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“I’m Your Fan”: Fandom and Popular Music Studies
May 4 – 6, 2001
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
Click on a paper title to see the abstract.
FRIDAY MAY 4th
3:00-4:30 Race Ethnicity, and Fandom
Karen Pegley (York University)
“A Process of Advocacy”: Race, Multiculturalism, and Constructions of Whiteness on MuchMusic (Canada) and MTV (US)
Brígido Galván (York University)
What Difference Does Difference Make? Toronto’s Racial Soundscape
Viny Hui (University of North Texas)
The Music and Non-Music Media Involvement of Hong Kong Adolescents
SATURDAY MAY 5
10:00-12:00 Fandom and Cultural Authority
William Echard (Carleton University)
Ways of Knowing, Kinds of Knowledge, and the Scholar-Fan
Gordon Ross (University of Calgary)
“Can I Have Your Autograph Please?”: Country Music Fans and Scholars
Chantal Savoie (Université Laval)
“I’m My Own Fan”: fanatisme et autorité culturelle
Cynthia Fuchs (George Mason University)
“Dear Mister-I’m-Too-Good-To-Call-Or-Write-My-Fans”: Understanding Eminem
1:30-3:00 Alternative to What?
Alexander Carpenter (University of Toronto)
The Pop Song and its Double: Bauhaus, Cover Songs, and the Deconstruction of Glam
Shannon Carter (University of Western Ontario)
The Magazine Culture of Alternative Rock: Coherence and Paradox
Mark Percival (Queen Margaret University College)
Chemikal Underground: “post-independent” rock and pop in Scotland?
3:30-5:00 (De)Constructing Genres
Durrell Bowman (UCLA)
Cast In This Unlikely Role: Genre, Demographics, and the Music of the Canadian Rock Band Rush
Simon Wood (York University)
It Rocks – It Sucks: Listening to the “Live Album”
Heather Sparling & Chris McDonald (York University)
Interpretations of Tradition: Transforming Gaelic Song Into Celtic Pop
SUNDAY MAY 6th
10:00-12:00 Approaching Textual Analysis
Craig Morrison (Concordia University)
California Folk Rock as a Cultural Diagnostic
Robert Toft (University of Western Ontario)
A Grammatical/Rhetorical Model of Phrasing in Singing: Holly Cole’s “My Foolish Heart”
Francine Fledderus (UBC)
Genre and Meaning in ‘la jalouse’ by Jane Siberry
Scott Henderson (Brock University)
Textual Healing: Pop Culture Methodologies and the Musical Text (Or How I Stopped Worrying About Having No Musical Ability and Learned How To Love The Songs)
Abstracts
Karen Pegley (York University)
“A Process of Advocacy”: Race, Multiculturalism, and Constructions of Whiteness on MuchMusic (Canada) and MTV (US)
It is indisputable that since MTV’s premiere as a venue for (primarily) white
rock acts, the station-albeit sometimes reluctantly-has expanded its range of
musical genres as well as its racial inclusivity. During the 1980s for instance,
the success of rap in the video flow and on programmes like “Yo! MTV
Raps” alongside crossover music that combines historically black and white
musical genres, rendered black artists an essential demographic on that station.
Indeed, in 1992 Andrew Goodwin suggested that because of these and other
important strides “the question of racism [on MTV] has been resolved”
(1992, p. 137). Since its launch in 1984, MuchMusic has gone even further to
incorporate diversity by showcasing in their video repertoire a variety of
languages and musical genres, a wide range of musical artists (many of whom are
not aired on MTV), and “world music” video shows, the combination of
which far exceed CRTC regulations on multiculturalism. As Homi Bhabha has
observed, however, “multicultural” practices that encourage diversity
should also be examined for simultaneous modes of containment and control (1990,
p. 208). Indeed, an analysis of both stations’ video programming and rotation
schedules from late 1995 suggests that as they expanded their repertories they
established unique, carefully controlled, nationally-inflected relationships
between dominant and marginalized musical traditions. In this paper I explore
how multiculturalism appears to be “celebrated” on MuchMusic and MTV
while Western and non-Western representations are negotiated such that
ethnocentric norms, which pervade North American cultural media, are never
contested.
Brígido Galván (York University)
What Difference Does Difference Make? Toronto’s Racial Soundscapes
In the ‘West,’ -a term that begs serious review- it is ‘eco-everything’;
music included. Increasingly available are eco-conscious compositions,
eco-performances and eco-recordings with the sounds of the rainforest and the
jungle; and so are’ Third World’ octogenarian musicians rescued from ‘oblivion’
and destitution, marketed in the European and North American World Music concert
circuit with its record sales machine, as would exotic handcrafted and
hand-woven artifacts attesting to the virtues of the austere rural life of
‘distant societies’ unfettered by the technological contamination and ‘noise’ of
industrial and urban life. Welcome to politics of difference. And how are
‘peripheral’ societies to respond to this drastic ‘change of heart’ on the part
of the ‘West’ on the values of modernity and modernization? How to deal with
ironic ‘postmodern’ misrepresentations when the great majority of Latin
Americans, for example, now live in urban areas, most struggling to survive and
fleeing the burgeoning disparity and ecological violence which has ensued under
neoliberal regimes, their enchantment with free trade blocks and the vacuum of
political accountability left by the anonymity of transnational capital? My
paper is an incipient incursion into these questions. I invoke a handful of
distinct local music practices in the city of Toronto in order to explore how
the articulation of musical values are important expressive means by which
groups and individuals stake their physical and political presence. With its
ever expanding urban sprawl and multicultural population the city of Toronto
presents ideal as well as unique opportunities to look at how the contradicting
political tensions between homogenization and difference of a globalized
cultural economy are played out (Appadurai 1990). Consumption channels may not
only facilitate but often embody the, sometimes conflictive and violent,
ritualization of physical spaces into culturally and historically specific
places. More generally, I explore how sound and music may play a role in the
negotiations and struggles over cultural authority and, by extension, in the
construction the Other .
Viny Hui (University of North Texas)
The Music and Non-Music Media Involvement of Hong Kong Adolescents
The study was to investigate Hong Kong adolescents’ music preferences and
their involvement in music and non-music media during leisure time. Volunteered
subjects, from two schools, included 79 sixth through ninth graders. For the
first part of the questionnaire, the students listened to 24 music excerpts and
rated their degree of preference and familiarity on 5-point Likert scales.
Information from the second part was used to portray different groups’ (grade
levels and genders) media use pattern including leisure time, activities, and
music media involvement. Effects of such factors in addition to music training
and was also analyzed. The coefficient of internal consistency of each style was
acceptable (Cronbach’s a ranged from .60 to .77). The most preferred style,
surprisingly, was Western pop/rock (Mean = 3.61) rather than Cantopop/ rock
(3.36). The next liked styles ranked as Western classical (3.17), jazz (2.81),
Chinese (2.37), and non-Western/ non-Chinese (2.11), in descending order.
Excerpt familiarity was positively correlated to preference for all styles, with
the top three being more powerful (r = .63 – .51) than the rest. Significant
main effect on age was found in Cantopop/rock and Western classical. For gender,
significant main effect showed only in jazz. Music training by grade level
yielded significant indication but not so for gender. Preference was also
positively correlated to the corresponding style of recorded music bought.
Students of higher grades pursued more hours of leisure than lower graders (Mean
hour ranged from 3.5 daily for the ninth graders to 2.22 for the sixth graders).
Girls spent more time daily (Mean hour = 3) than boys did (2.64). Three most
participated leisure activities were television viewing (Mean hour = 3),
chatting (2.28), recorded music listening (2.09). Regarding music media
involvement, girls spent slightly more than boys did on radio music, recorded
music, and karaoke/MTV while boys spent a little more than girls did on music
websites.
William Echard (Carleton University)
Ways of Knowing, Kinds of Knowledge, and the Scholar-Fan
In recent years, popular music scholars such as Frith, Lipsitz, McClary,
Middleton, and Walser have combined the traditional role of the musicologist
with other kinds of social position. Among the many strategies explored in this
connection, Richard Middleton has advocated the role of ‘scholar-fan’. The
scholar-fan as described by Middleton is in many ways similar to the participant
observer of traditional ethnomusicology, and also the dialogic researcher as
described by Stephen Feld, and in this sense engages with long-standing and
still-crucial debates in branches several branches of musical scholarship. In
this paper, proceeding from a grounding in social semiotic theory and the neo-
pragmatic philosophy of Richard Rorty, I will explore basic questions of the
production and control of knowledge within popular music studies, and assess the
opportunities and dangers afforded by the role of the scholar fan. What kinds of
knowledge can be produced from this position? In what senses does this way of
knowing reinforce existing institutional structures? In what ways does it
challenge them? And finally, how can it best be employed in the further
development of a pluralist, dialogic popular musicology?
Gordon Ross (University of Calgary)
“Can I Have Your Autograph Please”: Country Music Fans and Scholars
The relationship between the country music fan and performers is one of the
closest relationships in popular music. Historically, the country music fan
identifies with the performer and the subject matter of the songs. More so than
fans of other popular musics, the country fan can relate to the songs, impose
their own experience, and remain loyal to the performer often staying a fan for
decades. Country music speaks to its audience on a level that they understand
and mainstream country music along with the sub-cultures of bluegrass, country
rock, cow punk, and other country hybrids all display similar markers that the
fans readily subscribe to. A country music fan must accept the stereotype that
accompanies the music and in turn adopt that stereotype if he or she desires to
proclaim their fondness for the music. In some ways, the country music scholar
is painted with the same brush as the fan and only by research is the stereotype
is chipped away making the music “legit.” Academic study of country
music reveals its intrinsic values and at the same time validates the fandom of
the scholar and the audience. The scholar, however, runs the risk of being
prejudicial in his or her analysis if personal taste is allowed to bias the
research. This is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to country music, in order
to adequately study any type of music, personal bias must be set aside. Academic
study of country music, like other music, canonizes its genres, composers, and
performers, and by undertaking research, in some ways, the scholar will
perpetuate the mythology of the great artist as viewed by the fan. The canon of
the fan becomes intertwined with the canon of academic study, both feeding off
each other.
Chantal Savoie (Université Laval)
« I’m My Own Fan » : fanatisme et autorité culturelle
La question des conséquences d’être à la fois juges et parties de nos
objets d’études respectifs n’est pas nouvelle. Toutefois, l’accroissement du
nombre de recherches portant sur des pratiques culturelles populaires (musicales
ou autres), de même que l’augmentation de l’intérêt, de la pertinence et/ou
de la visibilité que l’on accorde à ces travaux, incitent à poursuivre la
réflexion sur ce terrain. Plutôt que de tenter un bilan des conséquences
pratiques du double rôle des intellectuels aux prises avec le dilemme plaisir/connaissance
(effets sur les méthodologies, les stratégies discursives, etc.) je souhaite,
dans cette communication, poser quelques jalons d’une réflexion qui aurait pour
but de situer le problème du fan/chercheur dans une perspective historique, de
même que tenter de saisir les conséquences de cette “nouvelle”
posture académique sur la notion d’autorité culturelle.
Cette communication s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une réflexion sur l’autorité
culturelle et le rôle des intellectuels dans la sphère publique qui constitue
l’amorce d’une recherche postdoctorale en préparation. Pour la réaliser, nous
puiserons à l’histoire et à la sociologie des intellectuels (Hoggart 1957,
Bourdieu 1984, Michael 2000), de même qu’aux recherches sur la valeur
culturelle (Eagleton 2000 ; Frow 1995).
Cynthia Fuchs (George Mason University)
Dear Mister-I’m-Too-Good-To-Call-Or-Write-My-Fans”: Understanding Eminem
“You can melt in my mouth anytime.” –Eminem fan’s sign, outside
the studio on TRL
You gotta call me man, I’ll be the biggest fan you’ll ever lose. Sincerely
yours, Stan — P.S. We should be together too. –Eminem, “Stan”
Since he hit the mainstream two years ago, Eminem has been raising a ruckus.
Of late, it’s hard to find a U.S. media outlet that hasn’t addressed the
“problem” of Eminem, from his strutting misogyny to his homophobic
lyrics, from his young fans’ devotion to their parents’ outrage. As an icon of
more or less business-as-usual “youthful rebellion,” Em is not
particularly alarming, and he certainly isn’t saying much that’s new — many
straight white male performers and black hiphoppers have derided women, queers,
adults, and various institutions. Where Em does pose a dilemma, however, is in
his widespread popularity: his fans include hardcore hiphop heads, 12-year-old
Total Request Live viewers, white boys sporting baggy jeans and Slim Shady
haircuts, and girls who keep posters of Britney Spears and ‘N Synch in their
bedrooms.
A pop star and a spokesperson for hiphop rage and interrogation, Em’s
far-reaching fanbase makes him something of a paradox, combining a threat to pop
music’s generally romantic and idealistic values, an aggressive challenge to
those values (his attacks on Britney, Christina, and the boy bands are infamous,
or Valerie Smith’s legal efforts to bar him from entering Canada, based on his
commitment of “hate crimes” against women), and a full-on marketing
miracle — the kid moves enormous amounts of product, from t-shirts to posters,
records to hair bleach. For every MTV special decrying the hatefulness
represented by Eminem (“When Lyrics Attack” or the Matthew Shepherd
docudrama, followed by a panel discussion about hate crimes and hate speech),
there are a thousand airings of the videos, “The Way I Am,”
“Forgot About Dre,” or “The Real Slim Shady.”
This paper looks at the Eminem paradox in particular relation to his fans,
not only their representations in fan magazines (matching strategies of address
in those geared to Backstreet Boys’ or Christina Aguilera fans, with stories on
his homelife, his childhood, his likes and dislikes) or on tv shows, but also in
Eminem’s own understanding of his fans, in songs from “The Real Slim
Shady” to “Stan.” I explore the ways that Eminem’s work
interrogates his own relationship to his fans while imagining theirs to him, an
unusual instance of an artist so self-conscious about his function as object and
subject.
Craig Morrison (Concordia University)
California Folk Rock as a Cultural Diagnostic
In Thomas Vargish and Delo E. Mook’s Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory,
Cubism, Narrative (1990), the authors treat their subjects (a scientific theory,
a style of painting, and a technique of fiction writing) as cultural
diagnostics, defined as “advanced intellectual activities that serve to
reveal the underlying values of the period” (p.4). Values are identifiable
characteristics which are “pervasive, almost ubiquitous at a certain level
of culture during a certain period” (p.7). They are not necessarily new,
but become dominant themes or qualities.
Folk rock, the kind that was based in Los Angeles and had a brief but
successful heyday in the mid-1960s, can serve as a cultural diagnostic. Folk
rock mixed the ideologies and sounds of the folk revival with those of the
British Invasion and was announced by two number one hits by the Byrds:
“Mr. Tambourine Man,” a Bob Dylan composition, and “Turn! Turn!
Turn! (To Everything There is a Season),” a biblical text adapted by Pete
Seeger. Other Los Angeles acts that recorded folk rock include the Mamas and the
Papas, the Turtles, the Leaves, the Grass Roots, Sonny and Cher, Love, and
Buffalo Springfield.
To decode the style’s themes, I make use of the matrix concept advanced by
musicologist Peter Van der Merwe in Origins of the Popular Style: The
Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music (1992). The term matrix refers to
“a unit of musical communication” (p. 96), such as a regular beat, a
fixed musical note, or an individual chord. Matrices are found grouped together
in concrete ways (songs, styles), and conceptual ones (sonata form, or the
keynote with its feeling of home base). All seem to depend on truisms and come
with implications (like a major scale with its diatonic triads), and can carry
embedded meanings (like the bright mood of the major scale). This paper will
present, through the analysis of a sample repertoire, the stylistic vocabulary
of folk rock and an interpretation of its cultural meaning.
Shannon Carter (University of Western Ontario)
The Magazine Culture of Alternative Rock: Generic Coherence and Paradox
Alternative rock began life on the fringe, as the negative space surrounding
the mainstream or ‘corporate’ rock of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is
exclusive and riddled with notions of authenticity including fervent claims to
non-commercialism. Today it is marketed as a mainstream genre by the industry
press and the distribution machines of major recording labels, yet continues to
maintain the illusion of the noncommercialism essential to its identity.
Alternative should not cohere as a genre but somehow continues to do so,
otherwise the industry could make no use of it as a marketing tool. The
magazines Spin, The Alternative Press, CMJ New Music Monthly, and Chart are a
force in consumers’ sense of alternative rock and present us with a multifaceted
view of how the industry instructs and reacts to its audience in terms of this
genre. All four periodicals publish charts and reviews that are consulted
regularly by rock, alternative, and campus radio stations to develop play lists,
widening the magazines’ sphere of influence beyond their readers. This paper
offers an examination of the musical, material, and ideological elements used to
bind this paradoxical genre from the perspective of these four magazines through
an analysis of their musical content, graphic design, advertisements, ownership,
and rhetoric. There are few studies on alternative rock at present. Of these,
most have examined the cultural identities of fringe or underground alternative
while the mass-marketed form has received little attention. This examination of
the mainstream-alternative press, part of a larger study of alternative rock
mass-reception, begins to redress this imbalance and adds to the literature
surrounding the notion of genre as the negotiated space between music, industry,
and consumer.
Mark Percival (Queen Margaret University College)
Chemikal Underground: “post-independent” rock and pop in Scotland?
Glasgow-based Chemikal Underground is one of Scotland’s most successful
independent record labels, staring out in 1995 with the debut 7″ single
release from label founders, The Delgados (originally a guitar-based alternative
pop/rock band). In 1999 the Delgados released their critically acclaimed third
studio album on Chemikal Underground, whilst still running the label, and having
released significant albums by Mogwai (post-rock), Arab Strap (down-tempo
alt-ballads) and The Radar Brothers (LA-based alt-pop guitars). However, it was
the Delgados album, The Great Eastern, which was nominated for the Technics
Mercury Music Prize 2000, awarded by a panel on journalists, media people and
musicians to the best UK album of the year. In September 2000, the award was won
by Badly Drawn Boy, but the Delgados album was rumoured to have been very close
to winning, on a split vote.
This paper investigates notions of independence, alternativeness and the
mainstream from the perspective of a band that started an indie label with a
militantly anti-corporate approach and finds itself not only engaging directly
with the global music industry, but also up against mainstream major label
albums and records by folk and classical artists. The Delgados have always
claimed they didn’t want to be seen as ‘lo-fi’ or ‘indie’, but how has this
mainstream validation affected their approach to their business and to their
music? To what extent is Chemikal Underground representative of a new generation
of business-savvy, artist-run independent labels in the UK and North America?
And where does Chemikal Underground position itself in relation to a
‘mainstream’ music industry?
Alexander Carpenter (University of Toronto)
The Pop Song and its Double: Bauhaus, Cover Songs, and the Deconstruction of Glam
The British post-punk band Bauhaus (1979-1983) is often credited with the
founding of the genre known as “gothic rock,” so-called for its
tendency towards dark, dreary music and eschatological lyrics. The band’s true
roots, however, actually lie in the British “glam rock” movement of
the early 1970s, spearheaded by performers like David Bowie and T.Rex. Bauhaus
was in fact vilified by the musical press in England in the early 1980s for
resurrecting the theatrics and pomposity of glam, a musical aesthetic thought
dead and buried by the raw, stripped down aesthetic of the Sex Pistols and punk
rock (ca.1976-77). I argue in this paper that Bauhaus’ resurrection of glam was
not simply derivative-a cheap copy of the original, as British music critics
would have it-but rather represented a new, critically deconstructed version of
glam, one that combined seemingly disparate elements punk and glam to create the
group’s post-punk identity.
This deconstruction of glam was accomplished through the medium of the cover
song, a song composed and recorded by one performer that has been re-recorded by
another. The concept of the cover song brings to the fore questions about
originality, identity, and reproduction, questions that are central to the
critical practice of the philosophy of deconstruction. With the principles of
deconstruction in mind, I will examine two songs “covered” by Bauhaus,
David Bowie’s Glam anthem “Ziggy Stardust,” and T. Rex’s
“Telegram Sam.” My paper will show how the idea of a cover song and
the processes of deconstruction are inter-implicated, how Bauhaus’ cover
versions of two glam songs amount to a deconstructive critique of the musical
aesthetic of glam rock, and how these covers-as-critique ironically challenge
the characterization of the group as mere imitators of David Bowie and T. Rex.
Heather Sparling & Chris McDonald (York University)
Interpretations of Tradition: Transforming Gaelic Song Into Celtic Pop
What transformation does a traditional song undergo in order to become part
of the World Music phenomenon? Using a field recording of a Scots Gaelic dance
song, “Seallaibh Curraigh Eoghainn” (“Owen’s Corracle”), we
consider how it is altered by two Canadian pop artists from the Gaelic region of
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia: The Barra MacNeils and Mary Jane Lamond. Celtic music
has recently enjoyed considerable popularity in the World Music scene. In the
popular mind, the notion of “Celtic culture” often conjures images of
bagpipes, kilts, knotwork, druids, standing stones and Celtic crosses. The Barra
MacNeils draw upon the aural equivalents of these images in order to identify to
the world market that their musical heritage is Celtic whereas Mary Jane Lamond
explores a broader range of contemporary pop styles.
Informed by Heather’s ethnographic work on Canadian Gaelic musical culture,
we define and contextualize the song genre of which “Seallaibh Curraigh
Eoghainn” is an example, focusing on issues of authenticity. Although such
a traditional Gaelic song may fit the World Music definition of
“authentic,” there are issues on a more local level, such as the fact
that this particular song is not indigenous to Cape Breton but was, instead,
learned by Lamond and The Barra MacNeils from Scottish singers. Moreover, the
song genre to which this particular example belongs is not generally considered
representative of Gaelic culture by native Gaelic speakers in Cape Breton. We
discuss how each artist maneuvers through these issues, based on their positions
within Cape Breton Gaelic culture and the aims of their recordings.
Drawing on Chris’s specialization in Canadian popular music and musical
analysis, we consider how each artist utilizes instrumentation, harmony, vocal
style, studio effects, and rhythmic and melodic variation to represent “Seallaibh
Curraigh Eoghainn” in two very different modern recordings. The two
representations each serve very different cultural needs. Lamond takes a more
didactic approach, highlighting the lyrics through clarity of diction and tempo
change, thereby using her recording to teach listeners about Gaelic culture.
Primarily a folk-country band that only records the occasional traditional
Gaelic song, the Barra MacNeils use Celtic music stereotypes such as drones,
echo effects, head voice and atmospheric synthesizer pads to create a version
that is intended more for entertainment.
Bringing the issues of authenticity and representation together within a
framework of cultural context and performance style, we discuss how and why this
particular Gaelic song is transformed into two different Celtic pop recordings.
Simon Wood (York University)
It Rocks – It Sucks: Listening to the ‘Live Album’
While discussions of studio recordings and concerts have become commonplace
in the literature of popular music, the intersection of the two – the “live
album” – has attracted little attention. In many popular music genres these
recording (along with the so-called “greatest hits” collection), are
viewed as a contractual necessity consisting primarily of previously released
material, and thus, of secondary importance for fans and scholars alike.
However, for genres which lie on the margins of acceptance by commercial media,
such as heavy metal and hard rock, these documents serve a much more important
function. As Robert Walser states: “Because heavy metal threatened to
antagonize demographically targeted audiences, metal bands received virtually no
radio airplay, and they had to support their album releases by constant
touring.” This emphasis on the concert in the practice of rock fan
communities has engendered a similar level of interest in the “live
album.” This paper will draw on examples from four live recordings produced
between 1975 and 1981 by the rock groups KISS (ALIVE! and ALIVE II ) and Rush
(All The World’s A Stage and Exit…Stage Left) . In a discussion integrating
numerous comments from members of the two fan communities, it will consider
aspects of the performances, sound quality, and cover design found on the four
recordings. Drawing on the work of Christopher Small and his notion of “Musicking,”
as well as that of Robert Walser, Simon Frith, and William H. McNeill, it will
place these fan comments into a theoretical framework, suggesting that the
recordings allow the listener to recreate the collective process of the rock
concert, but that the success of this recreation is based on distinct criteria -
criteria which are under constant discussion and renegotiation within the fan
communities.
Durrell Bowman (UCLA)
Cast In This Unlikely Role: Genre, Demographics, and the Music of the Canadian Rock Band Rush
My dissertation, “Permanent Change: Culture, Ideology, Genre, and the
Music of the Rock Band Rush,” concerns the music of a progressive hard rock
band from Toronto, Canada. As I am a musicology Ph.D. candidate and popular
music scholar who was once a teenaged Rush fan, my intellectual work in this
area presents a number of challenges.
First, rock music historians and encyclopedia editors routinely leave Rush
out of their publications. For example, despite my advice and the efforts of my
dissertation advisor, the recent web-based New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians‹although considerably expanded in its materials on popular music‹does
not include an article on Rush. This is partly due to “genre issues”
involving the band’s difficult fusion of British progressive rock and American
hard rock and partly due to the fact that the band is Canadian. In fact, Rush
has had a longer string of gold-selling albums in the United States (22) than
any rock group except the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and KISS.
Second, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, rock critics and
fans of other types of music often suggest that Rush’s music could not have been
meaningful outside of Canada. In fact, the band has been commercially successful
throughout North America and Europe for at least twenty years. Although Rush has
never had a Top 20 hit in the United States, every major market has at least one
radio station that programmes some of the band’s songs, either as examples of
“classic rock” or of “album rock.” The band has sold about
35 million albums (most of these in the United States), and it was also the
top-grossing annual U.S. concert act for several years in the 1980s and early
1990s. I have encountered and surveyed Rush fans ranging from their teens to
their forties and including many women and non-whites. Part of my dissertation
explores the ethnographic dimensions of Rush fandom in Southern California and
Southern Ontario.
Third, mainstream popular music publications, especially Rolling Stone, have
derided Rush’s music for reasons such as the band’s supposed pretentiousness and
staunch individualist lyrics. In fact, Rush incorporates a much wider variety of
musical styles and lyrics than do most popular music artists. These styles have
included blues-rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, new wave, synth
pop, world beat, alternative, and mainstream rock. The band’s lyrics have
included extended Ayn Rand-derived individualist narratives and
sociologically-informed critiques of society and politics. However, they have
also included mini-narratives about freedom, war, suicide, religion, the media,
the environment, and numerous other topics. Although the band recorded and
released about 130 songs on various albums between 1974 and 1998, Rush’s critics
mainly emphasize the band’s most politically difficult works of the mid to late
1970s. My detailed readings of some those works serve to explain their
ideological and musical meaning in a much more complete manner than would be
possible if I had never been a fan of this music in the first place.
Should my work as a musicologist primarily function to convince other
scholars that the ideological, cultural, genre, musical, and lyrical contexts
for “invisible mainstreams” (such as Rush’s fans) deserve to be written
into the history of popular music? Or should my work more directly address such
fans themselves, many of whom are well-educated, well-read, amateur musicians?
(For example, those of my friends who have also been Rush fans include
professional physicists, computer programmers, architects, and many others.) Is
it possible for popular music studies to contribute not only to a community of
scholars but also to a much wider community of enlightened fans? This paper
explores these issues.
Robert Toft (University of Western Ontario)
A Grammatical/Rhetorical Model of Phrasing in Singing: Holly Cole’s ‘My foolish heart’
In recent years, many approaches to the analysis of popular music have been
suggested and debated in the scholarly community. One area which has not
received sufficient attention, however, is the analysis of phrasing in singing,
and it warrants further investigation. In this paper, I will discuss the
techniques of phrasing Holly Cole employs to establish the sense of the text in
her recording of ‘My foolish heart’ (Washington/Young).
The art of phrasing in singing has been closely aligned to the role of pauses
in speaking for at least the past 300 years, and Cole’s method of articulating
the ideas presented in songs is identical to the principles traditionally used
by speakers. Indeed, when a reconstruction of the grammatical/rhetorical method
of delivery employed in the 18th century, the golden age of elocution in the
English language, is applied to Cole’s version of ‘My foolish heart’, a model
emerges that not only elucidates her approach to phrasing but also serves to
help us describe one facet of the intuitive emotional responses singers have to
the texts they sing.
My grammatical/rhetorical model has been derived from the works of Joseph
Robertson (1785), John Walker (1785), and Lindley Murray (1795) and is based
upon their discussions of grammatical and rhetorical pauses. The two ways in
which orators and singers articulated the structure of their sentences were
through the observance of notated punctuation (the grammatical pause) and the
application of a pause in a place where, although a stop was not indicated, the
sense of the sentence called for one (the rhetorical pause). By introducing
grammatical and rhetorical pauses of varying lengths (a hierarchy of commas,
colons, and full stops existed), singers and speakers were able to clearly
establish the sense of a text. Like her counterparts in the 18th century, Holly
Cole places pauses (that is, inserts rests into the vocal line) after
nominatives and before accusatives, prepositional phrases, conjunctions, and
relative pronouns, as well as in other places where she chooses to emphasize
certain ideas in the text.
Through her highly articulated style of delivery, Cole establishes the sense
of the text for the listener in a way that demonstrates the expressive nature of
the pause. Her approach belongs to a tradition that dates back hundreds of
years, a tradition that once served both the ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ styles of
singing but now remains firmly established only in the world of popular music.
As Richard Middleton predicted a number of years ago, studies such as this one
may help to bridge the ideological barriers that exist between art and popular
music.
Francine Fledderus (UBC)
Genre and Meaning in “la jalouse” by Jane Siberry
Because the study of popular music is a relatively new field, it has not yet
established a standardized analytical methodology. Far from it. In practice the
discipline is divided between two camps: those such as Wilder, Hamm, and Mellers
who apply the analytical techniques of art music theory to popular song, and
those such as Keil, Tagg, and Hennion who do not. The rationalte of the latter
group is that they believe that the analytical tools themselves prioritize the
parameters emphasized in art music aesthetics. For example, in art music theory
harmony, tonality, counterpoint, and form are prioritized above rhythm, timbre,
and pitch nuance to the detriment of popular music. Because the latter faction
has eliminated the tools of the former, neither school has come up with an ideal
approach to the analysis of popular music. To combat this lack, this paper
offers a potential framework for the analysis of popular music, by way of an
example of a song by Jane Siberry. Siberry (b. 1955) is a Canadian
singer-songwriter whose experimental pop songs present an original voice in
popular music. Her oeuvre spans from the 1980s to the present, which is no small
feat in light of Siberry’s avoidance of formulaic songwriting and her
negotiation of contrasting genres(including folk reivival, electro pop, jazz,
country, funk, etc.). In this paper, “La jalouse” from Siberry’s 1989
album, BOUND BY THE BEAUTY, will be discussed within the generic parameters of
folk revival. First of all, an analysis of folk revival as a genre prototype
will reveal which parameters are most distictive in this genre, as well as the
meanings associated with folk revival. Secondly, “la jalouse” itself
(its lyrics and music) will be analyzed from a transcription in terms of both
its consonant fits with the conventions of the folk revival genre and its
dissonances from generic conventions. Finally, conclusions (intimately bound up
with issues of meaning) will be drawn as to why Sibery might find it necessary
to depart from certain folk revival conventions in the composition of “la
jalouse.”
Scott Henderson (Brock University)
Textual Healing: Pop Culture Methodologies and the Musical Text (Or How I Stopped Worrying About Having No Musical Ability and Learned How To Love The Songs)
The aim of this paper is to analyze my own responses to discussing, and
critically interpreting music texts using a background in Film and Popular
Culture studies. My main concern is in looking at how the meaning of some songs
lies outside of their musical structures and is more closely related through
intertextual references. At the same time I want to remain aware of the pleasure
this brings in ‘making sense’ of songs, especially as someone with little
musicological sense who nonetheless derives great pleasure in music. The focus
will be on two pairs of cover versions, ‘Superstar’, originally by The
Carpenters and covered by Sonic Youth, and ‘Come as you Are’, originally by
Nirvana and covered by The King, an Elvis impersonator. In the paper I will
examine how the interpretations of the cover versions rely on aspects of musical
style and additionally rely on popular culture references that exist outside the
texts (musical and lyrical) of the songs themselves. At the same time, the
process opens up other issues and avenues for the study of music (industry
structures, gender, authorship, genre, stardom/personas etc.). While these are
not necessarily new, the approach here is about assessing why they may provide a
‘mastery’ of the text in such a way as to give this musically inept music junkie
some form of pleasure. These songs are not necessarily favourites of mine, but
in teaching popular culture and popular music this method of analysis has proven
fruitful and enjoyable.