Element contents
Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Popular Music
Practice-Based Research
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 December 2024
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.
Keywords
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Online ISBN: 9781009358255Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 16 January 2025
References
Adlington, R and Buch, E (2020) Introduction: Looking for Democracy in Music and Elsewhere. In Adlington, R and Buch, E (eds.), Finding Democracy in Music. London: Routledge, 1–18.Google Scholar
Ahmed, S (2012) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Baily, J (2001) Learning to Perform as a Research Technique in Ethnomusicology. British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10(2), 85–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barney, K and Proud, M (2014) Collaborative Music Research at the Contact Zone in Cherbourg, and Aboriginal Community in Queensland. In Barney, K (ed.), Collaborative Ethnomusicology: New Approaches to Music Research between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Melbourne: Lyrebird Press, 81–96.Google Scholar
Bartleet, BL (2016) The Role of Love in Intercultural Arts Theory and Practice. In Burnard P, Mackinlay E, and Powell, K (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook on Intercultural Arts Research. London: Routledge, 91–101.Google Scholar
Bartleet, BL and Carfoot, G (2016) Arts-Based Service Learning with Indigenous Communities: Engendering Artistic Citizenship. Chapter 17 in Elliott, DJ, Silverman, M, and Bowman, WD (eds.), Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199393749.001.0001.Google Scholar
Beladi, SM (2021) Music of Bushehr and Its Origin in the Path of History and Cultural Interactions in Persia. Tehran: Arvan.Google Scholar
Beladi, SM. (2023). Neyanban and its Role in the Music of Bushehr [Doctoral thesis]. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield. Retrieved from https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/neyanban-and-its-role-in-the-music-of-bushehrGoogle Scholar
Blair, T (2014) Last Drinks in Lakemba: Tim Blair Takes a Look inside Sydney’s Muslim Land. Daily Telegraph, 17 August.Google Scholar
Bowman, WD (2016) Artistry, Ethics and Citizenship. Chapter 4 in Elliott, DJ, Silverman, M, and Bowman, WD (eds.), Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199393749.001.0001.Google Scholar
Brown, M, Pahl, K, Rasool, Z, and Ward, P (2020) Co-producing Research with Communities: Emotions in Community Research. Global Discourse 10(2), 93–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, G and Puruntatameri, TK (2014) When Performance Comes before Research: Reflecting on a Tiwi/Non-Tiwi Musical and Research Collaboration. In Barney, K (ed.), Collaborative Ethnomusicology: New Approaches to Music Research between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Melbourne: Lyrebird Press, 129–146.Google Scholar
Cantle, T (2012) Interculturalism: For the Era of Cohesion and Diversity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carfoot, G (2016) Enough Is Enough: Songs and Messages about Alcohol in Remote Central Australia. Popular Music 35(2), 222–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cherry, N (2022) The Violin’s Bridge between Past and Future (The Fiddler on the Palace Roof): Alfred Hook Lecture. University of Sydney, 25 November. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA-9T65iMfU.Google Scholar
Clark, MK (2021) Hip-Hop and Pan-Africanism: From Blitz the Ambassador to Beyoncé, The Conversation, 29 January 2021. https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-and-pan-africanism-from-blitz-the-ambassador-to-beyonce-151680, accessed 10 January 2023.Google Scholar
Collinson-Scott, J (2018) Pop as Research. https://popasresearch.com/, accessed 16 November 2018.Google Scholar
Cooper, K (2005) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. 33 1/3 Continuum Publishing. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Dawe, K (2015) The Many Worlds of Popular Music: Ethnomusicological Approaches. In Bennett, A and Waksman, S (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Popular Music. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 15–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, I, Hammond, N, and Sollberger, E (eds.) (1975) The Cambridge Ancient History, History of the Middle East and the Aegean Region c. 1380–1000 B.C. (3rd ed., Vol. 2, Part 2). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elkins, J (2005) The Three Configurations of Practice-Based PhDs. Printed Project 4, 7–19.Google Scholar
Elliott, DJ, Silverman, M, and Bowman, WD (2016) Artistic Citizenship: Introduction, Aims and Overview. Chapter 1 in Elliott, DJ, Silverman, M, and Bowman, WD (eds.), Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199393749.001.0001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erlmann, V (1999) Music, Modernity and the Global Imagination. South Africa and the West. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Exarchos, M (aka Stereo Mike) (2020) Sonic Necessity and Compositional Invention in #BluesHop. Journal of Popular Music Studies 32(3), 99–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabian, J (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Farraj, J and Shumays, SB (2019) Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frith, S (1996) Music and Identity. In Hall, S and du Gay, P (eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity, London: Sage, 108–127.Google Scholar
Hage, G (1998) White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Melbourne: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Harper, P, Aruz, J, and Tallon, F (1992) The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art.Google Scholar
Hitchins, R (2013) Rhythm, Sound and Movement: The Guitarist as Participant-Observer in Jamaica’s Studio Culture. In Dawe, K (ed.), Guitar Ethnographies: Performance, Technology and Material Culture. Special issue of Ethnomusicology Forum, 22(1), 27–48.Google Scholar
hooks b (1992) Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance. Chapter 3 in hooks b, Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.Google Scholar
hooks b and Hall, S (2017) Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
hooks b and Yancy, G (2015) bell hooks: Buddhism, the Beats and Loving Blackness. New York Times, 10 December. https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/bell-hooks-buddhism-the-beats-and-loving-blackness/, accessed 11 October 2023.Google Scholar
Hughes, S, Pennington, JL, and Makris, S (2012) Translating Autoethnography across the AERA Standards: Toward Understanding Autoethnographic Scholarship as Empirical Research. Educational Researcher 41(6), 209–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huxtable, P (2014) Sound System Culture: Celebrating Huddersfield’s Sound Systems, One Love Books.Google Scholar
Ingold, T (2013) Making: Anthropology, Art and Architecture. Abdingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, A (2021) Album Review: Youth Group’s Toby Martin’s Solo Album ‘I Felt The Valley Lifting’. Backseat Mafia, 9 November. www.backseatmafia.com/album-review-youth-groups-toby-martins-solo-album-i-felt-the-valley-lifting-is-an-uplifting-amalgam-of-mystical-realism-and-the-minutiae-of-everyday-life/, accessed 3 February 2023.Google Scholar
Koszolko, MK (2017) The Giver: A Case Study of the Impact of Remote Music Collaboration Software on Music Production Process. IASPM Journal. Special issue: Practice-Led and Practice-Based Popular Music Studies 7(2), 32–40.Google Scholar
Lacasse, S and Stévance, S (2017) Research-Creation in Music and the Arts: Towards a Collaborative Interdiscipline. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Laughter, J (2014) Toward a Theory of Micro-kindness: Developing Positive Actions in Multicultural Education. International Journal of Multicultural Education 16(2), 2–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorde, A (2007a) The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. In Lorde, A, Sister Outsider. New York: Penguin, 53–59.Google Scholar
Lorde, A (2007b) Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. In Lorde, A, Sister Outsider. New York: Penguin, 114–123.Google Scholar
Macdonald, A (2021) I Felt the Valley Lifting (Album Documentary). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w_OweWgenE&t=346s, accessed 8 March 2023.Google Scholar
Mackinlay, E and Chalmers, G (2014) Remembrances and Relationships: Rethinking Collaborative Ethnomusicology as Ethical and Decolonising Practice. In Barney, K (ed.), Collaborative Ethnomusicology: New Approaches to Music Research between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Melbourne: Lyrebird Press, 63–80.Google Scholar
Marsh, K (2012) ‘The Beat Will Make You Be Courage’: The Role of a Secondary School Music Program in Supporting Young Refugees and Newly Arrived Immigrants in Australia. Research Studies in Music Education 34(2), 93–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKerrell, S (2022) Towards Practice Research in Ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicology Forum 31(1), 10–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, S (2015) Scott Mc Laughlin Reporting on a PaR Discussion. Artistic Research Reports [blog]. http://artisticresearchreports.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/scott-mc-laughlin-reporting-on-par.html?spref=fb, accessed 1 April 2018.Google Scholar
Mera, M (2015) Can Composition and Performance Be Research? Talk given at City University, 25 November. https://blogs.city.ac.uk/music/tag/composition-as-research/, accessed 1 April 2018.Google Scholar
Meredith, J (2017) Songs from Northam Avenue: Mini Documentary. https://vimeo.com/195744782, accessed 7 August 2024.Google Scholar
Nærland, TU (2014) Rhythm, Rhyme and Reason: Hip Hop Expressivity as Political Discourse. Popular Music 33, 473–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, R (2013) Practice-Based Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neutral Milk Hotel (1998) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Chapel Hill, NC: Merge Records.Google Scholar
Nooshin, L (2014) Introduction. In Nooshin L (ed.), The Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music. London: Routledge, 1–16.Google Scholar
Norton, B (2009) Songs for the Spirits: Music and Mediums in Modern Vietnam. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Östersjö, S, Thủy, NT, Hebert, DG, and Frisk, H (2023) Shared Listenings: Methods for Transcultural Musicianship and Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pham, S (2022) Western Sydney Is Dead, Long Live Western Sydney! Sydney Review of Books, 14 June. https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/western-sydney-is-dead-long-live-western-sydney/, accessed 13 March 2023.Google Scholar
Read, P (2000) Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, D (2020) Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodano, R and Olanyian, T (2016) Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, V (2016) Framing Intercultural Music Composition Research. In Burnard, P, Mackinlay, E, and Powell, K (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook on Intercultural Arts Research. London: Routledge, 431–443.Google Scholar
Sahota, HS (2014) Bhangra: Mystics, Music and Migration. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield Press.Google Scholar
Shuker, R (2016) Understanding Popular Music. Fifth edition. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, B (2017) Youth Group’s Toby Martin on His New Solo Album and Being an Outsider in Western Sydney. The Guardian. 21 February. www.theguardian.com/music/2017/feb/21/youth-groups-toby-martin-on-his-new-solo-album-and-being-an-outsider-in-western-sydney, accessed 7 August 2024.Google Scholar
Smith, LT (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Somerville, M (2014) Creative Collaborations in the Contact Zone. In Barney, K (ed.), Collaborative Ethnomusicology: New Approaches to Music Research between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Melbourne: Lyrebird Press, 9–24.Google Scholar
Summerskill, C (2020) Creating Verbatim Theatre from Oral Histories. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagg, P (2011) Caught on the Back Foot: Epistemic Inertia and Invisible Music. IASPM Journal 2, 1–2.Google Scholar
Tâm, TT (1991) Buddhism of Wisdom and Faith: Pure Land Principles and Practice. Sepulvada, CA: International Buddhist Monastic Institute.Google Scholar
Torgovnik, M (1990) Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Turino, T (2003). Are We Global Yet? Globalist Discourse, Cultural Formations and the Study of Zimbawbean Popular Music, British Journal of Ethnomusicology 12(2), 51–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turino, T (2016) Music, Social Change, and Alternative Forms of Citizenship. In Elliott, DJ, Silverman, M, and Bowman, WD (eds.), Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 297–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urie, A, McNeill, F, Frödén, LC et al. (2019) Reintegration, Hospitality and Hostility: Song-writing and Song-Sharing in Criminal Justice. Journal of Extreme Anthropology 3(1), 77–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van de Merwe, P (1992) Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth Century Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vougioukalou, S, Dow, R, Bradshaw, L, and Pallant, T (2019) Wellbeing and Integration through Community Music: The Role of Improvisation in a Music Group of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Local Community Members. Contemporary Music Review 38(5), 533–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolinski, P (2017) Fully Automated Luxury Composition. IASPM Journal. Special Issue: Practice-Led and Practice-Based Popular Music Studies 7(2), 8–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, DJ (2017) Toby Martin: Songs from Northam Avenue Review. Rolling Stone, February.Google Scholar
Young, DJ (2021) 20 Incredible Australian Albums That Flew under the Radar This Year. Junkee, 14 December. https://junkee.com/australian-albums-underrated-2021/317847, accessed 3 February 2023.Google Scholar
Zagorski-Thomas, S (2014) The Musicology of Record Production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- 2
- Cited by