‘Issues and History in Popular Music’ POPMUS 106: Learning critical theory by
exploring the familiar
Dr. Kirsten Zemke-White, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, New
Zealand
While it is not indicated explicitly in its title, ‘Issues and History in Popular Music’,
POPMUS 106 reflects the influence of American culture and power around the world. As a
survey of popular music styles, artists, cultures, and issues, exploring such facets as genre,
rhythm, timbre, dance styles, and politics, the course is global in scope/principle. However, as
popular music worldwide is heavily influenced by American popular music, the course
content of POPMUS 106 is openly American—making it very much an ‘American Studies’
course. For this reason, and because we address local pop musics in other courses in the
Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland, I avoid New Zealand and
Australia pop musics and other non-U. S. forms (I teach a course on Aotearoa Pacific pop
musics: ANTHRO 234 ‘Popular Musics of the Pacific’; and genres like Reggae and Latin
musics are explored in ANTHRO 343 ‘Global Interactions in Popular Musics’). POPMUS
106 focuses solely on mainstream American and British pop musics. These popular musics
represent the majority of pop music played on radio and purchased in New Zealand and
around the world today. America’s social changes are closely linked with pop musics: rock, r
‘n’ b, grunge and disco could not have been formed in any other place than the United States.
As these musics reflect so closely the turbulences and struggles of their times and places,
POPMUS 106 offers students a way to gain insight into American society, culture, and
politics, together with the place of the United States in world, as they learn about popular
music.
The course title, though, ‘Issues and History in Popular Music’, does reflect my dual
motivation concerning goals and concepts. On the one hand I want the students to be at least
pithily familiar with some of the major trends, styles and artists of pop/rock music (how could
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we let them get through a course of this name without meeting Elvis, the Beatles, Bob Dylan,
Motown, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, and the history of Hip Hop?!). But the
other goal is to introduce core theoretical concepts by having students explore things they
know about (in many cases they know much more about certain genre and bands than me)
through a critical lens. Thus, this course may in some ways be less about gaining knowledge
and information but more about learning academic analytical processes. Students already
have access to many of the ‘names, dates and places’ type information of the pop musics they
love, but now they must explore these musics/songs/artists with an academic eye.
The four core concepts/lenses I apply in this course are race, gender, power and style; class is
broached as an element of power (Marxist perspectives) and race. Of these concepts, race
assumes a certain prominence as it is broached from a distinctly American angle. In Aotearoa
(New Zealand) we don’t usually speak of ‘race’; the concepts in New Zealand are better
expressed as Tangata Whenua (the Maori, the indigenous people of the land), the Paheka
(white people, inheritors of colonisation), and Pacific immigrants (ethnicity). So ‘Race’ as a
theoretical framework is framed in POPMUS 106 by the American experience which offers
the notion of ‘black’ and ‘white’ musics, experiences, clashes, and struggles. Understanding
the American concepts of, history of, and lived experience of ‘race’ is completely linked with
the developments of many American-originated popular musics. For instance one cannot
truly look at the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, or soul music of the 60’s, or disco, or hip hop without
exploring the racial configurations of the United States.
The first lecture block (of 2 hours each, for 12 weeks) is called ‘Style’. This is where I
introduce the concept of pop music genre (according to Frith 1996 and Fabbri) where pop
genre (broad style categories with names like punk, techno, disco etc) do not only have
musical differences, but they have differentiable characteristic approaches to text, dress,
stance, behaviour, imagery, and their relationship to the music business (i.e. alternative or
indie). This is a chance to look at the actual ‘music’ but also to note how even the music is
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subject to ‘gates’ (power structures like record labels and radio) and non-musical factors
(location, race, dress, etc), which are just as important in giving a particular genre its
‘identity’ as the actual musical sounds or rhythms.
The second lecture week is called ‘power’ and points out to the students that there are only
really three majors record labels who ‘control’ over 90% of what is on an average weeks sales
chart. I discuss how these gates might or might not affect creativity. In this vein, we then
explore students’ attitudes towards mainstream musics and ‘manufactured’ musics. This
‘Marxist’ analysis puts the students into the difficult position of seeing pop music as
manipulated, commodified and controlled by a small few. The students become conflicted as
they ‘love’ or ‘feel’ deeply certain types of popular musics and they know people can be very
‘moved’ by pop musics. ‘Authenticity’ is now a marketing tool and students are forced to
examine whether they have ‘fallen’ for this ploy and encouraged to explore what authenticity
might really encapsulate for a particular genre (For example: what makes a hip hop artist
authentic? What make certain punk bands inauthentic? Does ‘pop’ the sub-genre have any
rules for authenticity or is sales the measure of success for pop?). We also look at the charts,
the Grammies, MTV and radio (and the power structures behind them- Who pays? Who has
ownership? Who profits from the system?). This Marxist lens also allows me to broach
‘class’, which has great relevance for specific pop musics (i.e. punk, hip hop, disco etc).
In the third week I approach gender issues. We look at pop, feminism, alternative sexualities
and androgyny, and I highlight female artists. This lecture gives me a base so I can refer to
gender and sexuality in all subsequent weeks (i.e. rock and masculinity, misogyny in hip hop,
homosexuality and disco). Students start to see how theoretical concepts like power and
gender are critical ‘lenses’ that can all be applied to something (which they perhaps already
know) and highlight fascinating, often unseen, facets of a music style/audience/performer.
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The issue of race I actually do not approach until the final lecture. In this way students have
viewed rock and soul and hip hop from their ‘known’ racial spaces (i.e. rock is ‘white’ music,
r ‘n’ b is ‘black’ music). Then using some stimulating readings, I present the argument that
rock is essentially black music ‘stolen’ by white people. From early rock ‘n’ roll to the
British invasion artists (the Beatles and Rolling Stones), who were so fascinated by black
rhythm and blues, I paint a picture of a stereotyped sexualised black ‘primitive’, fetishized as
an exotic ‘other’ and appropriated by white owned record labels and media companies. To
quote rapper Mos Def: “Elvis Presley ain't got no soul; Bo Diddley is rock and roll, damn
right; You may dig on the Rolling Stones; But they ain't the first place the credit belongs”.
Saving this lecture for the end helps show students how varied critical approaches can add a
different ‘spin’ to something they have already looked at. Because this ‘race’ lecture comes so
late in the course, they are usually given a chance to explore this ‘theme’ in the exam.
The rest of the course appears to go in historical sequence but actually proceeds in larger style
blocks. Rock gets four weeks (eight hours). Beginning with the birth of rock and roll
(embroiled in race and gender issues), I highlight the diversity of the ‘in-between’ years (1959
-62), broach highlights from the sixties (Beatles, Dylan, Psychedelia), look at the ‘Stadium
Rock’ of the 70’s and then present the different rock ‘branches’ of the 70’s 80’s and 90’s
(glam, punk, Goth, New Wave, Grunge, Alternative and their 'posts’). The notion of the
iconic rock ‘band’ (U2, Queen, Aerosmith) can now be read as a culmination of the music,
social and aesthetic phases of rock, and lights are turned low for pondered listenings to
‘Stairway to Heaven’, Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Sweet Home Alabama’. I then explore (and
get students to explore in essays or exam questions) what the verb ‘rock’ really means, who
defines it, and has it changed. Students themselves help me work through current rock acts
(they bring CD’s or guide me through web searches projected on a screen) and we look in
particular how the music media frames these acts as ‘rock’.
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Then we move to the ‘branch’ of ‘black’ musics, from soul and Motown, to funk, to hip hop
and contemporary R’n’B. I usually do hip hop first. I lecture fours hours on hip hop looking at
the history and early days of hip hop (mid 1970’s), and the flowering and mainstreaming of
hip hop culture (1980’s). We then look at the Gangster rap period/branch (late 1980’s up to
now) and explore its profanity, violence, crime, misogyny, and its wide appeal. I move
through hip hop in the 1990’s focusing on areas such as Afrocentrism, Black politics, Women
in hip hop, virtuosity (on word play and DJing), pop rap, location (such as the ‘Dirrty South’
and the ‘West Side’), underground hip hop, political opposition, sexism, and money (bling,
power, class, record labels, radio, MTV etc). As this is my primary field of interest I have to
hold back from overemphasising this area of the course!
We step back in time once more to the early 1960’s and look at ‘black’ pop musics, like soul,
Motown, and Funk. While chronologically and musicologically these genre should perhaps
come before hip hop (as hip hop is so musically grounded in them, particularly funk) I need to
make the political and racial points about hip hop in order to prove the transgressive power of
today’s contemporary R ‘n’ B. Contemporary R ‘n’ B (Usher, Beyonce, Mariah Carey) is
currently a huge commercial force and may appear as superficial and obsessed with sex. But
after looking at the trangressive power and racial politics of hip hop, soul and funk, then R 'n'
B by its very nature of being ‘black’ and descendant of these forms, can be read as political
and empowering despite its light lyrical themes and highly sexualised images.
We then turn to what has become a recent burgeoning branch of pop- Dance music (or
Electronica). Starting with Disco in the 1970s and its fertile platform for the broaching of
homosexuality, class, race, the body, independent record labels, music scenes and dance, we
move to the development of techno and house music in the 1980’s. We look at raves (drugs,
crime, underground), and move to the current proliferation of all sorts of DJ and electronic
based musics- Drum ‘n’ Bass, Break Beat, Trance, Trip Hop, Garage, etc. This music has
proffered some huge sales and chart impact (Fat Boy Slim, Moby, Chemical Brothers, etc.)
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but primarily has been a ‘non-mainstream’ movement—less about sales and more about
gatherings, venues, and ‘the musical experience’. Associated drugs like Ecstasy and Acid
have generated a moral panic around this pop genre. ‘Dance’ now has its own Grammy and
Billboard chart. So Disco, which was once equated with the epitome of ‘cheese’ and
superficiality, can now be read as a site for the liberation of gays, blacks and women and has
spawned a whole generation of countless creative dance and DJ-based pop music off shoots.
POPMUS 106 is so large (150 – 200 students per term, two terms a year) we use a tutor. The
tutor runs smaller tutorial groups (20-25) who meet for one hour each week. My first choice
for these sessions would be pure discussion (What musics people love and hate and why?
How many female artists are they fans of? Do they follow the charts? Which readings are
interesting? etc.) but students somehow imagine they are not learning anything if they only
talk!!! So we work discussion into the sessions gradually. They watch some DVDs in tutorials
(there is most often no time in lectures) They also demand essay writing and referencing sorts
of tutorials, too. As they are mostly level one students they always ask for this information
(even though they are perhaps getting it in eight courses per year, and there are lots of
workshops and learning centres available to them). The tutorials, I feel, are a chance for
students to try to elaborate and defend their strong opinions on music, and often they bring
their own CDs, or talk about gigs, etc. We go through the readings in tutorials as students find
some of the material quite dense and they need to be ‘taught’ how to read the readings and
take notes. I give them only one reading per week as that is all they can cope with but I refer
to many others in lectures and make these available to them for those who wish further study.
The course readings always feature in some way in essay or exam questions in order to
‘force’ them to read them. Otherwise, students feel it is not worth the time unless they are
specifically assessed on the readings. The tutorials are popular; they help to engender a
community feeling in class and often broker lasting friendships and musical alliances.
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I rely on a tremendous number of Audio Visual aids in class, as of course much of this music
needs to be heard, seen and experienced. The lectures are all on PowerPoint (I do not give
students copies of these) and we watch DVD’s (most often only in tutorials). I have loads of
music on my iPod, which we listen to, and we ‘surf the net’ on a large screen, which gives me
access to more music and music videos. On line we look at how artists or styles are framed on
fan sites, ‘official’ sites, mainstream media and encyclopaedic sites. Our University uses a
programme called CECIL where I can e –mail announcements to the class, post their readings
as down-loadable PDF files, send them web links and post extraneous notes and readings.
Also on CECIL I help students advertise gigs they are in or involved in. I envisage in the
future some sort of marked (for participation) chat site where I give discussion questions and
they have to post sensible arguments and comments on line. I hope this will also be a place
for album reviews, gig reviews etc. I guide students to amazon.com, yahoomusic.com and
allmusic.com where they can listen to short song samples of almost any artist I refer to (as
there is not time to play everyone I refer to in lectures). We also deconstruct and critique
some of the summaries and descriptions of artists and music on these sites.
I have taught this course since 1999 and the students have been primarily Arts and Music
students (the course is listed in both Faculties). It has been very popular with high student
numbers. The students from Music have often been forced to acknowledge with this course
that Pop Music is a serious place of study, worthy of the same sort of recognition and critical
analysis as classical music. They often bring a deeper musicological focus to their work,
which I tend to avoid in lectures as the general Arts student cannot read music. Some of the
Arts students bring wonderful Film Studies, Sociology, History and Philosophy experiences
and theories to their work. They thrive on the Marxist and Post-modern slants I offer. I have
experimented with various assessment projects such as multi-choice tests and listening
assignments but have resigned myself to the practicality of essay-based assignments and
exams. This form of assessment of course favours the Arts students but it also helps to elevate
the status of popular music as a site for ‘serious’ study.
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For the first time this year (2006) the course has been offered as a GENED (General
Education) course. This means that now there is a flood of students from Law, Medicine and
Engineering. They have brought such a different ‘flavour’ to the course. Their varied tastes
and lack of reserve I have found to be in contrast to previous student groups. These non- Arts
students tend to have much more mainstream pop and rock tastes, they are even VERY
familiar with rock bands from the 70’s and 80’s (they know all the words to KISS and Bon
Jovi songs!). The Arts and Music students had previously mostly been fans of underground
punk and hip hop, and some were even DJ’s and underground radio announcers. I found them
often ‘too cool’ to clap or move much to music played. But now there is much more
uninhibited participation and ‘joy’ in lectures. It will be interesting to see how this diversity
of students now taking an academic course on Popular Music eventually affect general
notions of popular music as a ‘real’ course. I have never had any complaints about the
American emphasis of this course. It seems that students realise that popular musics most
often represents America to the world and that examining the United States is a part of
understanding Popular Music; and vice versa of course.
COURSE OUTLINE AND READINGS
Week
1
2
Topic
Reading
Style:
Frith, S. (1996): Performing rites (:) On the Value of
Genre, sound,
Popular music. Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
performance
Mass. Chapter Four “Genre rules” pp 75-95.
Power :
Banks, J. (1997): “Video in the Machine: the incorporation
the music industry,
of music video into the recording industry” Popular Music
hegemony
16/ 3. pp 293-309.
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3
4
Gender :
Baker. S. (2004): “Pop in(to) the Bedroom: popular music in
pop, sex, and girl
pre-teen girls’ bedroom culture” European Journal of
power
cultural studies 7/1. pp 75-93.
Rock I: Origins
Keightly, K. (2001): “Reconsidering Rock” in Straw, Frith,
and Street (eds) Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock.
Cambridge University Press, London pp 109- 142.
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Rock II: The
Inglis, I. (2000): “The Beatles are coming: conjecture and
Sixties
conviction in the myth of Kennedy, America and the
Beatles” Popular Music and society 24/2. pp 93- 108.
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Rock III: 70s & 80s
Walser, R. (1993): Running with the Devil (:) Power
Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Wesleyan
University Press, Hanover. Chapter Four “Forging
Masculinity (:) Heavy metal sounds and images of gender”
pp 108-136.
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Rock IV: Nu-Rock,
Wright, R. (2000): “ ‘I’d sell you suicide’: pop music and
Grunge, Alternative
moral panic in the age of Marilyn Manson” in Popular
Music 19/3, pp 365-85.
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Soul, Funk, and R
Neal, M. A. (1997) “Sold Out on Soul: The Corporate
‘n’ B
Annexation of Black Popular Music” in Popular Music and
Society, Fall 1997 v21 i3 p117
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Hip Hop I
Rose, T. (1994): Black Noise: Rap music and Black
culture in contemporary America Wesleyan University
Press, Hanover. Chapter three "Soul sonic forces:
technology, orality, and black cultural practice in hip hop"
pp 62-98.
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Hip Hop II
Forman, M., 2000. ‘Represent’: race, space and place in rap
music. Popular Music 19/1. pp 65-90.
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Electronica and
Gerard, M. and J. Sidnell (2000): “Reaching out to the core:
Dance Musics
on the international work of the MC in Drum & Bass
performance” in Popular Music and Society Fall, 2000
24/3. pp21(19)
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Race: black musics,
Various (web links)
white musics
WEB RESOURCES
Music Industry
http://www.undercover.com.au/news/2003/20031107_elvis.html
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/top-40.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/wv/Royalbadness/napster.html
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
http://bbc.net.uk/dna/collective/A989328
http://bbc.net.uk/dna/collective/A2524646
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/26/160333.php
http://www.universalmusic.com
http://www.top50.co.nz/rianz/chart.asp
http://www.billboard.com/bb/index.jsp
http://www.grammy.com/
http://abc.go.com/primetime/ama/index.html
http://www.metallicasucks.com/
http://www.angelfire.com/wv/Royalbadness/napster.html
www.zonicweb.net/ badalbmcvrs/hallofsh.htm
Gender
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http://www.riotgrrl.com/archive/fem13.htm
www.ricmusic.de/women_ of_rock/ric_woma.htm
http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/index.asp
http://www.columbia.edu/~marg/ani/
www.divastation.com
www.ricmusic.de/women_ of_rock/ric_woma.htm
Pop Music
Online Resource: The Basics of Reading Music
Online Resource: In Search of Tin Pan Alley
www.allmusic.com
50s and 60s
Online Resource: Teenagers of the '50s
Online Resource: Girl Groups / Online Resource: American Bandstand
Online Resource: The Motown Museum / Online Resource: Stax Records
Online Resouce: Woodstock Set List / Online Resource: Woodstock69 website
Rock
Online reading from Wikipedia on Indie Rock
Online Resource: Lollapalooza
Hip Hop
http://www.graffiti.org/index/hiphop.html
http://www.daveyd.com/
http://www.zulunation.com/afrika.html
http://www.ohhla.com
http://www.allhiphop.com/
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http://www.rapstation.com/
http://www.conscioushiphop.com/
http://www.oldschoolhiphop.com
http://www.rocksteadycrew.com/
http://www.mrwiggles.biz/
Soul/Funk/ R ‘n’ B
http://www.iconscious.co.uk/musichistory/funk.htm
http://www.zulunation.com/THEFUNK.html
http://www.fantasyjazz.com/html/stax_acquisition.html
http://www.soulsvilleusa.com/about-stax/history/
http://www.history-of-rock.com/motown_records.htm
http://www.history-of-rock.com/motown_recordstwo.htm
http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=26&category=life
http://www.soul-patrol.com/funk/civil.htm
http://web.mit.edu/leonide/www/soul/history.htm
Techno/House
http://www.jahsonic.com/ProtoHouse.html
http://www.discomusic.com/101-more/23_0_7_0_M
http://www.disco-disco.com/disco/disco.html
http://www.70disco.com/
http://www.shadesofseventies.com/
http://www.discodj.de/discodj/index.html
http://www.djhistory.com/
http://dancemusic.about.com/od/genres/a/HistHardHouse.htm
http://phobos.plato.nl/e-primer/
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http://www.intuitivemusic.com/techno-guide-time-line.html
http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/1392/Techno.html
http://www.jam2dis.com/j2delectronicadef.htm
http://www.soundry.com/trance-techno.htm
http://search.localcolorart.com/search/encyclopedia/Techno_music/
http://www.jahsonic.com/DB.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/drum-and-bass
http://www.trugroovez.com/history-drum-bass-music.htm
http://www.scaruffi.com/history/cpt519.html
Race
http://www.crispinsartwell.com/media/whiterap.htm
http://www.fastnbulbous.com/hegemony_black.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/sc/bluesthesis/rock.html
http://www.fff.org/freedom/1090a.asp
http://www.angelfire.com/sc/bluesthesis/minmed.html
DVD/VIDEO RESOURCES
Dancing in the Streets
The History of Rock ’n’ Roll.
Style Wars
Better living through Circuitry
Standing in the Shadows of Motown
Beatles Anthology
Rock & roll invaders: the AM radio deejays
Ed Sullivan’s rock ’n’ roll classics
Gimme some truth: the making of John Lennon’s Imagine album
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The Rolling Stones rock and roll circus
Jimi Hendrix Electric Ladyland
The work of director Michel Gondry
The work of director Spike Jonze
The work of director Chris Cunningham
Achtung baby U2
Live Aid
Michael Jackson: Video greatest hits- History
Dr. Kirsten Zemke-White is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of
Auckland (since 2000). She teaches Ethnomusicology and Popular Musics Studies (the latter for the
Music Department). Her primary field of research and publication is hip hop- both U.S. and New
Zealand/Pasifika but she also researches in early rock 'n' roll (U.S.) and Pacific Pop Musics (Reggae,
rap, pop). Born in the U.S.A. she moved to New Zealand as a teenager in the 1980's.
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