How do you fashion an identity in a society that, at every turn, tries to snuff you out? In this article, I address Nina Simone's praxis of renaming and reinvention to demonstrate strategies of resistance. To this point, I analyze the musico-poetic setting of Nina Simone’s songs “Images” (1964) and “Four Women” (1965) to argue that her artistic musical choices sonically orchestrate varying issues of Black female subjectivity, identity, and self-making. In Simone’s songs, she refuses to discount the materiality of the Black body; instead, she envelops the Black body with signifiance and significance. The sonic bearers of semantic content become extensions of the Self—transmutable and heterodox. The compositional and poetic subtleties in these songs claim that the gaze of the Other can potentiate exteriority and freedom—what I term the “exo(p)tic.”

This article is a reflection by the authors on the impact that their identities as disabled women have had on their ongoing music careers. Skinner and Kapuscinski-Evans make up two-thirds of the Australian crip-folk trio, the Bearbrass Asylum Orchestra (the term “crip” is a cultural reappropriation of “cripple”). The Bearbrass Asylum Orchestra is a band that performs as part of the Disability Music Scene in Melbourne, Australia, using folk music to portray their experiences as people with disabilities. In this article Skinner and Kapuscinski-Evans discuss the formation of and philosophy behind the band, as well as the impact that growing up as disabled women had on their musical education, careers, and influences.

Within the study of rock music, religion appears as a racial marker or a biographical attribute. The concept of religion, and its co-produced opposite, the secular, needs critical analysis in popular music studies. To inaugurate this work this article returns to the moment in singer-songwriter Bob Dylan’s career that is most unmarked by religion, namely his appearance with an electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Dylan’s going electric became, through subsequent years of narrative attention, a secularizing event. “Secularizing event” is a phrase coined to capture how certain epochal moments become transforming symbols of divestment; here, a commitment writ into rock criticism as one in which rock emerged by giving up something that had been holding it back. Through a study of this 1965 moment, as well as the history of electrification that preceded it and its subsequent commentarial reception, the unreflective secular of rock criticism is exposed.

Germany’s premier rock music export Rammstein has been controversial since its formation in 1994. This article analyzes Rammstein’s sonic signature from the perspective of the “art of record production.” It decodes the politics of Rammstein’s sound, which is inextricably linked to the exaggeration of German attributes and the associations attached to them. The findings suggest that although Rammstein productions emphasize some specific German stereotypes in their sound, their overall aesthetic is international. This carefully crafted fine line between exotic otherness and conformity to pop standards has made Rammstein successful on the global pop music market for more than two decades. The production aesthetic must be understood against the background of the band’s experience of German reunification. Rammstein were founded as a means for the band members to come to terms with their new “German” identity. Initially, the band dealt with the shock of reunification and the realities of Western capitalist societies. Later the band pursued two further goals: to improve the history of their country in foreign perception and to help the Germans make peace with their nation’s past. These goals are achieved by adopting strategies of industrial music for their course, such as provocation, ambiguity, contrast, recontextualization, and humor.

Beatles tributes come in many forms and guises, but look-alikes are arguably the most popular type. Because of their focus on replicating the band’s iconic costumes and hairdo, they usually limit themselves to an easily reproducible core repertoire, forgoing the elaborate post-1966 studio productions. By contrast, sound-alikes strive for complete aural accurateness, often recreating the heavily produced compositions the Beatles never performed outside of the studio. One of the industry’s top-tier Beatles sound-alikes are the Analogues. Neglecting all mimetic visual effects, they re-animate the albums created after 1966, using the same orchestrations and instrumentations as the Beatles, including rare vintage instruments such as the Mellotron. Their approach bears parallels to historically informed performance (HIP), a common practice in Early Music, yet it operates within an entirely different framework. Informed by sound recordings, the Analogues deconstruct and re-record the Beatles’ music to construct their own performance, in the process conceiving a modern technology-based type of HIP. This article begins by establishing a typology of Beatles tributes before examining the process of staging an Analogues performance. It argues that the Analogues’ approach to historical recreation allows them to transcend criticism typically aimed at tributes and, paradoxically, lay claim to an “authentic” performance of what is inherently inauthentic, a live imitation of a recording. Overall, this article demonstrates how HIP can be used effectively outside of its mainstream classical context as a tool for popular music researchers and performers.

This article investigates melodic figures and harmonic sequences that miraculously only step up to illuminate an aesthetic lineage that connects gospel to electronic dance music. It argues that the synth-risers and ever-opening filters of contemporary euphoric rave music like happy-hardcore and uplifting-trance find precedence in compositional devices that made their way into funk/soul and disco/garage from Black gospel music, and that these gospel inventions were derived from the Afro-diasporic ring-shout. Cognitive linguistic and psychoacoustic theories premise an analytical framework for musical representations of endless ascent. Through close readings of representative recordings—a 1927 Pentecostal sermon by Reverend Sister Mary Nelson, James Cleveland’s “Peace Be Still,” Chic’s “Le Freak,” Trussel’s “Love Injection,” and DJ Hixxy’s remix of Paradise's “I See the Light”—the article examines various historical intersections with parlour music, European art music, and modal jazz, and suggests that musical ascent has a non-causal but, nevertheless, objective relationship with a type of spiritual transcendence.

Queerbaiting is a fast-expanding topic in media and cultural studies. In 2015, this author attempted to define queerbaiting as a strategy by which writers and networks attempt to gain the patronage of queer viewers via the suggestion of queer relationships, before denying and laughing off the possibility. Joseph Brennan’s 2019 edited volume has greatly developed the concept of queerbaiting to include a range of meanings, from media industries’ pledges of allegiance to LGBT causes that are not delivered upon to courting queer viewers via paratexts that imply queer relationships that don’t exist in text. Applying the concept of queerbaiting to bands complicates these ideas, as the “truth” or “delivery” of queer representation lies not in a fictional text but the public persona of real performers. Through an examination of stage-gay, the notorious practice of queer performativity on stage by straight performers in the emo music subculture, I investigate how a restrictive notion of “truth” in discussions of queerbaiting can actually close off the very possibilities of transformation and open-ended configurations of sexuality that Alexander Doty’s formulation of queerness promised. Emo bands are the natural case study here, as emo is an offshoot of hardcore and punk that sought to complicate the hegemonic masculinities dominating those genres, both in its musical and lyric content, and the public and paratextual performativity of its artists.

432 Hz music is a relatively recent internet-based phenomenon that has attracted listeners and musicians from all parts of the world. Increasingly connected via social media, listeners in this subculture do not necessarily share the same musical tastes or backgrounds. Rather, they have in common a belief that music tuned to the standard pitch of A-440 Hz is in some sense “out of tune” with nature or humanity. Alternatively, they prefer (and in some cases promote and advocate for) music that is tuned to a slightly lower, A-432 Hz standard. This preference is, for many, connected to beliefs that the A-432 Hz tuning reference can be physically, psychologically, and even spiritually beneficial. This article examines the promise of—and skepticism towards—the concept of “frequency” that is at the center of the 432 Hz phenomenon. It draws from research into some of the common historical, scientific, and conspiratorial claims made by 432 Hz advocates, as well as from qualitative data collected from dedicated 432 Hz listeners. After exploring the listening practices and media engagement of 432 Hz proponents, the article asks how the rise of 432 Hz music might relate to other recent and emerging forms of music consumption, the affective marketing of sound, and the management of personal sonic space.

Dancing has been a central component of the experience of popular music, yet with the exceptions of disco and electronic dance music, it is rarely discussed in the academic literature. This article focuses on a pivotal moment in the transformation of dancing to popular music in England. The second half of the 1960s saw the gradual move from dancing to live groups to dancing to records in clubs. Just before this dancing itself had changed from something done by couples to something done by individuals albeit usually in pairs, though often girls might dance together in a group. Young people in England learned to dance to music with a strongly emphasized beat. This article traces this genre from its early manifestations in tracks by the Honeycombs and the Dave Clark Five in the first half of the 1960s to the early 1970s in tracks by Mud and Slade. The article ends by looking at how this musical genre morphed into Eurodisco in the production work of Giorgio Moroder.

This talk identifies in popular music a common but largely untheorized phenomenon. Parade aesthetics are marked by an implied permeability between performers and audience, and the jubilant instrumentalization of individuals toward collective identity for its own sake. As a connoted medium (per Marshall McLuhan) the parade extends the body, rendering its participants larger, louder, and more opulently visible. It simultaneously miniaturizes the world, reducing it to the status of model, token, and toy. Such aesthetics then invite young pop audiences to step into roles with grownup attributes of instrumentalization, bigness, and access. These attributes are structural within parade aesthetics and largely independent of specific content. The talk concludes with an insight into the parade-like nature of first-wave hip-hop.

In 1847 Atwill of New York published “The Lament of the Blind Orphan Girl.” Composed by William Bradbury, the song is written for voice and piano in a lilting 3/8 meter. Mary, the song’s protagonist, sings of “the silvery moon” and “bright chain of stars” over diatonic harmonies. A dramatic shift to the minor mode supports the climax: “Oh, when shall I see them? I’m blind, oh, I’m blind.” Mary explains that she and her brother have also lost their parents. On the sheet music cover a wreath of flowers encircles an image of a young white woman kneeling beneath a tree, alone at a grave. The title page notes: “As sung with distinguished applause by Abby Hutchinson.” Orphan songs pervade nineteenth-century pop repertory. Scholars have analyzed Latvian, Hmong, Danish, and German orphan songs, but US orphan songs have generated little more than passing references. Other examples include: “The Orphan Nosegay Girl” with words by Mrs. Susanna Rowson from 1805; “The Colored Orphan Boy,” composed by C. D. Abbott and sung by S. C. Campbell of the Campbell Minstrels from 1852; and “The Orphan Ballad Singers Ballad” by Henry Russell from 1866. Orphans were not just a topic; in the latter half of the nineteenth century, actual parentless youth featured in bands such as the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band of New York City. This paper connects the stolen childhoods in orphan songs to those of enslaved youth. If free children were aware of slavery and the movement to abolish it as historian Wilma King has shown, what did it mean for Abby Hutchinson, who started performing abolitionist songs with her brothers at age twelve, to sing as the sentimental stock character of the orphan? Songs like the one above may have been a way that young abolitionists empathized with enslaved youths robbed of their youths.

This article looks into the nation branding phenomenon surrounding two major Serbian music festivals, Exit and Guča, in the post-Milošević era. The departure point of analysis is the once-dominant national identity narrative of Two Serbias, by which Exit (as a purveyor of Western-style popular music) and Guča (as the self-proclaimed guardian of the Serbian brass-band tradition) were pitted against one another as representatives of Two Serbias, one looking towards the West, and the other towards the East. Moving away from this obsolete model of interpretation, this article examines the effects that the inception of nation branding in Serbian public discourse has produced on the local perception of each festival as well as on Serbian national identity within the broader contexts of post-socialist transition, the EU integration, and globalization. It also analyzes the ways in which the principles of market economy and branding practice are being “bastardized” in both festivals, resulting in what Mladen Lazić (2003) calls normative-value dissonance . Nation branding has forged a more unified view of Exit and Guča as national brands that ostensibly improve the international image of the country but which in reality deplete both festivals of their initial cultural and political potency. Ultimately, however, the proof of normative-value dissonance in Exit and Guča supports the argument that nation branding in these two festivals feeds back into earlier Balkanist discourse on Serbia’s indeterminate position between West and East; and it does so in a way that provides little hope for alternative visions of the nation’s future.

Seventy-six-year-old Alvenia Bridges is someone who could be described as forever young. While she contends with typical signs of aging such as osteoporosis and arthritis, her daily meditative walks, diet of primarily salmon and avocados, and invigorating friendships contribute to her youthful demeanor. But a healthy lifestyle can only account for so much. Her captivating storytelling is what truly keeps her young. When she recounts her ability to move throughout the world in the heyday of her youth and when she describes how music allowed her to escape a violent beginning and discover her true purpose for existing, she transports both herself and her listener to another place and time. In doing so, age loses all meaning. Furthermore, her experience as a Black woman navigating the predominantly white and male-run world of Rock and Roll bears witness to the racial and gendered dynamics that exist in the music industry, highlighting how the past informs the present. By narrating an incident that occurred when Bridges was tour-managing the Rolling Stones, this lecture explores how our ethnographic memoir entitled Reclaiming Venus: The Many Lives of Alvenia Bridges conveys the power one wields when telling a story on one’s own terms.

In chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, and their respective subgenres, a common element is the thread of nostalgia, constant in each. This is the case for both the cover art used for these releases, as well as compositional techniques used in the music itself. Although these genres certainly approach nostalgia in different ways, they each rely on imagery that evokes nostalgic feelings or memories in a form of collective, imaginative self-soothing. The memories evoked, however, tend to rely on unrealistic depictions of reality and center on times and places that have perhaps only existed in the listener’s imagination. This article argues that the re-interpretation of cultural memory is an important structural feature in chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, and vaporwave subgenres such as mallsoft and the associated Japanese “city pop” revival. Through a discussion of the visual and musical connections that draw these genres together, the concepts of nostalgia in music (as well as the related concept of “reconstructed nostalgia”) are explored. An examination of listeners’ narrative explorations of these genres posted online suggests that users engage knowingly and willingly with this “reconstructed nostalgia.” Ultimately, this forms a collaborative and collective universe used by listeners as a method of escapism, through both their own imaginations and online comments.