21st Century Perspectives on Music, Technology, and Culture: Listening Spaces

216 Pages·2016·4.796 MB·English

by  Richard Purcell, Richard Randall (eds.)

21st Century Perspectives
on Music, Technology,
and Culture
Listening Spaces
Edited by
Richard Purcell
and Richard Randall
Pop Music, Culture and Identity
Pop Music, Culture and Identity
Series Editors: Steve Clark, University of Tokyo, Japan, Tristanne Connolly,
St Jerome’s, University of Waterloo, Canada and Jason Whittaker, Falmouth
University, UK
Advisory Board: Chris Best, University College Falmouth, UK, Audrey Faine,
Vice President of Marketing, CBS Records, Gavin Hayes, Musician, USA, John
Hutnyk, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, Allan F. Moore, University
of Surrey, UK, Ryan Moore, Florida Atlantic University. USA, Jennifer Otter,
University of East London, UK, John Phillips, National University of Singapore,
Singapore, Cristina Ruotolo, San Francisco, USA, Karl Simms, University of
Liverpool, UK, Will Straw, McGill University, Canada and Steve Waksman,
Smith College, USA
Pop music lasts. A form all too often assumed to be transient, commercial and
mass-cultural has proven itself durable, tenacious and continually evolving. As
such, it has become a crucial component in defining various forms of identity
(individual and collective) as influenced by factors such as nation, class, gender,
ethnicity, location/situation, and historical period. Pop Music, Culture and Identity
investigates the implications of this greatly enhanced status. Particular attention
will be paid to issues such as the iconography of celebrity, the ever-expanding
archive, the nature of the performance-event, the parameters of generational
memory, and the impact of new technologies on global marketing. In particular,
the series aims to highlight interdisciplinary approaches and incorporate the
informed testimony of the fan alongside a challenging diversity of academic
methodologies.
Titles include:
M. King Adkins
NEW WAVE
Image is Everything
Jennifer Otter Bickerdike
FANDOM, IMAGE AND AUTHENTICITY
Joy Devotion and the Second Lives of Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis
Ewa Mazierska and Georgina Gregory
RELOCATING POPULAR MUSIC
Rosemary Overall
AFFECTIVE INTENSITIES IN EXTREME MUSIC SCENCES
Cases from Australia and Japan
Trajce Cvetkovski
THE POP MUSIC IDOL AND THE SPIRIT OF CHARISMA
Reality Television Talent Shows in the Digital Economy of Hope
Tuulikki Pietilä
CONTRACTS, PATRONAGE AND MEDIATION
The Articulation of Global and Local in the South African Recording Industry
Raphaël Nowak
CONSUMING MUSIC IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Technologies, Roles and Everyday Life
Michael Urban
NEW ORLEANS RHYTHM AND BLUES AFTER KATRINA
Music, Magic and Myth
Richard Purcell and Richard Randall (editors)
21st CENTURY PERSPECTIVES ON MUSIC, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
Listening Spaces
Pop Music, Culture and Identity
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–03381–9 (hardback)
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a
standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us
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Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
21st Century Perspectives
on Music, Technology,
and Culture
Listening Spaces
Edited by
Richard Purcell
Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
and
Richard Randall
Cooper-Siegel Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
21ST CENTURY PERSPECTIVES ON MUSIC, TECHNOLOGY, AND CULTURE: LISTENING SPACES
Selection, Introduction and editorial matter © Richard Purcell and
Richard Randall, 2016
Individual chapters © Respective authors, 2016
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-49759-8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission. No portion of
this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting
limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House,
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published 2016 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of Nature America, Inc.,
One New York Plaza, Suite 4500 New York, NY 10004-1562.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
ISBN: 978-1-349-69803-5
E-PDF ISBN: 978–1–137–49760–4
DOI: 10.1057/9781137497604
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Macmillan®, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction: Listening in on the 21st Century 1
Richard Randall and Richard Purcell
1 The Scream and Other Tales: Listening for Detroit
Radio History with the Vertical File 12
Carleton Gholz
2 ‘On Tape’: Cassette Culture in Edinburgh
and Glasgow Now 33
Kieran Curran
3 Radio in Transit: Satellite Technology, Cars,
and the Evolution of Musical Genres 55
Jeffrey Roessner
4 The Internet and the Death of Jazz: Race,
Improvisation, and the Crisis of Community 72
Margret Grebowicz
5 A Brief Consideration of the Hip-Hop Biopic 84
Richard Purcell
6 Love Streams 113
Damon Krukowski
7 A Case for Musical Privacy 120
Richard Randall
8 Digital Music and Public Goods 134
Graham Hubbs
9 The Preservation Paradox 153
Jonathan Sterne
10 Headphones are the New Walls: Music in the Workplace
in the Digital Age 167
Kathy M. Newman
v
vi Contents
11 Researching the Mobile Phone Ringtone: Towards
and Beyond The Ringtone Dialectic 182
Sumanth Gopinath
Index 195
List of Figures
1.1 Mackey, R. (1971) Employee Sit-In Silences
Radio Station for 3 Hours. 12th January.
Used by permission of Detroit Free Press. 14
3.1 SiriusXM Channels by Genre. 60
5.1 Basquiat’s art gets him a check he can’t cash
while Steding’s brings despair and little
compensation in Bertogilo’s Downtown 81 (1981). 94
5.2 The opening shots of Charlie Ahearn’s Wild Style
establish nostalgia for graffiti’s past. Later, Zoro
grapples its “post-graffiti” present. 96
5.3 The credit sequence of Michael Schultz’s Krush Groove
are filled with iconic images of Manhattan, like this
shot of the United Nations as well as the postmodern
1 United Nations Plaza. 99
5.4 The “assembly” line of musical post-production in
Michael Schultz’s Krush Groove (1985). 101
5.5 George Tillman’s “assembly line” homage to
Krush Grove ends with a different kind of performance
for the artistic self in Notorious (2009). 104
11.1 Mystery ringtone, spring 2004, Yale University. 184
vii
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Media Initiative of the Center for the Arts
in Society at Carnegie Mellon for their support for this project. The
intellectual and administrative home provided to us by CAS’s Paul
Eiss, James Duesing, Kathy Newman, and Anna Houck is a model for
interdisciplinary research in the arts and humanities. We are grateful to
Golan Levin, director of Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at
Carnegie Mellon University, for hosting the 2012 Listening Spaces sym-
posium and our 2013 seminar. Since the establishment of this project in
2011, we have been fortunate to work closely with an inspiring group of
scholars and practitioners. Specifically, we are indebted to Larisa Mann,
Trebor Scholz, Graham Hubbs, and Jonathan Sterne, Josh Kun, Carleton
Gholz, Margret Grebowicz, Ian Nagoski, Abby Aresty, Rich Pell, Elaina
Vitale and the students in our Listening Spaces seminar in the fall of
2013. We need to single out the contributions of Gesina Philips. She
was the best research assistant two busy academics could ask for and
was there from the very beginning of our project. Rich Purcell would
also like to thank Steve Secular and Lauren Lancaster-Gudorf for their
research assistance. We would also like to thank Jennifer Howard for
guiding our manuscript to its final form.
viii
Notes on Contributors
Editors
Richard Purcell is Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon
University. His research explores the relationship between race and
subjectification in the 20th and 21st century. He is the author of Race,
Ralph Ellison and American Cold War Intellectual Culture (Palgrave, 2013)
and co-directs the Listening Spaces Project.
Richard Randall is the Cooper-Siegel Associate Professor of Music
Theory at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music and holds
a faculty appointment at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition.
Randall’s research lies at the intersection of music theory, cognitive
psychology, and media and cultural studies. His work employs a wide
range of investigative methods in an attempt to better understand what
music is and why it is important. He directs the Music Cognition Lab
and co-directs the Listening Spaces Project. Randall is the co-founder of
the Pittonkatonk May-Day Music Festival and Workshop, which seeks
to transcend traditional political economies of musician and audience
and create socially engaged and sustainable musical events supported
by vested community collaborators.
Contributors
Kieran Curran recently completed his PhD on “The Cynic in Post
WWII British Popular Culture (Music and Literature)” at the University
of Edinburgh. He currently works as a tutor in English Literature at
Edinburgh, and is a part-time music maker/promoter.
Carleton Gholz is Lecturer in Communication Studies at Oakland
University in Rochester, Michigan, president of the Friends of the
E. Azalia Hackley Collection at the Detroit Public Library, and the
founder of Detroit Sound Conservancy. He can be reached via his per-
sonal website: http://csgholz.org
Sumanth Gopinath is Associate Professor of Music Theory at
the University of Minnesota. He is the author of The Ringtone
Dialectic: Economy and Cultural Form (2013), and he co-edited with
Jason Stanyek, The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies (2014).
ix