Chris Potash, The Jimi Hendrix Companion: Three Decades of Commentary

Few icons of the 20th century have carved and retain as distinct and influential a presence on the cultural landscape as James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix. As a creative performance musician, he not only made incalculable contributions to defining the voice and presence of the electric guitar in popular styles, but he also defined new possibilities for blues, rock, jazz, soul and folk music during a meteoric rise to prominence at the end of the 1960s. Hendrix is, as Franco Fabbri would indicate, ..

Mark Duffett (ed.), Popular Music and Society “Fandom” issue

Most, if not all students and scholars of popular music are also fans. For Cornel Sandvoss (2005), the term “fandom” stands for “the regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text in the form of books, television shows, films or music, as well as popular texts in a broader sense such as sports teams and popular icons and stars ranging from athletes and musicians to actors.” Throughout this wide-ranging special edition of Popular Music and Society, this definiti..

Teaching music theory in UK higher education today: contexts and commentaries

This multi-authored article offers accounts of how programmes for teaching music theory within the Western-notated tradition were created in two UK higher education institutions. These accounts are followed by two more discursive reflections on the nature and purpose of music education today, advocating the importance of listening skills and inclusive pedagogies. The article is framed by an introduction and conclusion contextualising the issues raised in relation to a selection of prior contributions to Music Education Research and comparing approaches to music literacy and theory teaching as represented in recent music theory conferences in the UK and the United States

Sheila, Take a Bow

Professor Sheila Whiteley passed away on 6th of June, 2015. Sheila’s ground-breaking achievements in popular culture and gender studies, alongside her bright personal triumphs are celebrated by numerous obituaries from national and international media. Here, we present the tributes of Sheila’s students, colleagues and friends.Sheila Whiteley nous a quittés le 6 juin 2015. Ses recherches pionnières sur la culture populaire et le genre, en plus de ses grands succès personnels, furent célébrés dans de nombreux médias internationaux. Nous vous présentons ici une série d’hommages de ses étudiants, collègues et amis

‘I thought I heard that up north whistle blow’: African American blues performance in the north of England

Many narratives concerning the transatlantic cultural exchange which carried blues music and blues culture from the United States to the United Kingdom focus on the Southern cities of the UK, particularly London and the South East. This chapter argues that the music producers, consumers and cultural workers of the Northern United Kingdom, especially Manchester, but also Leeds, Newcastle and Liverpool, were equally significant as part of the cultural convection currents which precipitated and sustained the blues boom of the 1960s. Further, this chapter argues that the construction of blackness undertaken by performers, cultural workers and consumers during the 1950s and 1960s in the North of England was a fundamental strand in the discourse of authenticity which surrounded African American music, such as it was presented in the United Kingdom during the beat era and blues boom. Broadly, the presentation of early blues performers in the UK of singing guitarists Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy to secondary audiences in the United Kingdom during the early 1950s was at odds with the reality of blues music and blues culture as presented by Muddy Waters and Otis Spann at Leeds in 1958, and by the musicians who took part in the subsequent American Folk Blues Tours of the early 1960s. Additionally, the performances televised by Manchester-based Granada Television also problematized the understanding of blues music and blues culture, whilst contributing to its spread beyond the United States. Manchester’s Twisted Wheel Club and Free Trade Hall also provided an opportunity for a predominantly white British audience to engage first-hand with the live performance of African American artists. This chapter explores and indicates how the blues was developed from a music of the African American rural poor to a style which emphasised personal authenticity, providing a source of communion and creativity across racial barriers in circumstances geographically removed from the United States. With specific reference to Manchester’s Twisted Wheel club and Free Trade Hall, the American Folk and Blues Festival Tours (1962-1966), and the televised Granada performance at Chorlton Station, Manchester which featured leading lights of the American blues scene (1963), this chapter explores the enculturative and acculturative musical practices and sociological contexts that placed young, white musicians in the society and influence of blues music’s African American progenitors. The problematic issues of race and cultural dissonance are raised and contextualised against a system of demographic othering characterised as the North/South divide and a societal antipathy toward emerging youth culture, in order to illustrate diachronic processes of technological mediation and cultural development in both blues music and the emerging counterculture and blues revival of the 1960s

The boy can’t help it: Little Richard’s disruption and re-construction of screen performativity

As both “…the architect of rock and roll,” and the archetypal rock and roller, Little Richard’s genre-defining performance of sound and self in the studio, on stage and on screen repeatedly sets and transgresses the boundaries of performativity within popular music and popular culture. In cinema appearances which include lip-synching to his music in The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), portraying a slowly exploding music producer in Down and Out in Beverley Hills (1986), and voicing his own cartoon cameo for television’s The Simpsons (2002), Little Richard’s screen performance collapses performer, persona and protagonist into an expressive mode which draws on, defies and so re-defines our understanding of pop stars-as-actors. This essay examines the cultural impact of Little Richard as a multi-media stylistic originator and disruptor, with a specific focus on screen-based dimensions of his musical influence and performance legacy

Why Is Nina Simone such a huge icon?

The output is an educational/informative/entertainment podcast in the public domain, in which Attah discusses the life, work, and legacy of musician and civil rights activist, Nina Simone. Research Process: Literature review of primary and secondary sources, including biographies, autobiographies, documentaries, and interviews conducted with the subject, her family, and her associates and collaborators. Research Insights: The research highlights Simone’s continuing influence and legacy amongst musicians and audiences. It highlights Simone’s importance as a cultural icon with specific regard to her musical talent, her political activism, and her confidence and determination since regarded as her ‘feminism’. Dissemination: This work was made available to the public via a Sony Music podcast "Shot & Chaser" on Spotify in March 2023

To make purple, you need blue: Prince as embodiment of the postmodern blues aesthetic

As part of his ground-breaking work as a stylistic provocateur during the 1980s and 1990s, blues music and blues culture provided a fundamental element of Prince’s composition, production and live performance practice. This chapter constructs a continuum of blues music performance including Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix, positioning Prince as a performer in full command of the aesthetic qualities that characterise African-American music-making with specific reference to the stylistic gestures particular to the blues. This chapter does not attempt to delimit and collapse Prince’s activity into a single style or genre of practice, or to disregard his wider contribution to popular music. Neither is this an attempt to claim Prince purely as a bluesman – although the figure of the bluesman is one of great complexity in cultural studies. This is not a reductive polemic. The intention is to deconstruct several key performances and rehabilitate the artist’s practice as part of the ongoing continuum of the blues aesthetic. With this in mind, the chapter discusses definitions of the blues aesthetic, blues music and blues performers. The chapter looks at several musical examples in pursuit of musical and stylistic analysis before the presentation of conclusions. Specifically, the chapter discusses a live performance of ‘If I Had A Harem’ (1988), additionally, recordings of ‘Zannalee’ (1993) and ‘The Truth’ (1996), offers a comparative analysis between Prince’s ‘5 Women’ (1999a) and B.B. King’s ‘The Thrill Is Gone’ (1969); Prince’s ‘The Ride’ (1993), and Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Hear My Train A-Comin’’ (1967a); and finally Prince’s ‘Purple House’ (1999b) is compared to Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Red House’ (1967b). There are additional references to other Prince songs which contain strongly indicative blues material such as ‘The Question of U’ (1990)

Halls without walls: examining the development, dissemination and perpetuation of blues music and blues culture

Blues music and blues culture undergo transformations of form and circulation when oral practices are first committed to text as sheet music . Further evolutions occur as performances are remediated as phonograph records and through various broadcast media during the 20th century. Each successive transformation generates discourses of authenticity, ownership and value which enable and constrain definitions of blues music and blues culture. These discourses have remained largely unexamined as part of the latest cycle of remediation to digital formats and computer-mediated virtual environments since 1996. This paper presents the results of examination on key sites to better understand and illustrate the development, dissemination and perpetuation of the discourse blues music and blues culture such as it is enacted on the internet in the digital age