,/ IA$Pm
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music
RPm
Review of Popular Music 1
Editorial
Popular music is about communicat ion, and even
for those like ourselves who study the subject,
communication is impor tant. This is the first
issue of RPM (which may remind you of revs. per
minute, but wh ich also means Revi ew of Popular
Music) , the official bulletin of IASPM . It is
planned to appear twice a year, and will include
news of the Associati on's activities, incl uding
its Conferences, but will also be a vehicle for
the exchange of information between member s.
We hope to cover reports on research projects,
courses, conferences attended, the activities
of Branch Committees, book and concert reviews
and other features, including a letters column.
Letters for publication should be as brief as
possible, and reports or articles should not
exceed 1 000 words. This will enable us to give
a greater coverage and be more truly representative of our membership . Return postage will
be appreciated - which brings us to the
important issue of the establishment of IASPM .
We urge every reader to seek new members, both
individuals and institutions, as vigorously as
possible . We cannot emphasise too strongly how
i mportant this is for the survival and growth
of our new Association .
Like all the work of the Temporary Executive
Committee this first issue of RPM has been put
together voluntarily . Help with thi s, and all
other activities of IASPM is urgently requ ired,
so if you can assist, or have any ideas that
may help, write to the Secretary, Philip Tagg,
or to ourselves, The Editors .
Why IASPM?
THE CASE FOR IASPM
One of the most radical changes in the everyday life of inhabitants in industrialised
nations is surely that brought about by the
advent of the ma ss media . This has meant
profound changes for the production, dissemination and reception of music . Such a
development is historically unprecedented and
has only recently become a matter for general
concern . Mass media music is a comparatively
neglected area for serious study although sound
recording has existed for more than a century.
Interdisciolinary Reasons
Despite persistent notions of 'absolute music '
and 'hiah art', mus ic itsel f has never been
conveni~ntly separable from the rest of human
activity and communication .
And yet its
interdisciolinary character seems only to have
become evident once again s ince the advent o=
musical mass production and distribution.
During the past hundred years composers, write=s
arrangers, musicians, choreographers, coscu::.e
des i gners, scenographers and publishers have
been joined by technicians, sound enginee=s.
cover designers , camera crews, advertisers,
market researchers. economists, psycholog~s cs ,
sociologists, etc . in the production of ~usic
for mass markets .
This specialisation and coordination o f labour
follows the general pattern o f production in
industrialised soc iety . However, whereas
mode rn cultural production and distribution
(including music) is c haracterised by both
specialisation of labour and interdiscipl inary
coordination, t he study of mass medi a musi c is
generally conducted in the splendid isolation
of individual disciplinary traditions .
For example , some musicians may be trying t o
work out alter native forms of expression ,
production, perfor mance and distribution for
what they see as a new sociocultural situation
while someone at the sociology department of a
nearby university might be studying the role
of music in a similar culture or sub-culture.
Similarly, perhaps a psychologist might be
studying particular patterns of music reception
while a musicologist i s trying to analyse
aspects of musical meani ng and expression in
the same area . All this cou ld be going on
while educationalists are trying to produce
n ew teaching materials for school pupils
nurtured on rock, TV commercials and f ilm
music and while members of cultural committees
on local councils deci de how best to spend their
ever- decreasing music budget .
In other words, the practical l evel s of making
music in society and the t heoretical levels of
explaining the nature and function of music in
industri a li sed society are separated from each
other outside the are a of commerci al production
and distribution. Moreover, the various
academic disciplines concerned with di f ferent
aspects of the same phenomenon seem to live in
mutual isolation . This is why there i s an
obvious need for interdisciplinary cooperation
and coordination in the study of popul ar music .
International Reasons
The production and distribution of music in the
modern media is also international in a number
of ways (and to varying e xte nts) . Certain
forms of r ock, pop, film music, adver tis ing
music, jingles, background ('funct ional ' )
~usic, etc . are often produced by multinational
c~Jcerns for distribution through various media
=or similar functions in many different countries.
~.nd yet there is hardly any international
in=or:nation available about thi s phenomenon .
:=:ve~ when popular music assumes differ ent forms
in different nations, regions and sub-cultures,
~~ is possible that s uch variations can be
.
interoreted as different express ion s of reaccion
to a genera l tendency in the whole of international industrialised society . The explanation
of diverse musical utterances in similar
sociocultural situations also requires incernational coordination and cooperation. ~J.l t~is
means that any organisation seeking to pro~ote
the understanding of music in modern sociecy
should be not onl y interdisciplinarily but also
internationally constitut ed . And this is what
IASPM aims to be .
Philip Taaa (Secretary) .
1
t IZ:::-... L
2
ES ZS!
Conferences
THE FOUNDATION OF IASPM
:'Ei3
I ASPM, the International Association for the
Study of Popular Mus ic was offi cially founded
in September 1981, as a direct result of a
decision taken by the ove r 1 00 participants
at the F irst International Conference on
Popular Music Research, held at Amsterdam i n
June t he same year. The Association is now
r egistere d as an official non - p r ofit -mak i ng
organisation with its admini s trat ive base in
Sweden.
iESEr..RCH
SECURING A FUTURE
Since i ts election at the Ams terdam confe rence
the Temporary Ex ecutive Committee o f IASPM
(us ually known as 'TEC') has met three times.
The firs t meeting was convened in the Hotel
Armada in Ams terdam, afte r the c onference ,
the second took place in Kassel (FRG) in
September 1 981, and the third in Berlin (GDR)
in March 1982 .
Considerable progress has b een made on the key
questions of constitution, affiliation, finance,
etc . , and the Committee will present its re c ommendations to t he next international conference
in Italy in 1983.
:~;:-ERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON POPULAR MUSIC
AMSTERDAM JUNE 1981
The newest bran ch of mus icology to find itself
eC.ging tentatively towards ' academic respectabil ity' - the study of popular musi c - took a
sizeable step in that direction at the
Amsterd am conference. Many inte res~i=c a.::c
importa nt papers were prese=ted a=:c =~~
published p ro ceedings of the confere=ce __ _
surely become a standarc wo r~ in t~e .:.i=era=~=
of mus icology. The organ1sers do not see..- =c
have intended to use the c onf erence as a
platform to establish a common set of ideas, a:i
' a pproac h', a manifesto for the study of poo~:ar
musi c . To have done so would probably have-been
over- ambitious and unrealistic . Yet one has to
ask to what extent a full e xposition of the
p r esent state of t he scope and aims of popular
musi c research was made .
I t stil l seems h ard
to a n s wer tha t question, which p r obably
indicates that the papers were diver se, worke d
over some domin ant themes in popul ar musi c
research, and le ft others untouched .
The papers p r esented at the conference were
as fo l l ows :
Charles Hamm
The next meeting of the Committee will take
p lace in Exeter (UK ) on September 22-24, 198 2 .
Vic Gammon
The Conuni ttee me mbers are:
Antoine Hennion
?ai.:l Beaud (Switzerland)
F r a:ico Fabbri ( Italy)
C'=a=les Hamm (USA) ( Chairpe rson)
::R.'>id Born (GB)
C-e:::crd Kempers (Netherl ands) (Treasure r)
Gi!:::iter Maye r (GDR) (Vi ce-Chairpe rson)
Sy.:.via Moore (Netherlands)
?aul Oliver (GB)
3el.::iut Rosing (FRG)
Philip Tagg (Sweden) (Secretary)
Helmut RClsing
Franco Fabbri
Paul Beaud
John Collin s &
Paul Richards
Roger Wal li s
At p r esent a ll IASPM business is run by T . E . C.
member s on a voluntary 's pare-time ' basi s in
addition to t heir often extremely h e avy
schedules of regul ar (paid} work . There is no
likelihood of anyone b eing paid to carry out
any of the Association's administrative chores
in the fo r eseeable futur e .
Simon Frith
This means t h at IASPM will be hard pushed to
achieve its aims and to realise its current
projects (publication of reports and bulletin,
organisation of conferences and seminars,
compilation of biblio graphies a n d discographi es,
lists of p r o jects in the study of popular music ,
e tc . ) unless membership, the Association's
only r eal source of income and guarantee for
independent activity, is radically increased .
Though financi al aid may be forthcoming in the
f uture IASPM must rely solely on membership
dues, i ndividual gestures of goodwill, etc .
for its existence at this stag e. It is true
that t his s tate of affairs guarant ees the
As sociation a certain independence vis-a-vis
bot h ' t he industry' and public culture
institutions and their frequently restricted
vi e w of ' art '; however, i t also means financial
insecurity. IASPM must incr ease its n umber
of members t hreef o ld before even such basi c
running costs as t e lephone , postage, or ganisi=~
commit tee meetings, etc. can be covered . °7."U.s
will depend on the active campaigning of a.:.!
our members!
Alenka BarberKe rsovan
I s rael Nestiev
Paul Oliver
Richard Jackson
Giint er Mayer
Sylvia Moore
?anel Presentation
'The Measurement of
Popularity in Music '
'Music of the Rural
Work ing Class in 19thCentury Sussex '
'Popular Musi c as
Social Production'
'Music in Advertising'
'A Theory of Musical
Genres'
' Et Si L 'On Reparlait
d 'Adorno? '
'Popular Musi c in
West Africa'
' The Interdependencv
of Broadcasting and.
the Phonogram I ndustry'
'The Soc iology of Roc k :
Notes from Britain '
'Some New Types of
Pop ular Music in the
USSR and Their Receot ion By Youth Audien~es'
'Blues and t he Binary
Principle'
'Tradition and Acc ulturation in Slovenian
Popular Music'
'S alvaging a Treasure :
Pop Songs in the New
York Publ ic Lib r a ry '
'Rock Mus ic : Social
and Political Aspect s
of Capitalist Mass
Cul ture as a n International Phenomenon '
'Social Identity in
Popular Mass Media
Music: the Example
of Os ibisa and Others '
'Popular Music Research : Its u ses in
Education '
: c is not my int ention to comment in detail on
every paper but rathe r to assess coverage of
the field .
:::>efinitions of pooul a r music
~his
subject recei ved rather little discuss ~ on
from the contributor s . Pe rhaps they felt that
everyon e knows what popular music is, or
pe r haps they wished to avoid getting bogged
down at the outs et in possibly intractable
wrangles.
I t can be argued that if we are to
isolate 'popular music' as a meaningful
2
4
category i~
ment of the
=.::s ~
be on account of the involvemedia in its creation and
communi ca~~o~.
One aim of popular mus ic research should be to show what i s special about
popular music as music : the fact that the
invention of media technology 1 00 years ago
allowed, for the first time, the sounds o f
music to be divo rced from a social context
might be one crucia l factor here. Most of the
papers dealt with 'sound media' varieties of
popular musi c. Only Charles Hamm really
focused on the issue of popularity itself,
discussing the difficulties in actually
obtaining objective measures of this elusive
property . Richard Jackson's r evelation of the
riches of the New York Public Library's
collection of sheet music dre w at tention to
gen r es whose relation to the sound media is
mor e problematic, while Vic Gammon labelled
the repertory of the 19th century English
countryside as popula r music. These matters
deserved more discussion .
sou..~d
Theory and. method
I t ake i t that the key word in the title of the
conference was research, a process of active
inquiry and investigation rathe r than a r mchair
speculation. Effective research re lies o n the
application of specific methods and techniques
to the solving of particular problems as
defined in terms of a theoretical framework.
Many of the papers invoked some k ind of
theoretical framework . Vic Gammon provided
a valuable outline for the historical s tudy
of popular musi c, resting on the four pillars
of musical, social & cultural, ideological
and historical analysis. This approach is
relevant for the historical study of many
other kinds of music besides popular music .
Fra.~co Fabbri was primarily concerne d with the
rules that define different genres within a
musical system, identifying formal a nd t echnical, semiotic, behavioural, s oci al and
ideological and economical and juridical rules,
and then applying this analytical framework to
a consid e r ation of the development of the
canzone d 'autore genre . Again, this is a paper
of broad musicological interest . Antoine
Hennion gave some interesting details of research
method while discuss ing the work of recording
professionals in the studio. The theories of
Adorno were mentioned in sever a l p a pers, with
Paul Beaud arguing strongly fo r the con tinuing
relevance of Adorno's ideas about the evolu tion
of mus ic. Si mon Frith raised serious doubts
about some of the methods of r esearch hitherto
applied to popular music .
Case studies
The papers provided a number of case studies of
a variety of types of popular music. John
Collins and Paul Richards gave an account of
the history of highlife and juju in West Africa,
correlating these musical developments with
economic and social factor s, stress ing the
importance of mercantile capitalism and the
patronage of music by powerful African merchants competing for prestige . Sylvia Moore's
history of the group Osibisa, notable for its
many verbatim state ments and explanations by
members of the g roup, addr essed the subjec~ of
music and ethnicity, but a lthough it was clearly
shown that Osib isa 's music became (delibera~ely)
more African as time went by, it is still ~o~
clear what this shows about ethnicity and ider.~­
ity. Another very interesling example was
provided by Alenka Bar ber-Kersovan's study of
the adoption of American and British popular
music in the Slovenia r egion of Yugoslavia,
which showed clearly that for a growing group
of teenagers popular music expressed, symbolised and provided a channel for the sas:ie
rejection of traditional patterns of authority
that we are famili a r with in the US and Western
Europe . This s tudy made for an illuminating
contrast with Israel Nestiev ' s description of
popular music in the USSR and Peter Kieke and
~-==~e r
Maye r's d is cussion of rock music from
German perspective . Although not
presented as case s t udies they could be
~rea~ed as such .
Nestiev's account showed how
the Soviet authorities were able to harness
popul ar music influences from the West and so
in effect to neut r alise their anti-authoritarian
messages, while in East Germany it seems that
rock music was somehow accomodated by interpreting it as a new form of socialist mass
culture developed inside capitalis~ socie~ies .
~~e ~ast
Musica l and textual analysis
Only one contributor offered an analvsis o f a
particular genre of popUlar music an~ t~at ~-as
Paul Oli ver in his paper on binary stru~ures
in the blues. It may be that many popular
music researchers shy away from musical analysis,
perhaps believing - probably rightly - that
methods devised for Western art music are
lar gely inappropriate for other kinds of music .
But this simply means t hat alternative methods
of musical analysis have to be found . Paul
Oliver demonst rat ed the successful application
of such an analytical tool, showing the blues
to be richly laden wi th examples o f the b inary
principle . One suspects that many other genres
of popular music might show similar results.
Studi es of the popul a r music industry
Thi s has been one of the most accessible areas
for popular music res earch but i t receiv ed
surpr isingly little coverage at t he conference.
Roger Wallis describ ed in detail an incident in
Kenya in 1980 when a new policy that 75% of the
records played on one of the s tate radio channels
should be b y Kenyan musicians was implemented ,
only to be reversed after one week . We heard
the i ncident discussed i n verbatim statements
from various points of view, with different
interpret ati ons of the government' s motivation
and e xplanations of how it was forced to revert
to the old system . This fascinating material
merited further discussion in terms of e thnicity
and attempts to foste r national identity .
Antoine Hennion described an impressively
detailed and yet wide-ranging study of the rec ord industry in France, taking a fresh look at
the r elati onships between small producers and
big companies , then going on to l ook at the
process of recording music in the studio and
the contro l of the product by the A & R man.
Helmut R~sing 's paper on music i n advertising
was really an account of the sophisticate d
theories about how music ' works' held by the
experts who design TV adverts . Whether these
theories apply to music i n general is another
matter - they work for the genre t o which they
apply. We are not so far from the A & R man
after all, t hough the advertising man may be
more analytical about his ' cooking' .
As I have already inti mated, I believe that
r esearch in popular music is a leg itimate
branch of musicology (whether i ts practitioners,
on both sides, l ike it o r not) . The history
of mus icology shows an expansion from the
European art tradition of 'mainstream' musico l ogy, - through comparative musicology and its
offspring e t hnomusicology to the study of non~estern music and Western fo l k music, and now
into the realms of Western popular music . It
is true that ethnomusicologists have been
studying popular mus ic for many years but
despite ethnomus icology's claim to encompass
all kinds of music in i ts 'study o f music in
cultur e', it has hitherto largely neglected
rock and allied genres . I suppose it is
inevitable that progress in musicol ogy has to
depend in the first instance on the enthusiasm
of certain scholars for certain kinds of music
and so i t is not surprising that the task of
research in popular music should fall to a group
of (mainly) younger scholars who have, presumably,
a stronq committment to the music itself .
The committment seems to raise certain problems,
though . Scholars of popular music sometimes
3
give the ~::::p=-e55~on of being ra~~e~ sceptical
about t~eir o;;::. activi~ies, as though studyi ng
th~ mu$ic was so::iehow irrelevant, missing the
point of.the ~1.!Sic altogether. In his paper
Simon Frith re=erred to:
. .. a feeling of unease I've got about
apparent distance between the people
in here discussing popular music and the
people involved - whether as producers
or consumers - in popular music itself
~he
and later
... the most significant sociology of
rock produced in Britain is not that
produced in university departments or
by academic research projects ... but
that produced by people making and
listening to musi c, making sense of
that music for themselves, in their own
lives.
Could it be that an over-emphasis on the
sociology of popular music has led to the
feeling that the research results have drifted
rather far from the music? It seems to me
that popular music research has now got to
the stage where new approaches are required,
some of which may already be available within other branches of musicology, especially
ethnomusicology. An 'ethnomusicology of
rock', with its own anthropologically-inspired
methodology, including ' participant observation' (which should include performance of the
music), would be as much about t hose worrisome
'sociologies of rock' produced within the music
community as about the taking of decisions in
the studio or the musical structures of rock
songs. Further developments in the vigorous
field of popular music research are await ed
with interest and impatience .
John Baily
~?'.::~~S
FROM CONFERENCES
Man.!.:a Con ference
symposium on popular musi c was
Manila on February 8-10, 1982 . Organis ed Join tly by Unesco, the Philippine Association
of the Record Industry (PARI) and the Cultural
~entre of the Philippines, it took as its title
'Pop Music and its Role in the Community' . Two
IASPM delegates, Gerard Kempers and David Horn
attended the symposium at the invitation of
'
Unesco and gave presentations, on music
education in the Netherlands and recent devel opments in popular music research respectively .
Other overseas participants were also t~ere,
to provi de a non-Filipino flavour to what was
a fundamentally national;event.
~.n
~~ternational
hel~ ~n
Its history of Spanish and American colonialism
has given the music of the Philippines a
diversity possibly unique in Asia; but current
Western (particularly US) commercial domination
threatens to overwhelm the indigenous idioms,
themselves the product of a delicate kind of
creolisation . The extent to which the media
ar7 assisting, willingly or unwillingly, in
this process, became the issue around which
all else revolved .
But that subject did not ~ppear on the programme .
ro those delegates accustomed to such events
being t he province of academics, critics and
similar 'disinterested' parties, the strikingly
different feature of thE' Manila symposium was
the very strong representation of the Filipino
media industry . The Filipino record industry
has achieved much and may have intended to use
the symposium to demonstrate its successes and
lay the foundations for more, but the many
discussion sessions turned repeatedly to debating whether the industry ack nowledged and
acted on its r esponsibilities towards native
Fi lipino mus i c .
On more than one occasion these discussions
turned into confrontations between media
representatives and 'independent ' observers
(journalis ts, educators, academics) . The same
ground was repeatedly covered, the same grievances aired. But there can be no doubt that
channels of communication, hitherto blocked,
were opened.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
IASPM's first book-length publication, the
proceedings of the Amsterdam conference, is
currently in the press and will be published
in August/September, 1982. Called 'Popular
Music Perspectives' and edited by Philip Tagg
and David Horn, it will include the texts of
all fifteen papers given at the conference .
The editorial work, now complete, took longer
than was originally envisaged (for which the
editors duly apologise) - but rest assured, it
will be worth the wait!
All participants at the Amsterdam conference
may purchase the book fo r HFL 11 . 50 (approx.
£2 . 45, $4 .50, DM 11) . To IASPM members who
did not attend the conference itself (and therefore did not pay a conference fee) it will be
available @ EFL 23 (£4 . 90, $9.00, DM 22) . For
everyone else, including institutions, the
price is HFL 36 (£7 . 80, $14 . 40, DM 35) . All
these prices include postage and packing.
Advance orders are greatly welcomed, as they
help to improve the Association's finances.
When making an advance order please send the
order to the Secretary (GBteborgs Universitet ,
Musikvetenskapliga Institutionen, Viktoria~a~an
23, S -411 25 Gl:Steborg, Sweden) and the rnonev to
the IASPM Treasurer, Gerard Kempers (Jagersveld
36, NL-8222 AC Lel ystad, The Netherlands),
Postgiro accou nt no. 4295096 . When ordering
after publication, send your order to the
Secretary; an invoice will b e sent with the
book.
4
Discussion sessions provided the most challenging moments . Of the papers themselves, one of
the most informative was by Deputy Broadcasting
Commissioner Antonio Barreiro, on the question
of whether pop music owes its popularity to
broadcasting or vice-versa .
The President of
PARI, Dany Olivares, described in detail the
tape piracy problem in the country and raised
the t emperature of the gathering when he read
out a recent letter he had received from a
'pirate', threatening his lif e. Richard Gordon,
the young mayor of a coastal town near Manila,
described how he had worked actively to promote
pop musi c in Olongapo as an antidote to the
sense of lost identity in a community that had
experienced more than the average Filipino
share of US hegemony as a naval base till
1959 . These and o t her papers were notable
especial ly for being given by people active in
some way in the popular music scene . As ide
=rom your IASPM representatives no speakers
approached the subject area as one for research .
The music industry's inclination was to concern
itself principally with what might help to
promote Filipino music (as it records it)
beyond national boundaries . It was prevented
from mirror-gazing by those who, troubled by
questions of identity at group and national
level, were determined not to allow the
industry to neglect its social responsibilities .
Both groups had a common interest in the nature
of t he music i t self, therefore, and both
wondered aloud about t he identifiable qualities
of that music - but the symposium had made no
provision =~= a::.7one to investigat:e t:his, or
indeed any c~~ e= question involving aspects of
the music ~~self .
Thus the music was all but forgotten. The main
lesson s of the Manila symposium were fi rst ly
that the involvement of the medi a indust r y can
p roduce a very stimulating event, and secondly
that in many countri es where popular music is
boun d up with ques ti ons o f identity in the
contemporary world total deta chment is probably
impo ssible - and maybe not e v e n desirable.
David Horn
~ PlTi Confere nce 1983
Con ference on Popular Music Studies
:r;:;.,;_,y, 1983
The Second Internation al Conf erence on Popular
~us ic Studies will take place in I taly from
25 - 30 September, 1983. The venue will either
be Milano or Reggio Emilia . The conference coordinators are Franco Fabbri (Mi lano, together
with membe rs of IASPM's Italian branch ),
Gerard Kempers (Le l ystad) a nd Philip Tagg
(Goteborg) .
Black Ame rican Bl ues Song
Papers
A Colloquium sponso red by the Smithsonian Division
of Performing Arts Program in Bl ack American
Cul ture was held in Wa s hi n gton D. C. February 5 7, 1 982 .
Subtitled 'a Study i n Poeti c Li t erature'
it aimed to show how blues expres sed folk poetry .
Such symposia are often dominated by white
contri butors, but this was not the case in
Washington, where the veteran poet Sterling
Brown, the musicologist Stephen Henderson and
Daphne Duval Harrison who is researching women
blues singers , all spoke . Other speakers included Davi d Evans , Sandra Lieb and Paul Oliver
as well as several music ians . Smoothly managed
by Bernice Johnson Reagon, herself both scholar
and gospel singer, t he colloquim attempted the
virtually i mposs i ble in b r inging blues singer s
and academics on the same platfo r m. Harmonicaplayer J . C. Burris, composer and bass player
Willie Dixon, pianist/guitar player Taj Mahal
and the singer Coco Taylor, both performed and
descr ibed the i r work . Though the combinati on
tended to make the academics seem dry and the
blues singers somewhat light-weight it appealed
to a large audience, of which half were middleclass blacks - a fact that may indicate a change
in attitudes to blues .
Interesting though the
colloquium was, i t signalled a few warnings to
t:~ose who hope to bring musicians and scholars
t:ogethe r in future IASPM conference s .
The theme of the conference wi ll be WHAT IS
POPULAR MUSI C? An official call for pape r s
has not yet been sent out, but if you would
l ike to give a paper or present some other
materi al relevant to the theme of the conference (for details, see below), you are
welcome to write a summary (300 - 50 0 words ir
Engl ish) and submit this to the conferenc e coordi nators by 31 December 1982 .
Dolce.
••
••
EXETER SYMPOSIUM
A weekend symposium entitled 'Popular Music
Research in the U.K.' will be held at the
University of Exeter on September 24 - 26 , 198:.
Speakers will include Simon Frith ('The Story
So Far '), Dave Harke r ('Song a nd History '),
Sebastian Clark ('Neglected Areas of Black
Music in the Caribbean and UK ' ) and Mary
Harren ( ' Rock Critics Compared') . As noted
elsewhere in RPM, the IASPM Temporary Execut::.•:e
Committee will meet in Exeter on September :2 24 ; following their meetings, committee ~e=.bers
will join the symposium and add an inter::at:~on C..:
flavou r to what promises t o be a stimulat::.ng
event .
The total cos t of the weekend (Friday - Sunday),
including accommodation, is £38 .
Booki ~g f orms
and programmes ma y be obtained from David Horn,
Un iversity Library, Prin ce of Wales Road,
Exet er, EX4 4PT, England .
Costs
As a t the Amsterdam conference, participation
fees will b e kept as low as possible - in the
regi on of 40.0 00 lire (£20, US$ . 20, DM . 85 - 50%
less for students), excluding board and lodgi ng .
Spe akers wi ll have their board and l odging paid,
and will be exempt from the conference fee itself . They will, however, need to find money
fo r their travel expenses .
Conference t heme
At the plenary sess ion of t he First International
Conference on Popular Music Research (Amst erdam,
June 1981), the participants expre ssed the view
that a second con ference should be held no
later than 1983. A clear need fo r a more precise
international and interdisciplinary unders tanding of what 'popular musi c ' actual ly is arose
f r om various discussions dur i ng the confer ence
week .
I t was sugge sted that a suitable theme
for the following confe rence might simply be
'What is Popular Music?' .
So, unper t u r b ed by
the vastness of the subject, the 1 983 conference
organisers h ope that some sort of operationa l
agreement on the actual area of our studies wi l l
res ult from the five intensive days of popular
mus i c studies being planned.
Provocative guestions
The sort of proble ms t o b e dealt with at t he
1983 conference can be exe mpl ified by the
following questions :
When does folk music become popular music?
- Is jazz popular music?
- Ar e punk, reggae and new wave folk music or
popul ar music?
- Can rock be art mus i c?
- Can the class ics be considered as popular
mus ic?
- Mus t popular music be recorded?
- Can popular music be progre ssive?
- Can popular music be understood by studying
the psychology of its perception ?
- can popular music be understood by studying
the s ocial a nthropolog y of its con ception?
- Can popular music be unders t ood by studying
the economic conditions of its production
and distribution?
- How can popular music be understood as
idealogy?
- I s popular music necessary?
Concepts and methods
The subjec t of the conference c an also be
str uctured in the foll owing way :
1 . Descriptions o f current positions ~n 'what
is popular music? ', i.e. what opinions on
such concepts as 'popular music', 'l i ght
5
music',
e::~;=-::ainment
music ,
~ass­
distribuce= ~sic', 'musica popular', etc.,
actually exiscs? What areas of musical and
social practice do these terms actually
delimit in different national, cultural and
academic traditions?
2.
Discussion of research methodology, i.e . ,
how can the area of study be described and
understood using empi rical methods, 'object'
analysis, semiology, philosophy, economic
theory, reception tests, by analysing
attitudes and patterns of social and musical
behaviour, by discussing psycho-social
aspects, by choosing idealist i c individual
models or those of dialectical materialism?
3.
Description of 'borde rline cases ', e.g.,
between popular music on the on e hand and
folk and art music on the other. This also
includes discussing the relationship between
soundscape and music as well as that bet ween
'noise ' and music .
It also concerns descriptions of mainstream (dominant) music cultures
in relation to musical sub-cultures and
counter-cultures, the position of jazz, the
question of definition by means of anal ysing
differen t production processes and technique s,
the relation of economic to musical structures, the question of politics and enter tainment, etc .
4.
Exchange of real musical experience:
presenting, watching and listening to
examples of the actual music and musical
practices being discussed. Video and audio
recordings as well as live presentations
are considered an important point of this
conference, not only because music and
musical situations can be better understood
if conference participants are confronted
with the relevant musical experience, but
also because the actual exchange of real
~usic (not just words about it) i s obviously
o= great value in itself .
More than a conference
Apart from the usual papers and discussions,
the conference will also include a social event,
two evenings of live music as well as video
presentations. More details about the conference,
including booking forms, will appear in the next
number of RPM. In the meantime, anyone wishing
to be considered to present a paper is welcome
to send a summary to Franco Fabbr i, Torre 1,
San Felice, I-200 90 Segrate, Italy, or Philip
Tagg. Now is the time to book the last week
of September 1983 in your diary!
Proiects
Experimental Project, Hamburg
In April 1981, at the Music Academy in Hamburg,
an experimental project was started, entitled
'Popular Music', organised and carried out by
Professor Dr . Hermann Rauhe and a team of
collaborators . The aim of the project is to
test the possibilit.ies and to develop the
methods of teaching and learning popular music
on a university l eve l, in order to include it
as a subject on offer at the music academics
in Hamburg and/or elsewhere in Germany . The
project is planned as a series of three oneyear programmes. Compact courses three weeks
in length will focus on the improvement of
t echn ical skills, the broadening of theoretical
knowledge and the setting up of practical
projects which are to be realised in the following six and three month periods of supervised
practical work. Since the project is partly
financed by the Federal Ministry of Education
and Science and part l y by free enterprise
(German Phone-Academy, radio and television
stations), the students will be able to gain
practice in 'real' situatio n s - for example ,
in concerts o r in studios . The practice
6
or~e:: =~=~on
of the proje~ ~ s =o be == ~~ == rce c
b> :::.a :=:::oice of the . teach ers , who are oreC.o=.:..::a::c:y well-known musicians of the German
ar:C. ~=c e rnat ional musical scene.
~here
are still a number of problems to be
so:vec. The profile of a pop musician ,
consid ering the knowledge and skills required
=or his profession, is very vaguely defined.
Since most of the students obtained their
~usical knowledge on an autodidactical basis
rather than through an institutionalised
training, the variety of their experiences
( ranging from musical illiteracy in the
conventional sense to music acade~y C.egree )
is causing difficulties in the conscruc::ion o =
a gene ral curriculum .
In spite of this , c~e
first compact course in 'Rock, Jazz , :-iusica:Chanson-Song-Liedermacher' and composicio n
classes will take place in March, 1982 .
In accordance with characteristics of specific
musical idioms and experiences of students,
the curriculum includes instrumental and
vocal training, theoretical subjects (theory
of music, ear training, rhythm , harmony,
composit ion and arrangement and analyses of
musical works), ensemble play and various forms
of presentation. In addition general lectures
on the principles of the music market, on
legal problems and on characteristics of massmedia communication wil l be offered. They are
supposed to add up to an open democratic and
non-repressive learn ing process, whose aim is
to help the students to form their own musical
identity and to develop those potentialities
which are most distinctive.
Alenka
Barber-Kersova~
Publications
'POPULAR MUSIC'
'Popular Music' is the title of a new scholarly
publication from Cambridge University Press.
It
appears annually, and as readers will see from
the enclosed leaflet ('Cambridge Journals'),
IASPM members have the opportunity to subscribe
to the first issue at a considerably reduced
rate (£9.50 instead of £12.00 - i.e. a reduction of over 20%!).
Popular Musi c 1 was published at the beginni ng
of 1982. Popular Music 2 is currently in the
press and will appear early in 1983. Its
theme is 'Theories and Methods' and it will
include the following articles : Bill Brooks,
'On Being Tasteless!; David Coplan, ' The
Urbanisation of African Music'; Philip Tagg,
'Popular Music Analysis : Why?'; Iain Chambers,
'Some Critical Tracks'; Vladimir Zak, 'Boris
Asafiev's Theory of Intonation'; Paul Oliver,
'Binarism, Blues and Black Culture'; Franco
Fabbri, 'What Kind of Music?'; Anthony Bennett,
'Sources of Popular Song in Early 1 9th Century
Britain'; Max Paddison, 'Adorno and Popular
Music'; Peter Wicke, 'Rock Music: a MusicalAesthetic Study'. The review section contains
reviews of around th irty books and sets of
recordings and - a new feature in this issue there is also an annotated bibliography of
190 books on popular music published in 1980-81.
(For further detai l s on Popular Music 1 - and
an independent opinion - see the review by
Anna szemere .
Popu lar Music 2 will also be available to IASPM
members at a reduced rate.
(At its next meeting,
the TEC will consider a proposal that I ASPM
members should be given the opportunity to have
a subscription to Popular Music included in their
subscription to IASPM . )
Popular Music 3, currently in preparation, will
be on the theme 'Producers and Mar kets' . Among
probable contributors are Tony Russell, Antoine
Hennion, Toru Mitsui, Pekka Gronow and H. Stith
Bennett .
Brie"':·.· Noted
Reviews
POPULAR MUSIC 1.
and David Horn.
Folk or Popular? Distinctions, Influences,
Continuities. Cambridge University Press 1981
222 pp .
This well-edited and thought-provoking anthology,
including substantial articles as well as a large
review section, reflects the significant achievements in the fi eld of research into popular music,
especially in England and in the United States .
/
of the new journal 'American Music'
of Illinois Press for the Sonne ck
Soc~ ety) has been postponed till February 1983
.... The Autumn/Winter issue Brio (the journal
o= the UK branch of the International
."'5sociation of Music Libraries) included an
article by Nigel Cross entitled 'A Survey of
Fanzines', which included addresses and prices
.... The First Nordic Festival of Children's
:1us ic took place in Copenhagen in Dece:nber
1981 . Organised by Anna-Lise Malmros, it
included seminars a workshop and numerous
conce rts featuring rock.music written and
performed by children. :. Still with education,
the London publishers Routledge and Kegan Paul
have recent ly published a series of books for
school use under t he general title of 'Routledge
Popular Music' . The series is edited by
Graham Vull iamy and Ed Lee and inc l udes books
on folk song (Lee), rock 'n' roll (Dave Rogers),
jazz and blues (Vulliamy), and Tin Pan Alley
(John Sherpherd) . Further titles are pending,
on reggae and soul. An accompanying volume,
Popular Music: a Teacher's Guide, edited by
Vulliamy and Lee, is a l so published by
Routledge . . . Blues enthusiasts wi t h $100 to
spare may like to know about a portrait of
Mance Lipscomb by Glenn Myers. Called I Saw Me
For a Parable, it is based on taped interviews
and is available from Possum Heard, P.O. Box
703, El Rito, New Mexico, USA ... An important
addition to the reference shelf on black
American music comes wi t h JoAnn Skowronski ' s
Black Music in America : a Bibliography
(Scar ecrow Press), whi ch has citations for
no less than 14,319 items ..• Two new studies
of Bob Dylan have recently been published .
Denn is Anderson's The Hollow Horn (Hobo Pr ess,
Munich) is subtitled 'Bob Dylan's Reception in
the U.S. and Germany ' ; Betsy Bowden's Performed
Literature : Words and Music by Bob Dylan is
published by Indiana University Press . . .
Pub: ~cat ion
Edited by Richard Middleton
Can one agree with the characteristic postAdornoist trend in the sociology of music that
tends to question the validity of 'high art'
versus ' folk art ', or the generally accepted
trinity of the terms 'art', 'folk' and 'popular'
music? Are they indeed merely the products of
bourgeois mind and ideology? All the ten
articles bear witness to the fact that the above
categories are products of not so much a
bourgeois but of a very schematic view on social
history, and can serve only as a vague frame of
reference in the investigation of twentiethcentury musical phenomena. Non-European musical
practice, especially like that of America or
the 'Third World' cou ntri es, abound in what
might be called 'border- line cases'. Gerhard
Kubik discusses the impact of commercial media
music on an East-African traditional one; John
Baily argues that the folk music of a hardly
industrialised country like Afghanistan can
also assume the properties of commercial pop,
owing to the presence of mass media. Simon
Frith ' s illuminating study on fo l k ideologies
points out, how much the label 'folk' has been
exposed to arbitrary use by the working-class
and middle-class revival movements .
Can the 'folk' concept be preserved apart from
its traditional application to precapitalist
rural musical cultures? John Blacking reminds
us of the fact that for over n i nety-nine
per cent of human history all music was popular in a certain sense, and thus he arrives
at a strikingly positive interpretation of
even modern popular music. His train of
thought, however, contains an i ssue of great
i mportance : music, irrespective of its style
or genre, is a primary modelling system of
thought, therefore it cannot be considered as
merely the reflective epiphenomenon of the
social . Janos Marothy also ponders over the
chances of a total relationship between man
and music . Whereas Blacking enlarges the term
'popular' backwards to prehistoric times,
Marothy extends the 'folk' concept beyond its
classi c boundaries: creativity on a mass
scale may converge with the most progressive
artistic trends even in our century, under
favourable social and political conditions.
It is ~orth-America which seems to provide the
richest variety of interactions between folk
and popular music . Charles Wolfe follows the
professionalisation of white gospel singing;
Charles Ham:n offers a fine analysis of the
recent uni=ormisation of popular styles as
well as the tastes of the several American
audiences; John Cowley's paper deals with a
short phase of the development of t radit ional
blues and is more of philological interest ;
a scholarly study is devoted to Bob Dylan's
latest albums by Wilfrid Me l lers.
The reader becomes acquainted with various
approaches and methods .
Some authors, however,
refrain from music analysis proper, while others
apply its traditional techniques. The editors
could have made their selection more repre sentative by including a paper with a semiological
approach.
.\nna Szemere
Budapest
{t:::~ ·.·ersi ty
RPM 1 1982
RPM 1 was edited by
DAVID HORN
University Library, Prince
of Wales Road, Exeter,
EX4 4PT, England
PAUL OLIVER
Oxford Polytechnic, Headington,
Oxford, OX3 OBP, England
assisted by
HELMUT ROSING
Gesamthochschule Kassel ,
Fachbereich 3, Postf. 1013 80 ,
3500 Kassel, west Germany
Grateful thanks to the IASPM secretary
PHILIP TAGG
Goteborgs Universitet,
Musikvetenskapliga Institutionen, Viktoriagatan 23,
S- 411 Goteborg, Sweden
without whom the project would not have been
possible . ..
7
J ranches
BRANCH COMMITTEES
=eport and send a copy of this to the
I;..s?:-{ treasury .
c~~
6.
is to arouse interest for the serious study of
popular music at local, regional and national
levels . A relatively simple measure to be
taken towards the creation of such interest is
the formation of branch committees.
Branch committees a r e already being planned
fo r Canada, Great Britain, Italy, the Federal
Republic of Germany, Scandinavia and the USA .
IASPM also has good contacts with popular
music researchers cooperating between
Czechos lovakia, the German Democratic Republic
and Hungary .
7.
Activities carried out by PBC ' s should be
compatible with the aims and in accordance
with the statutes of IASPM .
8.
PBC's will need to soli c i t local economic
support for thei r own ~ ct ivities .
(At a
later stage i t may be possib l e for Ll\.SPM
membership d u es to be increased and for
PBC's to retain a certai n per centage of
locally col l ected memb ership revenue. At
the moment, however, it is impossible to
predict t he sort o f e x pen d i tur e like l y to
be incurred by PBC's and no such arran gement i s p r actical for the time being) .
9.
All IASPM members resident in the nation o r
reg i o n c over ed by the PBC shall be automat icall y members of that committee .
Branch committees are envisaged as playing a
vital role in the construction and development
of IASPM. There are several reasons for this:
1.
2.
Though popular music is an international
phenomenon of mass culture it cannot be
satisfactorily studied without the necessary
national contributions to such study
it is easier to awaken new interest by
carryi ng out activities on a national o r
regional level and by intiating studies
concerned with the immediate musical cul tur a l -social environment rather than by
attempting t o embrace the subject as a
more general, global l evel
3.
Certain types of activity, such as
contributions to RPM, preparations for the
International Conference, information on
theories of culture, studies of topics of
local impor tance (e.g. of young people's
music) etc . , may be better co- o r dinated
at the national or regional level
4.
it is far more practical to collect membership dues, payment for IASPM reports, etc . ,
on a national basis. In this way i n dividual
membe rs can avoid having to pay currency
exchange charges on t op o f their o r dina r y
payments.
In return, IASPM as a ' central body ' see ks t o
provide b r a n ch committees with information f r om
othe r nations and regions in the same gener al
field of s t udy .
Branch commi t tees are not env i saged as autonomo u s national bodies but as organi sations
carrying o u t their own work along the lines of
IASPM aims and statutes and making indispensable
c ontribut i o n s to the understanding of popular
music . Definite rul es of proc edu re fo r branch
committ ees and propos i tions f or their constitutional status are being drafted. These will
be discussed and put to the vote at the next
International Conference in Italy (September
25 - 30, 1983). Until such time i t is suggested
that provisional branch committees be formed
along t he following lines.
1.
A provisional branch committee (PBC) may be
formed when at least five I ASPM members decide to constitute themselves as a branch
committee in a given nation or region.
2.
The formation of PBC should be reported to
the IASPM secretariat and to t he editors
of RPM.
3.
PBC's should hold regular meetings at which
minutes should be written, and copies sent
to the IASPM secr etariat and to the editors
of RPM.
4.
Each PBC should appoint a secretary and a
treasurer.
5.
PBC treasurers should make an annual finan-
8
P3C snould open a nat ional bank accou nt fo r
IASPM membership dues and other pay=e.~ t s to the international association
s~ou ld be collected in local currency and
sent to the IASPM treasurer as a l u mp sum
i:i the currency o f the nation where the
I."'5PM treasury is situated.
=;..s?:·' .
An important step towards increasing membership
10. PBC ' s shoul d p r epare a r epor t on act ivities.
This should be submit t ed t o the I ASPM
secretariat before 1st August 1 983.
As stated earlier, IASPM is not at present
able to assist financial l y i n the foundation
of b r anc h committees, but will he l p in any way
i t can. The T.E.C . firmly bel i e v es that bran ch
committees are vital to IASPM's success.
If
you are i nterested in formi n g or j o i ning a
branch, you should first of all c ontact me at
the IASPM Secretar iat ( see add ress page seven
o f RPM) t o ascertain i f a branch committ ee has
already been set up in your c oun try .
I will be
happy to send you the name of the secret ary of
the branch i f one exists; if n o t , I can suggest
names of o t her contacts who mi ght be prepared
t o join with you in fo r ming a b r anch. You can
a l so make u se of the list of members . Good
l uck !
Phi li p Tagg
Join IASPM!
IF YOU ARE NOT YET A MEMBER OF IASPM, READ ON ...
Member ship of IASPM mean s
*** You receive informatio n on t he Association's
activities.
*** You receive RPM, p ublished t wice a ye ar.
(In addition to the type of contents in
PRM 1 fut ure issues will i nclude correspond~~nd news from branches . )
*** You can subscribe to Popular Music at a
reduced rate .
*** You can pur chase al l IASPM publications at
a reduced rate, beginning with the proceedings of t he Amsterdam c o n ference (due out
Augus t/Sept ember, 1982) .
*** You will be abl e to k eep i n tou ch wi t h who
is studying what and where.
*** You will be abl e to use IASPM as a channel
to publici se your own research and not i fy
others of your fields of interes t.
*** You will be making a cont r ibut ion to the
es tablishment of an interdiscipl in a r y and
international exchange of information .
If you have not received a membership fo rm in
the past, write for one now ! Send your
request t o the IASPM Sec r etary, Philip Tagg
(see Page 7 of the bulletin for the address) .
I ASPM membership fees are HFL (Dutch Guilders )
50 (ca. £11 . 00, DM 46) or $20 for individual
members .
For institutional members t he fees
are HFL 125 or $50 .