CAT 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Alternative Country, Will Straw, Alternative Rock
Rap/Hip-Hop as subculture
â—Ź Underground party music emerging in Bronx neighborhood of NY
○ Combination of Jamaican “toasting,” turntablism, fashion, dancing and graffiti
â—Ź Rejecting mainstream musical practices
â—‹ No vocal melodies
â—‹ No traditional instrumentation
○ “Inversion” of ensemble structure
The commercialization of subculture
â—Ź Musical subcultures are regularly embraced by industry
● Commercialization and “selling out”
â—Ź What was once resistance becomes acceptable behavior/conformity
● The “message” is transformed into a reaffirmation of hegemonic culture
A criticism of subculture
● “Subculture” assumes stability and coherency within the group
○ “...consistent distinctiveness of a group over time, commitment, autonomy from
wider social and economic relations, and a sense of like-mindedness with others
of the same group”(30)
● “Subcultural analysis was in fact never ables to offer much insight into music” (31)
â—‹ Reliance on homology to understand the music
â—‹ Musical tastes are believed to be produced by class and status
â—Ź Youth, style, and music are more fluid and transitory
Neo-Tribes
● Andy Bennett’s study of UK dance cultures (1999)
○ Draws on Maffesoli’s concept of tribes
○ “...without the rigidity of the forms of organization with which we are familiar, it
refers to a certain ambience, a state of mind, and is preferably to be expressed
through lifestyles that favor appearance and form”
● Society offers “commodities and resources” for individual expression
○ Neo-tribes as “collective sensibilities of taste and style”
Music and post-modern collectivity
● Electronica’s (EDM,House, etc) reliance on sampling as post-modern pastiche
○ Assembling meaning in a “fragmented” world
â—Ź The shift in musical composition/production parallels a shift in consumer sensibilities
○ We reassemble “fragments” to produce personalized meaning (and identity)
Hesmondhalgh’s criticism
â—Ź An underlying basis of consumerism
â—‹ Collective identity is constructed by a culture identity, not by individual choice
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