hence, mutatis mutandis, about music in general, than almost anything else. We must start by locating repetition within an overall theory of musical syntax.

Drawing listener attention in popular music: Testing five musical features arising from the theory of attention economy

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubert Léveillé Gauvin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Attention Economy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The Way

Technological changes in the last 30 years have influenced the way we consume music, not only granting immediate access to a much larger collection of songs than ever before, but also allowing us to instantly skip songs. This new reality can be explained in terms of attention economy, which posits that attention is the currency of the information age, since it is both scarce and valuable. The purpose of these two studies is to examine whether popular music compositional practices have changed in the last 30 years in a way that is consistent with attention economy principles. In the first study, 303 U.S. top-10 singles from 1986 to 2015 were analyzed according to five parameters: number of words in title, main tempo, time before the voice enters, time before the title is mentioned, and self-focus in lyrical content. The results revealed that popular music has been changing in a way that favors attention grabbing, consistent with attention economy principles. In the second study, 60 popular songs from 2015 were paired with 60 less popular songs from the same artists. The same parameters were evaluated. The data were not consistent with any of the hypotheses regarding the relationship between attention economy principles within a comparison of popular and less popular music.

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