The decline of contemporary music

This paper introduces the IASPM Journal special edition entitled Twenty-First Century Popular Music Studies (PMS), in which a number of papers respond to Philip Tagg’s paper “Caught on the Back Foot: Epistemic Inertia and Visible Music” (2011). Respondents discuss a lack of ethnographic methodology in three prominent journals, Popular Music, Popular Music and Society and Journal of Popular Music Studies; the success of PMS in Australasia and the role of ethnomusicology there; the potential of ecomusicology for PMS; the proliferation of PMS courses in new universities in the UK; gender and sexuality within PMS; differences between the concepts of invisible and of ubiquitous music; and the need for addressing corporeality within PMS. The common threads of these discussions are brought out, and a number of key issues emerge. Interdisciplinarity is emphasized and the interactions of classical and popular music, ethnomusicology as well as recording and production are examined. It is suggested that PMS might consider tactical alignments with other relevant bodies in order to overcome epistemic inertia, including ethnomusicology organisations, the Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production, and academics and practitioners involved in teaching and making popular music.

The Musical Quarterly, 74/3, 385–410., 1990

Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2011

Twentieth-Century Music, 2021

This article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of 'the contemporary' along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art-a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process-while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contem-poraneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose 'musical contemporary art' to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

In this essay, I critique and critically reflect upon two questions derived from Action Ideal VIII of the MayDay Group: " We commit to understanding the wide range of possibilities and the limitations that technology and media offer music and music learning. " Before we can address the " how, " it is necessary to know the " why, " which I offer here. This includes questioning dichotomies based on beliefs that either no longer hold true and/or are based on a presumptive fallacy—first, that making music in the 21st century is an " either/or " proposition—i.e. one either makes music acoustically or digitally but not both, and second, an implicit belief that hands-on acoustic face-to-face music making is always preferable to making music digitally—either by one's self or with others through technological mediation – for various reasons. I conclude with a discussion of the impact that corporate power on the Web has and continues to have on music making, and by extension, music learning, in the 21st century. Keywords: " bi-contextuality, " " long tail " musics, Web as " sociotechnical construct, " Web 2.0, online music communities, data mining. he rapid pace of technological change over the last decade, particularly in relation to social media and network connectivity, has deeply affected the ways in which we interact socially (and musically) among individuals, groups, and institutions to the point that it has become difficult to grasp what it would be like to lose access to this everyday aspect of modern life. To paraphrase William Gibson, " the future is with us now, only spread around thinly. " 1 Although Gibson wasn't referencing music (and music making) specifically, his words aptly describe current 21st century music making (and music learning and teaching) practices. Like the fish that can't perceive the water in which it swims, neither can we easily comprehend the importance of digital technology and communication in our daily lives. Because of technology's all-encompassing pervasiveness, it is also T

The musical universe of the 20th and 21st centuries is a force-field in which styles, instruments, personalities and stories can be found that are ascribable to conceptual frameworks that may differ greatly one from another. Such complexity cannot be traced back to single theories or all-encompassing interpretations, but may be tackled, philosophically, starting from certain characteristics. This book identifies nine such characteristics: namely, Extremes, Noise, Silence, Technology, Audience, Listening, Freedom, Disintegration, and New Media. Each of these permits us to open up unforeseen philosophical-cultural paths and interpret, in its multifarious variety, the developments of contemporary music, profoundly interwoven with the history of thought, culture and society.

2020

This book explores the relationships between popular music, technology, and the changing media ecosystem. More precisely, it looks at infrastructures and practices of music making and consuming primarily in the post-Napster era of digitization – with some chapters looking back on the technological precursors to digital culture – marked by the emergence of digital tools and platforms such as YouTube or Spotify. The first section provides a critical overview of theories addressing popular music and digital technology, while the second section offers an analysis of the relationship between musical cultures, taste, constructions of authenticity, and technology. The third section offers case studies on the materialities of music consumption from outside the western core of popular music production. The final section reflects on music scenes and the uses and discourses of social media.

Contemporary Popular Music Studies: Proceedings of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music 2017, 2019

This is the second volume in the series that documents the 19th edition of the biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. The volume contains contributions on the variety of musical genres from all over the world. Authors engage with the role of popular music in contemporary music education, as well as definitions and conceptualizations of the notion of ‘popular’ in different contexts. Other issues discussed in this volume include methodologies, the structure and interpretations of popular music scenes, genres and repertoires, approaches to education in this area, popular music studies outside the Anglophone world, as well as examinations of discursive and technological aspects of numerous popular music phenomena.

Journal of Popular Music Studies, 1999

Routledge, 2017

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches widens the scope of analytical approaches for popular music This study endeavors to create a new analytical paradigm for examining popular music by taking the perspective of developments in contemporary art music as a point of departure to open up multiple new paradigms. " Expanded approaches " for popular music analysis is broadly defined as any compositional, analytical, or theoretical concept outside the domain of common practice tonality that shapes the pitch-class structures, form, timbre, rhythm, or aesthetics of various forms of popular music. The essays in this collection investigate a variety of analytical, theoretical, historical, and aesthetic com-monalities popular music shares with 20th and 21st century art music. From rock and pop to hip hop and rap, dance and electronica, from the 1930s to present day, this companion explores these connections in five parts: With contributions by established scholars and promising emerging scholars in music theory and historical musicology from North America, Europe, and Australia, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches offers nuanced and detailed perspectives that address the relationships between concert and popular music.

Journal of Popular Music Education, 2018

Popular Music Education A White Paper by the Association for Popular Music Education Introduction The Association for Popular Music Education (APME), founded in 2010, is the world’s leading organization in popular music education, galvanizing a community of practice, scholarship and innovation around the field. Popular music education (hereafter PME) is exciting, dynamic and often innovative. Music education – meaning formal schooling in music – has tended most of the time to exclude almost all forms and contexts of music, and therefore has also elided most models of music learning and teaching. Popular music is among these excluded musics. The report is based on the knowledge, perspectives and experience of APME Board members, and therefore reflects the Anglophone and largely US American orientation of the contributors. We recognize that popular music is as diverse as the world’s cultures, and that writing on popular music education is as nuanced as the languages in which it is communicated. What is Popular Music Education? Popular music is qualitatively different from other forms of music, in function and aesthetics (although there are areas of commonality). PME, therefore, may also be understood as necessarily different from Western Art Music (WAM) education. However, APME does not intend to construct or to construe PME as existing or working in opposition to existing music education programs and paradigms. PME, like popular music, is highly complex, problematic and challenging, as well as being inspiring and deeply meaningful to many people, individually and collectively. This is true of all musical traditions, their associated hierarchies, embedded practices and assumptions, and attendant educational practices. APME recognizes that change, stasis and tradition all constitute the lifeblood of popular music. As such, and to reflect that ongoing change, the authors assert that popular music education practice and scholarship must remain reflexive, allowing for and embracing constant revision and re-contextualization. As such, this paper marks a moment in time, but is not intended to codify, define or delimit PME. Popular music has a growing presence in education, formal and otherwise, from primary school to postgraduate study. Programs, courses and classes in popular music studies, popular music performance, songwriting, production and areas of music technology are becoming commonplace across higher education and compulsory schooling. In the context of teacher education, classroom teachers and music specialists alike are becoming increasingly empowered to introduce popular music into their classrooms. Research in PME lies at the intersection of the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, community music, cultural studies and popular music studies. Who are the Popular Music Educators? The following page quotes and borrows from the editorial article introducing the issue 1, volume 1 of the Journal of Popular Music Education. 1 The popular music education world is populated by two largely separate but far from discrete communities. One of these groups comprises mostly school music teachers and those who work in higher education institutions to ‘train’ teacher/musicians for the workplace. For them, music education is a high art and prized craft; PME is one part of the jigsaw puzzle of a schoolteacher’s diverse portfolio of approaches to learning, teaching and assessment. The other community primarily teaches popular music studies (including popular music performance, business and songwriting) in institutions of higher education. For them the goal is to learn (about) popular music; ‘education’ is implicit in the fact that this activity takes place in a college or university. These two communities (crudely bifurcated as they are here, for the purposes of this short paper) collide and collaborate at APME conferences. They rarely seem to bump into one another, however, at meetings of IASPM (frequented primarily by members of the popular music studies community) or ISME (attended mainly by music teachers and music teacher teachers). People’s experiences of education are frequently self-defining and life-changing – affirming, uplifting, crushing, celebratory and (dis)empowering by turns; the same can be said of people’s encounters with music. Humans’ engagement with popular music and experiences of education are vital to people’s understanding and tolerance of themselves and one another. APME believes in the necessity and transformative power of deep educational experiences that critique and enable, challenge and transform. Popular music exists at the intersection of folk and celebrity cultures, combining the everyday with the exceptional and fantastic. It merges commerce, community, commodity and the construction of meanings. People live their lives both as popular musicians and through popular musicians, realizing identities as fans, consumers and practitioners. Popular music scenes, communities and subcultures are local, regional, national and international. PME thus takes place at the cross sections of identity realization, learning, teaching, enculturation, entrepreneurship, creativity, a global multimedia industry, and innumerable leisure, DIY and hobbyist networks – online, and in physical spaces. Popular music education is business and social enterprise. It is personal and it is collective. It is vocational and avocational, and it builds and develops communities. Popular music stands as a vital part of our modern lives. A valuable form of artistic expression, it embraces all facets of the human experience. It blends art with contemporary culture and tradition to make relevant the ever changing now.

Musical Gentrification: Popular Music, Distinction and Social Mobility, 2020

2010

For many years it has been identified a crisis of modernity in Music. But what would be a modernity crisis if not effervescence and dispersion? The development of modern music led to questions that exploded with the aesthetic multiplicity and experimentalism of the second half of 20th century. However, since the 1980s what we see is the ebbing of radicalism. In the 21st century, we come upon an open field. On one hand, expanding the field of music to include sonology created a double challenge: either its concept is less extensive than that of music, a case in the field of music; or its concept is more extensive than that of music, which becomes a case in the field of multi-expressive sound arts in the globalized world of communication and informational technology. On other hand, concert music seems to need to resume its meanings, striving for an expressiveness that was considered abandoned since modernity. The quest we are mentioning has reflected itself in musicological studies. A...

Postdigital Science and Education, 2018

A Google Scholar search for the term 'postdigital' returns a telling list of references. 1 The most relevant source related to the concept is Kim Cascone's article 'The aesthetics of failure: BPost-digital^tendencies in contemporary computer music' (Cascone 2000), followed by several chapters from the edited volume Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design (Berry and Dieter 2015) and then by the authored book The Postdigital Membrane: Imagination, Technology and Desire (Pepperell and Punt 2000). The validity of Google's algorithms and other types of algorithmic ranking can be questioned on many grounds (Peters et al. 2016), yet this list tells a lot about our collective (un)conscious: music, and the arts in more general, are at the forefront of the development of the concept of the postdigital. Editors of Popular Music in the Post-Digital Age: Politics, Economy, Culture and Technology are well aware of the pioneering nature of music. In the Introduction, they write: This significance reflects the widespread perception that music is at the forefront of technological, political, economic and cultural change, and therefore what happens in music should be of interest to everyone. This idea was captured by