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.

This paper explores the social origins and development of music relayed through loudspeakers in British factories during World War Two, focusing on the BBC programme Music While You Work, which provided a national soundtrack for factory work, and the contemporary institutions of Industrial Psychology, which promoted music as a highly ‘valuable’ accompaniment to work and formulated scientific principles governing its broadcast. Combining archival evidence from these organisations, the paper first outlines the historical circumstances of development, detailing the form of broadcasts and of the music itself. Subsequently, the causes of music's introduction to the factory are analysed. The central argument advanced is that the music resulted centrally from top-down initiatives from a ‘human relations school’ coalition of institutions and individuals, in which the aims of increased productivity and the humanisation of the workplace intermingled, but in which the aim of increased productivity dominated. Concluding remarks assess the argument and relate it to the growing literature on contemporary practices of the sound-tracking of social life.

In ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ (DDR), an arcade and home video game distributed by the Japanese entertainment corporation Konami, players move their feet in specific patterns set to electronic dance music. Only by achieving a high accuracy rate can a player advance from one level to the next. DDR enjoys worldwide popularity among teenagers and young adults, partially due to the marketing of the game's ‘soundtracks’ as separate, purchasable collections of underground techno, house, and drum ‘n’ bass. This article considers the Internet communities of DDR fans and their debates concerning ‘mainstream’ culture and musical taste.

How does one tell the history of an art form? Looking at classic examples like Gombrich's The Story of Art (London, Phaidon Press, 1950) or Read's A Concise History of Modern Painting (London, Thames and Hudson, 1959), it seems that, at their core, such projects conventionally consist of annotated lists: extended commentaries on a long line of works and artists, in other words a canon. These works are typically presented as peaks of the aesthetic power of the art form in question, as ultimate manifestations of aesthetic perfection, complexity of form and depth of expression which humans are capable of reaching through this art form. Such presentations hide an implicit promise that, with proper knowledge, encounters with these works will result in extraordinary experiences.

This article applies the processes of canon formation suggested by Philip V. Bohlman in The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World to the historiography of popular music. Bohlman distinguishes between at least three different types of folk music canon: a small group canon, a mediated canon and an imagined canon. Adjusting Bohlman's ideas to the case of popular music, a reformulation is proposed in the form of an alternative canon, a mainstream canon, and a prescribed canon. The unstable power relations implied by the juxtaposition of different canons are considered, as well as the cumulative aspect of canon formation. The article also looks for each type of canon in the media through which historical knowledge is transmitted, and considers the tendency to narrate the historiography of marginal musics with more ephemeral media than the printed word.

The ‘temp track’, a temporary mock-up of a film's soundtrack, is assembled from pre-existing music prior to the real, commissioned score being composed. An integral element of the post-production process of American feature films, it survives only in its role for audience previews. Constructed by a music editor, in most cases, it is a blueprint of a film's soundtrack – a musical topography of score, songs, culture and codes in which a balance must obtain between the director's vision, the music's function, underlying requirements of genre, and the spectator's perception. This article demonstrates that the temp track informs compositional practices and the final score, and makes the argument that textual analysis would benefit from the recognition of the role of production practices. Drawing on published sources and interviews with practitioners, this article provides historical context and musical detail, and shows how productive analysis can be when it draws on practitioners' insights as well as textual analysis. Film score analysis must not begin and end with the finished film score but must utilise a more eclectic methodology which takes into account the production process. Film score analysis should reflect the constitutive nature of film and film music.

Kind of Blue has been misrepresented by its promoters. The roots in the blues of the best-selling jazz album have repeatedly been obscured in favour of modal features whose associations are less problematic for those coping with the realities of racial injustice. The case that the blues underpins the modal language of the album is made through reconsideration of the claims made for compositional features of individual tracks. Recognition of the transformed blues language that lies at the heart of the album places questions of its significance on a new footing, opening up the mix of musical languages on the album to interpretation within the context of integrationist ideals of the late 1950s. A critical reading of the album against this backdrop leads to the suggestion that the ongoing commercial success of the album can be partly attributed to a retention of integrationist ideals that masks the reality of persistent inequalities in race relations.

Nor-tec music was created at the Tijuana–San Diego border as a hybrid that incorporates the sounds of traditional music from the North of Mexico to computer-based styles of dance music. Through a distinct process of do-it-yourself distribution, Nor-tec quickly became a worldwide phenomenon in the underground electronic music scene. Based on extensive ethnographic work in Tijuana, Los Angeles and Chicago, this article compares different Nor-tec scenes in an attempt to identify how different transnational communities appropriate this music in order to imagine and conciliate notions of identity, modernity and tradition according to their specific social context. I focus on the relationship between discourses about Latinidad and Latino bodies, and their influence on the way different Latino communities dance and move to the Nor-tec beats.

For this article the authors analysed thirty-eight lists of ‘The 100 greatest albums of all time’ type. As the findings demonstrate, a canon of popular music has evolved which shows strong tendencies towards stability in featuring albums from the late 1960s (especially those by The Beatles), while only a few albums from the 1990s have gained ‘classic’ status. The canon's contents and exclusions are explained by the social dispositions of the participants, predominantly white males aged twenty to forty. Influenced by efforts of the cultural industries, these actors also evaluate certain albums for the purposes of distinguishing themselves from the ‘mainstream’. Furthermore, aesthetic and artistic criteria underlying the esteem of the ‘masterworks’ are identified by analysing reviews. The authors suggest that future research on canonisation should interlock sociological and aesthetic perspectives. Findings from such an approach might initiate reflection among music fans about their own exclusions, and result in an opening up of the meaning and significance of the canon.

By applying Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's systems model of creativity, evidence can be presented to claim that despite ‘Yesterday’s promotion as a Romantic piece of creative activity, perpetuating the myth of the mystically inspired freely expressive artist, the creation of ‘Yesterday’ can be seen as a more considered and rational process than otherwise mythologised. The definition of creativity assumes an activity whereby products, processes and ideas are generated from antecedent conditions by the agency of someone, whose knowledge to do so comes from somewhere and the resultant novel variation is seen as a valued addition to the store of human knowledge. As an example of a system at work, the song's creation satisfies more closely the characteristics ascribed to the rationalist approach to creativity. From the evidence, it can be argued that creativity is a dynamic system that works on a larger scale than that of the sole individual posited by the Romantic conception and concomitant understandings. It, instead, incorporates the actions of the person, in this case Paul McCartney, within the systemic relationships of the field and domain. These three components, person, domain and field, comprise a system with circular causality where the individual, the social organisation they create within, and the symbol system they use are all equally important and interdependent in producing creative products. ‘Yesterday’ is but one creative product of this system at work.

We show how the Grammy award ceremony played a central role in influencing the US popular music industry through two important inter-organisational processes. The ceremony served as the vehicle through which the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) interlinked with commercial interests in the field: the distributors, wholesalers and retailers who are represented by the National Association of Record Merchandisers (NARM). As music became a more visual medium and television coverage of the ceremony became prominent, merchandisers came to rely on the Grammy awards as their sales cue, and began to aggressively promote nominees and winners. As a result of the retailers' selective attention, Grammy award-winners began enjoying greater popular appeal through increased album sales. Second, attempts made by various constituents of NARAS to influence award decisions resulted in the surfacing of, challenges to and, finally, the resolution of occupational conflicts and normative concerns about the legitimacy of genres in the popular music industry. In the process, NARAS succeeded in championing the Grammy awards as the hallmark of peer recognition. We contend that the unique ability of the Grammy awards to mingle both peer and popular recognition makes them a significant arbiter of canon formation in the popular music industry.

In this Middle Eight using ethnographic observation and interviews made in Cuba in May–July 2005 and March–April 2006 I problematise the new Latina/o dance music ‘reggaetón’ which in the USA is being heralded as ‘‘an expression of pan-Latino identity … the latest Latin musical style to sweep the world … the one with the most promise of finding a permanent, prominent place not just in US but in global popular culture …” (Marshall, 2006). Notably along with hip-hop with which it is now related in Cuban cultural politics, this is the first pan-Latin style of non-Cuban origin to have a strong presence in post-‘Special period’ 1990s revolutionary Cuba. I focus on the significance and possible history of the dance moves and the lyrics of two key songs, discussing possible political double meanings and implications within a Cuban context. While focusing particularly on issues of regeton in Cuba, I place regeton in Cuba in the larger context of reggaetón history in the Latin world and of Latin dance history and discuss it within the constant construction of an appropriate Cuban national identity. I pose open questions about gender, sexuality and generational attitudes. The overall theoretical context falls within the context of Järviluoma et al's work on ‘gender as cultural construction’ (2003). It builds on work on gender and dance which forms a small part of Fairley (2004).

Since the 1997 reissue of the 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, journalists, scholars and musicians have promoted this collection as the ‘founding document’ (Marcus 1997) and ‘musical constitution’ (Cantwell 1996) of the urban folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. This reception differs markedly from that of its original issue, which sold few copies and attracted only minor critical attention. This article provides an account of the transformation in the Anthology's cultural status – showing that the canonisation of the Anthology stems not just from its content, but from the interplay of its content and its sociohistorical context. I identify some of the factors that influenced the retrospective consecration of the Anthology, including the important work of key people, the growth of a new field (‘Americana’ music) and changes in the organisational structures of the recording industry.

‘Are ye dancin’?' ‘Are ye askin’?' ‘Yes I’m askin” ‘Then I’m dancin'!' This was the exchange between couples in Glasgow early in the twentieth century at the height of the ballroom dancing boom that made the city one of the dancing capitals of the world. It lingers on in Scottish dancing parlance. In Havana, people were dancing danzón; in Buenos Aires, tango; and in Río de Janeiro, samba. It was a time of big orchestras when women wore evening dresses and men wore suits. Today, whilst the clothes may have changed, dance with its link to sensual pleasure continues to be fundamental to our cultures.

This article explores the relationship between musicians and the music press from the musicians' point of view, based on a collection of recent interviews with musicians working in the pop and jazz fields. It will expose some of the concrete effects of the music press using examples from the everyday experiences of musicians, which include the influence of the press in record retail, genre labelling, and creating industry buzz. But while musicians may have a pragmatic understanding of the role of music criticism, their perspectives are emotionally heated in direct proportion to the influence the press holds over their own livelihoods. The interests of the working music critic often conflict with the interests of the working musician, and this article will conclude with a discussion of how the practical conflict of interests between musicians and critics is reflected in ideological differences between the two groups.

In this article I investigate how power is (re)produced on and through the body, specifically on Toronto's raving bodies during the summer of 2000. Toward the end of 1999 and throughout 2000, Toronto's rave culture came under intense surveillance by institutional and discursive authorities such as city councillors, police, parents, community health organisations, public intellectuals, and the mass media. What ensued was a temporary ban of raves in Toronto on city-owned property. In response to this ban, Toronto ravers relied on liberal approaches such as educational programmes and state lobbying as a way to protect their ‘freedom to dance’. In light of these reactions, one of my primary questions is: As rave becomes more normative, what are its own disciplinary mechanisms or techniques of control that are asserted at the site of the raving body?

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.