While study of the social and cultural aspects of popular music has been flourishing for some time, it is only in the last few years that serious efforts have been made to analyse the music itself: what Allan Moore has called ‘the primary text’ (1993, p. 1). These efforts include general studies of styles and genres (Moore, 1993; Bowman, 1995); studies of specific aspects of popular styles such as harmony and improvisation (Winkler 1978; Moore 1992, 1995; Walser 1992), as well as more intensive analyses of individual songs (Tagg 1982; Hawkins 1992). In this paper I will investigate syncopation, a phenomenon of great importance in many genres of popular music and particularly in rock.

Indie alternative rock in the 1980s is often presented as authentically autonomous, produced in local scenes, uncaptured by ideology, free of commercial pressures, but also of high culture elitism. In claiming that the music is avant-garde, postmodern and subversive, such accounts simplify indie's historical, social and cultural context. Indie did not simply arise organically out of developing postpunk music networks, but was shaped by media, and was not just collective, but also stratified, hierarchical and traditional. Canon (articulated through practices of archivalism and connoisseurship) is a key means of stratification within indie scenes, produced by and serving particular social and cultural needs for dominant social groups (journalists, scenemakers, tastemakers, etc.). These groups and individuals were mainly masculine, and thus gender in indie scenes is an important means for deconstructing the discourse of indie independence. I suggest re-envisioning indie as a history of record collectors, emphasising the importance of rock ‘tradition’, of male rock ‘intellectuals’, second-hand record shops, and of an alternative canon as a form of pedagogy. I also consider such activities as models of rational organisation and points of symbolic identification.

In the American record industry, independent record companies have long held a cultural status that far exceeds the actual economic impact they have in the market-place. Independent record companies, or ‘indies’, have become understood as innovative and creative oases for new or unconventional musicians in the midst of a capital-driven and profit-oriented record business. The development of a wide range of musical genres and styles – from rhythm and blues and soul to punk and industrial – are often attributed to the small companies that operated outside of the control of the larger ‘major’ labels.

Since the early 1970s the advent of cassette technology has had a profound effect on music industries worldwide. This influence has been particularly marked in the developing world, where cassettes have largely replaced vinyl records and have extended their impact into regions, classes and genres previously uninfluenced by the mass media. Cassettes have served to decentralise and democratise both production and consumption, thereby counterbalancing the previous tendency toward oligopolisation of international commercial recording industries.

Against theories of cultural hybridity and disembodied flows of recorded media, this article argues for the continued relevance of the concept of regional musical scenes. It takes as examples contemporary punk as it exists in four cities and shows that there are different local accents in Washington D.C., Austin, Texas, Toronto and Mexico City. The conclusion describes some aspects of the social organisation of cultural contacts between these scenes. The article is part of a larger project of multi-site ethnography of youth subculture and resistance to globalisation.

This article began, quite simply, as the presentation of a stage in the mapping-out of those harmonic practices which serve to distinguish rock and closely cognate styles (hereafter simply ‘rock’) from those of common-practice tonality on one hand, and jazz on another. It soon became apparent, however, that such a task necessitated some detailed consideration of the means by which the conclusions might be presented and, therefore, some careful consideration of analytic method. To my knowledge, there is as yet very little concern for theorising analytic method in rock music and, therefore, what follows may act as a tentative opening of a difficult debate. The issue at present is, simply, whether or not Schenkerian theory can be adequately applied to this music. My conclusion is that as yet it cannot, and I shall present my findings in that light, but the reasons for my position must, I think, be spelt out. Thereafter, my specific concern will be to investigate varieties of the use of the diatonic ‘flattened seventh’ in rock, which I shall do by focusing in turn on three issues, investigating them through the analysis of particular examples rather than through any larger generalisations.

It is a common argument by now that the modern mass media and the music they disseminate have been ‘used by economically and politically powerful interests within the state to support the capitalist relations of production and to legitimise the social, economic and political organisation of society’ (Tomaselli et al. 1986, p. 19). Criticism directed more specifically at radio has focused chiefly on capitalist societies in which there are multiple channels of entertainment and information. A recent issue of the present journal devoted to radio, for instance, was concerned only with the UK, Canada, and the USA (Popular Music, 9/2, 1990). Little critical attention has been focused on the use of radio to ‘legitimise the social, economic and political organisation of society’ in countries in which the state assumes full control over programming and transmission.

The ubiquitous songs in India's commercial feature films play a dual role in Indian society: they serve as both film songs and pop songs for India's 800 million people. India is the largest film-producing country in the world and one fifth of its current annual production of approximately 750 films is made in Hindi, each film having an average of five to six songs (Dharap 1985). As the major form of mass entertainment available on a national scale, rivalled only by the government-run television network, Hindi cinema plays a prominent and influential role in Indian society. Yet its songs, which represent India's most popular music in the twentieth century, are relatively little known to non-Indians, either to scholars or to the general public. Musicologists and anthropologists have for the most part focused their attention on Indian classical and folk traditions to the neglect of film song. To counteract this imbalance I propose here to examine one important aspect of Hindi film song – its peculiarly eclectic nature – which plays a major role in the nationwide appeal of this popular music. I look at some of the ways in which these film songs are eclectic and possible reasons why they are so. Such a study provides insights into the role of this popular music in Indian society and culture and can thereby contribute to an understanding of the role of popular music generally in non-Western and developing countries.

At the heart of the frenetic activity of the record industry and of all the conflicting opinion to which this activity gives rise, lies a common goal: popular success. This also provides the key to the paradoxes one encounters when one studies the economic aspects of the record industry in France.†What does the achievement of success involve in actual fact? Economic, sociological and musicological analyses tend to evade this issue rather than explain it. Can the ability to achieve success be attributed to a more or less innate sixth sense? Does it reside in the superiority of the smaller producers over the larger ones? Is success achieved through bribery, through massive ‘plugging’, through a dulling of the senses or through conformism, as the ritual claims of the press would have it? Is it a by-product of profit, of standardisation, of alienation or of the prevailing ideology, as marxists argue? The sociology of mass media and culture explains it in an equally wide variety of ways – in terms of manipulation (see Adorno 1941), the meaninglessness of mass culture (see Ellul 1980, Hoggart 1957)/ symbolic exclusion (see Bourdieu 1979), the system of fashion (see Barthes 1967), desocialised ritual (see Baudrillard 1970), or as the cunning strategies of the dominated (see de Certeau 1974). I do not propose casually to invoke all the different theories only to dismiss them with moralistic claims that we must return to the basic facts.

Several authors have observed that rock music sometimes features a kind of independence or ‘divorce’ between melody and harmony. In this article, I examine this phenomenon more systematically than has been done in the past. A good indicator of melodic-harmonic divorce is cases where non-chord-tones in the melody do not resolve by step. I argue that this does occur frequently in rock – often with respect to the local harmony, and sometimes with respect to the underlying tonic harmony as well. This melodic-harmonic ‘divorce’ tends to occur in rather specific circumstances: usually in pentatonically based melodies, and in verses rather than choruses. Such situations could be said to reflect a ‘stratified’ pitch organisation. A particularly common situation is where the verse of a song features stratified organisation, followed by a chorus which shifts to a ‘unified’ organisation in which both melody and accompaniment are regulated by the harmonic structure.

There are two seemingly self-evident truths concerning the harmonic practices of popular music. The first, which finds clear expression in Adorno, is that such music's harmonic language is both detrimentally limited and static. The harmonic repertoire is considered to consist of a few formulae (Adorno deals with them in terms of standardisation: see Middleton 1990, p. 45ff.), by means of which song-writers string together their songs, uninfluenced by the song's content. For the expert listener, therefore, popular music should be uninteresting: it is only its psycho-economic dimension which makes it worthy of study. This tends also to be the conclusion of established musicology, except that there it is felt such ‘extra-musical’ speculation is best left to the sociologist. The second truth is that the differences between Afro-American-derived styles are material, since our identities are so strongly incorporated in the styles we use:

We mark out the differences between genres and styles partly by reference to contrasts in the way this stock of techniques and sounds is used. (Middleton 1990, p. 88)

Since harmony is not only at the forefront of traditional analytical investigation, but also forms an important initial focus for songwriters, it may well be assumed that it is therefore an important factor in enabling us to distinguish, for example, ‘rock’ from ‘pop’ from ‘soul’. However, the material reality behind these differences of style has rarely been subject to systematic investigation.

The British rock music press prides itself on its liberalism and radicalism, yet the discourses employed in music journalism exclude women from serious discussion both as musicians and as fans. In particular, the notion of credibility, which is of vital importance to the ‘serious’ rock music press, is constructed in such a way that it is almost completely unattainable for women.

The most important and influential part of the British music press was until recently its two weekly music papers, Melody Maker (MM) and the New Musical Express (NME), both published by IPC magazines. The NME, launched in 1949, contains reviews, concert information and interviews with performers and describes itself as ‘a unique blend of irreverent journalism and musical expertise’ (www.ipc.co.uk). MM, which started life in 1926 as a paper for jazz musicians, had similar content but a greater emphasis on rock, as opposed to pop, music. It was relaunched in 1999 as a glossy magazine, before ceasing publication or, as IPC put it, merging with the NME, in December 2000.

The ‘post-’ in both post-identity politics and post-genre musical practice refers to the same thing. Through readings of Taylor Swift's ‘Shake It Off’, Diplo's description of his practice as a DJ, producer and impresario, Sasha Frere-Jones's infamous New Yorker piece on indie rock miscegenation, and critical race theorists Cristina Beltran and Jared Sexton's critiques of post-racial politics, I demonstrate that progress past traditional commitments to white racial purity is both the defining characteristic of post-racial whiteness, and what makes multigenre pop practice count as post-genre. The ‘post-’ in post-identity is what distinguishes post-genre practice from supposedly more primitive forms of genre transgression, such as the love & theft-style cultural appropriation Eric Lott identifies in 19th century blackface minstrelsy or Pitbull's Latin American style racial/musical mestizaje.

It's funny how the difference in each nation organised a different rhythm almost. The beat, the beat is different, it's much faster here than in the States. Mainly in bush music it's like that, if you call it bush music. You know this, this lagerphone? Well this lagerphone beat is usually much faster than you would hear in America, that's the way we felt it when we first arrived. Now it's fine, it fits, you know! But for some reason, it didn't quite [fit], it was just a bit too fast for what I was used to from the States. (Glasco 1998)

Frederique Glasco, a participant at the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival held in Mt Isa, Queensland, talks here about the unsettled experience she had upon hearing what she described as an ‘Australian rhythm’: it felt different, it was too fast, it did not ‘fit’ to her own sense of rhythm. Yet, her initial perception changed after living for a time in Australia and this new rhythmic pulse did feel appropriate to her in her new surroundings. Two questions arise from this: first, how does a musical coding of space help create a sense of place? Second, how does engagement with this aural symbol create an identity through connections to place? In this paper I am interested in examining this relationship between music and place by focusing on participation in the community music festival, specifically participation in the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival, which was held in northern Queensland.

Television is an essential part of the star-making machinery of the music business and music accompanies nearly all television programmes, and yet the relationship between the two is uneasy. Television does not seem to be an essential part of musical culture and adds little to music aesthetically. Music has had little impact on the form or aesthetics of television. And yet television has certainly had an impact on music and particularly on the mediation of rock and the formation of the modern pop/rock aesthetic. Here it is not music in television that is important but television in music. The 1950s was a significant turning point in popular music history not so much because of the musical revolution of rock ‘n’ roll but because of the impact of television.

The Jamaican system of recording and performance, from the 1950s to the present, constitutes a distinctive approach to notions of composition, originality and ownership. Emerging from a tradition of live performance practice mediated by (and informing) sound recordings, the relative autonomy of riddims and voicings in the Jamaican system challenges conventional ideas about the integrity of a song and the degree to which international copyright law applies to local conceptions, as enshrined in decades of practice, of musical materials as public domain. With the spread of the ‘riddim method’ to the sites of Jamaican mass migration, as evidenced by similar approaches in hip hop, reggaeton, drum'n'bass and bhangra, reggae's aesthetic system has found adherents among artists and audiences outside of Jamaica. This paper maps out, through historical description, ethnographic data, and musical analysis, the Jamaican system as a unique and increasingly influential approach to music-making in the digital age.

Music makes mutations audible. (Attali 1977)

In his opening remarks as host of the 1998 Grammy Award Show, sitcom actor, substance abuser and convicted drunk driver Kelsey Grammer promised that Marilyn Manson's ‘skinny white ass’ would not be appearing on the show. It was a truly extraordinary moment. Referring explicitly to his own teenage daughter, Spencer, Grammer couched this slur in the form of an inside joke for the baby boomer parents of children with seemingly inexplicable musical tastes. In so doing, he affirmed not only the intractable conservatism of the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences but also the arrogant hegemony of his own generation within mainstream musical culture. The show proceeded to reward Bob Dylan with Album of the Year, James Taylor with Best Pop Album and Elton John with Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, while lavishing unbridled approbation upon the newest crop of corporate hit-makers, including Babyface, LeAnn Rimes, Hanson and the ubiquitous Spice Girls. Mitch Miller could not have orchestrated a more thoroughgoing tribute to the pop music status quo in America.

The vast majority of all music ever made is played by ear. To make music by ear means to create, perform, remember and teach music without the use of written notation. This is a type of music-making that has been little observed by musicology, which has mainly been devoted to notated music. Even in the research on folk and popular music, which has expanded in the last twenty or thirty years, questions of musical practice when you play by ear are rarely treated: how do you learn to play an instrument, how do you make songs, how do you teach and learn songs and how do you conceive of music theory?

Since 1993, popular music magazines in the USA such as Rolling Stone have reported the outbreak of an alternative music ‘revolution’, as bands such as Green Day (who trace their musical roots to late-1970s punk groups such as the Sex Pistols) achieve large-scale popular success. In September 1994 the Boston Globe newspaper devoted significant coverage to the free Green Day concert in Boston that was cancelled midway through as the crowd of 70,000 (comprised mostly of teenagers) threatened to overwhelm the security guards. The news media have focused their attention on the dancing known as ‘slamdancing’, or ‘moshing’, which is associated with this newly popular music. Slamdancing and moshing are two different, albeit similar, styles of dance in which participants (mostly men) violently hurl their bodies at one another in a dance area called a ‘pit’. The media attention paid to this music and its associated violent audience-behaviour paint them as emerging threats to public safety. On 10 September 1994, the Globe reported that ‘there have been severe injuries in mosh pits, where fans act out the hostile lyrics of groups such as Green Day’.

This essay explores the political significance of Balinese death/thrash fandom. In the early 1990s, the emergence of a death/thrash scene in Bali paralleled growing criticism of accelerated tourism development on the island. Specifically, locals protested the increasing ubiquity of Jakarta, ‘the centre’, cast as threatening to an authentically ‘low’, peripheral Balinese culture. Similarly, death/thrash enthusiasts also gravitated toward certain fringes, although they rejected dominant notions of Balinese-ness by gesturing elsewhere, toward a global scene. The essay explores the ways in which death/thrash enthusiasts engaged with local discourses by coveting their marginality, and aims to demonstrate how their articulations of ‘alien-ness’ contributed in important ways to a broader regionalism.