Popular Music History
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH
<p><em>Popular Music History</em> publishes original historical and historiographical research that draws on the wide range of disciplines and intellectual trajectories that have contributed to the establishment of popular music studies as a recognized academic enterprise. <a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/about">Learn more about this journal.</a></p>
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
en
Popular Music History
1740-7133
<p>© Equinox Publishing Ltd.</p> <p>For information regarding our Open Access policy, <a title="Open access policy." href="Full%20details of our conditions related to copyright can be found by clicking here.">click here</a>.</p>
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Introduction to the special issue
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/27282
<p>Both jazz studies and gender studies are relatively new academic disciplines. Both originated in the twentieth century, and neither were taken seriously by academia at large until nearly the twenty-first century. Since that point gender in jazz, and gender in relation to jazz, has been playing catch up to the rest of the field. However, in the second decade of the twenty-first century gender and jazz as an area of serious research has been slowly gathering pace, with an increasing number of publications on a variety of topics. This has been helped along by the rise of #MeToo, We Have Voice, Safer Spaces in Music and other similar movements promoting an a increase in awareness of gender dynamics and music, and the use and abuse of power structures, both personal and institutional. This special issue examines some of the many topics revolving around jazz and gender, in particular moving beyond the performance and performers of jazz to examine the support networks of programmers, journalists and the audience.</p>
Introduction
jazz
gender
history
festivals
audiences
jazz
gender
history
Jazz Studies
Musicology
Gender Studies
Aleisha Ward
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
109
115
10.1558/pomh.27282
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Breaking boundaries in festival programming
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/26942
<p>In Germany, the modern jazz festival programmer descended from earlier multifaceted roles established during the interwar and war periods as cultivated by both German and international jazz critics, record collectors, and impresarios. While impresarios historically occupied multiple roles as fans, critics, and producers; they often inhabited the quintessential cosmopolitan role of (white) male jazz critic and discoverer of Black musical creativity. This article examines the impact of the legacy of this archetype in the German context, with the case study of JazzFest Berlin. In particular, we trace the particular contours of Joachim-Ernst Berendt’s (1922–2000) embodied enactment of masculinity within the postwar German jazz festival world, beginning with the seminal founder of the JazzFest Berlin. Drawing on feminist initiatives of the first American women jazz organizers, we compare this female-centric legacy with the particular style and ideologies created by Berliner Jazztage programmer Nadin Deventer, the first female programmer of this historic festival, who brings an innovative and socially engaged approach, in part by staging less constrained gender expectations. Through interviews and an examination of publications, programme reviews, and more, we reveal how the figure of the jazz impresario has been disrupted by increased attention to the roles of professional women programmers who consciously embrace diverse competencies and seek greater recognition of the intersectional barriers for women, women of colour, and foreigners within the German jazz scene.</p>
Articles
jazz impresario
jazz programmer
jazzfest berlin
gender
jazz festival
Nadin Deventer
Joachim-Ernst Berendt
Jazz
Jazz Festivals
Gender
Transnational popular music cultures
popular music in Germany
Ethnomusicology
Jazz Studies
Cultural Sociology
Nora Leidinger
Kristin McGee
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
137
155
10.1558/pomh.26942
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Disassembling the gendered archetype of the male jazz impresario in the United States
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/26933
<p>In the United States, jazz impresarios historically inhabited the quintessential cosmopolitan role of (white) male jazz critic and intrepid discoverer of Black musical creativity. This article explores the once entrenched and yet recently challenged gendered and cultural dynamics surrounding the powerful jazz impresario role in an era transitioning from a local individualized coterie of fans and critics with liberal socio-cultural politics to a more specialized, transnationally networked world of professionalized music agents and institutions. To trace this role, the seminal jazz impresarios John Hammond and George Wein are recollected, uncovering their particular embodied enactment of masculinity within the American jazz presentation and festival world. Through second-wave feminist initiatives, a critical counterpoint to this prominent role is explored, including the efforts of pioneering Black musicians and composers Melba Liston and Mary Lou Williams in the 1960s, the first Women in Jazz Festival programmers Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg during the 1970s and 1980s, and the tireless efforts of record label owner, critic, and concert promoter Rosetta Reitz during the 1980s and 1990s. These contrasting legacies set the stage for new avenues of curatorship and jazz presentation which take into account intersectional obstacles and experiences of both women in jazz as well as women behind the scenes in the American jazz music industry. </p>
Articles
Jazz Impresario
John Hammond
George Wein
Mary Lou Williams
Rosetta Reitz
Carol Comer
Dianne Gregg
Jazz festivals
jazz impresarios
jazz promoters
women in jazz
popular music studies
jazz studies
American history
Kristin McGee
Nora Leidinger
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
116
136
10.1558/pomh.26933
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Doing ‘Kulturpolitik’
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/26929
<p>In this article I focus on the motives and practices of a group of women who ensured the continuity of the small Austrian music festival ‘Konfrontationen’ after its bankruptcy in 2007. While the association responsible for the festival was being restructured, they assumed responsibilities and re-modelled organizational practices into a cultural-political practice. I look at their agency through the lens of Judith Butler’s concept of subversive repetition. By contextualizing their practices with Austrian cultural policies that have been neoliberalized since the late 1990s, I place them in the arena of what in Austria is called ‘Kulturpolitik’: the negotiation of rivalling (world)views of what is to be understood as ‘culture’ and what the role of that culture is in society.</p>
Articles
improvised music
subversive repetition
cultural policies
festivals
neoliberalism
voluntary work
gender
improvised music
subversive repetition
cultural policies
festivals
neoliberalism
voluntary work
gender relations
music sociology
anthropology
gender studies
history
Philipp Schmickl
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
156
172
10.1558/pomh.26929
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Millennial nostalgia, social media with kids and connection via The Wiggles
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/25888
<p>The Wiggles are often called popular ‘children’s musicians’—yet their music and influence clearly extend beyond child audiences. Examining the period of the first COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia in 2020 and continued disruption into 2021, the article explores the ways The Wiggles used specialist recorded and live content to appeal to diverse groups of audiences, including co-watching/listening family groups, and older fans returning to the group as a form of musical nostalgic comfort. Particularly important during this period was the way The Wiggles used a number of social media outlets to allow for as many of their fans to engage with them as possible. The article includes a cultural history of key media posts and interactions between artists and families made during the time period 2020–21, and how these informed other forms of nostalgic engagement like the The Wiggles’ cover of Tame Impala’s ‘Elephant’, which won the Triple J Hottest 100 in 2021/2. Subsequently they have also been the subject of a 2023 documentary, ‘Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles’ (Sally Aitken, dir.). The preservation of fan and artist engagements like this demonstrate the continued importance of popular music during, and beyond, periods of crisis.</p>
Articles
intergenerational media
popular music
Australia
broadcasting
Covid-19
media
cultural studies
popular music
Media
cultural studies
popular music
Liz Giuffre
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
251
267
10.1558/pomh.25888
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Alone Together
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/24585
<p>This article explores how masculinity functioned as an expressive vocabulary for articulating feelings of <em>belonging to</em> and <em>estrangement from</em> the John Coltrane classic quartet. McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones’s departure from the quartet in January 1966 is often attributed to creative differences, but this glosses over what was an emotionally complex experience of estrangement and an identity crisis rooted in the loss of a shared masculine collectivity. This article first establishes how masculinity structured and informed the terms of belonging to the ensemble, and secondly, explores how these masculine relationships evolved and fractured during their final few months of collaboration in late 1965. Analysing different ensemble dynamics and textural configurations on Coltrane’s quartet and sextet recordings of his spiritual suite Meditations—recorded in September and November 1965 respectively—reveals a burgeoning tension between Coltrane’s preference for ‘strong’, masculine, individual performances, and his cultivation of an intimate, shared, group masculinity.</p>
Articles
Masculinity
John Coltrane classic quartet
gender
jazz
John Coltrane
Meditations
Musicology
Gender Studies
Masculinity Studies
Luke Riedlinger
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
196
212
10.1558/pomh.24585
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Experimental fusion (fusión), ritual batá, and gendered interventions
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/24710
<p>Cuba constitutes a site of immense importance for the history of jazz (and Latin jazz) in the United States, and attention to the contributions of Cuban women artists contributes to a broader understanding of the gendered histories of global jazz. This article explores women jazz artists in Cuba and its diaspora, excavating how women instrumentalists and vocalists have transformed the landscape of Cuban, Latin, and global jazz through groundbreaking and experimental performances. I attend to how the fusion-centered approaches of Cuban women unearth an emic orientation towards collaborative experimentalism that builds upon specific, local histories of jazz performance on the island. These performances draw upon histories of revolutionary-era musical experimentalism and fusion (<em>fusión</em>) that have emerged since the late 1960s and 1970s in Cuba and which repeatedly tie jazz experimentalism closely—though not categorically—to dance forms (both popular and ritual). Amid Cuba’s intensifying economic crises, I additionally engage how women regularly pursue careers—and, in an overwhelming number of cases, emigration—to Spain, Canada, the continental United States, Puerto Rico, and other international locales, in turn impacting local and translocal jazz scenes.</p>
Articles
Cuban jazz
gender and jazz
women in Cuban jazz
Cuban jazz fusion
Cuban music
jazz fusion
Cuban ritual music
Santería
jazz music
Cuban music
women in jazz
music and gender
Ethnomusicology
Musicology
Ruthie Meadows
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
213
233
10.1558/pomh.24710
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As Hip(p) as Auer?
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/24717
<p>The vibraphonist Vera Auer (1919–1996) and the pianist Jutta Hipp (1925–2003) are known as the ‘first female European jazz musicians’. Both were born in German speaking countries and came in contact with jazz in the 1940s. These instrumentalists had the courage to try out new approaches and develop their own musical ideas early in their careers in jazz scenes shaped by androcentric dynamics. Forms of subversion of gendered assignments are to be seen and heard in Auer’s and Hipp’s performances and influenced a new generation of jazz musicians in recent years. This article discusses the biographies and works of Vera Auer and Jutta Hipp by <br />exploring how these women known as ‘female exception[s]’ built their careers, with a critical eye on power and gender dynamics in German and Austrian jazz scenes. I argue that by subverting various gendered stereotypes such as the trope of the competitive individual jazz soloist, the supportive, caring, egalitarian aesthetic of both Hipp and Auer was coded feminine and therefore ignored in jazz history as a result of patriarchal structures in jazz.</p>
Articles
jazz
gender
power
Germany
Austria
female instrumentalists
historiography
Jazz
gender
music and gender
History
historiography
popular music in Germany
Jazz Studies
Gender Studies
German studies
Magdalena Fuernkranz
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
173
195
10.1558/pomh.24717
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Righting jazz history
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/24728
<p>Given the historical focus of jazz journalists on the male jazz world and the propensity for early jazz journalism to be written by and for men, the lack of research on women jazz journalists is not surprising. However, women have been at the center of jazz journalism from the beginning. Their acceptance in the jazz world, however, has been hard fought. As writer Val Wilmer said in her autobiography, jazz writing is ‘something that men did’. This article seeks to address the lack of research that has been devoted to women jazz journalists by focusing on the work of journalists between the 1930s and the 1980s. Focusing on such women writers as H. M. Oakley, Marili Ertegun, Barbara Gardner Proctor, Dorothy Ashby, Val Wilmer, and others, this article will go beyond a reclaiming of these writers’ works and analyze how jazz journalism by female writers is feminist.</p>
Articles
jazz journalism
women writers
women journalists
jazz
journalism
women in jazz
feminism
jazz history
women's studies
ethnomusicology
Kara Attrep
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-04
2024-03-04
234
250
10.1558/pomh.24728
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Emily Abrams Ansari, The Sound of a Superpower: Musical Americanism and the Cold War.
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/19547
<p>Emily Abrams Ansari, The Sound of a Superpower: Musical Americanism and the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 257 pp. ISBN 9780190649692 (hbk).</p>
Reviews
Americanism
American composers
USA
Cold War
Cultural politics
Americanism
musicology
popular music history
Cold War studies
Asya Draganova
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-12-08
2021-12-08
76
79
10.1558/pomh.42893
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Kirkland A. Fulk, ed., Sounds German: Popular Music in Postwar Germany at the Crossroads of the National and Transnational.
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/19674
<p>Kirkland A. Fulk, ed., Sounds German: Popular Music in Postwar Germany at the Crossroads of the National and Transnational. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. 140 pp. ISBN 978-1-78920-740-8 (hbk).</p>
Reviews
German popular music
transnational popular music history
West Germany
GDR
German pop music journalism
popular music in Germany
Transnational popular music cultures
musicology
cultural studies
German studies
Wolf-Georg Zaddach
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-12-08
2021-12-08
88
91
10.1558/pomh.42894
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Karen Tongson, Why Karen Carpenter Matters.
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/19723
<p>Karen Tongson, Why Karen Carpenter Matters. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019. 138 pp. ISBN 978-1-4773-1884-3 (pbk).</p>
Reviews
Karen Carpenter
musical biographies
iconicity
fan cultures
fantasy
Karen Carpenter
Singers
Biography
musicology
popular music studies
popular music history
Jenny Cubin
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-12-08
2021-12-08
80
83
10.1558/pomh.42896
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The pandemic disco
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/19822
<p lang="en-US" align="JUSTIFY">The COVID-19 crisis has brought unprecedented disruption to the social and economic status quo and has redefined music culture. The sudden shift from a collective to an exclusively private music experience has undoubtedly changed both the market and listening practices. Live shows and club culture have been suspended. However, while disco clubs remain closed, private apartments become the only possible dancefloor. Surprisingly, nostalgic disco albums have been very popular among listeners during the past coronavirus year. Artists like Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, Róisín Murphy and Kylie Minogue have presented disco utopias that have carried the listeners into a world before pandemic. Although disco albums are full of joyful synthesizer sounds, they also resonate with trauma from the past. At their core we can find traces of another epidemic that never came to an end: the HIV/AIDS epidemic. My goal is to show continuity between musical responses to different pandemics and to interpret the side effects of the (pre) COVID disco nostalgia, which, while giving hope, reminds us that HIV/AIDS is not yet a closed case.</p>
Articles
COVID-19
Queer
Disco
AIDS
Archive
Popular Music
Disco Music
Queer Theory
COVID-19
AIDS
Cultural Studies
Konrad Sierzputowski
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-12-08
2021-12-08
42
59
10.1558/pomh.19822
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Ephemeral income
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/19828
<p>There are two main types of income earned by musicians. The first is capital income, which is the type of income derived from owning the intellectual rights to music, either through record sales or leveraging moral rights. The second is labour income, which is generated from live performance and takes the form of performance fees. Historically, these two activities are considered separate with some ontological and economic interdependences, creating two different streams of income; however, we present a case which shows that the two merged when much ‘live’ music appeared online during the COVID-19 pandemic in the form of livestreams. These livestreams theoretically allow musicians to earn both capital income and labour income from the same activity. We use ‘design culture’, as a form of organizational culture, to describe how musicians can use the new livestreaming trend to realize better/fairer deals for themselves. This is especially prescient because in contemporary history, most musicians cannot earn a sustainable income from releasing recorded music, so have relied on live performance. Live performance has thus become less ephemeral, as has the income derived from it.</p>
Articles
capital income
labour income
design culture
COVID-19
live music
livestreaming
copyright
Live Music
Recorded Music
Popular Music Studies
Arts and Cultural Management
Josh Barlow
Guy Morrow
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-12-08
2021-12-08
60
75
10.1558/pomh.19828
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The Sound of Düsseldorf city walk
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/19936
<p>This article explores and contextualizes the in-person and remote implementation of The Sound of Düsseldorf city walk, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Music tourism and authenticity in the music walk, and its temporary activation of places via performance, storytelling and sounds, are discussed. The article also focuses on the opportunities offered by the digital implementation of the tour and how successful the attempt to mediate local heritage to virtual tourists can be. On one hand, it is crucial to refer to how this tour came to be in terms of local music history and where it is situated in relation to Düsseldorf’s development from retail industry and high art towards the discovery of the cultural and economic potentials of its own popular music heritage. On the other hand, it is interesting to reveal what can be learned from this tour and its implementation in relation to the future of music tourism. The conclusion reflects on how music heritage exists in a cultural ecosystem, based around a strong link between materiality, music and authenticity and how this might change in the post-pandemic future.</p>
Articles
COVID-19
Düsseldorf
music tourism
music walk
music heritage
Düsseldorf
Tourism
City walk
popular music
popular music studies
cultural geography
urban studies
heritage studies
Giacomo Bottà
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-12-08
2021-12-08
9
27
10.1558/pomh.19936
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To craft modern (hi)story through music
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21201
<p>Almost two years after the first contaminations and while the origins of COVID-19 and its worldwide proliferation remain unclear, analysing the music released by Chinese rappers in 2020 offers a relevant angle to engage with the country’s narration of the present. In the People’s Republic of China, where any cultural production lies under a strict control of the state, rap music recently reached the mainstream, forcing its actors to quickly comply with the authorities’ directives and become representative of ‘positive energy’. After the lockdown of Wuhan on 23 January 2020, Chinese rappers were prompt to mobilize and share songs with COVID-19 as the central topic. In close alignment with the country’s rejuvenated cultural nationalism, rap music thus became a vigorous sounding box for the government’s propaganda during the crisis, enhancing the bravery of Chinese medical workers, the responsibility of the Chinese people and displaying images broadcast by national media in music videos. This article draws on the official concept of the ‘main melody’ and focuses on the texts and the illustrations of three songs retrieved from a corpus of rap songs uploaded on online platforms during the first month of the pandemic. It argues that in the first phase of the crisis, official and non-official collaborations between state actors and musicians contributed to the creation of a uniform historical narrative that bolstered the state’s propaganda in its fight against the virus. The article also points out that such cooperation has not only been beneficial for the state but has also boosted the visibility of the artists involved.</p>
Articles
Rap music
China
Covid-19
Main melody
Cultural nationalism
Covid-19
Rap music
Popular Music
Media studies
Gregoire Bienvenu
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-12-08
2021-12-08
28
41
10.1558/pomh.19821
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Introduction
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21318
<p>.</p>
Introduction
Introduction
COVID
COVID
Musicology
Catherine Strong
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-12-08
2021-12-08
5
8
10.1558/pomh.21318
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Giacomo Bottà, Deindustrialisation and Popular Music: Punk and ‘Post-Punk’ in Manchester, Düsseldorf, Torino and Tampere.
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/19420
<p>Giacomo Bottà, Deindustrialisation and Popular Music: Punk and ‘Post-Punk’ in Manchester, Düsseldorf, Torino and Tampere. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. 213 pp. ISBN 978-1-78660-737-9 (hbk).</p>
Reviews
Post-Punk
Post-industrial cities
Industrial sound
deindustrialization
Deindustrialisation
Post-Punk
Industrial sound
Post-industrial cities
Popular Music Studies
urban studies
cultural analysis
cultural studies
Melanie Schiller
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
209
212
10.1558/pomh.42891
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Alain-Philippe Durand, ed., Hip-Hop en Français: An Exploration of Hip-hop Culture in the Francophone World.
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/19521
<p>Alain-Philippe Durand, ed., Hip-Hop en Français: An Exploration of Hip-hop Culture in the Francophone World. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. 260 pp. ISBN 978-1-538-1163-2/978-1-538-11633-3 (hbk/ebk).</p>
Reviews
contemporary France
Banlieue
Transatlantic pop
race and diaspora
hip hop
Francophone hip hop
Popular Music and Society
Hip-Hop
Francophone Hip-Hop
Music
Popular Music Studies
James G McNally
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
213
216
10.1558/pomh.42892
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John Whiteoak, ‘Take Me to Spain’: Australian Imaginings of Spain through Music and Dance.
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/20494
<p>John Whiteoak, ‘Take Me to Spain’: Australian Imaginings of Spain through Music and Dance. Melbourne: Lyrebird Press, 2019. 258 pp. ISBN 978-0-7340-3792-3 (pbk).</p>
Reviews
Australian music and dance history
Spanishness
Spanish music and dance
exoticism
Music
Musicology
Popular music history
Matthew Machin-Autenrieth
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
217
220
10.1558/pomh.20494
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Introduction
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21636
<p>The history of popular music in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is marked by disproportion on the one hand and gaps on the other. The majority of studies focus on phenomena that are assigned subversive qualities and the potential to lead to fundamental social change: jazz, blues, folk, and various styles of rock music. These genres are well documented in the archives that have opened up since the fall of the Berlin Wall. As Schlager, musicals or the operetta are considered to be light entertainment rather than culture, they are rarely researched. Gaps also exist with regard to the analysis of the musical artefact itself. Most research projects are dominated by an interest in historical events and focus on political forces and social effects, and the music itself is often ignored in favour of a discussion of the socio-political framework. This special issue presents new findings and invites a discussion on those methods that may contribute to a broadening of the perspectives on the history of popular music in the GDR.</p>
Introduction
Popular Music History
GDR
Historiography
history
methodology
popular music
sociology
history
Michael Rauhut
Beate Peter
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
97
105
10.1558/pomh.21636
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Irish rebel songs in the GDR
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21644
<p>Drawing upon ethnographic and historical research, this article explores the performance of Irish rebel songs among former members of the GDR folk-scene (1976–1990). It proposes that the political and nostalgic alignment of East German revivalists with folk songs in which Irishness is inscribed as a longue durée of oppression and anti-colonial rebellion constitutes a powerful discourse that has recursively shaped performance practices. The article argues that this top-down imaginary, circulated through popular culture, could be harnessed by GDR artists from the bottom up. Simultaneously, this adaptation of Irish Republican leanings resonated with the official socialist rhetoric of anti-imperialist resistance.</p>
Articles
GDR
Ireland
Irish Folk Music
Rebel Songs
Nationalism
Postcolonialism
Nostalgia
Translocality
GDR
Irish Rebel Songs
Popular Culture
Nationalism
Postcolonialism
Socialism
Nostalgia
Folk Music
Revival
Translocality
Ethnomusicology
Music Sociology
Music History
Political Science
Felix Morgenstern
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
122
132
10.1558/pomh.21644
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Intent and reality
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21700
<p>The development of popular music in the GDR was managed and controlled by the state. The state monopolized the production and distribution of music and kept its social use under surveillance, enacting a multitude of laws intended to shore up its own claim to power. While the administrative hold of the state left behind deep marks on the aesthetics and attitudes of East German rock and pop music, its grip was never absolute. Leading political ideas were continually being undermined by musicians and fans, but also by the state apparatus itself. In practice, the principle of expediency held court, and the path of least resistance was chosen. Small capitalist structures became increasingly prevalent, while everyday music culture atomized into niches. The fissure between intention and reality, with its attendant contradictions and tensions, operated as an important source of impetus and momentum for popular music in the GDR. Historical research that looks to advance to the heart of the subject must keep a view to the intricate processes of negotiation and power structures. This article considers the specific dynamics at play in light of three examples: the means of production, of publicity, and of interpretation.</p>
Articles
GDR
popular music
production
publicity
interpretation
GDR
popular music
politics
history
musicology
Michael Rauhut
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
167
182
10.1558/pomh.21700
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Inside the tape recorder factory
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21712
<p>Technical media such as playback devices play a key role in popular music culture. Hence, it is hardly surprising that extensive cultural-historical research with a focus on such devices has already been conducted. But almost all researchers working on the cultural history of playback devices in Germany concentrate on West Germany, while the media history of the GDR is treated marginally. In this article, I aim to contribute to the historiography of the GDR’s popular music with a focus on material culture. In doing so, I analyse archival material of the state-owned company VEB Messgerätewerk Zwönitz, which manufactured tape recorders in the 1950s and 1960s. The focus is on documents regarding the tape recorder BG 20. The sources, for example technical reports, advertisements, and letters from the government, demonstrate that the manufacturing of music devices in the GDR was highly influenced by the political conditions.</p>
Articles
Material culture
music devices
economic archives
History of music media
Musicology
Media Studies
Cultural History
Benjamin Burkhart
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
150
166
10.1558/pomh.21712
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Patterns of pop
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21717
<p>Although the images on the front of album covers contribute to a multimodal experience of popular music, they have up until now rarely been used as a historiographical source. This article aims to add this visual dimension to the historiography of popular music in the GDR by investigating visual patterns within a corpus of 105 album covers produced in the German Democratic Republic between 1964 and 1990 and by comparing them to Western album covers from the same period. Following a theoretical introduction, the political, economic and technological contexts of record production and album cover design in the GDR are described. Inspired by visual discourse analysis and social semiotics, a comparative corpus analysis approach focuses on the depiction of persons, settings and objects on the album covers as well as on their general visual design. The results suggest both a specific visual language that is peculiar to album covers in the GDR and an encompassing transnational imagery of popular music.</p>
Articles
GDR
album covers
corpus study
popular music historiography
visual discourse analysis
album cover imagery
Popular Music Research
History
Musicology
Visual Studies
Christina Dörfling
Martin Pfleiderer
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
133
149
10.1558/pomh.21717
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Dixie and free
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21766
<p>Expanding on findings from my recently published book A People’s Music: Jazz in East Germany, 1945–1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), in this article I argue that the process of ideologization granted the two most prominent styles of jazz in the GDR, Dixieland and free jazz, overt state support and social acceptance, despite their being on opposite ends of the stylistic spectrum. East German ideologues advanced polarized views on jazz based on their interpretation of the origin of jazz, as well as of their views of the role of jazz in socialism: both Dixieland and free jazz enjoyed legitimized positions in the socialist musical canon based on constructs of ‘Volk’ (the people) and ‘Kommerz’ (commercialization). By the late 1970s, both styles of jazz were celebrated at political events and festivals, were utilized as cultural diplomacy, and had become deeply embedded in the socialist musical canon—ultimately contributing to a national East German identity.</p>
Articles
Cold War history
ideology
jazz history
musicology
political science
Jazz
Ideology
Cold War history
GDR history
musicology
Helma Kaldewey
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
106
121
10.1558/pomh.21766
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Peter Stanfield, A Band with Built-in Hate: The Who from Pop Art to Punk.
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21897
<p>Peter Stanfield, A Band with Built-in Hate: The Who from Pop Art to Punk. London: Reaktion Books, 2021. 280 pp. ISBN 978-1-7891-4277-8 (hbk). £15.99.</p>
Reviews
visual arts
mod culture
pop art
The Who
Nik Cohn
The Who
Pop music history
60s culture
Camilla Aisa
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
198
201
10.1558/pomh.21897
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Tanya Pearson, Why Marianne Faithfull Matters.
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/21971
<p>Tanya Pearson, Why Marianne Faithfull Matters. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021. 192 pp. ISBN 978-1-4773-2116-4 (pbk). $18.95.</p>
Reviews
Marianne Faithfull
women in music
popular culture
memory
gender
popular music
1960s
autoethnography
memory studies
popular music
history
Christine Feldman-Barrett
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
202
205
10.1558/pomh.21971
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To dance or not to dance?
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/22314
<p>This article discusses the body politic of the GDR in the context of leisure and dancing. Two case studies are employed to show how conventional Western methods of describing and defining a musical event fail to capture the social aspect of popular music dancing in East Germany. The embodiment of popular music through dancing is proposed as an aesthetic choice that subverts official body politic and offers a non-verbal form of resistance. Through the focus on the body and the creation of affective communities, this article shows how young people were able to escape state control and regain a level of agency that might not have existed otherwise. By introducing aesthetics as a method of enquiry, a wider examination of the relationship between the body, politics and popular music is enabled.</p>
Articles
aesthetics
body politic
dancing
resistance
GDR
historiography
dance
politics
cultural studies
sociology
cultural studies
popular music studies
Beate Peter
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-22
2022-06-22
183
197
10.1558/pmh.22314
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On the borders of ska
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/18872
<p>On Tales from the Border: Skank for Choice (2019), a benefit album to support local reproductive rights organizations in Rio Grande Valley, Texas band L@s Skagaler@s position their music and ska in general as an explicitly activist space. Despite calling the album and accompanying concert ‘ska themed’, musically, the album features little of ska’s elements: upstroke rhythms, prominent brass and walking bass lines—the hallmarks of ska music—are all absent. Instead, the album offers three hardcore tracks, before the band’s drummer takes center stage and delivers three bilingual hip-hop songs. This article seeks to understand what ‘ska’ as a signifier means in this context. It posits that L@s Skagaler@s utilizes double meanings, such as ‘skank’ in the title and a feminist pseudonym, to gesture toward both ska’s history and feminist activism. Ultimately, this highlights the anti-racist and anti-colonial moments in the genre’s history, while also posing a corrective to the depoliticized ‘third-wave ska’ sound.</p>
Articles
Rio Grande Valley
Punk
ska
borderland
music scene
Genre
Activism
Music Scene
Ska
Punk
Hip-Hop
Borderlands
Cultural Studies
American Studies
Steven Stendebach
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-06-23
2022-06-23
268
282
10.1558/pomh.18872