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Using a group of Japanese‐born experimental musicians who make their lives in Tokyo and New York as a case study, this article examines how new musical genres are created, shared, and mediated through layers of circulations, identities, and locations. The author argues that these musicians' lives and music have a kind of "noisy" quality, complicating genre boundaries and identity binaries in their wake. Through ethnographic "thick descriptions" and the words of the musicians themselves, the author shows the web of musical genres, languages, geopolitical identities, and gender relations that combine to make up the texture of musical performances. This article is also thinking through and with a sea change in the study of Japanese music. In recent years, building on the work of scholars of Japanese cultural studies, ethnomusicologists have critiqued how monocultural and mono‐ethnic mythologies have influenced the study and production of Japanese music. Ethnomusicology and area studies are Cold War enterprises, designed to create research that would help maintain that world order, educate Americans as global leaders, and change hearts and minds in foreign lands, leading to a cultural conservatism that often led scholars to focus on "traditional" Japanese music. Recently, however, research on Japanese music has increasingly focused on popular and experimental musics and examines how Japanese contemporary identity is created and maintained through music. Thus this article gives readers a view of how US‐based Japanese music scholarship is moving away from such Cold War paradigms and contributes to this shift in studies of Japanese music and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While certain musical genres and songs are widely popular, there is still large variability in the music that individuals find rewarding or emotional, even among those with a similar musical enculturation. Interestingly, there is one Western genre that is intended to attract minimal attention and evoke a mild emotional response: elevator music. In a series of behavioral experiments, we show that elevator music consistently elicits low pleasure and surprise. Participants reported elevator music as being less pleasurable than music from popular genres, even when participants did not regularly listen to the comparison genre. Participants reported elevator music to be familiar even when they had not explicitly heard the presented song before. Computational and behavioral measures of surprisal showed that elevator music was less surprising, and thus more predictable, than other well‐known genres. Elevator music covers of popular songs were rated as less pleasurable, surprising, and arousing than their original counterparts. Finally, we used elevator music as a control for self‐selected rewarding songs in a proof‐of‐concept physiological (electrodermal activity and piloerection) experiment. Our results suggest that elevator music elicits low emotional responses consistently across Western music listeners, making it a unique control stimulus for studying musical novelty, pleasure, and surprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That is, while similar to Peter Falk's character, Sanneh is a likeable sleuth in the end his musical tastes often tend, following Columbo's, to come across as agreeably middlebrow in pursuit of some higher goal (Columbo's is to catch the killer, while Sanneh's is to validate the genre). Kelefa Sanneh's I Major labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres i tries to apply some kind of controlling narrative to an esthetic category that is shambolic beyond any other. Bouncing between myriad genres, subgenres, and sub-subgenres, inserting elements of memoir along the way, following some threads obsessively while bypassing others altogether, neither is Sanneh's book really a history of popular music: it's his I own i history of popular music and how it has impacted his life. [Extracted from the article]

"Crooner: Singing from the Heart from Sinatra to Nas" by Alex Coles is a book that aims to reanimate the underappreciated history of crooning. Coles explores the crooner archetype and its influence on various genres of popular music, from disco to reggae to hip hop. While the title and chapter structure may suggest a departure from Sinatra, Coles consistently references and pays homage to him throughout the book. The author's passion for crooning is evident in the carefully crafted narrative, which balances personal insights with measured analysis. Although the book could benefit from a more extensive list of further reading, it offers a rich and vibrant genealogy of crooning that will appeal to both casual music fans and academics. [Extracted from the article]

What are the social factors shaping musical repertoires? This paper analyzes repertoires as social relations among performers, refracted through factors such as the organization of industry, genres, race, and gender. Using data from American popular music recordings, performers and songs are treated as a two-mode network and repertoire communities are operationalized as bicliques. The production of culture perspective, the sociology of genres, and theories of race and gender imply hypotheses that are tested diachronically. Analysis finds support for the first two, with genres becoming the strongest basis of repertoire community membership while race and gender are surprisingly weak. Importantly, these factors worked in tandem as reflexive mechanisms for each other. The repertoire community system documents the rise of genre as the primary means of categorizing American popular music in the early twentieth century and mediated the effect of other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we link the sociology of culture with the sociology of race and racism to examine how race shapes perceptions of genre ambiguity in popular music. Notable studies in the sociology of culture have recently shown how intermediaries, such as food or literary critics, subtly devalue categories associated with non‐White producers and highlighted the obstacles Black musicians and audiences face in spanning racialized genre boundaries. In contrast, we focus on a less visible yet pervasive racial structure that shapes the likelihood that critics identify a musician or group as spanning genre categories. We bring insights from critical race theory (CRT) into direct conversation with empirical scholarship on categorical ambiguity by analyzing 47,230 reviews of 3,252 albums archived on the Metacritic database from 2000 to 2007. We find that critics are less likely to describe Black musicians as category spanners relative to White musicians, and that multiracial music groups are the most likely to have ambiguous genre identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Intertextuality and hypertextuality in recorded popular music', S. Lacasse (in M. Talbot (ed.) The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, Liverpool University Press, 2000) proposes a model for understanding intertextuality in recorded popular music. His model provides different ways one text may reference another, while simultaneously transforming the style and/or subject of the original text. Style and subject are two of the integral elements that make up a work, yet what is missing from Lacasse's model is the medium through which these elements are presented. This article addresses that gap by introducing three phonomatic referential practices (retronormativity, vinyl aesthetics and analogue allusion) that transform the medium of a referenced work alongside transformations of style and/or subject. It further expands the model by discussing self-quotation as a referential practice. The applicability of the expanded model is demonstrated using the music of Portishead, one of the bands that pioneered the trip hop genre in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical compositions require genre-specific sophisticated performance techniques. This paper focuses primarily on the features of Chinese pop and traditional music, based on the music genre's influence on the vocal music. To achieve this goal, the analysis methods and the Shapiro-Wilk test were used. The study involved 218 music major students from the Beijing International Art School, Shanghai Normal University, and Guangzhou College of Music. The audience and respondents gave less preference to pop music (47% and 39%) compared to the traditional music (53% and 61%). The Shapiro-Wilk test revealed that, when it comes to pop music, the strongest preference was attributed to music geographical spread (0.867), and in the case of traditional music the strongest preference was for higher education (0.927). The paper established the specific features of different genres of music. The most common elements pertaining to pop music include: the option to apply a variety of music elements and singing techniques; rhythm stability; a simple form of vocal performance; extreme sound techniques; preserving the emotionality of the singing; a combination of Western and Chinese elements. Traditional music is characterized by a harmony of music elements and voice timbres, maintenance of the high-pitched voice, natural sound, throat singing, performance quality, preservation of Chinese traditional music elements. Traditional music instruction was the best thing for improving intonation (0.815), maintenance of sound quality (0.806), and development of vocal range (0.718). Pop music is known for a combination of various music elements (0.901), conveyance of the performance style (0.312). The paper's practical implications boil down to determining the characteristic features of pop and traditional music, as well as elements describing vocal music. Further studies might involve a comparative analysis between Chinese pop music, traditional music, and Western pop and traditional music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the conditions of multiculturalism, Chinese vocal art has formed its own unique theoretical system based on the characteristics of vocalization, articulation, diction, and breathing. The aims of the study are to identify singing features in Chinese popular and traditional music, as well as to determine the ways in which musical genres influence vocals. Two teachers of modern vocal, two teachers of traditional vocal, 30 students of the Vocal Arts Department of Beijing University, art historians from the Central Conservatory of Music and Lishui University took part in the study. According to the study purpose, it was found that in traditional Chinese vocal arts, the main technique is falsetto (58%), mixed techniques (21.2%), vibrato (13.2%), overtone singing (6.1%), and glissando (1.5%) are also used. In popular singing the key technique is splitting (33.6%), also used: subtone (20.2%), vibrato (17.7%), drive (12.1%), glissando (11.1%), vocal fry register (9.2%), falsetto (3.3%), overtone singing (2%). As a result of the correlation analysis the dependence of popular singing techniques on traditional singing was determined. The coefficient of determination was 33.5%. It was also determined that when performing pop music, vibrato is controlled; noises and growling tones are used in rock music; uncontrolled vibrato, falsetto, and mixed techniques are used in opera; nasal sounds and minimal vibrato are in folk/country music; clear diction, articulation, slides, and scatting in blues/jazz; rhythmic and nasal sounds in hip-hop. The experiment results can be used in pedagogy for teaching vocals in China and abroad, as part of cultural activities related to the organization of events such as festivals, concerts, tourist programs, theatrical performances, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the findings of a larger ongoing study that explores visions of "unity" and "belonging" among present-day Malaysians that are shaped by their engagements with popular music genres of the country's indigenous ethnic communities. Through a critical theory-informed qualitative analysis of Malaysians' views on the popular Iban song, "Biar Bekikis Bulu Betis", the study described in this article examines the visions of unity and belonging that they conceived through various engagements with the song. The findings show that these visions were co-created in and through a dynamic interaction between the song and the audience. The former evoked a sense of solidarity and cohesion, and the latter conceived their visions of unity and belonging based on those feelings. However, the findings reveal that these visions did not coalesce with the "grand" or "official" narratives of unification and inclusion, given the audience's strong sense of togetherness and attachment to their state of origin and community rather than to the country and the nation. Such findings are important as they provide insights into the potential role that popular music of Malaysia's indigenous ethnic communities can play in the complex and never-ending process of achieving a national sense of unity, belonging and identity in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining mahragānāt, a genre of music common among the lowincome working class in Cairo, and upper-class pop music, this article studies the expression of love and grief across socio-economic classes in Egypt. It challenges the mainstream argument that men, especially those belonging to lower socioeconomic classes, are expected to perform 'like men' and suppress their emotions and affection. These mahragānāt exhibit extreme affection and grief as men threat of inflicting self-harm or committing suicide if they lose their female lovers. This genre's popularity on social media resonates with increasing suicide rates among lower socio-economic classes due to failed love affairs. By focusing on expressions of love in Egyptian music, this article suggests a dialectic relation between love, class and the understanding of masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews studies that examine internationally circulating music which has reached the upper echelon of all-genre single charts in the 21st century. The examinations will be used as examples for the analysis of sonic aesthetics that are embedded in a particular frame of cultural debate, which the article conceptualises as 'mainstream popular music'. The research field is then mapped and discussed with regard to prevailing objectives, methods and findings, including elaborations on how future research might advance understanding of the aesthetics within the discourses of mainstream popular music and, thus, of contemporary culture at large. The literature review focuses on music- and listener-based analytical directions and critically reflects on the frequent absence of theoretically well-founded and empirically underpinned, context-sensitive music examinations, particularly with regard to quantitative and audience research. The concluding section calls for a more integrated perspective on mainstream popular music as a discourse and praxis formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indeed, to read Holst-Warhaft's presentation of their poetry, to listen to their poignant sounds, and to dance to their rhythms, is to recognize that the I nisiotika i remain as vital to the Aegean islands as sweet water. Throughout the book, Holst-Warhaft displays a concern with traditional island music not only for its unique sounds but also for the powerful emotions conjured by songs and dances that remain connected to place, history, and family. Holst-Warhaft suggests that, while these songs remain treasured masterpieces of the I nisiotika i tradition, they have long been regarded as less serious than songs from northern mainland Greece, perhaps either because the poetry is rendered in a female voice and the songs have been performed by women, or else because, in spite of their sadness, Greek islanders dance to these plaintive songs. [Extracted from the article]

Heavy metal, once considered an outlier among the popular music genres by music critics and scholars, has nonetheless consistently enjoyed a large and dedicated fanbase. In the twenty-first century, it has become an increasingly popular subject of music scholarship, which has led to an increase in the number and variety of metal resources available to and collected by libraries. This article will provide a basic introduction to heavy metal music and materials and some suggested best practices for working with these materials in a library or archival setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research sought to examine how consuming music on streaming platforms, such as Spotify, and other digital media acts as a form of interpersonal communication. This survey research, which is based on a sample (n = 401) recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) human intelligence marketplace, revealed that once consumption rates surpass casual listening (more than 2 hours per day), popular music offers remarkably comparable communicative value for listeners. Results clarified that regardless of music genre preferences, relatively frequent listeners consistently call upon music for parasocial interaction, to inform their identity, and as a means of sharing with others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In music studies, genre theory has primarily been used to study popular music rather than classical music. This article demonstrates how genre theory can be applied to studying classical music production in order to understand how its value is negotiated and reproduced. Drawing on data from interviews with early-career female classical musicians in London, it explores discourses of classical music as a genre in order to understand how genre shapes working lives. We identify three themes within the data: first, genre hierarchies contribute to the (re-)production of divisions of labour, in ways that reaffirm gendered hierarchies. Second, many research participants actively portrayed themselves as being interested in different musical genres, both as listeners and as performers, but identified other classical musicians as having pejorative attitudes towards non-classical genres or practices such as playing in a band. Third, genre hierarchies were (re-)produced in institutional settings, in musicians' working practices and in social interactions. Overall, analysing classical music as a genre through examining the perspectives of freelance musicians shows that subgenres within classical music, as well as classical music itself, are understood relationally to other genres in a hierarchy of value that reaffirms existing inequalities in the cultural labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary popular music, covering or adapting previous songs signals a tribute or reworking of popular hits, which implies acknowledgement of the original musicians. This connection can be interpreted as a form of musical impact among artists. A network graph with more than 106k artists and 855k cover versions extracted from the web site SecondHandSongs was created. The objective is to explore the shape of this network, identify the most relevant artists according to different impact measurements and to visualize connections between music genres. This analysis is done from a longitudinal perspective with the aim of understanding how cover versions can inform us about the history of the contemporary popular music. Results show that the number of covers by artist is skewed distributed, diminishing gradually since the 1950s. Different network metrics have allowed to identify the most covered (weighted indegree), the most influential (PageRank) and the most crossover artists (weighted betweenness centrality). The network graph also shows that genre affinity is the main criterion for covering songs between artists, language being the second. Remakes from other genres reflect that Jazz and Pop/Rock are the most influential because they emerge stronger and form the core of their respective sub-networks. Cover songs describe two cycles. In a first phase from 1900s to 1950s, dominated by Jazz and Vocal artists, the covers are more frequent and associated with the notion of reworking (e.g. jazz standards); in a second stage, since the 1950s, when the Pop/Rock emerges, cover songs are less common and seen as tribute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors wrestle effectively with the inherent issues of music industry research through a cultural/arts administration lens, particularly the lack of an accepted definition of popular music and differing national understandings of what - and who - are part of the music industry. It is worth nothing that the authors have defined popular music as, "the forms and genres of music that are most accessible to, meaningful to, and enjoyed by large numbers of people" (Chen et al. [1]). This reality demands a new understanding of the economic and cultural impacts of the music industry and the roles of national economic and cultural policy in a global music marketplace. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on Raymond Knapp's Making Light: Haydn, Musical Camp, and the Long Shadow of German Idealism bridges the work of Haydn and New World vernacular music's against the backdrop of German Idealism's durable influence. Topics include Knapp engages musical scores and abstract theoretical frameworks, the monograph offers a rich complement to the edited volume Music & Camp, and Making Light's unique aims and investigative depth require appreciation on their own terms.

This article analyses the coverage of pop music in two magazines for older children and young adults during the transition from late socialism to post-socialism in Czechoslovakia or what has been called the "anti-decade" of 1985-1995. By revisiting Pionýr, a magazine for adolescents aged 12 to 15 and Mladý svět, a magazine for young adults aged 15 to 30, I uncover the gradual transformation of Czechoslovak pop music from a genre for Mladý svět's broad young audience to one aimed specifically at teenagers after 1989. These teens were the target readers of Pionýr and its post-socialist successors, Filip and Filip pro-náctileté (Filip for Teenagers). Pop music was connected with social capital and incorporated into the lifestyles of Mladý svět's readers. However, it gradually disappeared from the pages of the magazine and became increasingly visible in Pionýr and its post-socialist counterparts. This study argues that this connection of pop music with teen lifestyles and values had profound social impacts between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Selekā art and kava collective is found in the heart of the Kingdom of Tonga's urban centre and capital. Selekā is a transformed nickname which is a play on the word kasele, meaning toilet or outhouse, an external othering and internal acceptance of divergence within Tongan society. Selekā is a site where urban Tongans paint and drink kava together while listening to rebellious music, incorporating some of the aesthetics and politics of these musical genres into their group. They have a broader musical playlist than most kava clubs in Tonga, which includes punk, rock and metal. This article explores the character of Selekā as a radical critique to Western introduced social constructs such as puritan respectability, which have become part of Tonga's modern cultural norms. Selekā performs and generates mana (potency/prestige) through noa (profanity/neutralization) by desecrating the 'sacred' and recreating a new alternative. This act of rebellion is presented as a contemporary manifestation of an ancient Tongan practice where the 'profane' was used to identify and bring balance to the most tapu ('sacred'/protected). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A healthy popular music scene, it has been suggested, is a key indicator of a healthy society. To date, studies of popular music scenes have largely focused upon urban centers while, in contrast, music scenes in regional and rural contexts have received very little attention. This is in part understandable given the accessible nature of urban scenes to researchers who are often faced with the challenge of working with limited time and resources. Similarly, in smaller countries, for instance, the U.K., or more densely populated ones such as the United States, there is often a less well-developed concept of remoteness. However, in more sparsely populated countries like Australia, the distance between urban centers can be enormous, and even the concept of touring to the next town can be a significant undertaking. This article considers the imperative to study popular music scenes in regional areas. As a case study, it considers Central Queensland, and in particular the areas around the towns of Mackay and Rockhampton. Being Australia's second-largest state, Queensland covers an area of 1.853 million km2 – an area 2.6 times that of Texas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kroncong is the urban popular music of Indonesia, which some scholars suggest was brought by Portuguese in the early sixteenth century. Kroncong becomes popular across the archipelago as accompaniment in its musical genre, theatre and film. Although popular music has long been an integral part of Indonesian cultural domain, genres such as kroncong have been overlooked by music scholars. This article aims to introduce kroncong orchestration that could be performed in an updated style for incorporating repertoire from any other genres into idiomatic kroncong, that will be adopted by the millennial generation. Therefore, the reinvention of kroncong will not only be a significant contribution to scholarship on Indonesian popular music, but it will also contribute to a wider understanding of the complexities of indigenous ethnicity, political power, social class, and gender. The orchestration that will retain its rhythm pattern and vocal ornamentation, while reinforcing the strings and winds as melodic carriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular music of the 1980s is remembered today as having a "sound" that is somehow unified and generalizable. The '80s sound is tied to the electric piano preset of the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. Not only was this preset (E. PIANO 1) astonishingly prevalent--heard in up to 61% of #1 hits on the pop, country, and R&B Billboard charts in 1986--but the timbre of E. PIANO 1 also encapsulates two crucial aspects of a distinctly '80s sound in microcosm: one, technological associations with digital FM synthesis and the Yamaha DX7 as a groundbreaking '80s synthesizer; and two, cultural positioning in a greater lineage of popular music history. This article analyzes the timbre of E. PIANO 1 by combining ethnographic study of musician language with visual analysis of spectrograms, a novel combination of techniques that links acoustic specificity with social context. The web of connections created by the use and re-use of DX7 presets like E. PIANO 1, among hundreds or maybe thousands of different tracks and across genres, is something that allows modern listeners to abstract a unified notion of the "'80s sound" from a diverse and eclectic repertoire of songs produced in the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Th is paper describes an on-going project, the collaborative Th ematic History of Music in Portugal and Brazil; it details its context, rationale, concept, structure and the process that led to its public presentation and preliminary development at CESEM/FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Th e importance of Africa in the understanding of some facets not only of modern popular music, but also of 16th- 18th century genres in Portugal and Brazil is particularly stressed; examples of both polyphonic and instrumental music are given to illustrate this early infl uence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music and sound constitute an important site of politics in Brazil. Debates about laws regulating music and performance--particularly when related to historically marginalized genres--provoke debates about citizenship, belonging and inequality. Despite being Brazil's most popular contemporary genre of music, funk carioca (funk from Rio de Janeiro) faces multiple legal challenges. Various state laws have criminalised or banned live performances of funk. Furthermore, funk producers and DJs flaunt copyright through intensive, unauthorized sampling of American hip-hop, freestyle, funk, and other genres. Despite pervasive sonic and musical illegality, funk musicians imagine the law as a source of protection which should work for them. In response to funk's illegality, musicians focus on lawmaking to declare the genre popular Brazilian "culture" and on educating artists on copyright law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates various aspects of the popular online music genre known as vaporwave in order to understand how it functions as a form of socio-economic critique while problematizing aspects of identity. It begins by discussing some of the prominent features and objectives of vaporwave. Although there is much ambiguity in the overall attitude and message of vaporwave, its main unifying ideology is the re-configuration of pop music from the 1970s and '80s in order to critique and parody consumerism and corporate culture. With an analysis of one of the most well-known examples of vaporwave, Macintosh Plus' Floral Shoppe (2011), the article explores the relationship of vaporwave to techno-Orientalism and the genre's recent pernicious co-option by the conservative alt-right movement in the forms of Fashwave and Trumpwave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies find that objects that do not clearly fit within the categories of their field are penalized by relevant audiences. We examine whether this ‘categorical imperative’ is dependent on the symbolic and institutional structure of fields by comparing the effects of genre ambiguity across two popular music subfields. The results show that genre ambiguity has a negative effect within the commercial subfield, but not in the artistic subfield. The effects of genre fuzziness on the reception of popular music are also contingent on the producing organization (major vs. independent) and the types of media outlets that review an album. We find that certain forms of ambiguity can enhance the critical reception of a popular music album. In general, our findings support DiMaggio’s theory regarding variation in the boundary strength of classification systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In secondary general music classes, music educators have the opportunity to bridge the gap between the music students’ experiences in school and the music they engage with outside of school. According to Williams, nontraditional music students have musical lives outside of school but choose not to participate in traditional ensembles. In this article, I explore three teaching strategies that can be used to engage students with popular music. These strategies are through studying music genres, studying music producers, and listening to popular songs to distinguish if a song is a remake, cover, sample, remix, or an original song. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, video compact discs (VCDs) have come to occupy a prominent position in the Andean musical world and making music videos has become an ordinary and expected activity for many traditional and popular musicians. While the widespread uptake of VCD technology itself occurred with little comment or controversy, the material affordances of this new technology have fuelled contestation about aesthetics, culture and identity. Focusing on the production ofsantiagomusic videos in Huancayo, Peru, this article investigates the impact of this technological shift on genre conventions and genre politics. The article examines how cultural producers have harnessed, resisted and debated the possibilities of VCD music videos, as well as how genres have been discursively (re)constructed in the process. The article argues that the possibilities afforded by new visual technologies and emerging markets have been a driving force behind recent processes of genre-fication, whether in the service of perpetuating tradition or being part of the next big thing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the arrival of hip hop in Tanzania in the 1980s, a diverse and vibrant range of musical genres has developed in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. Incorporating rapping, these new musical genres and their associated practices have produced new imaginative spaces, social practices, and identities. In this paper, I argue that rappers have appropriated signs and symbols from the transnational image of hip hop to cast themselves as 'thugs' or 'gangsters', simultaneously imbuing these symbols with distinctly Tanzanian political conceptions of hard work (kazi ya jasho), justice (haki) and self-reliance (kujitegemea). This article examines how the persona of the rapper acts as a nexus for transnational and local moral and ethical conceptions such as self-reliance, strength, and struggle. Exploring the complicated, ambiguous, and contradictory nature of cultural production in contemporary Tanzania, I argue that rappers use the practice of rapping to negotiate both the socialist past and neo-liberal present. Drawing on the work of De Certeau and Graeber, I argue that rappers use these circulating signs, symbols, and concepts both tactically and strategically to generate value, shape social reality and inscribe themselves into the social and political fabric of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses some aspects of popular music studies in Latin America since the 1930s. It begins with a synthesis of the First Inter-American Conference on Musicology (Washington, DC, 1963), published in volume 1 of Anuario (1965), the predecessor to Latin American Music Review. It follows with commentaries on the concept of popular and an assessment of the contribution of pioneer musicologists Mário de Andrade (1893-1945) and Carlos Vega (1898-1966). Finally, proposals for future directions of Latin American music studies in musicology and ethnomusicology are presented. Sources were taken from the 2010 conferences of the following associations: the Argentinean Association of Musicology, the Brazilian Association of Research and Post-Graduation in Music, and the Latin American branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trot is a genre of popular music in South Korea (hereafter Korea) from the colonial period (1910–45), and it is still debated whether it should be understood as part of the native culture or as a component of the transplanted culture due to the influence on it of the Japanese genre enka. For 20 years after its liberation from Japanese colonial rule, Korea did not have any diplomatic relationship with Japan and banned all forms of Japanese culture, including Japanese popular music. However, since 1965 when Korea normalized relations with Japan, the question of whether trot should be considered part of Japanese or Korean culture—and therefore whether it should be banned or permitted—has been up for debate. For instance, the most famous song of this period, “Camellia Lady” by Lee Mee-ja, was banned due to its “Japanese color.” Nonetheless, trot was the most popular musical genre in Korea even after the country’s liberation from Japan; it was also the comfort music enjoyed by Koreans during the Korean War (1950–53). This article addresses the origins of this dispute by examining Korea’s political and cultural decolonization of popular culture during the postcolonial era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is on Zimbabwean popular songs that adapt traditional Shona ngoma (drum) genres. Its purpose is twofold. First, the article identifies Zimbabwean popular musicians' various approaches to the adaptation of traditional rhythmic patterns and song texts associated with certain ngoma genres. Second, it examines how these approaches influence the process of redefining the Shona musical tradition. It is argued that the traditional drumming patterns and styles incorporated within specific Shona popular songs have an important role in redefining this music culture within Zimbabwean popular music in general. A critical analysis is conducted on selected ngoma-influenced, Zimbabwean popular songs and the opinions expressed by the popular musicians who create the music. Three different approaches of adapting ngoma rhythms have been identified and are explained. These approaches are realised in the "integration" of musical and non-musical elements, "framework" as far as the imitation of structure is concerned, and "component", as far as content is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study investigates the presence of verbal objectification in Rap, Country, Adult Contemporary, Rock, Rhythm & Blues (R&B)/Hip-Hop, and Pop music lyrics through a content analysis of the top 20 U.S. Billboard songs in each category from 2009 to 2013. Using objectification theory, we assessed the inclusion of body objectification, gaze, and attractiveness themes in music lyrics, genre and gender differences in the prevalence of objectification, and self-objectification. In support of previous research on objectification, our findings document clear genre and gender differences. Rap and R&B/Hip-Hop featured significantly more objectification than other genres. Women are the most frequent targets of objectification within music lyrics, and female artists are more likely than male artists are to objectify themselves. However, the greater frequency of top 20 songs by male artists indicates consumers are exposed to more messages about men objectifying their own bodies. Future research areas are proposed with an emphasis on the continued investigation of verbal objectification in music lyrics. Practical implications are discussed based on the findings, and the potential impact of objectification in music on audiences. The authors highlight strategies, such as media literacy training, to address this topic in young audiences that may be useful to many types of professionals, including therapists/counselors, activists/social policy makers, instructors, and organizational administrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts an intervention in contemporary popular music classification. It argues that popular musicians do not only choose the titles to their works, but go further to define the genres of these works. The dynamic at play is such that most popular musicians claim to produce works of different and new genres with each new work they create. By engaging with the works of a selection of Nigerian popular musicians, the paper shows a trend of opportunistic productions within the political music genre by artists not otherwise known for political songs. Through a discussion of the textual and contextual elements of the material, the paper argues that an increased number of popular musicians have started producing protest political music and unity political music, following Nigeria's democratization in 1999, as a way of alerting audiences of their political astuteness and in an attempt to court political relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past century, sociocultural and technological developments have fostered the emergence of what Peterson and Kern (1996) call "omnivorous" music listeners, who listen to music from a variety of different genres. As well, non-hierarchical forms of categorization, such as tagging, have appeared in recent years. Despite such trends, genre remains the primary basis for categorizing music in systems with content, metadata, or both. Furthermore, techniques employed within many recommender systems, intended to aid listeners with finding music for recreational listening, indirectly continue to reflect genre-based categorization and taste. This paper provides an overview of the contexts in which such trends have emerged. It also considers prospects for incorporating actively nuanced dimensions of similarity into recommender systems, which could enable users to engage in cross-genre music discovery more easily than current systems allow. To provide further grounding for such possibilities, I am currently conducting a study to determine how "avid recreational music listeners" conceptualize musical similarity. This paper discusses the study's methodology, which consists of semi-structured interviews and music-seeking exercises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]