Compositional Mechanisms in Popular Music: Emotional Affect on the Subconscious Mind

How does popular twenty-first century music manipulate emotions of its mass audience? Music carries emotional valence, due to key basal psychological functions interacting with listeners as they undergo musical experience. This dissertation aims to identify how and why we are emotionally manipulated when experiencing music in our everyday contexts, to assist in the composers’ plight: altering emotions of a listener for a purpose. Experiencing emotion occurs in three steps: an arousal of nervous energy, a blocked tendency to react, and a build up of energy manifesting as emotion (MacCurdy, 2013). Certain individuals are more susceptible to emotional change than others due to an “aptitude for mood disturbance” (Garrido & Schubert, 2013). Popular music has been proven to influence emotions at both a general level (i.e., influencing shopping behaviour) and at a specific level (i.e., provoking joy or nostalgia). In this study, seven fundamental psychological mechanisms form a toolbox used to analyse a selection of emotionally charged tracks from the last decade. The musical analysis demonstrates the presence of these mechanisms in popular music, and draws comparison between which of them occur most frequently, and which emotions are conveyed most frequently. The prevalent mechanisms in the analysed tracks were Rhythmic Unity and Emotional Contagion, and the prevalently conveyed emotion was catharsis. The invocation of Catharsis via Rhythmic Unity became the key in my own composition. This study seeks to demonstrate why music has power over our everyday lives, providing a toolbox for musical analysis and for composers to use to effect positive emotional change. Future analysis in music and emotions might utilise this type of multi-disciplinary approach in order to accurately understand the relationship between music, emotions and a listener’s experience

Organizational communication on devolved governance: a case of kisii county executive

In the year 2010, Kenya promulgated a new constitution that advocated for a devolved system of governance. This led to the establishment of 47 County governments in the country that are charged with the responsibility of providing services to the local people. Devolution, being a new phenomenon in Kenya, the capacity of the counties to face up with communication challenges and potential structural complexities to ensure that they are managed sustainably is a concern. County Government‟s capacity to entrench communication to ensure proper service delivery remains an area of concern. The purpose of this study was to assist in understanding how organizational communication contribute to the general performance of county governments in Kenya and possibly stimulate the exchange of ideas among public and private experts, policy makers and implementers on policy guidelines for optimal implementation of devolved governance. The specific objectives were to establish how organizational communication channels affect devolved governance in Kisii County, determine the effect of employee communication skills on devolved governance in Kisii County and examine the effect of organizational communication structure on devolved governance in Kisii County. The study targeted 620 employees and a sample size of 86 respondents was used for the study. The location of the research was limited to the county headquarters at the former Municipal building along Kisii-Daraja Mbili road. The study adopted a descriptive research design and also used stratified sampling technique. The study used questionnaires and observation in the collection of primary data while secondary data was obtained through published documents such as books, journals, periodicals, magazines and reports to supplement the primary data. Data was analyzed and presented in tables and column charts. Based on the study findings, the study concludes channels of communication, employee communication skills and organizational communication structure as the major factors that mostly affect devolved governance. The study recommends for improvement in the way the county executive conducts its management operations and activities by communicating to other employees properly besides equipping them with necessary communication skills through training to enhance and support devolved governance. It also recommends for an establishment of an internal communication policy in Kisii County government to guide the communication processes

Competency requirements for first-line managers to deal with resistance to change.

Continuous changes in the needs of markets require effective change management at all levels in organisations. First-line managers are directly responsible for meeting the demands of clients and resistance to change at this level could result in sub-standard outputs. The effectiveness of change interventions will be largely determined by the competence of first-line managers to facilitate the desired change taking into account resistance to change. The purpose of this article is to identify competencies required by first-line managers to deal with resistance to change. The findings are based on a literature study and functional analysis