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Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Popular Music

Practice-Based Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2024

Toby Martin
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Seyed MohammadReza Beladi
Affiliation:
University of Huddersfield

Summary

Cross-cultural collaboration in popular music represents opportunities for the audibility of multiple voices and the creation of new sounds, but it also presents many challenges. These challenges are both musical – that is, how to technically match voices – and ethical – that is, how to negotiate historically entrenched power discrepancies. Practice-based research has recently developed as a field in popular music studies. This burgeoning area has much to offer in terms of new knowledge, based on embodied insights, lived experience, and an arts practice. Through a practitioner-centred account of three projects involving traditional Persian and Vietnamese musicians, and western folk/rock musicians, this Element suggests pragmatic strategies and conceptual frameworks for making pop music with people of different cultural backgrounds.
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Online ISBN: 9781009358255
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 16 January 2025

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