Midterm 1 Flashcards
How does sound construct subjectivities?
- Technology plays a role
- Mobile devices enable us to control what we hear, creating “personal soundworlds”
- Mood Subjectivity: Songza asks you what mood your in to match music to
- Listening is different than hearing, it is intentional, conscious and active: we may hear noise but we listen to music
- The tether between listening choices and constructing a sense of self establishes boundaries of belonging, community, inclusion and exclusion
3 Components of Acoustic Space
- ) Resonance (Amplification of the Environment)
- ) Simultaneity (many events in same zone of space-time)
- ) Atmosphere (sound carries mood and effect)
Popular Music has…
- Has currency beyond a local audience
- Gains new audiences, meanings, contexts
- Shapes our identity
The goal of writing about Pop Music
Not only to capture ‘the real’ or ‘the authentic’ experience but also to widen the thinking spaces of research into the imaginary, the possible and the potential of sound and identity
Paul Morley: Podcast
- Previously, only popular music was critiqued because it was prevalent
- Now anyone can review music, it is not as sophisticated as it used to be
- Much more critiquing and reviewing in music now
Main Sonic Elements of Music
Rhythm, Hooks, Riffs, Voice, Harmony, Melody
What is Vaudeville?
Variety shows which often centered around music (NYC)
The Piano was a …
Status symbol
Broadway and Vaudeville relied on …
Tin Pan Alley Songwriters
_ were at the centre of the music business, turning the creations of songwriters and lyricists into commercial properties (Music used to be very detached from business and commodities, music was a one time only thing, now sheet music began being released)
Music Publishers
An “American” Sound
- Reflected the multiple ethnicities in Tin Pan Alley (Jewish America, Irish America, African America)
- Tin Pan Alley songs came to be accepted far beyond the community in and for which they had been created
- Jazz often misattributed to big orchestras by upper class white people
What was central to the Tin Pan Alley mode of song production?
Collaboration
Irving Berlin’s Songs often included…
- ) Piano introduction
- ) Two- or four- bar vamp (repeated riffing?)
- ) Two (or more) verses (16 or 32 bars)
- ) A chorus
* * Yet this sequence was subject to change in performance
1909: New Copyright Act
Royalty fees from recorded music and, termed “mechanicals” from “mechanical reproduction”
1920: New technologies for music consumers
Records and the Radio
1920s: The Jazz Age
Jazz was popularized as “syncopated dance music” often by high society orchestras
- Born from a variety of musical traditions including ragtime and blues
- “Hot Jazz”
- Oral, improvised
- “Sweet Dance Music”
- Written, played by high society orchestras
Appropriation of Ragtime
an African American piano music which Tin Pan Alley began to work into popular songs
Paul Whiteman
- Dubbed “King of Jazz” due to association between “jazz” and “sweet dance music”
- Blending of symphonic music and jazz
- A lot of African American artists were excluded from radio broadcast
Issue of Cultural Appropriation
The political concern emerges when empowered groups take on or take over the attributes of less powerful communities
- Attention should not be paid to the ownership of the sound, but who profits from the product
- Minorities often have clothing, language, religious beliefs, icons and music taken from a contextually-sensitive location, which are then used in inappropriate and commercial ways
Commodification
- The marketing of music often strips its cultural origin in order to appeal to a larger (and often white) audience
- Imagery and ideas of certain groups, that because of social position and inequalities, cannot make a profit from the sale of their sounds to an audience
Madonna and Vogue – Appropriation?
Voguing originated in the gay community with drag Queens, Madonna uses voguing as a style and to widen her audience - to promote acceptance or commercialize?
Jazz Music
- Music canonized as “Jazz”: small hot combos (i.e: Louis Armstrong) and ragtime-influenced compositions (I.e.: Jelly Roll Morton)
- These 2 kind of define jazz, which differs from the way it was popularized by people like Paul Whitman
- This is distinct from what was seen to be popular at the time: Recall the “Jazz Age” and sweet dance music
Louis Armstrong
- 1901-1971, New Orleans: Jazz Trumpeter and singer, Major influence in jazz, solo performance, very distinct voice, a different kind of jazz
Swing Era:
- Distinction between predominantly white ‘sweet bands’ and ‘predominantly black hot swinging bands’ continues
- The differences between how white jazz musicians are treated, versus that of black musicians
Racial Stereotypes in Jazz
- Black Musicians: body, spontaneity
- White Musicians: mind, calculation, femininity (“even college girls” like white swing bands)
Count Basie
- 1904-1984, New Jersey, Jazz pianist, composer, got his start in Harlem
- Jazz standard
“Hillbilly” and “Race” Music
Categories developed by music industry that catered to rural white Americans and African Americans
- Developed outside of Tin Pan Alley, Recording companies brought this music to the public with help from radio and film, turning them into a commodified piece of popular music
Hillbilly
A term that became widely used to described and market music in the 1930s, beginning in mid-1920s (usually coming from Mountain regions)
