Among the most frequently repeated formulae in the description of the traditions most often called Afro-American music, in particular the styles of jazz, blues, soul and rock, is the concept of the `blue note’. It may also seem that this is a most widely accepted idea. The ‘blue note’ is usually thought of as a kind of basic element in those styles, as constituting the `ethnic’ or ‘African’ aspect of those musics as opposed to the ‘Western’ contributions of harmony.

My main attempt here is to step into the somewhat muddy waters of musicological and sociological/anthropoligical/ cultural studies discourses of ‘the blue’ and ask what the ‘blue idea’ really is about. In rethinking the concept of the ‘blue note’, I find it necessary to differentiate between two concerns that often seem to be somewhat unconsciously or muddily mixed together:

(1) the idea of the ‘blue note’ as referring to pitch, thinking of the note as an ‘item’, commonly thought of as the slight altering of the minor third and the flattened seventh; and

(2) the general concept of `blue feeling’ linked to the idea of playing ‘blue notes’: in short, the performance of music with a ‘blue feel’.

This article builds on research about gender in music practice, concerned with skewed musical canons, ratios and quotas of gender representation, unfair treatment and power dynamics, and the exclusionary enmeshment with music technologies. The aim is to critically discuss what ‘gender’ is understood to be, how it has been studied and how gendered power has been challenged, in order to suggest new routes for research on gender and music practice. While we count ourselves among the scholars working in the field and critically investigate our own work as well as that of others, the article addresses some additional concerns to those of previous studies by examining how gender is ontologically constructed in these studies, how intersectional approaches can enrich analyses of gender in music practice and how the material dimensions of music practice can be actively addressed. The conclusions outline suggestions for broadening research in gender and music practice.

As festivals were cancelled or people were afraid of participating in mass gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, the well-being effects of festival participation were missed. How can these missed hedonic, eudaimonic or social well-being impacts be described, and how has the prolonged absence of live music events and the cancellation of the festival summer influenced attitudes towards festivals? Research data comprised nearly 13,000 responses to the Finnish Festival Barometer 2020 at a time when all the large festivals had been cancelled. Clustering the COVID-19 related questions led to three segments named Covid-cautious, Music-driven and Experience-oriented. The findings indicate challenges for event organisers, particularly in terms of communality. The theoretical contribution of this study is in scrutinising the well-being effects of festival attendance at a time when festivals were banned. Thus, survey participants could say the factors they missed most, revealing the most important well-being dimensions for their festival attendance.

What is moving in rock and pop? This question concerns both what levels change in the popular music arena, and how music can initiate changes inside and outside itself. Revolution in popular music can mean radical transformations of music itself, as well as the way in which social and psychic changes express themselves in music. Musical forms can go through revolutionary changes, and musical content can thematise revolutions.

Since autumn 1989 when the ‘peaceful revolution’ in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) made Die Mauer (The Wall) fall, Germany has gone through a transformation process incomparable in world history. To understand how popular music has changed during this period it is necessary, first, to describe the situation in the former GDR before examining the personal views of two famous exponents of rock music in East Germany, Tony Krahl (leader of the band City) and the vocal group Die Prinzen, from Leipzig.

The study of the recorded artefact from a musicological perspective continues to unfold through contemporary research. Whilst an understanding of the scientific elements of recorded sound is well documented, the exploration of the production and the artistic nature of this endeavour is still developing. This article explores phenomenological aspects of producing heavy metal music from the perspective of seven renowned producers working within the genre. Through a series of interviews and subsequent in-depth analysis, particular sonic qualities are identified as key within the production of this work: impact; energy; precision; and extremity. A conceptual framework is then put forward for understanding the production methodology of recorded heavy metal music, and how developing technology has influenced the production of the genre.

This article argues for understanding popular songs and songwriting through the metaphor of architecture, an idea we draw from vernacular terms used by songwriters when comprehending and explaining their own creative practice, and which we deploy in response to those who have called for writing about music to use a non-technical vocabulary and make greater use of metaphor. By architecture we mean those recognisable characteristics of songs that exist as enduring qualities regardless of a specific performance, recording or sheet music score. We use this analogy not as a systematic model, but as a device for exploring the intricate ways in which words and music are combined and pointing to similarities in the composition of poetry and the writing of song lyrics. The art of repetition and play with ambiguity are integral to popular song architectures that endure regardless of the modifications introduced by performers who temporarily inhabit a particular song.

In 1959, the Conlon report, a presentation of United States government policies in relation to Asian cultures, stated the following about Japanese culture (in a section titled ‘Social change’):

Developments within and among the various Japanese social classes suggest the dynamic, changing quality of modern Japan … No area of Japan, moreover, is beyond the range of the national publications, radio, and even TV. New ideas can be quickly and thoroughly disseminated; it is in this sense that Japanese culture can become more standardised even as it is changing. Many of the changes look in the direction of the United States; in such diverse fields as gadgets, popular music, and fashions. American influence is widespread. And this is but one evidence of the general desire to move away from the spartan, austere past toward a more comfortable, convenient future.

In Rock Formation, Steve Jones notes that ‘popular music is, at every critical juncture of its history, determined by the technology musicians use to realize their ideas’ (Jones 1992, p. 1). As far as sound treatment is concerned, the importance of that technology (or more precisely, the importance of the possibilities it offers at a certain time) is rather obvious – had he not possessed reel-to-reel tape recorders, Sam Phillips would have never been able to achieve the slap echo which was so characteristic of his productions in the 1950s.

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is one of the most-watched entertainment programmes in Europe. Apparent national differences in using the show as an instrument for national-cultural representation can be explained by reducing its complexity to seven essential and interconnected ‘dimensions of meaning’.

In this article, I examine the history of a genre that spans several continents and several centuries. I bring together material from Mexico, Cuba, France and the UK to create anew, expand upon and critique the ‘standard’ histories of danzón narrated by Mexico's danzón experts (and others). In these ‘standard’ histories, origins and nationality are key to the constitution of genres which are racialised and moralised for political ends. Danzón, its antecedents and successors are treated as generic equivalents despite being quite different. From the danzón on, these genres are positioned as being the products of individual, male originators (and their nations). ‘Africa’ is treated as a conceptual nation, and ‘Africanness’ as something extra which racialises hegemonic European music-dance forms. Political leanings and strategies determine whether these music-dance forms are interpreted, adopted or co-opted as being ‘black’ or ‘white’.

In the final scene of Harold Pinter's play Mountain Language (1988), a guard informs the prisoners that they are now permitted to speak in their own language, at least ‘until further notice’. The guard is an agent of an unnamed state that pursues a policy of linguicide, summarised in an earlier scene by an officer who tells prisoners that ‘Your language no longer exists’. In 1993 the Kurdish Tiyatora Botan (based in Cologne) began to present Pinter's play to audiences of immigrants from Turkey, where Kurds were long called ‘mountain Turks’ (daǧli Türkler) by the government.

‘Why buy all those?!’ a street vendor in Cairo asked as I picked out photographs of young singing stars he had for sale. ‘Take more of these,’ he suggested, proffering stills from the 1950s films of Abd al-Ḥalīm Hāfiẓ and photos of Muhammad Abd al-Wahhāb and Umm Kulthūm. ‘Those were really good days … the old singers were really good singers. There's nothing like that now. Umm Kulthūm, Abd al-Ḥalīm, they're all gone and the rest are kalām fāḍī [literally ‘empty talk’, indicating something nonsensical or of little value].’ The vendor's opinions resonate among Egyptians. When asked about music in Egypt now, listeners frequently respond by saying: ‘There are no good voices these days’; ‘The singers are all alike – you can't tell them apart’; ‘After Umm Kulthūm, Abd al-Ḥalīm, Farīd and Abd al-Wahhāb died, there was no one’.

In Hindi cinema, love songs comprise the vast majority in an industry in which almost every film contains song and dance numbers. Often incorrectly characterised as narrative interruptions, these celluloid creations contain indigenous aesthetics and self-identifying cultural values, and employ contemporary cinematic techniques which impact film song content and context. How do these cinematic techniques intensify the viewing experience and allow traditional aesthetic ideals to coexist with contemporary codes relevant to a burgeoning Indian middle class and diaspora?

Beginning with an examination of traditional sources and contemporary values regarding music and emotion, I address the particularly important notion of displaying heart, often the centrepiece of thematic and dramatic tension as well as the love song soundtrack. As the primary emotional genre, I analyse the use of heart in romantic films and suggest a general typology of romantic film songs and their aesthetics, including commonly used musical motifs and codes.

Finally, I compare musical, cinematic and narrative components of the Indian romantic genre with those aspects of the American film musical, particularly in relation to cultural values and ideological differences. The iconic use of a couple-centric narrative is examined in relation to Indian displays of emotion, and love song duets are contextualised through description of several pervasive cinematic techniques used to heighten the emotional impact of songs on the audience. I conclude with a focus on the relationship between the song sequence and the narrative structure, particularly how this serves to intensify the narrative flow rather than interrupt it.

African American gospel music seems without obvious parallel as a musical and social phenomenon of the twentieth century. It is a powerful musical and ‘spiritual’ expression that is to a larger extent defined by the musical style, vocal techniques and performance practices of one of its central figures: the gospel singer. Although these originally African American gospel vocal techniques and practices have now also significantly influenced the development of contemporary popular music and the broader gospel vocal style, the specific terminology used to describe them lacks precise definition, and also highlights the failure of conventional notation in successfully capturing or representing them.

This article seeks then to firstly define and annotate some of the key descriptive terms commonly applied to African American gospel singing techniques in order that greater consistency and clarity can be achieved in relation to their usage within contemporary popular music research. Secondly, it will also introduce an analytical notational system, accompanied by a series of annotated musical transcriptions, that forms the basis of the author's taxonomy of musical gesture for African American gospel music, and which may provide a framework for comparative analytical research within the field of gospel-inspired contemporary popular music.

Among the ever-growing body of publications on popular music, all but a small minority have tended to deal exclusively with the capitalist world. The relative neglect of the workings of popular music in socialist countries has led to an unfortunate lacuna in descriptive studies and, perhaps more importantly, a potential bias in theoretical studies. Popular cultures in socialist states may share many features with their counterparts in the capitalist world, but they are also likely to differ in several important aspects, including, for example, the role of the market, of the bureaucracy, of state cultural policy, the limits on commercialism and the entire ideological climate fostered by socialism. Consequently, many of the theoretical generalisations about popular music, based on studies of the capitalist world, must be revised or qualified when socialist countries are considered.

In her re-authoring of Otis Redding's ‘Respect’, Aretha Franklin's seminal 1967 recording features striking changes to melodic content, vocal delivery, lyrics and form. Musical analysis and transcription reveal Franklin's re-authoring techniques, which relate to rhetorical strategies of motivated rewriting, talking texts and call-and-response introduced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The extent of her re-authoring grants her status as owner of the song and results in a new sonic experience that can be clearly related to the cultural work the song has performed over the past 45 years. Multiple social movements claimed Franklin's ‘Respect’ as their anthem, and her version more generally functioned as a song of empowerment for those who have been marginalised, resulting in the song's complex relationship with feminism. Franklin's ‘Respect’ speaks dialogically with Redding's version as an answer song that gives agency to a female perspective speaking within the language of soul music, which appealed to many audiences.

Rap and ragga musics have found a place on the musical landscape of Malawi over the last decade, exemplified in a nation-wide scene characterised by competitions. Recordings and associated materials of rap and ragga that inform Malawian youth interpretations tend to emphasise male participation and masculine symbols. Competitions are male-dominated in their organisational structure and participatory roles. Though the articulated focus of these events is the musical component, movement practices are at the core of the scene, comprising part of contestants' performances and the more informal activities of spectators. Female involvement as dancers is much greater than as music-makers, making attention to dance crucial for understanding gender dynamics. Our exploration of intersections between dance, music, gender and class provides insight into the reasons for and implications of male dominance in this popular music/dance scene.

This article focuses on three recent manifestations of cumbia in Buenos Aires, Argentina: digital cumbia released by ZZK Records; retro cumbia orchestras; and a newer strand of digital cumbia, música turra. The first two are identified with the middle class, whereas the third emerged from the clases populares (‘popular classes’). Música turra is underpinned by government policies towards digital inclusion, while middle-class incursions into the traditionally working-class sphere of cumbia, too, suggest increasing social cohesion. However, the digital fascination of música turra contrasts with an embrace of the analogue and acoustic in middle-class cumbia. These developments point to the emergence of a post-digital ethos and a shift from a digital to a post-digital divide, also running along class lines, analysed here through a Bourdieusian lens of taste and distinction. While transnational in nature, the post-digital ethos appears in Buenos Aires in a distinctive local form, articulated to growing Latin Americanism and post-neoliberalism on the part of the middle class.