Charity and Political Protest in French Popular Music

This article explores the cultural assumptions expressed in the self-proclaimed ‘alternative’ and ‘protest’ sector of French popular music, and how these become problematic when leading a charity concert. Liberté de circulation (1999) is a small-scale concert set up for the benefit of the Groupe d'Information et de Soutien des Travailleurs Immigrés (GISTI) in support of illegal immigrants, and its participants (artists and organisers) have a confused relationship with contestation and media exposure. While they convincingly wrap their pro-migration discourse in notions of solidarity and universality, they often confine themselves in artistic and production terms to a certain marginality, which fails the objective of raising funds and public awareness for the charity targeted. Drawing on a comparison between Liberté de Circulation and Les Enfoirés, a high-profile, televised charity show supporting the destitute, the article observes the problematic articulation of charity to political commitment and, in so doing, contributes to debate about the formation of cultural identities around the concept of ‘resistance’ in contemporary France. This discussion follows the pluridisciplinary method of popular music studies and includes an analysis of song lyrics, orchestration, artists' declarations in interviews and the media reception of charity concerts.     

Place and Innovation in Popular Music: The Bebop Revolution in Jazz

This paper explores the relationship between place and processes of innovation in popular music, focusing on the example of the bebop style of jazz. Bebop emerged during the 1940s both as a reaction against older jazz styles and as an expression of artistic innovation within a community of younger jazz musicians. The process of its creation and early development was situated in a set of "nested'' locales centered in New York City. This analysis examines the diverse nature of these locales and the distinctive ways in which they fostered interactions among bebop's creators and their various audiences. The analysis reveals that different locales played dissimilar roles during specific stages in bebop's emergence, as it evolved into an increasingly coherent form of cultural expression. Most importantly, certain jazz clubs in Harlem provided a setting for the early experimentation that culminated in the bebop style, but the style's subsequent formalization and popularization depended on its exposure in jazz clubs in midtown Manhattan, at first along 52nd Street and later on nearby sections of Broadway. These findings confirm the importance of place in understanding the dynamic nature of popular music and the processes of innovation integral to it.     

Cultural Identity and the Canonization Of Music in Early China

This article shows that over the course of the Warring States period (479–221 BCE) authors began to organize and categorize music in a manner that helped define and reinforce their conceptions of themselves as a distinct cultural or ethnic group: variously referred to as the Huaxia, Zhuxia, and Zhou. By examining how Ruist (Confucian) authors articulated distinctions among various types of music, and by showing how such identifications denigrated nefarious forms not associated with the Zhou court and its culture, I show how authors endeavored in a process of musical canonization while also consolidating a sense of an ethno-cultural self. The fact that these writings distinguished among and evaluated musical types not primarily through a discussion of musical form or theory but via a morally-laden language rooted in the civilizing rhetoric of the day suggests that music was a primary site for formulating, expressing, and promoting cultural identity.     

Place, Culture and Identity: Summer Music in Upper Galilee

The Kfar Blum festival is an annual chamber music festival at a kibbutz in northern Israel involving three public bodies. Soon after its inauguration, it was dominated by audiences of élite groups who gave it a specific character and made it a highly desirable social event. The demand created for participation caused the festival to change in character, and what had been an artistic celebration became a cultural commodity. This challenged the overall purpose of the festival and brought changes in artistic direction, as new audiences were sought through programmes with wider appeal. The Kfar Blum festival is an example of a contested arena reflecting social trends in Israel. Place becomes a metaphor for social trends.     

On Dittmer's Popular Culture,Geopolitics, and Identity as a classroom resource

In this intervention, four geographers, all of whom have used Jason Dittmer's book, Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity, in their classes, assess its status as a teaching resource. All have had considerable success using Dittmer's book, alongside other resources, to cultivate critical thinking and critical knowledge production in a wide range of classes.     

Representations of 1968 in French Popular Music: The Case of Dominique Grange

Focusing on the songs written during 1968–69 presented on the album L'Utopie toujours…(2004) by Dominique Grange, this article discusses some of the representations of key themes of 1968 in song. Grange is a politically engaged singer-songwriter who, whilst enjoying limited commercial success, was very much involved with the 1968 protest movement in Paris and was subsequently linked with various Maoist organisations throughout the 1970s. Her songs constitute an immediate response to the events of 1968 and reflect many of the key themes of the period as identified by Kristin Ross, whose seminal work on May ’68 provides the starting point for the article. The themes of disruption, displacement and reappropriation that Ross identifies in the movement generally are analysed within the context of Grange's songs. In particular the representations of these themes in the context of political contestation, the occupation of space and the seizing of speech are considered. This analysis will ultimately show how Grange's songs highlight the complex nature of the cultural construction that is 1968.     

Rural Transformation and Cultural Industries: Popular Music on the New South Wales Far North Coast

This article explores the emergence of popular music as a niche cultural industry, connected to economic and social transformations on the New South Wales Far North Coast (also known as the ‘Northern Rivers’ region). The various images of the New South Wales Far North Coast as a ‘lifestyle’ region, ‘alternative’ locale and coastal retreat have attracted a diverse mix of ex–urban professionals, unemployed persons, youth subcultures, backpacker tourists and retirees. Yet, despite population growth, the region continues to suffer unemployment rates among the highest in Australia. Against this backdrop, diverse popular music ‘scenes’ have emerged, constituting an industry with linkages to cultural production in Sydney, Melbourne and overseas. While the region’s unique cultural mix has been suggested as a key site of comparative advantage, future employment is likely to remain transient, insecure, and governed by industry–wide labour relations. This case study illustrates some of the complexities underpinning contemporary urban–regional change in Australia, and provides cautious assessment of the capacity of the cultural industries to reinvigorate rural economies.     

In Praise of the Ordinary Man: Popular Media,Social Hierarchy and Identity in a North Indian Text

This article recounts a story found in a popular genre of religious literature known as vrat katha[ritual storytelling]. The narrative is of an “ordinary” low-caste man and his everyday struggles. It tells of the social and economic suffering experienced by the poor man upon encountering god (called Trilokinath/Vishnu) and receiving his blessing, mediated through a series of miraculous events. However, the transformative power of the events and fortunes that follow is undermined by a Brahmin who refuses to acknowledge the poor devotee, rebuffing his ritual gift [prasad] as polluted and considering him untouchable. The ambiguous nature of the gift and the ideology and practice of devotion [Bhakti] present an intriguing and complex picture of Hinduism, revealed in the multiple social roles and social contexts in which subalterns operate in the course of their day-to-day lives.

?I offer a critical reading of this fascinating story. What seems like a straightforward, standardised ritual text is analysed in terms of its competing and sometimes subversive views of “dominant” Hinduism. By examining the tensions and ambivalence in the text I argue for a more nuanced rendition of subaltern power and agency which cannot be reduced to that of resistance and opposition alone.