From John Farnham to Lordi: the noise of music

In the field of music scholarship in general, it is popular music studies that have engendered the most innovative developments over the last several decades. As an academic formally based in literature and cognate theoretical fields, I would go further and offer the personal opinion that they have made some of the most interesting contributions to the methodologies of cultural studies over that period, fed by prior traditions of ethnomusicology and ethnography. One of the main reasons has a bearing on this article: it is impossible to write effectively about popular music, which is so predominantly independent of the printed score, without at least implicitly questioning the scopic orientations of cultural analysis and theory which dominate other fields (and indeed, sometimes music studies themselves). We can find an unfolding summary of the developments in popular music studies through what I suggest are the three most important academic journals in the field, which are, in order of seniority, Popular Music and Society (founded in the USA in 1971), Popular Music (UK, 1981) and Perfect Beat: the Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture (Australia, 1992). In its continuing series, Perfect Beat provides a comprehensive and focused exemplification of approaches to the critical analysis of the musics usually designated as ‘popular’ in the Oceanic region. In short, if we want to know what’s going on in Australian popular music studies, this journal is a good place to start

Jazz and nation in Australia: bridging the gap on screen, 1919–1933

When jazz arrived in Australia as live performance in 1918, it initially was taken by the establishment as a threat to national identity, in particular as that identity had been associated with masculinist rural mythologies centred on what was known as ‘the Bush’.1 The Bush was where the nation was created, through the heroic labour required for the conquest of the land. With its roots in nineteenth century pioneer frontier narratives, the values of the Bush were at odds with urban modernity and the lifestyles it fostered. The musical expression of the latter was jazz – a cacophonous importation from the USA with connotations of ‘negroid’ savagery and decadent effeminisation. Jazz thus functioned as the ‘Other’ in received discourses of nation. By the 1950s there was a growing synergy between Australian identity and jazz, consolidated by the arrival of a new music of the Other in the form of rock’n’roll. But the beginnings of this rapprochement can be identified from the early thirties when changes in the understanding of both jazz and nation began to bring the two into closer alignment. This paper explores those early relational shifts as they were manifested cinematically. Although it is widely held that the Great Depression ended the first phase of Australian jazz history, nonetheless it will be argued here that it was the search for solutions to the problem of the Depression that help to build a ‘bridge’ between jazz and Australian identity, in conjunction with a new appreciation of the meliorative possibilities of modernity, particularly as reflected in the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the transition from silent to sound films

A Veteran\u27s Philosophy Of Education

The acquisition of an education, to the veteran, is more than a desire-it is a must! The veteran\u27s opportunities for observation of society, perhaps more numerous than those of the non-veteran, enable him to instantly conclude: education is the foremost prerequisite to life

Online Gaming Can Make a Better World: Jane McGonigal

With personal feelings put aside and sociological theoretical depictions brought to the forefront, it is interesting to compare some of Jane\u27s ideas with that of both Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. The theorist who stood out right away, being exemplified through Jane\u27s positive attitude claims on a much larger, macro-level scale, was Emile Durkheim. Jane\u27s ideas about transcending human\u27s as a resource through the social fabrics of gaming into something that might solve world hunger, poverty, and global warming was nothing short of functionalism at it\u27s best. Jane\u27s platform for social structure and maintaining positive social order is the online world, and online gaming is the vehicle for change

Public Reaction to Mandated Language for U.S. Drinking Water Quality Reports

The author discusses results of a survey evaluating the mandated language for United States drinking water quality reports

Mass and Momentum Turbulent Transport Experiments

The downstream mixing of coaxial jets discharging in an expanded duct was studied to improve turbulent transport models which are used in computational procedures throughout the propulsion community for combustor flow modeling. Laser velocimeter (LV) and laser induced fluorescence (LIF) techniques were used to measure velocities and concentration and flow visualization techniques to determine the time dependent characteristics of the flow and the scale of the turbulent structure

Utility Customers\u27 Views of the Consumer Confidence Report of Drinking Water Quality

The author evaluates consumer understanding of water quality reports provided to them by their drinking water utility under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996

Risk Comparisons in a Democratic Society: What People Say They Do and Do Not Want

Using an exploratory focus group, Dr. Johnson examines citizen responses to common risk message techniques

Comparing Bottled Water and Tap Water: Experiments in Risk Communication

The author discusses results of experiments in risk communication comparing bottled water and tap water