Popular MusicPub Date : 2023-01-12DOI: 10.1017/S0261143022000691
Catherine Baker
{"title":"Music, City and the Roma Under Communism. By Anna G. Piotrowska. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 208 pp. ISBN 978-1-5013-8081-5","authors":"Catherine Baker","doi":"10.1017/S0261143022000691","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143022000691","url":null,"abstract":"Romani bands are an everyday presence in the public spaces of contemporary Kraków, Poland, as in many comparable European cities. Relying on their musical virtuosity and their intimate understanding of how to craft musical performances that appeal to their customers’ desires, they negotiate the precarity of the informal economy and the arm of the state as their predecessors and older relatives used to do in state socialist Poland. Yet their history in Kraków’s urban space, Anna Piotrowska shows in this detailed monograph, actually dates back to at least the early 19th century, when the Habsburg Empire had occupied southern Poland and Vienna’s musical cultures became strong influences on Cracovians’ tastes – if not to the mid-16th century, when there is evidence of Romani musicians at the court of King Sigismund I. This longer historical view, which also takes in the meanings and practices of Romani music in 19th-century Hungary and Bucharest to illustrate the transnational contexts that have shaped the musicians’ professional traditions, reveals that despite its title, Music, City and the Roma Under Communism is more than a study of Romani music and musicians in state socialist Poland alone. It also has much to say about their contributions to vernacular musical cultures before and after state socialism – always with an emphasis on agency, even as Piotrowska illustrates how Romaphobia, class inequality, attitudes to disability and state power have operated to constrain the conditions in which they have been able to exercise it. Piotrowska comes to this as an expert on Romani music in European culture who now turns this lens towards her own memories of experiencing Romani musicmaking in the streets of Kraków. These give her the situated knowledge to follow leads such as the life of the celebrated street violinist Stefan Dymiter ‘Corroro’, who died in 2002, but also to understand, for instance, just how comprehensively another dimension of Romani musical culture in state socialist Poland went on to be silenced by the communist authorities. This was the state-supported folkloristic ensemble ROMA, which formed in Kraków in the early 1950s, gained national recognition, performed abroad as part of Poland’s cultural diplomacy, and astonishingly defected almost en masse to Sweden in 1978 without their director’s knowledge after the Gierek regime had subjected him to years of escalating political pressure. Its premises in Kraków were turned over to new tenants, who disposed of all its papers, and never again would it be mentioned in the state socialist Polish press. For Romani musicians who had survived the Nazi occupation of Poland or had been displaced into Poland from further east during World War II, state socialism also profoundly affected the conditions for everyday and street performance in Kraków. At the same time as the socialist regime was representing Romani culture","PeriodicalId":46171,"journal":{"name":"Popular Music","volume":"42 1","pages":"104 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44953004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Popular MusicPub Date : 2023-01-12DOI: 10.1017/s0261143022000721
Tareeq Jalloh
{"title":"Fight The Power: Law and Policy through Hip-Hop Songs. Edited by Gregory S. Parks and Frank Rudy Cooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 300 pp. ISBN: 978-1-009-01153-2","authors":"Tareeq Jalloh","doi":"10.1017/s0261143022000721","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143022000721","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46171,"journal":{"name":"Popular Music","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42462277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Popular MusicPub Date : 2023-01-12DOI: 10.1017/S026114302200071X
N. Amar
{"title":"Sonic Mobilities. Producing Worlds in Southern China. By Adam Kielman. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2022. 216 pp. ISBN 978-0-226-81780-4","authors":"N. Amar","doi":"10.1017/S026114302200071X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S026114302200071X","url":null,"abstract":"ing the Beatles’ sets at the Cavern Club, and in the last chapter when the author demonstrates the rise of female scholars in Beatles Studies. A clear presentation of the data would have clarified the argument and been a great help in understanding the evolution of the social dynamics that are analysed. As previously stated, the main subject of this book is not musical analysis, and its focus on sociological and historical aspects of women’s narratives is well demonstrated. Indeed, Popular Music Studies are vitally multidisciplinary: we cannot speak about the music of the Beatles out of its context and analysing women’s reception of this phenomenon is a great input to Beatles studies. However, the opposite can also be true: dedicating a chapter to how the Beatles’ music influenced female musicians or how female bands influenced the Beatles without discussing music-making can be problematic. By occulting musical analysis in the fourth chapter, the Beatles’ influence on female musicians between the 1960s and the 2000s cannot be demonstrated firmly, likewise the influence of female performers on the Beatles. It would have been very interesting to show how female performers such as the Marvelettes or the Ronettes majorly influenced the Beatles, aesthetically and musically speaking. This point could have been developed in a book about women’s creativity and empowerment. Maybe a solution would have been to concentrate the chapter on a few musicians or bands – for example, the subversive approach to the Beatles’ music by Siouxsie Sioux or the beatlesque echoes in Sam Phillips’ repertoire – and to analyse their work in detail. However, this section has the great quality of making us discover or rediscover a lot of all-female bands or female musicians. In conclusion, A Women’s History of the Beatles is a sociological and historical approach of how the band contributed to women’s emancipation during the last 60 years and how personal stories can help rebuild a new gendered history, put in perspective with second and third-wave feminism. The profuse testimonies give a precious view on the past decades and constitute a remarkable collection of work, which might open new paths to future research, either in Cultural History or in Feminist Studies.","PeriodicalId":46171,"journal":{"name":"Popular Music","volume":"42 1","pages":"107 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43879652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Popular MusicPub Date : 2023-01-11DOI: 10.1017/s0261143022000745
Oskar Cox Jensen
{"title":"Popular Song in the 19th Century. Edited by Derek Scott. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. 380 pp. ISBN: 978-2-503-60078-9","authors":"Oskar Cox Jensen","doi":"10.1017/s0261143022000745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143022000745","url":null,"abstract":"tions, categories and classifications in a way that inadvertently formulates a priori guidelines. Organisationally, this renders a disconnect between the majority of the book and the final chapters, which would perhaps stand better as a distinct article. There are quite a few moments of useful insight in this book. Popular debate does in many ways continue to revolve around a needless parsing of definitions; this book offers a unique corrective to that tendency. However, I would be remiss if I did not state that readers already familiar with existing scholarly literature will likely find A Philosophy of Cover Songs to be an intriguing if somewhat pedantic exercise. Ultimately, the kind of pragmatic pluralism Magnus argues for is already deployed by scholars in areas of popular music, communication, media studies and cultural studies (even if we do not explicitly name our approach with that term). And we have been doing so in more – and more contextually expansive – ways than are suggested by the author. Some of the definitive work on cover songs addresses concerns over (for example) copyright, historiography, race, the archive, changing practices of consumption, cross-cultural influence, postmodernism, commerce, aesthetics, changing technological formats, narrative recontextualisation and the relation between audience use and perceptions of value (Plasketes 2010; Popular Music and Society special issue, 2008). Indeed, pluralism (whether pragmatic or not) already defines our approach to cover songs.","PeriodicalId":46171,"journal":{"name":"Popular Music","volume":"42 1","pages":"118 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41348011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Popular MusicPub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/s0261143022000472
S. Maisonneuve
{"title":"Phonographic Encounters: Mapping Transnational Cultures of Sound, 1890–1945. Edited by Elodie A. Roy and Eva Moreda Rodríguez. London: Routledge, 2021. xv+268 pp. ISBN : 978-1-032-05711-8","authors":"S. Maisonneuve","doi":"10.1017/s0261143022000472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143022000472","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46171,"journal":{"name":"Popular Music","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43648883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Popular MusicPub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0261143022000617
Keir Monteith
{"title":"Ban rap and drill lyrics in the courtroom","authors":"Keir Monteith","doi":"10.1017/S0261143022000617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143022000617","url":null,"abstract":"Keir Monteith KC has been working in the criminal courts since the last century; he defends in high profile cases, some of which are of constitutional significance and also sits as a part time Crown Court judge. In this Middle Eight, he argues that, in recent years, the state has increased its use of rap and drill to prosecute Black defendants, that music is being used to plug gaping holes in cases with no forensic evidence, and that this regressive and racist practice has to stop.","PeriodicalId":46171,"journal":{"name":"Popular Music","volume":"41 1","pages":"546 - 557"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48295512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Popular MusicPub Date : 2022-11-28DOI: 10.1017/S0261143022000587
Erik Nielson
{"title":"Expert or advocate? The role(s) of the expert witness when rap is on trial","authors":"Erik Nielson","doi":"10.1017/S0261143022000587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143022000587","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper considers the role of the rap music expert in criminal cases involving the use of rap as evidence. In addition to describing ways that an expert can help the defence challenge the use of rap, both before and during trial, it also offers strategies for intervening beyond the criminal justice system. These strategies may require an expert to balance the roles of objective observer on the one hand and criminal justice advocate on the other, but whatever the risks or challenges associated with this balancing act, this paper argues that doing so opens up important avenues for intervention and impact that can more effectively end the racially motivated and unjust practice of ‘rap on trial’.","PeriodicalId":46171,"journal":{"name":"Popular Music","volume":"41 1","pages":"446 - 462"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45564477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Popular MusicPub Date : 2022-11-28DOI: 10.1017/S0261143022000551
Alex de Lacey
{"title":"Live and direct? Censorship and racialised public morality in grime and drill music","authors":"Alex de Lacey","doi":"10.1017/S0261143022000551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143022000551","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article addresses the linguistic policing of grime and UK drill music. Existing studies often focus on the immediacy of the penal system. This article will instead explore the extent to which institutional bodies uphold and maintain a programme of racialised censorship across radio broadcasts, seeking to understand how these value judgements impact upon creative practice. It presents an ethnographic study of three radio shows that aired on BBC 1Xtra, demonstrating through interviews and analysis how the broadcaster's censorship practice unfairly renders Black artists as dangerous with criminal associations. Lyrical assertions of musical skill are misread as direct threats, while evocations of the quotidian are seen to cause violence rather than reflect artists’ surroundings. Importantly, it will show how artists’ work and words are adversely discriminated against owing to a legacy of racialised public morality that imposes greater sanctions and restrictions on artistic output: radio personalities must strike a balance between presenting voyeuristic excitement about a genre, and the need to meet (racialised) editorial standards; producers assiduously monitor new slang to make sure that it is censored; and artists are encouraged to self-censor and alter their musical output, to protect themselves from unwanted ramifications.","PeriodicalId":46171,"journal":{"name":"Popular Music","volume":"41 1","pages":"495 - 510"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47807529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}