623 research outputs found
The (Grand) Maternal Queenly Canon
The (Grand) Maternal Queenly Canon
Queens, both of them. Queen of Calypso and âQueeneâ of English Folk, Calypso Rose and Shirley Collins are lauded musicians, recording and performing in their eighties. They are two female performers in âolder ageâ who make up a (grand)maternal canon within popular music. This canon goes across genre and includes women who are valued for both their ongoing contribution to music and for their participation in the formative histories of those musics. Performing well past the âmenopausal gapâ they act as familial beacons in their respective genres, markers of a longevity imbricated and wrapped up with discourses of authenticity that in turn, speak to national and diasporic heritages (Bascombe, 2015).
Their contributions to music are recognised in film (The Ballad of Shirley Collins, 2017), cemented by memoir (All in The Downs: Life, landscape and Song, (2018), documented through official websites that measure musical outputs and significance against broader cultural markers (www.calypsorose) and presented in music video. Using an interdisciplinary methodology the paper focuses on these metatexts of Collins and Calypso Rose who are both in âoldâ age and producing music anew and, in part, through alliance with younger musicians and producers. As one chapter in a book on âAgeing and Contemporary Female Musiciansâ, its motive is to spotlight age as a pertinent theme of enquiry within popular music studies and to note how the production and performances of these women in their 80s signifies a veneration of a âgrand-maternal canonâ which is both a manifestation and a rebuttal of appropriate ageing
Whose Record is it Anyway? Musical 'crate digging' across Africa
The search for old and new African sounds is based around a nostalgia culture that is endemic to Anglo-American popular music
Framing Grace: Shock and Awe at the Ageless Black Body
âThirty years of the high life have not taken their toll on Jonesâ perfect hindquarters, which she shakes and wiggles in the faces of the photographersâ.
Kitty Empire 22/06/08 The Observer
Thirty years of such a high life may not have taken their toll on Grace Jonesâ posterior but something is ârottenâ in the use of the term âhindquartersâ. It is what is at stake in such language that is the concern of this paper, which maps out broadcast press and blog discourses surrounding Jonesâ recent re-emergence onto the British popular music scene to establish how she becomes framed both through the vectors of race and age in ways that highlight her as an awesome and âaweâful artefact
Review: Performing Englishness: Identity and Politics in a Contemporary Folk Resurgence. By Trish Winter and Simon Keegan-Phipps. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. x +185 pp. ISBN 978-0-719-08539-0Nick Drake Dreaming England. By Nathan Wiseman-Trowse. London: Reaktion, 2013. 165 pp. ISBN 978-1-780-23176-1
My Story. Digital Storytelling across Europe for Social Cohesion
âMy Storyâ (Mysty) is a pan-European, Erasmus+ funded Digital Storytelling project focused on intercultural competency. It has eight partners (HE, secondary schools and NGOs) across four countries (Austria, Italy, Hungary and the UK) and involves the collection, editing and uploading of digital stories to a shared âtoolboxâ. These stories focus on âfoodâ, âfamilyâ and âfestivalâ and act as a platform for diversity awareness and digital upskilling. The project is driven by the principle that innovative teaching resources form part of broader pedagogic strategies that can actively help tackle issues of diversity common across the EU. The paper discusses the process
the project went through, some of its challenges and its results and, on the basis of these, looks at the role digital storytelling as a way of expressing different ethical, cultural or personal issues
Defending the Bodice Ripper
Romance novels have always occupied a strange state of limbo in the literary world. Decried by feminists, critics, and by the general populace, what could a whole genre of books have done to be so disparaged, arguably more than any other genre? Books written by women, for women, about women should be hailed as revolutionary in a historically male dominated publishing industry; from a more cynical point of view, an industry that pumps out hundreds of books and brings in millions of dollars every year is surely doing something right and deserves more than a cursory look. Yet they canât seem to shake some strange taint that clings to them. The term âbodice-ripperâ has long been used in a derogatory fashion to describe the popular romance genre dating back to the 1970s. A closer examination of these books shows that such hatred is far from justified. Said examination will reveal that so called bodice-rippers are an important part of not only the history of the popular romance genre but serve as feminist and cultural artifacts that can help modern readers and scholars to better understand the position and feelings of women in the 70s and 80s
Ageing, Travelling Folk: Sam Lee and Songs across Time
Sam Lee is a British songwriter and collector whose music is a reimagining of traditional English and traveller folk music. His first album, Ground of Its Own (2012), was the first âfolkâ album to be nominated for The Mercury Prize, a critically acclaimed UK music award, whilst his second Fade in Time (2015) continues his exploration of UK folk and traveller heritage. Lee travels around the UK, working with elderly travellers and amateur folk singers to recast and reinterpret their songs. His activities are part of a wider folk movement network across Europe and the United States, where age is valued, both as a life lived and as a quality embedded in the songs performed (Boyes, 2010; Elliot, 2015; Negus, 2012, Winters and Keegan-Phipps, 2013).
This paper is framed by an understanding that his work is related to the preservation, encoding and transference of a collective musical experience; what we might term âmimetic inheritanceâ. It is rooted in English folk music but reaches out beyond the borders of âEnglishnessâ through the travellersâ own familial inheritances to encompass migratory musical traditions. The paper focuses on the conceit of âtravellingâ, whereby music is at once rooted, or âgroundedâ and âde-territorializedâ (Deleuze and Guattari (1972), since it travels not only across differing spaces but across time. Using Negusâs work on Ricoeur (2012, 1984) the paper argues that this musical practice is a manifestation of Ricoeurâs âpresent of the pastâ where remnants float up from shared and found pasts to circulate within the present, which Lee makes apparent in his treatment and versions of the old folk songs he refashions and records
Temporal tracking of mineralization and transcriptional developments of shell formation during the early life history of pearl oyster Pinctada maxima
Molluscan larval ontogeny is a highly conserved process comprising three principal developmental stages. A characteristic unique to each of these stages is shell design, termed prodissoconch I, prodissoconch II and dissoconch. These shells vary in morphology, mineralogy and microstructure. The discrete temporal transitions in shell biomineralization between these larval stages are utilized in this study to investigate transcriptional involvement in several distinct biomineralization events. Scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis of P. maxima larvae and juveniles collected throughout post-embryonic ontogenesis, document the mineralogy and microstructure of each shelled stage as well as establishing a timeline for transitions in biomineralization. P. maxima larval samples most representative of these biomineralization distinctions and transitions were analyzed for differential gene expression on the microarray platform PmaxArray 1.0. A number of transcripts are reported as differentially expressed in correlation to the mineralization events of P. maxima larval ontogeny. Some of those isolated are known shell matrix genes while others are novel; these are discussed in relation to potential shell formation roles. This interdisciplinary investigation has linked the shell developments of P. maxima larval ontogeny with corresponding gene expression profiles, furthering the elucidation of shell biomineralization
PJ Harvey and Remembering England
PJ Harvey is an English musician who has, to date, enjoyed a career spanning nearly a quarter of a century. She comes from Dorset, a rural county in the South West of England, where she still lives. This fact is important because it locates her in a particular rural and potentially âpastoralâ place, one that is far away from the metropolitan, from Thomas Hardyâs âmadding crowdâ. This chapter focuses on White Chalk (2007) and Let England Shake (2011) to argue that they are her âEnglishâ albums, a claim that rests not only on their musical temperament, lyrical concerns or audio-visual representation, but also on the nature of how they remember England, especially when this collides with narratives of war and home. Remembering is often selective and selection is part of the archiving process. What we leave in and what we leave out of the archive dictates in turn, what is and is not remembered. In these two albums, Harvey presents a version of Englishness that adds to contemporary discourses on (memories of) national identity by foregrounding the forgotten, the rural, the disappointed; by narrating tales of love and war that are not those of victory or triumph but of longing and loss.This chapter interrogates how and why this has happened and argues that it is, in part, due to her narration of Englishness and what aspects of it are remembered. To map this out, the discussion entails an analysis of the development over Harveyâs recent career (2007-2011) of audio-visual aspects of her work that might be construed as âEnglishâ particularly in relation to locality and land (Aughey, 2007). One of the questions posed here is to ask whether these aspects might be seen to culminate in her more recent work at a time when nation and identity may be considered to be pertinent political and cultural themes. In this sense, the chapter asks whether her albums are part of an archiving process that contributes to a reframing of Englishness
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