Sing a Song of Drug Use-Abuse: Four Decades of Drug Lyrics in Popular Music–From the Sixties through the Nineties

Songs dealing with illegal drugs have long dotted popular music. It was not until the aftermath of the sixties youth counterculture, however, that drug lyrics became a recurring musical motif. In the decades since, the lyrical treatment of drugs has undergone change. Heroin and cocaine have largely, though not exclusively, been treated antagonistically, with the animosity toward cocaine becoming more pronounced after crack cocaine was introduced in the mid-1980s. Marijuana, on the other hand, has generally been perceived as innocuous, if not positively assessed, and this treatment has crossed the decades into the nineties. In more recent years, however, the positive assessment of marijuana has undergone change, with younger musicians more likely to decry the harm that drugs do than older musicians do. This prosocial aspect of contemporary popular music has been largely ignored.     

The Production of Popular Music as a Confidence Game: The Case of the Chicago Blues

In this article I argue that the production of live music shares many formal properties with that of confidence games: specifically, (1) a set of structural relationships in which operators, ropers, insiders, shills and marks are enmeshed, (2) the deployment of carefully planned strategies of deception, and (3) a pattern of success owed in part to the moral and financial motivations of insiders, the willingness of the state to assist in the enterprise, and the desire among victims to be swayed by the production. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in some of Chicago's most popular blues clubs, I examine these three components of live music production qua confidence game. I also briefly discuss how one group of participants—local blues musicians—reacts to their own performances as musicians/confidence artists. Finally, I conclude by exploring the broader implications this case suggests regarding other types of live music production.     

Praise and Protest: Music and Contesting Patriotisms in Postcolonial Kenya

Abstract

This paper explores the partisan nature of music and musicians in Kenya from the colonial era to the present, and investigates how music served many differing sectarian interests during this period. It reveals how the ambivalent space within which musicians work influences and shapes their music, paying particular attention to political context. It shows how officialdom in postcolonial Kenya has endeavored to construct, and then saturate public space with, its own version of patriotism. The paper also reveals the ways in which such patriotism is contested. However, the fact that, in the economic and political context of contemporary Kenya, some musicians defend their right to economic gain in response to accusations of sycophancy, suggests that popular music does not always function as a site of subversion.     

Fashion,the passage,the body

Studies on transnational cultures have shown that local, national identities are not necessarily subordinated to, or erased by, the globalizing forces of the economy. Rather, the local mediates transnational cultures as well as it is transformed by the crossing of cultural boundaries. Likewise, emerging interdisciplinary and cultural studies approaches to Latin(o) popular music examine the ways in which musical production, circulation and reception create cultural spaces that challenge hegemonic notions of national identity and discrete cultural boundaries. This article examines the figure of the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, and the tensions among the multiple, transnational subjectivities that are constituted through her musical repertoire, her performances on stage, the aesthetics of her body, and her public statements in interviews. Having spanned more than sixty years of performances and recordings, Celia Cruz's diverse repertoire and musical selections have served as a performative locus for the negotiations of her Cubanness (her exile and national identity) and a hemispheric, Latin American identity that also includes the United States. Likewise, her construction of blackness as an Afro-Cuban woman transforms and is transformed by her collaborations with African-American musicians and singers, from jazz to hip-hop. Celia Cruz has also crossed racial and cultural boundaries by collaborating with Anglo musicians and by tropicalizing rock music. Her staged persona and her body aesthetics also reveal the fluidity with which the Queen of Latin music assumes diverse racial, national and historical identities while she simultaneously asserts her Cubanness through the use of Spanish on stage. Celia Cruz serves as a complex and intriguing icon of the relational nature of nationalism and transnationalism.     

Negotiating and Practicing Performance: An Ethnographic Study of a Musical Open Mic in Brooklyn,New York

This qualitative study explores amateur musicians and their performance negotiations at a weekly “open mic” in Brooklyn, New York. These musicians and their performance negotiations are juxtaposed against the larger cultural structures of musical scenes and musical art worlds. Opportunities and pathways are few for amateur musicians to practice and negotiate the craft of performance. This study examines the negotiation of the presumed boundaries between musical practice and performance within an open mic scene constructed by and for amateur musicians who are marginal to the larger musical art world.     

Contemporary South African Jazz and the Politics of Place

Abstract

Drawing on popular music scholarship on music and place, as well as interviews with jazz musicians, scholars, and journalists active on the jazz scenes in Durban and Johannesburg, this article considers how locales are perceived to uniquely influence music-making. Extending Bakhtin's notion of “utterance” to music, it argues that the musical character of recent South African jazz subtly registers demographic, political, economic, and environmental specificities peculiar to contemporary Durban and Johannesburg. It is argued that contemporary South African jazz, as it is experienced by its performers and listeners, may be profitably conceptualised as speaker and addressee of locale.     

World Music,nation and postcolonialism

Recent scholarship on representational politics in popular music tends to dwell on the macropolitical entailments of contradictory desires acted out through the consumerization of culture within the globalized circuitry of supranational capitalism. This article takes a micropolitical look at what salsa means for working-class Puerto Ricans in the colonial diaspora, positing salsa as a musical culture that fuels, and is fuelled by, the organic intelligence of its practitioners. Comparatively analysing the performative content and contexts of two albums produced at the symbolic juncture of the Quincentennial (1992) – Willie Colón's Hecho in Puerto Rico and Ruben Blades' Amor y Control – and sharing an auto-ethnographical account of experiences with salsa music in the Puerto Rican colonial diaspora, this article explores the cultural politics obtained between mainstream appropriations of Latin musical cultures and salsa within the working-class communities who created it. Thus shifting the critical lens from above to below, the most salient concerns become the ethical dimensions of subaltern (kin)aesthetics and knowledges, which can be charted alongside the overt rejection of consumerist assimilation, the conscious racialization of cultural agency and other articulations of liberatory desire.     

Incorporating flow into practice and performance

In the music profession, individuals often work under stress filled conditions. This is especially true for individuals making their living as performing musicians. Musical performance anxiety has been well documented in both students and professionals. For some, the experience may lead to a termination of what might otherwise remain a successful performing career. Humans are susceptible to anxiety and so the phenomenon of musical performance anxiety is not likely to disappear. Learning how to effectively deal with musical performance anxiety is paramount for those in the performing arts. Entering a state of flow, in which there is total absorption in an activity, allows for the possiblity of any ensuing anxiety to become facilitative, rather than debilitative. This article will discuss several characteristics of flow, as defined by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, and provide practical applications for musical practice and performance in an attempt to counterbalance musical performance anxiety. Musicians will benefit from a closer examination of the elements of flow and means of incorporating these elements into practice and performance.     

Richard Davis 1943-1981

This article examines some of the key issues discussed and debated in the literature on ‘world music’ in anthropology and ethnomusicology. In particular, it focuses on the kinds of aesthetic and musical decisions made by non-Western musicians as they produce music for a global market; as both producers and consumers of global music, musicians labelled by the term ‘world music’ must consider both local and global audiences when they take the stage or enter the recording studio. The article then relates these issues to the other articles in this issue of TAPJA, which explore a variety of local responses to the world music phenomenon.     

The sociology of popular music, interdisciplinarity and aesthetic autonomy

This paper considers the impact of interdisciplinarity upon sociological research, focusing on one particular case: the academic study of popular music. 'Popular music studies' is an area of research characterized by interdisciplinarity and, in keeping with broader intellectual trends, this approach is assumed to offer significant advantages. As such, popular music studies is broadly typical of contemporary intellectual and governmental attitudes regarding the best way to research specific topics. Such interdisciplinarity, however, has potential costs and this paper highlights one of the most significant: an over-emphasis upon shared substantive interests and subsequent undervaluation of shared epistemological understandings. The end result is a form of 'ghettoization' within sociology itself, with residents of any particular ghetto displaying little awareness of developments in neighbouring ghettos. Reporting from one such ghetto, this paper considers some of the ways in which the sociology of popular music has been limited by its positioning within an interdisciplinary environment and suggests two strategies for developing a more fully-realized sociology of popular music. First, based on the assumption that a sociological understanding of popular music shares much in common with a sociological understanding of everything else, this paper calls for increased intradisciplinary research between sociologists of varying specialisms. The second strategy, however, involves a reconceptualization of the disciplinary limits of sociology, as it argues that a sociology of popular music needs to accept musical specificity as part of its remit. Such acceptance has thus far been limited not only by an interdisciplinary context but also by the long-standing sociological scepticism toward the analysis of aesthetic objects. As such, this paper offers an intervention into wider debates concerning the remit of sociological enquiry, and whether it is ever appropriate for sociological analyses of culture to consider 'internal' aesthetic structures. In relation to the specific case study, the paper argues that considering musical specificity is a necessary component of a sociology of popular music, and some possibilities for developing a 'materialist sociology of music' are outlined.     

Production,convention and power: Constructing the sound of an Early Music orchestra

By explaining how an Early Music orchestra produces its sound, we can review Howard Becker's concept of a convention. An orchestra's sound depends on principles incorporated in things (musical instruments, scores) and bodies (musicians' techniques). A common set of principles about interpreting a piece of music — principles acquired well before any rehearsal — do not suffice for coordinating a group of musicians. As observations have shown, face-to-face interactions are decisive in this coordination. The conductor is not omniscient and does not impose his interpretation on musicians. Relations based on authority, being unstable, are redistributed among the conductor, soloist and first violin during rehearsals. Recognizing the importance of face-to-face interactions draws attention to the cogency of power relations, which, though omnipresent, are constantly reworked in the situation for producing an orchestra's sound.     

Occupational rhetoric and ideology: A comparison of copy and original music performers

This study focuses on similarities and differences between occupational rhetorics and ideologies of two groups of local level popular musicians, those who compose and perform their own music and those who perform music made commercially successful by other bands/performers. The analysis of in-depth interviews with twenty-five local level musicians demonstrates that the latter have developed an ideology which legitimates definitions of themselves as audience-oriented technicians who view the performance of music as an economic enterprise; musicians who perform original music share an ideology which stresses creativity over economic reward and legitimates a definition of themselves as primarily artists. Both types of musicians and their ideologies are discussed in relation to larger structural forces of the popular entertainment industry.Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association in the South, Knoxville, TN (October, 1988). The author wishes to thank the two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions made on an earlier draft. The author also wishes to thank the Faculty Research Committee at Western Kentucky University for their support during the course of this project.     

Sounds From Nowhere: Musical Protagonists by Alejo Carpentier and Zora Neale Hurston

Abstract

Critics have missed the music of Seraph on the Suwanee. In response, this paper listens to the music of Zora Neale Hurston’s final novel through the ears of Alejo Carpentier. Although Carpentier published Concierto barroco (1974) twenty-six years after Hurston’s Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), the later novel offers a new reading of American music that changes how readers view the earlier work, in part because Concierto barroco creates an understanding of music in a Caribbean context that suffuses both novels. Although unknown to each other, musical and anthropological interests connect these coeval literary figures. Most compellingly, the trope of music in Hurston’s fictive work puts her musical rhetoric in conversation with Carpentier. In Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagi- nation, Robert discusses the rare ability to create music in one’s mind, a characteristic evident in the protagonists of both of the novels under discussion. Together, this paper ultimately argues, Hurston and Carpentier make beautiful music.     

“The Spider Is Alive”: Reassessing Becker's Theory of Artistic Conventions through Southern Italian Music

Howard Becker wrote that art is constructed, and understood, according to conventions. However, Becker does not adequately explain how artists negotiate historical circumstances affecting their work. Using the southern Italian phenomenon of tarantism and its music, I address how contemporary musicians employ conventions to transform sounds with deviant connotations. The alteration of musical conventions reflects material social conditions in the Salento region and provides insight into the formation of a Salentinian cultural movement's ideology. By accounting for how social groups contend with history, I argue that sociologists must reconsider the theory of artistic conventions.     

Preferences for popular music in and outside school among Chinese secondary school students

During the last two decades, China has experienced the emergence of vibrant popular music, resulting from globalisation and commercialisation. This empirical study investigates Chinese secondary students' popular music preferences in daily life, and to what extent and in what ways they prefer learning about popular music in school in the city of Changsha. Based on the findings from the survey questionnaires completed by 1816 secondary school students and interviews with 45 students from 8 secondary schools, this study revealed that Chinese teenagers preferred popular music styles in their daily lives and in school, particularly popular songs from Mainland China, the USA and the UK. There was a strong relationship found between school music teachers and the students' preferences for learning popular songs. Many of the students surveyed had their own popular music idols, but they mostly maintained that they liked their music idols because of their songs' melodies and lyrics. The findings also showed that there was a gap between the students' preferences for popular music and the popular music styles taught in school music lessons. Despite the division of classical and popular music learning among Chinese youths, most students conceded that these two musical styles should be taught in school music education. This study's findings challenge the notion of how popular music education in a culturally diverse community can be improved, as well as stimulate further examination of young students' music preferences in and outside the school environment.     

The world according to iTunes: mapping urban networks of music production

In this article, I present a social network analysis that explores and maps relational urban networks of production within the global recorded music industry. Within the analysis, recorded music albums are viewed as temporary market‐based projects that bring together teams of skilled creative workers in recording studios across the globe. New tools and techniques for networking studios in geographically distant locations give mobile musically creative workers the ability to coordinate musical recordings on a global scale, resulting in new relational geographies of music production. An innovative approach is taken to the social network analysis to assess the connectedness of cities and determine the centrality and power of cities within networks of production for three major Anglophone digital music markets. The result is a mapping of the relational urban networks of music production as indicated through the interdependencies between projects, studios and local urban agglomerations.     

Reluctant entrepreneurs: musicians and entrepreneurship in the ‘new’ music industry

Changing labour conditions in the creative industries – with celebrations of autonomy and entrepreneurialism intertwined with increasing job insecurity, portfolio careers and short‐term, project‐based contracts – are often interpreted as heralding changes to employment relations more broadly. The position of musicians’ labour in relation to these changes is unclear, however, given that these kinds of conditions have defined musicians’ working practices over much longer periods of time (though they may have intensified due to well‐documented changes to the music industry brought about by digitization and disintermediation). Musicians may thus be something of a barometer of current trends, as implied in the way that the musically derived label ‘gig economy’ is being used to describe the spread of precarious working conditions to broader sections of the population. This article, drawing on original qualitative research that investigated the working practices of musicians, explores one specific aspect of these conditions: whether musicians are self‐consciously entrepreneurial towards their work and audience. We found that, while the musicians in our study are routinely involved in activities that could be construed as entrepreneurial, generally they were reluctant to label themselves as entrepreneurs. In part this reflected understandings of entrepreneurialism as driven by profit‐seeking but it also reflected awareness that being a popular musician has always involved business and commercial dimensions. Drawing on theoretical conceptions of entrepreneurship developed by Joseph Schumpeter we highlight how the figure of the entrepreneur and the artist/musician share much in common and reflect various aspects of romantic individualism. Despite this, there are also some notable differences and we conclude that framing musicians’ labour as entrepreneurial misrepresents their activities through an overemphasis on the economic dimensions of their work at the expense of the cultural.