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.     

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, 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.     

The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles

In her 2005 article, "The Long Civil Rights Movement and thePolitical Uses of the Past," Jacquelyn Dowd Hall called on scholarsto complicate the story of civil rights by looking beyond atraditional narrative that begins in 1954, ends in 1965, focuseson the South, and features Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leaderof a single-voiced chorus of interracial activists who overcameracial barriers nonviolently. The recent wave of histories aboutarts movements in African-American communities (e.g., Pointfrom Which Creation Begins: The Black Artists’ Group ofSt. Louis, by Benjamin Looker, 2004,     

Music and the Aesthetic Copernican Revolution of the Eighteenth Century

ABSTRACT

In the mid-eighteenth century music underwent a sudden and drastic revolution when composers “discovered” a new dimension to their art. This had immense repercussions on the philosophy of art, for the music created before and after this divide represents two different species of aesthetic experience, which in due course affected our understanding of the meaning and import of the other arts as well. Despite the immense aesthetic repercussions of this Copernican revolution in music, philosophers of art seem not to have taken much notice of it. This essay details the emergence of the relevant musical criteria during the eighteenth century and dwells on their long-term impacts on the philosophy of art.     

'Giant Strides' in Documentaries, 'Ascents' in Archaeology: Nautical Archaeology's Relationship with and Place within Popular Culture

This article covers 30 years of the representation of nautical archaeology on television. It criticises and positions current research, then develops an objective methodology for examining television documentaries. The relationships and similarities between television documentaries and academia and the wider professional and amateur discipline is debated. Original research, which argues for a structure that is ever-present in nautical archaeology as in popular culture and academia, is deconstructed, and the implications reviewed. A sequence of images is defined and it is demonstrated that this forms a 'unique selling-point' used by both television and the academic discipline.
© 2008 The Author     

亦真亦幻亦虚亦实——土族风情歌舞诗《彩虹飞落的地方》音乐谈

由西宁市歌舞团创作的土族风情歌舞诗《彩虹飞落的地方》（下称《彩》剧）以土族一年四季中的不同民俗民风为切入点,以歌颂男女青年的爱情为主线,分“春情”、“夏恋”、“秋醉”、“冬圆”四个篇章来表现主题。该剧自创作上演以来,深受观众欢迎,剧中的主题音乐、主题歌等经典作品,近年来在我省广为流行。笔者是一名专业音乐工作者,曾参与了《彩》剧的策划、排练和演出工作,为了对《彩》剧的音乐内涵有更深刻的理解和揭示,前不久笔者拜访了《彩》剧的作曲张启元先生。张先生就《彩》剧的音乐创作分三部分做了介绍。