Pop music has emerged as a significant phenomenon in the realm of ethnomusicology in the last two decades. This article examines the "music versions" and vocals-only "nasheed" recordings of songs ...from the music label Awakening, which has produced some of the most popular pop music in recent years. Using the case study method and drawing from the critical debates in jurisprudence about traditional nasheed, this study aims to explore the modern phenomenon of pop music from the perspective of consumer society aesthetics and marketing strategies. The study concluded that the vocals-only phenomenon is, in terms of both its aesthetic aspects and its manufacturing, an integral component of global consumer culture, while sending messages of nonconformist, conservative principles.
Introduction Smith, Marquita R
Popular music and society,
02/2019, Volume:
42, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This introduction for the special issue on the musical and cultural impact of Beyoncé offers scholarly context for the issue and its contents. Briefly, it details Beyoncé's career shift from her ...early girl group beginnings toward global stardom and outlines the scope of the issue's included articles.
Despite the growth of digital media, traditional FM radio airplay still remains the essential way for musicians to achieve commercial success.Climbing the Chartsexamines how songs rise, or fail to ...rise, up the radio airplay charts. Looking at the relationships between record labels, tastemakers, and the public, Gabriel Rossman develops a clear picture of the roles of key players and the gatekeeping mechanisms in the commercial music industry. Along the way, he explores its massive inequalities, debunks many popular misconceptions about radio stations' abilities to dictate hits, and shows how a song diffuses throughout the nation to become a massive success.
Contrary to the common belief that Clear Channel sees every sparrow that falls, Rossman demonstrates that corporate radio chains neither micromanage the routine decision of when to start playing a new single nor make top-down decisions to blacklist such politically inconvenient artists as the Dixie Chicks. Neither do stations imitate either ordinary peers or the so-called kingmaker radio stations who are wrongly believed to be able to make or break a single. Instead, Rossman shows that hits spread rapidly across radio because they clearly conform to an identifiable style or genre. Radio stations respond to these songs, and major labels put their money behind them through extensive marketing and promotion efforts, including the illegal yet time-honored practice of payoffs known within the industry as payola.
Climbing the Chartsprovides a fresh take on the music industry and a model for understanding the diffusion of innovation.
In a seminal study, Cur cantatur?, Anders Ekenberg examined Carolingian sources for explanations of why the liturgy was sung, rather than spoken. This multidisciplinary volume takes up Ekenberg’s ...question anew, investigating the interplay of New Testament writings, sacred spaces, biblical interpretation, and reception history of liturgical practices and traditions. Analyses of Greek, Latin, Coptic, Arabic, and Gǝʿǝz sources, as well as of archaeological and epigraphic evidence, illuminate an array of topics, including recent trends in liturgical studies; manuscript variants and liturgical praxis; Ignatius of Antioch’s choral metaphor; baptism in ancient Christian apocrypha; and the significance of late ancient altar veils.
Queer Tracks describes motifs in popular music that deviate from heterosexual orientation, the binary gender system and fixed identities. This exciting cutting-edge work deals with the key concepts ...of current gender politics and queer theory in rock and pop music, including irony, parody, camp, mask/masquerade, mimesis/mimicry, cyborg, transsexuality, and dildo. Based on a constructivist concept of gender, Leibetseder asks: 'Which queer-feminist strategies are used in rock and pop music?' 'How do they function?' 'Where do they occur?' Leibetseder's methodological process is to discover subversive strategies in queer theory, which are also used in rock and pop music, without assuming that these tactics were first invented in theory. Furthermore, this book explains where exactly the subversiveness is situated in those strategies and in popular music. With the help of a new kind of knowledge transfer the author combines sociological and cultural theories with practical examples of rock and pop music. The subversive character of these queer motifs is shown in the work of contemporary popular musicians and is at the same time related to classical discourses of the humanities. Queer Tracks is a revised translation of Queere Tracks. Subversive Strategien in Rock- und Popmusik, originally published in German.
The EPMOW Genre volumes contain entries on the genres of music that have been or currently are popular in countries and communities all over the world. Included are discussions on cultural, ...historical and geographic origins; technical musical characteristics; instrumentation and use of voice; lyrics and language; typical features of performance and presentation; historical development and paths and modes of dissemination; influence of technology, the music industry and political and economic circumstances; changing stylistic features; notable and influential performers; and relationships to other genres and sub-genres.This volume, on the music of Sub-Saharan Africa, features a wide range of entries and in-depth essays. All entries conclude with a bibliography, discographical references and discography, with additional information on sheet music listings and visual recordings. Written and edited by a team of distinguished popular music scholars and professionals, this is an exceptional resource on the history and development of popular music.This and all other volumes of the Encyclopedia are now available through an online version of the Encyclopedia: https://www.bloomsburypopularmusic.com/encyclopedia-work?docid=BPM_reference_EPMOW. A general search function for the whole Encyclopedia is also available on this site. A subscription is required to access individual entries. Please see: https://www.bloomsburypopularmusic.com/for-librarians.
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