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The lack of reference works that compile the early years of the rock-pop movement in Argentina has caused the invisibility of most of the pioneer musicians and groups. The official historiography has given little importance to the musical productions prior to the recording of the song "La Balsa" by Los Gatos in 1967, which led to a large part of this history remaining hidden. In recent years numerous academic studies have addressed this issue, giving a new look at the emergence of the origins and consolidation of the so-called "National Rock". We postulate that librarianship, through its search techniques and access to information, plays a fundamental role in the search and organization of documents to shed light on the diffuse origins of rock in our country. This individual project (in progress) aims to investigate this period, and generate a biographical repertoire on the origins of the rock/pop movement in Argentina, compiling soloists and bands that emerged between 1955 and 1973 that foreshadowed the future "National Rock". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1980s are considered the boom of Polish rock music which over time has become glorified thanks to extensive journalistic and scientific literature. However, there are still few resources about Polish music from the 1990s, after the political transformation. Yet since 1989, profound changes have taken place in Polish popular music. The predominant influences of punk rock and New Wave gave way to grunge, Britpop, thrash metal and rapcore. At the same time, the mainstream of Polish rock underwent market standardization and commercialization, leading to a loss of its raw sound and heroic character. For many, it was a time of great commercial success. What had previously been sown, blossomed and gave way to the second boom of Polish rock. The aim of this article is to explore this rich creativity in a broad, transdisciplinary perspective. It is also an attempt to answer the questions: Does rock work only in times of political crisis? Can rebellion become a commodity for sale? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the synth-punk band the Screamers and the uncertain futures they represent. After describing punk rock briefly and situating the Screamers in the Los Angeles punk scene of the late 1970s, I analyze the futurity connoted by their use of synthesizers. I discuss the band's desire for a future in music and examine the American recording industry's hostility to punk, preferring the safer sounds of new wave. In the conclusion, I consider the purported nihilism of early punk by contextualizing punk's negativity within debates about queer futurities as well as within what Mark Fisher calls "lost futures." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an analysis of the 'New Wave International Competition of Young Performers of Popular Music,' a televised spectacle in the music format of 'estrada' ('stage song'), that has been held in Jurmala, Latvia, since 2002. The competition is discussed in terms of the history of its Soviet predecessor, the 'Jurmala' competition that was held from 1985-1989 in the same concert hall, involving many of the same figures who organized 'New Wave.' Originally a showcase for 'all-union' culture and interethnic relations in the mode of the 'friendship of peoples,' in its last two years, that earlier competition became a stage for agitation in connection with national independence movements. In this light, the contemporary 'New Wave' competition may be seen as a form of memory project. Eliding the separatist politics of the last years of 'Jurmala,''New Wave' reconstitutes the 'friendship of peoples' model of multiethnic Russophone culture in which Russians are first among equals, for a television audience that encompasses not only Russia but many of the former Soviet and former socialist states. In some ways, this is a form of cultural imperialism, a projection of Russian soft power that matches projections of hard power into the ostensible Russian 'sphere of influence.' Yet despite the aspiration to unification of the post-Soviet and post-Socialist audience, the competition may take on distinct political and cultural significance in various locations. In Latvia, it may represent a clever marketing move, taking advantage of the demand for ironically inflected 'Soviet nostalgia.' In Russia, the project should be viewed not as 'nostalgia,' a term that may properly be applied to projects relating to scenes of cultural life that are truly past, but rather as 'soviet retro'-dedicated to the recovery of modes of political and cultural life that are still meaningful and subject to revival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the social and political implications of a popular culture music trend known as New Wave in SFRY. This trend was created in Great Britain and USA by the end of the 1970's but it "moved" to our country, as well, due to its opennes to Western culture. The Yugoslav New Wave was not a sheer copy of the Western trend but it managed to create its own original music expression becoming a phenomenon of one generation. The most popular new wave bands (Prljavo kazalište, Azra, Haustor, Film, Lajbah, Šarlo akrobata, Električni orgazam, Idoli) left a significant mark on the society, generation and the whole epoch not only in the sense of the music they created but also in the social, cultural and political sense. The New Wave was an avant-gard music trend whose ideals were reflected in simple musical forms, characteristic ideological engagement, visual presentations (music album covers and posters) and particularly in their lyrics full of irony, allusions and metaphors in relation to the establishment of the time. The paper compares the Western and Yugoslav new wave and punk music with a reference to their achievements and influence which is still present in contemporary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As “music of commitment,” in the period from the late 1970s to the late 1980s rock music in Yugoslavia had an important purpose of providing a popular-cultural outlet for the unique forms of socio-cultural critique that engaged with the realities and problems of Yugoslav society. The three “music movements” that embodied the new rock'n'roll spirit - New Wave, New Primitives, and New Partisans - used rock music to critique the country's “new socialist culture,” with the purpose of helping to eliminate the disconnect between the ideal and the reality of socialist Yugoslavia. This paper examines the New Partisans as the most radical expression of music of commitment through the works of its most important rock bands: Bijelo dugme, Plavi orkestar, and Merlin. The paper's argument is that the New Partisans' socio-cultural engagement, animated by advocacy of Yugoslavism, was a counter-logic to the nationalist dissolution of a distinctly Yugoslav fabric of a socialist community in crisis. Thus, the movement's revolutionary “spirit of reconstruction” permeating its “poetics of the patriotic” was a mechanism of socio-cultural resistance to political, cultural and moral-ethical de-Yugoslavization of Yugoslav society. Its ultimate objective was to make the case that the only way into the future - if there was to be any - rested on strategic reanimation of the Partisan revolutionary past as the only viable socio-cultural foundation of the Yugoslav socialist community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and other songwriters of the Golden Era, the second quarter of the twentieth century, wrote popular songs that treated common topics clearly and simply. During the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney created a new kind of popular music that was personal and often obscure. This shift, which transformed popular music from an experimental into a conceptual art, produced a distinct change in the creative life cycles of songwriters. Golden Era songwriters improved with experience and were generally at their best during their 30s and 40s, whereas since the mid-1960s, popular songwriters have been most imaginative early in their careers and have consistently done their best work during their 20s. The conceptual revolution in popular music occurred at a time when iconoclastic young innovators were making similar transformations in other arts: Jean-Luc Godard and his fellow New Wave directors created a conceptual revolution in film in the early 1960s, just when Andy Warhol and his fellow Pop artists made visual art an overwhelmingly conceptual activity. In each of these arts, there have been a number of common consequences of these revolutions, including the progressive balkanization that is a product of conceptual innovators' disregard for conventional disciplinary boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses if there is a connection among popular music, history and the process of urbanization. The author questions if popular music studies, with its lyrics, content, and social role, be considered a historical source in helping people understand modernization and urbanization. Yugoslav punk and new wave music from the 1980s as well as other historical sources and insights from the theory of urbanization are analyzed. How historiography, urbanization, and music, deal with the production of spaces and places by creating and manipulating space and time are discussed.

The article provides information on the varying theories of disco, new wave, and album-oriented rock in the U.S. especially in 1970. Disco music, from its very nature of having someone move on the dance floor, is noted to have sold millions of records across the world as much as it helps revive careers in music and gives rock performers the opportunity to write popular songs. On the one hand, the highlighted genre of music have accordingly come to point of overlapping in certain degrees in conjunction with their historical moment, musical materials, and modes of dissemination, among others.

The article looks at diva Grace Jones as a pipe dream of postmodernity whose new-wave star persona challenges gender, sexuality, race definitions and power relations. The article also discusses Jones' performances and works that are all hallmarks of postmodernism. She is also known for her abundance of style and voice. The author concluded that her rediscovery offers a need for star figures within the popular culture.