scholarly journals Kuuk, Skrap, and the Resistance Vernacular

Nordlit ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Mikkel Broch Ålvik
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Local Language ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Popular Music Analysis

How are gendered identities enabled, contested, and performed through Nordic popular music? Building on relevant approaches in popular music analysis, this article offers an investigation into the function/s of language and musical style in enabling and engendering agency and subjectivity via two case studies in Norwegian popular music. Gender and language are crucial factors in this. In a global context of popular music, bands and artists who choose to sing in their local language may be seen to take up marginal positions compared to artists who choose to sing in English, as the choice of language would naturally limit their audience. I argue that this overlooks the efficacy of using one’s local language to express points of view that are relevant on a local level; what is more, it overlooks the possibility of subverting globalized trends and using these to one’s own ends. In this article, I offer close readings of Norwegian-language albums by two all-female groups: the hip-hop duo Kuuk (Live fra Blitz) and the electronica duo Skrap (Atlantis). Applying Russell A. Potter’s (1995) concept of the ‘resistance vernacular’ as it has been expanded and operationalized by Tony Mitchell (2004), I contend that the bands’ use of their local language opens their music to a broader set of possibilities when it comes to subverting gender and genre norms at the same time as it enhances the music’s political potential. Working in discernible genres enables both bands to create music that expresses a feminist stance; in the case of Kuuk, deconstructing and subverting expectations of gendered behaviour through parodying hip-hop misogyny, and in the case of Skrap, drawing on strategic naïvety to steer clear of gender stereotypes.

The racial politics of hybridity and ‘neo-eclecticism’ in contemporary popular music

Popular Music ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Middleton ◽  
Roger Beebe
Keyword(s):  
Predominantly White ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
Consumption Practices

This paper explores some forms of rock/rap hybridity and a historically related shift toward a greater eclecticism in consumption practices in popular music in the United States in the late 1990s, a period marked by the decline of rock as the dominant mode of popular music. This decline has repercussions not simply for a musical style, but additionally for the privileged subjects who are both the producers and consumers of that music: predominantly white, middle-class males. A number of different strategies have emerged which attempt to develop new positions for these white suburbanites to occupy in the contemporary music-cultural terrain in order to re-assert their hegemony as both producers and consumers. On the producers' side, the most common strategy has been to develop hybrid forms which combine rock with styles of its musical competitors – most notably, of hip hop music and culture. On the consumer side, the response has been the emergence of a ‘neo-eclectic’ form of listening where a number of formerly disparate or even hostile musical forms are consumed by a single (white suburban) individual.

Jaco Pastorius, the Electric Bass, and the Struggle for Jazz Credibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-138
Author(s):  
Brian F. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Electric Bass ◽  
Public Persona

This article explores Jaco Pastorius’s efforts to legitimize himself as a jazz electric bassist. Even though the instrument had existed at the margins of jazz for decades, by the 1970s it was overwhelmingly associated with rock and funk music and therefore carried with it the stigmatized connotations of outsider status. Building on the work of Bill Milkowski, Kevin Fellezs, Lawrence Wayte, and Peter Dowdall, I situate Pastorius’s career within the broader context of 1970s jazz fusion. I then analyze how he deliberately used his public persona, his virtuosic technical abilities, the atypical timbre of his fretless electric bass, and his work as a composer and bandleader to vie for acceptance within the jazz tradition. As I argue, Pastorius specifically attempted to establish his jazz credibility through his first two solo albums, initially by disassociating himself from his own instrument, and then by eventually abandoning the musical style that had made him famous. Ultimately, Pastorius’s story serves as a useful case study of the tangible ramifications of authenticity disputes and the complicated ways in which musicians have attempted to navigate contested musical spaces within popular music.

Step It Up and Go

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Menconi
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The State ◽  
College Town ◽  
American Idol ◽  
Recorded Music ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
The Many ◽  
Nina Simone

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina’s extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state’s music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina’s Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball. Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina’s sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover.

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.

The Rise and Rise of K-Pop

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Howard
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Cultural Economy ◽  
Central Component ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Success

K-pop, Korean popular music, is a central component in Korea’s cultural exports. It helps brand Korea, and through sponsorships and tie-ups, generates attention for Korea that goes well beyond the music and media industries. This essay traces the history of Korean popular music, from its emergence in the early decades of the twentieth century, through the influence of America on South Korea’s cultural development and the assimilation of genres such as rap, reggae, punk, and hip hop, to the international success of Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ and the idol group BTS. It explores the rise of entertainment companies, how they overcame the digital challenge, and how their use of restrictive contracts created today’s cultural economy. It introduces issues of gender and sexuality, and outlines how music videos and social media have been used to leverage fandom.

Gender, Sexuality, and Youth in a Global Context

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anoop Nayak
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Nation States ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Managing Risk

Gender and sexuality are slippery social constructs whose meanings vary across time and place. To capture some of the complexity of these relations, it is necessary to consider their mutable meanings in different parts of the world. This means understanding how gender and sexuality are regulated, produced, consumed, and embodied in young people’s lives transnationally. At a regulatory level, nation-states are found to disseminate different policies and approaches when it comes to young people’s gender and sexual learning. Alongside formal pedagogical approaches, young people’s peer groups and local friendship circles are critical to the production of sexual knowledge and gender practices. In what is a rapidly interconnected world, processes of cultural globalization evident in the spread of film, media, and music are providing new templates from which to transform more “traditional” gender and sexual relations. In consuming global images of gender and sexuality, young people are found to be active and discerning agents who experience and negotiate global processes at a local level, managing risk and carving out new opportunities as they see fit. Young people are seen to perform and embody gender and sexuality in a host of different ways. In doing so, they not only reveal the instability of sex and gender norms but also disclose the intense amount of “gender work” that goes into the performance of gender and sexuality.

Nordic Modernity and the Structure of the Musical Landscape

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Holt
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Global Modernity

This chapter outlines macro structural changes in the Nordic music landscape, drawing from sociological theory of modernity. The chapter identifies popular music in wider tensions in Nordic modernity, particularly in relation to shifting hegemonic cultures to uncover the underlying dynamics of tensions between shifting mainstream formations and their alternatives. Following this logic, musical style and taste involve positionings in relation to issues of capitalism, nationalism, and mass media. The chapter analyzes changes in the region’s music landscape within the region’s evolving modernity, particularly in the transition from a national to a more global modernity. This is illustrated by the declining status of Stockholm’s Anglo pop music industry as the region’s center into a more decentralized and networked transnational cultural geography.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document