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The Value of Studying Popular Music |
Music is one of the most frequently employed, popular media for adolescents, “devoting approximately four and five hours a day listing to music and watching music videos” (Christenson & Roberts, 1998, p. 8). In a study conducted in 1990, when high school students were asked which media they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island, at all grade levels, music media was the preferred top choice, even over television (Roberts & Henriksen, 1990). |
Uses of music |
The appeal of music relates to adolescents’ uses of music (Christenson & Roberts, 1998, Dominick, 1996) for a range of different purposes: |
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information about political or cultural issues or social/romantic relationships.
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diversion, relaxation, release, distraction, intensifying mood.
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constituting social relationships, either solitary, imagined experiences or sharing musical experiences with others.
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withdrawal or escape into one’s own private listening experience
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defining personal identities.
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Jazz |
Another important music genre is jazz, which, as some critics note, is one of the most important American art forms of the 20th century. In “What is Jazz?” Dr. Billy Taylor, noted jazz pianist, historian, and educator, shares glimpses of his extensive knowledge of jazz music from its roots in the African-American slavery experience, through the early days of ragtime, and onward through swing, bop, and progressive jazz.
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Classroom: Defining Jazz |
The history of jazz as portrayed in the PBS Ken Burns series on Jazz demonstrates how certain artists continually built on previous artists by refining their techniques and creating new ways of using the trumpet, sax, bass, and drums. A key moment in the history of jazz was the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of jazz artists such as Duke Ellington. |
During that era, writers such as Langston Hughes wrote poetry that was highly influenced by jazz rhythms.
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Classroom: Visualizing Jazz Scenes of the Harlem Renaissance
[study of poems by Langston Hughes (“The Weary Blues,” “Red Silk Stockings,” “Juke Box Love Song”) and song lyrics by Duke Ellington (“Take The A Train,” “It Don't Mean A Thing,” “Drop Me Off in Harlem”)] |
Classroom: Transcending Poetry, Jazz, Rap, and Hip Hop
studying how poetry, jazz, hip hop and poetry reflect the culture of the time.
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Click here for an extensive site on the history of jazz with links to a lot of different aspects of ja:zz. |
Webquest: Jazzing It Up |
For further reading |
Michael Jarrett (1999). Drifting on a read: Jazz as a model for writing. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. |
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Soul/Motown
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Another important music genre is that of soul/Motown music of the 1950s–1970s as performed by James Brown, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Booker T. & The MGs, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, as well as the Motown groups/singers: The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Marvelettes, The Supremes, The Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and Junior Walker and the All-Stars.
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history-of-rock.com: Soul Music
classic motown
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As illustrated in the documentary, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, the backup band The Funk Brothers played an important role in providing new forms of musical background for the Motown groups through the use of inventive bass guitar and additional percussion/violins.
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funk45.com |
Another documentary, Only the Strong Survive, portrays a number of important soul singers of the 50s to the 70s: Wilson Pickett, Sam Moore, Ann Peebles, the late Isaac Hayes, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Jerry Butler, The Chi-Lites, and Mary Wilson. |
As illustrated in the shift in the focus in the content on racial conflict in the lyrics of the Temptations and Marvin Gaye’s music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Motown genre eventually began to address the racism facing African-American culture during that period. |
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For further reading:
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Kempton, A., McDonald, R., & Kennedy, R. (2003). Boogaloo. New York: Knopf.
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Merlis, B., Seay, D., & James, E. (2001). Heart & soul: A celebration of black music style in America 1930-1975. New York: Watson-Guptill.
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Posner, G. (2002). Motown (e-book: download: Adobe Reader). New York: Random House.
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Zolten, J. J. (2003). Great god a'mighty - the dixie hummingbirds: Celebrating the rise of soul gospel music. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Hip/hop and Rap |
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Rap music emerged out of a Hip-Hop culture of the 1960s and 1970s with its emphasis on political expression and resistance through graffiti, modes of dress, language, and social practices. In a paper on the evolution of rap, Henry Rhodes describes how DJ’s and street performers created a new forms of musical expression:
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Dick Hebdige, in his book “Cut ‘N’ Mix,” described Jamaican ‘toasting’ as when the Jamaican disc jockies talked over the music they played. This style developed at dances in Jamaica known as “blues dances”. “Blues dances” were dances which took place in large halls or out in the open in the slum yards. “Blues dances” were a regular feature of ghetto life in Jamaica. At these dances black America R&B records were played. Jamaicans were introduced to these records by black American sailors stationed on the island and by American radio stations in and around Miami which played R&B records. Some favorite R&B artists were Fats Domino, Amos Melburn, Louis Jordan, and Roy Brown. There was a great demand for the R&B type of music, but unfortunately there were no local Jamaican bands which could play this type of music as well as the black American artists. As a result, ‘sound systems’ (comprised of DJs, roadies, engineers, bouncers) which were large mobile discotheques were set up to meet this need.
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The record playing systems of ‘sound systems’ had to be large so people could hear the bass by which to dance according to Hebdige. The major player in the ‘sound systems’ was the DJ. Some notable Jamaican DJs were Duke Reid, Sir Coxsone, and Prince Buster. They were performers as well as DJs. For example, Duke Reid dressed in a long ermine cloak with a pair of Colt 45s in cowboy holsters with a cartridge belt strapped across his chest and a loaded shotgun over his shoulder. This outfit was topped off with a gilt crown on his head. Just as there were to be DJ battles (competition) in the Bronx, they would occur first in Jamaica with one DJ trying to out play another DJ. As in both ‘battles’, here in the U.S. and Jamaica, the competition boiled down to who had the loudest system and the most original records and technique. It was not uncommon for things to get out of hand and for fighting to erupt during these DJ battles at the Jamaican “blues dances” once the crowds got caught up in this frenzy. It was said that Duke Reid would bring the crowd under control by firing his shotgun in the air.
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At first Jamaican toasting began when DJs would ‘toast’ over the music they played with simple slogans to encourage the dancers. Some of these simple slogans were “Work it, Work it” and “Move it up”. As ‘toasting’ became more popular so did the lengths of the toasts. One of the first big “toasting” stars was a Jamaican named U Roy (his real name was Ewart Beckford). Another technique which developed along side ‘toasting’ was called ‘dubs’. ‘Dubbing’ was when the record engineers would cut back and forth between the vocal and instrumental tracks while adjusting the bass and the treble. This technique highlighted the Jamaican ‘toasting’ even more.
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There are four areas which Jamaican ‘toasting’ and American rap music have in common. First, both types of music relied on pre-recorded sounds. Second, both types of music relied on a strong beat by which they either rapped or toasted. American rap music relied on the strong beat of hard funk and Jamaican “toasting” relied on the beat from the Jamaican rhythms. Third, in both styles the rapper or toaster spoke their lines in time with the rhythm taken from the records. Fourth, the content of the raps and toasts were similar in nature. For example, as there were boast raps, insult raps, news raps, message raps, nonsense raps, and party raps there also existed toasts that were similar in nature.
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Rhodes notes that rap groups then emerged who had an appeal to a larger audience: |
Run-D.M.C. was the first black rap group to break through to a mass white audience with their albums, Run-D.M.C and King of Rock. These albums led the way that rap would travel into the musical mainstream. Even though Run-D.M.C. dressed as if they came right off the street corner, this was not the case. Run and D.M.C came from middle class families, they were never deprived of anything and they never ran with a gang. One could never tell this by their dress or from the raps they made. Run-D.M.C. records were produced under the Def Jam label which had as one of its founders a Jewish punk rocker named Rick Rubin. Russell Simmons, Run’s brother, was to later take control of the Def Jam label in 1989, however this can not take away from the fact that this so-called militant rap group was at one time being produced by a white person. What is even more startling is that one of the most militant rap groups, Public Enemy, was also produced by Rick Rubin. Just as Run-D.M.C. came from middle-class families so did Public Enemy. Members of Public Enemy grew up in suburban Long Island towns with successful middle-class professional parents.
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Hip Hop originated in the 1970s in the Bronx, when local neighborhood artists began to play records on record players in new, original ways, which led to the rise of early Hip Hop stars DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash. Click here for an interactive timeline exhibit at the EMI Seattle Music Museum. |
In an article in The Nation (January 13, 2003), “'Stakes Is High': Conscious Rap, Neosoul and the Hip-Hop Generation,” Jeff Chang notes the shifts from the original Hip-Hop to more recent commercialized versions: |
Fifteen years ago, rappers like Public Enemy, KRS-One and Queen Latifah were received as heralds of a new movement. Musicians - who, like all artists, always tend to handle the question "What's going on?" much better than "What is to be done?" - had never been called upon to do so much for their generation; Thelonious Monk, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder were never asked to stand in for Thurgood Marshall, Fannie Lou Hamer or Stokely Carmichael. But the gains of the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s were being rolled back. Youths were as fed up with black leadership as they were with white supremacy. Politics had failed. Culture was to become the hip-hop generation's battlefield, and "political rap" was to be its weapon.
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Today, the most cursory glance at the Billboard charts or video shows on Viacom-owned MTV and BET suggests rap has been given over to cocaine-cooking, cartoon-watching, Rakim-quoting, gold-rims-coveting, death-worshiping young 'uns. One might even ask whether rap has abandoned the revolution.
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Indeed, as the central marker of urban youth of color style and authenticity, rap music has become the key to the niching of youth culture. The "hip-hop lifestyle" is now available for purchase in every suburban mall. "Political rap" has been repackaged by record companies as merely "conscious," retooled for a smaller niche as an alternative. Instead of drinking Alizé, you drink Sprite. Instead of Versace, you wear Ecko. Instead of Jay-Z, you listen to the Roots. Teen rap, party rap, gangsta rap, political rap - tags that were once a mere music critic's game - are literally serious business.
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"Once you put a prefix on an MC's name, that's a death trap," says Talib Kweli, the gifted Brooklyn-born rapper who disdains being called "conscious." Clearly his music expresses a well-defined politics; his rhymes draw from the same well of protest that nourished the Last Poets, the Watts Prophets and the Black Arts stalwarts he cites as influences. But he argues that marketing labels close his audience's minds to the possibilities of his art. When Kweli unveiled a song called “Gun Music,” some fans grumbled. (No “conscious” rapper would stoop to rapping about guns, they reasoned, closing their ears even as Kweli delivered a complicated critique of street-arms fetishism.) At the same time, Kweli worries that being pigeonholed as political will prevent him from being promoted to mass audiences. Indeed, to be a “political rapper” in the music industry these days is to be condemned to preach to a very small choir.
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“Political rap” was actually something of an invention. The Bronx community-center dances and block parties where hip-hop began in the early 1970s were not demonstrations for justice, they were celebrations of survival. Hip-hop culture simply reflected what the people wanted and needed - escape. Rappers bragged about living the brand-name high life because they didn't; they boasted about getting headlines in the New York Post because they couldn't. Then, during the burning summer of the first Reagan recession, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released "The Message," a dirge (by the standards of the day) that seethed against the everyday violence of disinvestment. Flash was certain the record, which was actually an A&R-pushed concoction by Duke Bootee and Melle Mel, would flop; it was too slow and too depressing to rock a party. But Sugar Hill Records released the song as a single over his objections, and "The Message" struck the zeitgeist like a bull's-eye. Liberal soul and rock critics, who had been waiting for exactly this kind of statement from urban America, championed it. Millions of listeners made it the third platinum rap single.
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Through the mid-1980s, Melle Mel, Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force, Run-DMC and others took up the role of the young black lumpenrapper opposition, weighing in on topics like racism, nuclear proliferation and apartheid. And just as the first Bush stepped into office, a new generation began to articulate a distinctly post-civil rights stance. Led by Public Enemy, rappers like Paris, Ice-T, X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers and Brand Nubian displayed the Black Panther Party's media savvy and the Minister Louis Farrakhan's nationalist rage. Politics were as explicit as Tipper Gore's advisory stickers. As the Gulf War progressed, Paris's "Bush Killa" imagined a Black Power assassination of Bush the Elder while rapping, "Iraq never called me 'nigger.'" (Last year, he returned to cut an MP3-only critique of the war on Afghanistan, "What Would You Do?") Rappers' growing confidence with word, sound and power was reflected in more slippery and subtle music, buttered with Afrodiasporic and polycultural flavor.
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Many of these artists had emerged from vibrant protest movements - New York City's resurgent Black Power movement; the swelling campus antiapartheid / multiculturalism / affirmative action movement; local anti-police brutality movements. In each of these, representation was the cry and the media were a target. Rap "edutainment" came out of the convergence of two very different desires: the need for political empowerment and the need to be empowered by images of truth. On 1990's "Can I Kick It?," A Tribe Called Quest's Phife Dawg captured the mood of his audience sweetly and precisely: "Mr. Dinkins, will you please be our mayor?" But while Mayor Dinkins's career quickly hit a tailspin, hip-hop rose by making blackness - even radical blackness - the worldwide trading currency of cultural cool.
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In the new global entertainment industry of the 1990s, rap became a hot commodity. But even as the marketing dollars flowed into youth of color communities, major labels searched for ways to capture the authenticity without the militancy. Stakes was high, as De La Soul famously put it in 1996, and labels were loath to accept such disruptions on their investments as those that greeted Ice-T and Body Count's "Cop Killer" during the '92 election season. Rhymers kicking sordid tales from the drug wars were no longer journalists or fictionists, ironists or moralists. They were purveyors of a new lifestyle, ghetto cool with all of the products but none of the risk or rage. After Dr. Dre's pivotal 1992 album, The Chronic, in which a millennial, ghettocentric Phil Spector stormed the pop charts with a postrebellion gangsta party that brought together Crip-walking with Tanqueray-sipping, the roughnecks, hustlers and riders took the stage from the rap revolutionaries, backed by the substantial capital of a quickly consolidating music industry.
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Rap music today reflects the paradoxical position of the hip-hop generation. If measured by the volume of products created by and sold to them, it may appear that youth of color have never been more central to global popular culture. Rap is now a $1.6 billion engine that drives the entire music industry and flexes its muscle across all entertainment platforms. Along with its music, Jay-Z's not-so-ironically named Roc-A-Fella company peddles branded movies, clothing and vodka. Hip-hop, some academics assert, is hegemonic. But as the social turmoil described by many contemporary rappers demonstrates, this generation of youth of color is as alienated and downpressed as any ever has been. And the act of tying music to lifestyle - as synergy-seeking media companies have effectively done - has distorted what marketers call the "aspirational" aspects of hip-hop while marginalizing its powers of protest.
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Yet the politics have not disappeared from popular rap. Some of the most stunning hits in recent years - DMX's "Who We Be," Trick Daddy's "I'm a Thug," Scarface's "On My Block" - have found large audiences by making whole the hip-hop generation's cliché of "keeping it real," being true to one's roots of struggle. The video for Nappy Roots' brilliant "Po' Folks" depicts an expansive vision of rural Kentucky - black and white, young and old together, living like "everything's gon' be OK." Scarface's ghettocentric "On My Block" discards any pretense at apology. "We've probably done it all, fa' sheezy," he raps. "I'll never leave my block, my niggas need me." For some critics, usually older and often black, such sentiments seem dangerously close to pathological, hymns to debauchery and justifications for thuggery. But the hip-hop generation recognizes them as anthems of purpose, manifestoes that describe their time and place the same way that Public Enemy's did. Most of all, these songs and their audiences say, we are survivors and we will never forget that.
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In a readingonline.org article, Ernest Morrell describes how he integrated teaching about hip-hop culture into an English poetry unit. |
Given the social, cultural, and academic relevance of hip-hop music, a colleague and I designed a classroom unit that incorporated hip-hop music and culture into a traditional high school senior English poetry unit. We began the unit with an overview of poetry in general, attempting to redefine poetry and the poet's role. We emphasized the importance of understanding the historical period in which a poem was written in order to come to a deep interpretation. In the introductory lecture, we laid out all of the historical and literary periods that would be covered in the unit (e.g., the Elizabethan age, the Puritan Revolution in England, the Civil War, and the Post-Industrial Revolution in the United States). We placed hip-hop music and the Post-Industrial Revolution right alongside other historical and literary periods so that students could use a period and genre of poetry they were familiar with as a lens to examine the other literary works. We also wanted to encourage our students to re-evaluate how they view elements of their popular culture.
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The second major portion of the unit was the group presentation of a poem and a rap song. The groups were asked to prepare a justifiable interpretation of their poem and song with relation to their specific historical and literary periods and to analyze the links between the two. After a week of preparation, each group was given a class period to present its work and have its arguments critiqued by peers. In addition to the group presentations, students were asked to complete an anthology of 10 poems, 5 of which would be presented at a poetry reading. Finally, students were asked to write a five- to seven-page critical essay on a song of their choice.
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The students generated quality interpretations and made interesting connections between the canonical poems and the rap songs. They were also inspired to create their own critical poems to serve as celebration and social commentary. Their critical investigations of popular texts brought about oral and written critiques similar to those required by college preparatory English classrooms. The students moved beyond critical reading of literary texts to become cultural producers themselves, creating and presenting poems that provided critical social commentary and encouraged action for social justice. The unit adhered to critical pedagogy because it was situated in the experiences of the students, called for critical dialogue and a critical engagement of the text, and related the texts to larger social and political issues.
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A Chum Television Study Guide: Hip-Hop Consciousness
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Lots of sites related to Hip-Hop culture:
Hiphop-directory.com
The history of hip hop |
Vibe Magazine |
Hip-Hop/Rap Group sites:
hiphop-directory.com: hip hop and rap groups
Rapmusic.com
about.com: rap/hip-hop
b-boys.com
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For further reading: |
Chang, J. (2003). Can't stop, won't stop: A history of the hip-hop generation. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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Dimitriadis, G. (2001). Performing identity/performing culture: Hip hop as text, pedagogy, and lived practice. New York: Peter Lang.
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Green, J. (Ed.). (2002). Rap and hip hop. New York: Greenhaven (essays for students grades 8 and up).
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Krims, A. (2003). Rap music and the poetics of identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Maxwell, I. (2003). Phat beats, dope rhymes: Hip hop down under comin' upper. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
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Ramsey, G. (2003). Race music: Black cultures from bebop to hip-hop. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. |
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Punk |
As with Rap music emerging out of the Hip-Hop culture, punk music was an expression of adolescent punk culture that resisted traditional middle class, consumeristic culture, particularly mainstream dress, language, work habits, and music. As Charles Oh notes, punk music reflected a challenged to the traditional music industry:
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In the late 60’s and early 70’s, the music industry rang eerily familiar in its method of promoting trends over music. The public was being spoon-fed music that corporations simply intended to make a profit from. The backlash to this came to be known internationally as Punk rock.
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In New York, in the early 1970’s. Young, virtually unknown artists like Patti Smith, the Velvet Underground, and the Dolls of New York (changed later to New York Dolls) brought about a new style of “alternative-bohemian” entertainment, rooted in a “do-it-yourself” attitude. Short, frenetic songs, aggressive, sometimes confrontational stage presence, and angry messages against consumerism hit the stages at venues like New York’s CBGB’s, starting the movement that would be known as punk rock.
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Bands like the Ramones and the Talking Heads would evolve out of the punk rock movement, and become influences for those who shared a similar distaste in what was occurring in the music industry. Some say the underlying roots of punk was the frustration and anger from being treated as sheep, while others say punk stemmed from the “politics of boredom.” It was both.
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Malcolm McLaren has an indelible role in the history of punk rock, either beloved or hated for his managerial skills. In February of 1975, the New York Dolls, once a forerunner in punk, tried to revive a lagging career by hiring McLaren as their new manager. Understanding the value of shock, McLaren took the band and reintroduced them as born again communists. They draped themselves in communist flags and said catchy phrases like “better red than dead.” Unfortunately for the band, they continued to fail. Fortunately for McLaren, they continued to fail.
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After his attempt with the New York Dolls, McLaren relocated to England and teamed up with his friend Bernie Rhodes. The two nurtured a band that was arguably their greatest success, the Sex Pistols. McLaren and the Pistols adopted an anarchistic view of the world that made them instaneous celebrities. With spiked hair, tattered clothes, and safety pins as jewelry, they frequented talk shows and publicly badmouthed fellow artists, bands, and musicians. They spoke harshly of the British class system and the subjugation of the working class. They made news for concert violence and fighting with fans. The Sex Pistols were also as notorious for their brashness as they were for their inability to play their instruments.
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Their shock value not only brought them fame, but made them the single most recognizable punk band. Therefore, many believed that punk rock began with the Pistols, while others believed it made punk into a novelty and signified the beginning of the end.
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Despite the internal turmoil in the punk movement, punk rock made several things clear to international audiences. Punk Rock, in its subculture, managed to break down many barriers of expression and language. It made an indentation in the commericial music industry. It provided a fresh alternative to a boring, stagnant music scene.
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But most of all, punk’s legacy lies in its introduction of self employment and activism. It illustrated that anyone can do it themself, without reliance on the commercial media or the luxury of having financial abundance. Against the backdrop of mass consumer conformity, the punk rock movement made a statement of individuality that was heard worldwide.
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History of Punk/Heavy Metal music [ Seattle EMP Music Museum ]
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Punkmusic.com
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Punkbands.com |
MusicGirl [ female aspects of punk music ] |
See also:
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Greenwald, A. (2003). Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, the Web, and the Emo Generation. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. |
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Folk |
Another genre central to the development of American music is folk music, made famous by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan.
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It may difficult to define clear distinctions between early blues and folk music as reflected in the music of Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, and Bessie Smith. |
Contemporary folk singers continue the early traditions of openly addressing social and personal concerns of everyday life as expressed in the songs by Altan, the Chieftains, Ani DiFranco, Ry Cooder, Sara McLachlan, Wilco, John Prine, and Los Lobos. |
Sites with lots of links to different aspects of folk music:
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Musical Traditions
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Folk Music Home Page
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The Mudcat Café [ for downloading folk music ] |
Folk music instruments |
Dirty Linen Magazine |
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Country |
Another genre is that of country music, that became increasingly popular during the 1970s/80s as an expression of Bible Belt, working-class cultural values, and then, the 1980s and 1990s, political beliefs. |
The Roughstock History of Country Music notes that country emerged out of earlier forms of bluegrass, folk, spiritual, and cowboy music of the 1920s and 1930s.
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Country Music Television
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Country Music Association |
Country Music Hall of Fame |
Nashville.net [ lots of links to country music sites ] |
Great American Country TV |
Webquest: country music |
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Cajun/Zydeco |
As with other genres, Cajun music emanated out of Louisiana as an expression of Cajun culture. Zydeco music is a hybrid of cajun and blues music. This music became increasingly popular in the 1980s and 1990s outside of Louisiana, particularly as a form of dance music.
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Less important but very much a part of this scenario has been zydeco, a cross mainly of blues and cajun music. Cajun is the music of the Cajun people of southern Louisiana. The name is a local degradation of Acadian, the original name of the French colonialists who inhabited the colony of Acadie from 1624 until deported by the British in 1755, who renamed the area Nova Scotia. The Acadians arrived in the one time French colony of Louisiana, and built themselves a new home which stretches across southern Louisiana (except New Orleans) and part of eastern Texas. The music is normally sung in Cajun French and has a sound somewhere between a generic Celtic style, traditional French music, and a rough country/hillbilly stylisation. A distinguishing mark is that long melody notes are broken up into a series of staccato half-beats. The violin was traditionally the dominant instrument, and enabled frequent use of quarter-tones, but the accordion and guitar have come to dominate. The Cajuns were in their former years a very racially tolerant group, had never kept black slaves, and had already begun mixing freely with Native Americans by the time the emancipation of black slaves occurred. It may possibly be because of their having been refugees of a sort that their culture had not retained racial pride and prejudice. As black freedmen came to settle in the bayous, they found themselves more welcome than in most other areas, particularly of the southern states. Miscegenation began to occur, and the Creole race came to be. The Creoles have come from a mixture of Afro-Americans with Cajuns, and other French and Spanish settlers, and speak dialects of Spanish and French. Thus, while there are no Cajuns to be found in New Orleans (Cajuns suffer discrimination there due to lesser racial authenticity), there are many Creoles in the metropolitan and country areas.
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The non-instrumental juré music of the local slaves, which involved vocals accompanied by hand clapping and foot stomping, became rhythm and blues. As these developments took place, the styles were mixed such that the blues of the blacks mingled with the joyful, muggy-warmth of cajun music. The result was to create what could be described as the happiest blues on earth — zydeco. Zydeco can be described as cajun music with a major-key blues structure. Accordions again dominate, but a major component is the washboard taking much of the rhythm. Contemporary permutations of both styles, but much more so of zydeco, also use electrified instruments and tend towards a rock/pop caricature. Another parallel form is bluegrass — like rock n’ roll a melding of blues and country — but it will not be examined in this essay.
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Zydeco, incidentally, just like cajun, is a degradation of French. The phrase les haricots sont pas salés, which means the snap beans aren’t salty, is an evocation for hard times, and was the title of an early zydeco song. Phonetic variants of the first two words came to denote the style. Rock n’ roll by contrast was groomed and popularised largely by executives and entrepreneurs to make it what we know it to have been. Some record companies and broadcasters in the 1950’s knew the potential in black music, but a lack of white performers to deliver an acceptable synthesis of white and black sounds prevented them from taking the step, seeing as money was at stake. Finally the right act with the right sound came along, and the rest is history.
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In this instance we see a cross-fertilisation taking place between two utterly different, yet possibly converging ethnic collectives. The Africans blending slowly with a European-dominated society, and the Europeans starting in large numbers to listen to new music with influences from outside the official cultural map, and a youth culture finding an outlet that offered, if not cathartic aggression, then more verve and energy than the rather stuffy cheekiness of Glenn Miller’s Big Band.
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Music Video |
Music videos have played an important role in both the development and the promotion of music. Students could analyze different features of music videos (for on-line viewing)
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MTV.com
VH-1.com
in terms of (Shuker, 1994, p. 186):
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mood: the overall feeling of nostalgia, romanticism, despair, etc.
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narrative structure: degree to which contains a story versus a non-linear montage
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realism versus fantasy
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themes: loss of innocence, love, protest, etc.
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performance defined in terms of genre features
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portrayal of sexuality/gender role stereotyping
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focus on promotion of singer
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music content
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Another important element of music videos are the intertextual links made to a range of different images and texts that convey the meaning of the video. John Fiske studied adolescents’ responses to Madonna by “listening to them, reading the letters they write to fanzines, or observing their behavior at home or in public. The fans’ words or behavior are . . . texts that need ‘reading’ theoretically in just the same way as the ‘texts of Madonna’ do (97). In reading these various “texts of Madonna” — the music videos, movies, magazine articles, posters, etc., Fiske goes beyond what I have described as a textual approach to recognize “that the signifieds exist not in the text itself, but extratextually, in the myths, countermyths, and ideology of their culture” (97). This allows him to determine “the way the dominate ideology is structured into the text and into the reading subject, and those textual features that enable negotiated, resisting, or oppositional readings to be made” (98). |
He cites the example of 14-year-old Lucy’s response to a Madonna poster: She’s tarty and seductive . . . but it looks alright when she does it, you know, what I mean, if anyone else did it it would look right tarty, a right tart you know, but with her its OK, it’s acceptable. . . . with anyone else it would be absolutely outrageous, it sounds silly, but it’s OK with her, you know what I mean. (November, 1985)(98).
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For Fiske, this response represents Lucy’s grappling with the cultural oppositions of patriarchal versus feminist perspectives on sexuality: |
Lucy can only find patriarchal words to describe Madonna’s sexuality — “tarty” and “seductive” — but she struggles against the patriarchy inscribed in them. At the same time, she struggles against the patriarchy inscribed in her own subjectivity. The opposition between “acceptable” and “absolutely outrageous” not only refers to representations of female sexuality, but is an externalization of the tension felt by adolescent girls when trying to come to terms with the contradictions between a positive feminine view of their sexuality and the alien patriarchal one that appears to be the only one offered by the available linguistic and symbolic systems (98).
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Through her grappling with the conflicting codes of the poster, Lucy is defining her gender identity within the context of competing patriarchal and feminist values. She also make intertextual links according to learned cultural categories (Orr). Fiske cites the example of the cultural category of “the blond”: |
Madonna’s music video Material Girl provides us with a case in point: it is a parody of Marilyn Monroe’s song and dance number “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: such an allusion to a specific text is an example of intertextuality for its effectiveness depends upon specific, not generalized, textual knowledge — a knowledge that, incidentally, many of Madonna’s young girl fans in 1985 were unlikely to possess. The video’s intertextuality refers rather to our culture’s image bank of the sexy blonde star and how she plays with men’s desire for her and turns it to her advantage (108).
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Readers therefore associate certain cultural meanings with categories such as “the blonde” — sexiness, power, vulnerability, youth, celebrity, etc., meanings, in this case, associated with the cultural practice of defining gender roles. Through a range of different “textual shifters” ’ record labels, movies, music videos, celebrity magazines, etc., Madonna evokes the contradictory images of “innocent virgin” and “culturely whore.” For many adolescent females, during her popularity, Madonna represents an assertiveness against a patriarchal system — an attitude that “I can do what I want,” an autonomy not always associated with a 1950s image of “the blonde” as dependent on patriarchy. |
There has also been considerable debate about the content of music videos and the effects of that content on adolescent viewers. In his documentary, “Dreamworlds II,” Sut Jhally argues that women are represented primarily as sex objects within an adolescent male fantasy world in which alluring women are portrayed as willing and eager to have sex with men. He argues that these portrayals are related to male violence towards women and to patriarchic notions of sexuality. |
As noted on the web site description, he argues the following points: |
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In 1981, MTV began business as a cable channel devoted to broadcasting music videos created as advertisements by record companies. In the two decades since, these advertisements have become an integral part of popular culture, airing on a number of television channels, including BET, VH-1, and MTV2.
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As with many other forms of advertisement, music video often depends on sexual content to attract the attention of potential consumers.
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The sexual content of music video relies on a narrow set of characters and plot lines. Examining that narrow set can help us understand part of music video’s impact on our everyday lives.
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Women in music television inhabit a fantasy landscape, a “DreamWorld” where the norms of femininity are nymphomania and dependence on and subservience to men. In this DreamWorld, women vastly outnumber men, attraction is instant, and sex happens without courtship. All men are promised sexual gratification, including the viewer.
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This dream world is inextricably tied up in the fantasy life of adolescent heterosexual males. The adolescent heterosexual male fantasies of seeing women in their underwear, looking down women’s shirts or up their skirts, and engaging in casual and erotic touch with multiple women are played out ad nauseum in plotlines and camerawork.
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These sorts of stories about women’s sexuality, while undeniably successful from a marketing perspective, have consequences in the real world. They encourage men to think of women primarily as sexual objects without subjectivity and encourage women to value themselves only if they can attract the gaze or advances of men. Just as in adolescent heterosexual male fantasy, emotions and humanity take a back seat to a mechanical, exploitative orgy.
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To allow this one world as the dominant framework for popular conceptions of sexuality is to perpetuate a dysfunctional sexual culture.
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We should resist the urge to censor the sorts of sexual imagery prevalent in music video.
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We should, instead, look to increase democratic access to this and other popular institutions that spread stories of sexuality. The DreamWorld should include a radically wider range of fantasies about romance and intimacy. It should reflect the true diversity of intimacies and fantasies that make us human.
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Another Education Media Foundation video, What a Girl Wants examines the lyrics of Christina Aguilera’s song “What a Girls Wants” in relationship to adolescent females self-perceptions of themselves as females.
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Media Awareness Lesson: Popular Music and Music Videos |
Media Awareness Lesson: Public Images |
Webquest: The Producer [ create a music video based on a poem ] |
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Film Music |
Related to the topic of music videos is the study of music in film or film soundtrack. Film music plays an important role in a film by conveying certain meanings associated with the visual action. High-paced music is often used to convey a sense of suspense and desperation linked to a chase scene as is the case with the use of music in the Lord of the Rings triology films. Certain music may be linked to certain characters in a film, as is the case with the use of the Bee Gee’s disco music linked to the John Travolta character in Saturday Night Fever. |
In the following discussion, Fred Ginsburg describes how different types of music in a soundtrack functions to enhance a film: |
The dramatic source of music under a scene can be either “extraneous” or “practical.” Extraneous means that the score is simply there on the soundtrack because the filmmaker put it there to accompany the picture. The people in the movie theatre hear it, but the characters in the film do not. Most music in soundtracks falls under this category. In contrast to this, some music is initially explained or motivated by some source on screen, such as a radio playing, a nightclub band, or a character musician. In these instances, the music that the audience hears is also being heard by the characters on screen!
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Sometimes, music can creatively overlap both of these categories, by starting off as extraneous and then being revealed as practical, or vice versa.
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Music for a soundtrack can originate one of two ways: canned or original score.
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“Canned” music refers to having come from a prerecorded music library. For a fee, a producer can purchase the rights to use selections of existing music in his or her production. A large number of companies produce volumes of high quality, generic purpose music tracks intended exclusively for this purpose. The music is composed and recorded so as to facilitate “modular” editing to accommodate scene length or climax.
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Producers can pay for the music on a “needle drop,” screen minute, or blanket basis. Needle drop refers to buying music based on a per selection, per use, basis. Blanket arrangements permit unlimited usage of the entire library either per entire production or per entire year. In determining their fees, music libraries will also want to know the intended purpose and scope of distribution of the film (theatrical, educational, home video, nationwide broadcast, industrial in-house, etc.). Readers are warned, however, to exercise extreme caution in planning to use consumer music albums (pop, rock, soul, oldie, classical, etc.) as sources of music. Even in cases where the song itself is in public domain, the particular arrangement and performance are protected under copyright and fair trade laws. If you feel it is absolutely imperative to use a “real” song instead of one from a music library, make certain to obtain permission — in writing, in advance — from the recording company in question! Otherwise, you will discover just how ruthless, greedy, and unsympathetic lawyers and their clients can be.
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The other source of music is to have it originally composed and recorded for your project. This could involve a full-scale orchestra, or be as simple as a single musician overdubbing himself. The process begins with supplying the composer with a videotape copy of the footage along with instructions from the director or editor.
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In the course of composing the music, at some point the composer and editor will create what is known as a “click track.” This is a soundtrack that consists solely of clicks placed opposite the picture in order to convey cutting rhythm and climax. This click track serves to guide the composer and, later on, the musicians in keeping “beat” with the film rather than a more arbitrary reference rhythm.
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After the music has been composed, the next step is obviously to record it. In the case of an orchestral score, musicians are assembled and arranged in a large recording studio, known as a “scoring stage.” There, they view the film on a large screen while hearing the click track in headphones. Led by the composer, the orchestra performs the selections. The music is recorded on multi-track for later mixdown.
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When the score is composed and performed by a single musician, as is more often the case on low budget productions, the individual composer may be responsible for producing the entire musical soundtrack. Employing a portable multi-track recording system in conjunction with video playback, he or she will commonly perform and overdub with keyboards, synthesizers, electronic drums, and perhaps a few acoustic instruments.
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Film Music [ lots of links ] |
Music from the Movies |
Field of Dreams [ On-line film music journal ] |
Soundtrack.net [ links to individual soundtracks ] |
The Film Music Society [ lots of links to individual composers ] |
John Williams’s web site [ composer of music for movies such as Star Wars, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, the Indiana Jones trilogy, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws ] |
An NPR interview with John Williams and Leonard Slatkin |
FilmSound.org [ lots of links to aspects of film sound ] |
See also:
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Dickinson, K. (Ed.) (2003). Movie Music, the Film Reader. New York: Routledge.
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Inglis, I. (Ed.) (2003). Popular Music and Film. New York: Columbia University Press. |
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Economics of the Popular Music Industry |
The popular music industry, and associated distribution/promotion/radio outlets, sell over a billion tapes/discs annually in 60,000 music stores; about 20% of that music is rock, 13% is African-American oriented contemporary music, and 14% is country (Baran, 2002, p. 251). |
Four major conglomerates dominate the industry, controlling 90% of the market (Baran, 2002, p. 251): |
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SONY (Columbia/Epic Records)
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BMG (owned by Bertlesmann: RCA/Arista)
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Universal Music (owned by Vivendi: MCA)
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Warner/AOL (Atlantic, Electra, Warner, EML)
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Stanley Baran (2002) identifies three problems with the domination of the industry by these conglomerates (problems that also parallel those of the film industry, also dominated by a few conglomerates): |
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“cultural homogenization:” derivative, predictable, manufactured groups such as ‘N Sync of the Back Street Boys are favored over seeking out and developing new, original local bands.
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“dominance of profits over artistry:” to pay millions of dollars for superstar performers, less-well-known groups are eliminated or not signed, particularly controversial groups, creating “infringement of artistic freedom.”
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“promotion overshadows the music:” groups that marketable and have corporate sponsorship can go on tours to attract a fan following. Without fans, groups have difficulty obtaining sponsorship. The industry also controls radio playlists, promoting only their own groups whom they have selected to market.
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These large conglomerates can only control the industry through how they produce and market CDs, which have relatively high profit margins. They also can afford to sign up major stars and therefore control copyright access to these stars older songs, which are re-released in the form of “biggest-hits” CDs. These copyright profits also include uses of songs on the radio, in advertising, or in films, which are also often produced by the same conglomerates, an example of the cross-promotion synergy that exists within the multiple units within a larger mega-conglomerate (O’Sullivan, Dutton, & Rayner, 2003). |
Musicscenenetwork.com |
A Chum Television Study Guide: The Recording Industry |
The video Money for Nothing: The Business of Pop Music examines the following question: “Of the thousands of musicians who perform music today, why do some of them become stars and have their music heard by millions, while others don’t?” The video also examines the ways in which the industry controls four primary gateways to consumers: radio, television, touring and retail (from the curriculum guide): |
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Radio:
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The 1996 Telecommunications Act removed restrictions on the number of radio stations any one company could own and accelerated the trend of a small number of companies owning the vast majority of stations.
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Because three super “corporations” own almost all of the radio stations in the country, the system is closed: independent music is shut out, and the result is that deejays have no power and big-market stations around the country all sound the same.
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Major labels have a huge influence on what records radio stations play: they work closely with radio stations and pour substantial amounts of money into them to assure that their music is played.
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In the 1950s, Congress conducted hearings into “payola” scandals involving record deejays who took money under the table from record executives in exchange for playing the company’s music.
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Today the scenario is much the same, except that it’s become legal and no longer triggers public discussion about “musical or artistic integrity.”
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MTV:
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MTV has immense power to advertise music by broadcasting videos that reach 320 million houses in 90 countries on five continents.
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MTV is essentially a 24-hour infomercial, virtually all of its content designed to sell the products of their parent company or the paid advertisers with whom they do business.
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The major record labels have extremely close ties to MTV — the two feed off one another.
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MTV’s Total Request Live, perhaps the most influential television show in the music industry, is live, but in reality limits what can be “requested” to a very slim, carefully crafted roster of corporate-approved choices. To even be in a position to be “requested,” an artist needs plenty of promo money, connections and tie-ins – by definition excluding truly alternative choices.
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Touring:
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Corporate control is also central when it comes to the business of touring.
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If artists, even alternative artists who gain popularity without corporate backing, want to play large venues, they must pass through the corporate gates.
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This control amounts to huge touring costs, which translates into further debt for artists and high ticket prices.
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Retail:
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Three companies exercise inordinate control over the retail music industry: Walmart, Best Buy and Transworld.
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These three companies account for the majority of retail music business, which gives them tremendous influence over the kinds of music that are produced.
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If Walmart, who alone accounts for almost 10% of all music sales, decides it will not carry a record because of objectionable content, this exerts huge pressure on the major labels to change musical content rather than retailers.
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Similarly, with sales at the Walmarts of the retail world determining the national taste for music, more diverse tastes are crowded out because they are considered too expensive and risky – threatening the livelihood of an entire generation of artists and an entire generation of independent music store owners.
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Control of CD content/distribution |
In a study by Arbitron and Edison Media Research, as of Summer 2003, an estimated 103 million Americans age 12 and older have ever used Internet audio or video broadcasts. The study reveals that the percentage of all Americans who currently use Internet audio or video (44 percent) is nearly twice the size of what it was three years ago (24 percent). For a PDF copy of the study: http://www.arbitron.com/home/content.stm |
One of the major challenges facing the music industry is the large-scale down-loading and sharing of CD content on the Internet — a process originated by Napster. Click here for a 2000 PowerPoint presentation on the nature and issues associated with uses of Napster. |
When the conglomerates argued that downloading their music represented a form of illegal piracy of copyrighted material and were successful in shutting down Napster, other Napster substitutes for free downloading quickly arose:
KaZaA
Gnutella
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Universities are (as of 2003) under pressure to stop their students from using university computer server space for downloading music.
they attempted to create their own on-line distribution retailers that would provide custom-made collections, such as Musicmaker.com.
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Other commercial outlets also provide sites for pay-for-music. The Apple site (at $ .99 a song) has been particularly popular.
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Other commercial download sites:
mp3.com
MTV.com
Lycos.com
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Media Awareness Lesson: Teaching About Napster |
The New Music: The Future of Music [ A Chum Television Study Guide: deals with the issues of downloading ] |
Webquest: TeenMusic [ use of the Internet in studying music ] |
Promotion/distribution of music by the music industry |
Most of the recorded music available commercially does not succeed in making a profit. This is particularly the case with less-well known groups or groups who record on independent labels. In 2002, there were 30,000 CDs released, but 25,000 of those CDs sold less than 1,000 copies. Only 404 albums sold more than 100,000 copies. These tended to be “big name” superstars who are familiar, often non-controversial, and widely promoted by the industry. This means that many new, alternative, or controversial musicians are not able to make a living from recording music. Moreover, many have difficulty making money in playing in local clubs or venues, because the larger venues or halls are controlled by the same conglomerates who are promoting them. |
The extent to which a single or group musician is successful is often a function of the marketing and distribution provided by large companies who can afford such promotions of CDs. One key strategy in doing so is to promote one particular hit song on that CD through releasing that song to radio stations prior to release of the CD, particularly on the stations “A list” — of more than 30 times a week. It is here that the cross-promotion within corporations such as Clear Channel become important because Clear-Channel-owned radio stations can select those songs it wants to promote by artists whom it is also promoting for its own tours in its own concert venues. |
In 2000, Clear Channel bought SFX, one of the world’s largest live music promotion organizations, which owned 120 venues in 30 of the top 50 American markets. This meant that Clear Channel now controls not only the promotion of musicians on its radio stations, but also on its venues. As the Clear Channel web site notes: |
Clear Channel Entertainment is the power of live entertainment:
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As the world’s leading promoter and marketer of live entertainment, Clear Channel Entertainment is about providing fun and exciting experiences to millions of entertainment and sports lovers the world over. From the Backstreet Boys and U2 to *N Sync and Madonna ... from Scooby Doo Live, and David Copperfield to The Producers, and Sweet Smell of Success ... Supercross and Monster Trucks to the International Hot Rod Association ... everybody plays a Clear Channel Entertainment stage. Clear Channel Entertainment’s unparalleled array of events attracts the best and brightest performers on the planet, from the most celebrated international superstars to the most innovative new talent.
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Clear Channel Entertainment, formerly known as SFX, is a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, Inc. Clear Channel is a global leader in the out-of home advertising industry with radio and television stations, outdoor displays and entertainment venues in 63 countries around the world. Including announced transactions, Clear Channel operates approximately 1,213 radio and 19 television stations in the United States and has equity interests in over 240 radio stations internationally. Clear Channel also operates approximately 770,000 outdoor advertising displays, including billboards, street furniture and transit panels across the world.
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Musicians whose CDs are perceived as “controversial” are not promoted by Clear Channel, whose San Antonio-based executives have close ties to the Bush family. Clear Channel radio stations were encouraged to stage pro-war rallies during the Iraq War. |
All of this increased concentration of ownership was fostered by the 1996 Telecommunications Act , which deregulated ownership rules to allow companies to own more radio stations. In an analysis of the impact of these deregulation, Jenny Toomey, writing in The Nation (December 23, 2002)
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The 1996 act opened the floodgates for ownership consolidation. Ten parent companies now dominate the radio spectrum, radio listenership and radio revenues, controlling two-thirds of both listeners and revenue nationwide. Two parent companies in particular — Clear Channel and Viacom — together control 42 percent of listeners and 45 percent of industry revenues.
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Consolidation is particularly extreme in the case of Clear Channel. Since passage of the Telecommunications Act, Clear Channel has grown from forty stations to 1,240 stations — thirty times more than Congressional regulation previously allowed. No potential competitor owns even one-quarter the number of Clear Channel stations. With more than 100 million listeners, Clear Channel reaches more than one-third of the US population.
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