Britishness, Popular Music, and National Identity

Britishness, Popular Music, and National Identity PDF Author: Irene Morra
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135048940
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This book offers a major exploration of the social and cultural importance of popular music to contemporary celebrations of Britishness. Rather than providing a history of popular music or an itemization of indigenous musical qualities, it exposes the influential cultural and nationalist rhetoric around popular music and the dissemination of that rhetoric in various forms. Since the 1960s, popular music has surpassed literature to become the dominant signifier of modern British culture and identity. This position has been enforced in popular culture, literature, news and music media, political rhetoric -- and in much popular music itself, which has become increasingly self-conscious about the expectation that music both articulate and manifest the inherent values and identity of the modern nation. This study examines the implications of such practices and the various social and cultural values they construct and enforce. It identifies two dominant, conflicting constructions around popular music: music as the voice of an indigenous English ‘folk’, and music as the voice of a re-emergent British Empire. These constructions are not only contradictory but also exclusive, prescribing a social and musical identity for the nation that ignores its greater creative, national, and cultural diversity. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive critique of an extremely powerful discourse in England that today informs dominant formulations of English and British national identity, history, and culture.

Britishness, Popular Music, and National Identity

Britishness, Popular Music, and National Identity PDF Author: Irene Morra
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135048959
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This book offers a major exploration of the social and cultural importance of popular music to contemporary celebrations of Britishness. Rather than providing a history of popular music or an itemization of indigenous musical qualities, it exposes the influential cultural and nationalist rhetoric around popular music and the dissemination of that rhetoric in various forms. Since the 1960s, popular music has surpassed literature to become the dominant signifier of modern British culture and identity. This position has been enforced in popular culture, literature, news and music media, political rhetoric -- and in much popular music itself, which has become increasingly self-conscious about the expectation that music both articulate and manifest the inherent values and identity of the modern nation. This study examines the implications of such practices and the various social and cultural values they construct and enforce. It identifies two dominant, conflicting constructions around popular music: music as the voice of an indigenous English ‘folk’, and music as the voice of a re-emergent British Empire. These constructions are not only contradictory but also exclusive, prescribing a social and musical identity for the nation that ignores its greater creative, national, and cultural diversity. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive critique of an extremely powerful discourse in England that today informs dominant formulations of English and British national identity, history, and culture.

British Popular Music and National Identity in the 1990s

British Popular Music and National Identity in the 1990s PDF Author: Anja Thümmler
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3869436646
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1.3, University of Leipzig, language: English, abstract: This thesis evaluates the relation between British popular music and national identity. It concentrates on developments during the 1990s, bringing together all three popular genres of pop music during that period: indie rock, dance music and black music. Taking into account theoretical considerations on popular music, this thesis applies theories of collective identities in general and national identity in particular to Nineties pop. By analyzing an example of popular music media as well as selected music texts, the discourses within popular music culture are being compared to general discourses on questions of national identity within Great Britain.

Music in the 90s and the search of identity in the UK

Music in the 90s and the search of identity in the UK PDF Author: Maximilian Rütters
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668422842
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,7, University of Bonn (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Keltologie), language: English, abstract: People all over the world have been identifying with music for years. Music has a social quality that is across-the-board. But now only one nation is on focus. Every British decade had its own sound. Looking at the 1960s, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were dominating the music scene. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath invented Heavy Metal in the 1970s and also Glam Rock with representatives like Queen and David Bowie started during the 1970s. The 80s as the climax of the Punk Rock movement headed by the Sex Pistols and the upcoming Indie-Rock scene represented by The Cure. Music, now and then, reflects its time, its history and all the changes that passes by. The question of this term paper is, „Does one identity of the British excist? Or are there maybe several identities? Or none?“ And is music the key to find any answers?

British Popular Music and National Identity in the 1990s

British Popular Music and National Identity in the 1990s PDF Author: Anja Thummler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Popular music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Sounds English

Sounds English PDF Author: Nabeel Zuberi
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252026201
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
"Zuberi looks at how the sounds, images, and lyrics of English popular music generate and critique ideas of national belonging, recasting the social and even the physical landscapes of cities like Manchester and London. The Smiths and Morrissey play on romanticized notions of the (white) English working class, while the Pet Shop Boys map a "queer urban Britain" in the AIDS era. The techno-culture of raves and dance clubs incorporates both an anti-institutional do-it-yourself politics and emergent leisure practices, while the potent mix of technology and creativity in British black music includes local conditions as well as a sense of global diaspora. British Asian musicians, drawing on Afrodiasporic and South Asian traditions, seek a sense of place in Britain as commercial interests try to pin down an image of them to market." "Sounds English shows how popular music complicates cherished notions of Englishness as it activates cultural outsiders and taps into a sense of not belonging."--BOOK JACKET.

National Identity and the British Musical

National Identity and the British Musical PDF Author: Grace Barnes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350243558
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
National Identity and the British Musical: From Blood Brothers to Cinderella examines the myths associated with national identity which are reproduced by the British musical and asks why the genre continues to uphold, instead of challenging, outdated ideals. All too often, UK musicals reinforce national identity clichés and caricatures, conflate 'England' with 'Britain' and depict a mono-cultural nation viewed through a nostalgic lens. Through case studies and analysis of British musicals such as Blood Brothers, Six, Half a Sixpence and Billy Elliot, this book examines the place of the British musical within a text-based theatrical heritage and asks what, or whose, Britain is being represented by home grown musicals. The sheer number of people engaging with shows bestows enormous power upon the genre and yet critics display a reluctance to analyse the cultural meanings produced by new work, or to hold work to account for production teams and narratives which continue to shun diversity and inclusive practices. The question this book poses is: what kind of industry do we want to see in Britain in the next ten years? And what kind of show do we want representing the nation in the future?

Britishness, Popular Music, and National Identity

Britishness, Popular Music, and National Identity PDF Author: Irene Morra
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032925028
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book offers a major exploration of the social and cultural importance of popular music to contemporary celebrations of Britishness. Rather than providing a history of popular music or an itemization of indigenous musical qualities, it exposes the influential cultural and nationalist rhetoric around popular music and the dissemination of that rhetoric in various forms. Since the 1960s, popular music has surpassed literature to become the dominant signifier of modern British culture and identity. This position has been enforced in popular culture, literature, news and music media, political rhetoric -- and in much popular music itself, which has become increasingly self-conscious about the expectation that music both articulate and manifest the inherent values and identity of the modern nation. This study examines the implications of such practices and the various social and cultural values they construct and enforce. It identifies two dominant, conflicting constructions around popular music: music as the voice of an indigenous English 'folk', and music as the voice of a re-emergent British Empire. These constructions are not only contradictory but also exclusive, prescribing a social and musical identity for the nation that ignores its greater creative, national, and cultural diversity. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive critique of an extremely powerful discourse in England that today informs dominant formulations of English and British national identity, history, and culture.

Ethnic and Cultural Identity in Music and Song Lyrics

Ethnic and Cultural Identity in Music and Song Lyrics PDF Author: Victor Kennedy
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443896209
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Ethnic and Cultural Identity in Music and Song Lyrics looks at a variety of popular and folk music from around the world, with examples of British, Slovene, Chinese and American songs, poems and musicals. Charles Taylor says that “it is through story that we find or devise ways of living bearably in time”; one can make the same claim for music. Inexorably tied to time, to the measure of the beat, but freed from time by the polysemous potential of the words, song rapidly becomes “our” song, helping to cement memory and community, to make the past comprehensible and the present bearable. The authors of the fifteen chapters in this volume demonstrate how lyrics set to music can reflect, express and construct collective identities, both traditional and contemporary.

Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location

Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location PDF Author: Dr Ian Biddle
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409493776
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
How are national identities constructed and articulated through music? Popular music has long been associated with political dissent, and the nation state has consistently demonstrated a determination to seek out and procure for itself a stake in the management of 'its' popular musics. Similarly, popular musics have been used 'from the ground up' as sites for both populist and popular critiques of nationalist sentiment, from the position of both a globalizing and a 'local' vernacular culture. The contributions in this book arrive at a critical moment in the development of the study of national cultures and musicology. The book ranges from considerations of the ideological focus of cultural nationalism through to analyses of musical hybridity and musical articulations of other kinds of identities at odds with national identity. The processes of global homogenization are thereby shown to have brought about a transitional crisis for national cultural identities: the evolution of these identities, particularly with reference to the concept of 'authenticity' in music, is situated within broader debates on power, political economy and constructions of the self. Theorizations of practice are employed after the manner of Bourdieu, Gramsci, Goffman, Gadamer, Habermas, Bhabha, Lacan and Žižek. Each contribution acts as a case study to characterize the strategies through which differing modes of musical discourse engage, critique or obscure discourses on national identity. The studies include discussions of: musical representations of Irishness; the relationship between Afropop and World Music; Norwegian club music; the revival of traditional music in Serbia; resistance to cultural homogeneity in Brazil; contemporary Uyghur song in Northwest China; rap and race in French society; technobanda from the barrios of Los Angeles, and Spanish/Moroccan raï. In this way, the book seeks to characterize the ideological configurations that help to activate and sustain hegemonic, ambivalent and dissident articulations of national identity and musical practices.

Mediapolis

Mediapolis PDF Author: Sam Inkinen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 9783110161410
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Presents a critical, multidisciplinary anthology addressing the theories, problems, and possibilities of multimedia communication, computer interaction, hypertextual representation of knowledge, contemporary utopias, television broadcasting, semiotics of media, and sexuality in the cyber age. Instead of technological determinism or techno-optimistic rhetoric, essays focus on an analytical approach to contemporary media, future technologies, and electronic texts. Specific topics include Jean-Luc Godard's audiovisual works, the history of communication technologies in Russia, and the controversial advertising of Benetton. Main disciplines shared by contributors are philosophy and semiotics as well as media and communication studies. Includes color photos from the Benetton ad campaign. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR