From 1990 to 1999 MTV promoted a series of 288 music videos called “Buzz Clips”, designed to highlight emerging artists and genres. Such promotion had a measurable impact on an artists’ earnings and record sales. To date, the kinds of musical and visual practices MTV promoted have not been quantitatively analyzed. Just what made some videos Buzzw…[Read more]

In an essay on Latin American freaks, Susan Antebi warns, “The question of freakishness and freaks in Latin American contexts is fraught from the beginning by its decontextualized and translated quality; it is an imposition, even when embraced. To study freakishness in Latin America, or just to pay attention to it, necessarily involves an a…[Read more]

A consideration of 14 collaborative music videos by Emil Nava and Calvin Harris, closing with a close analysis of their work on Rihanna’s “This is What You Came For” (2016).

Brass bands in Africa have been in existence since the 19th century after the various colonial powers had established their presence across the continent. The history of such bands is very sketchy and limited, and the small amount of information I have collected so far is presented here. I hope that future researchers will be able to open up much…[Read more]

The primary goal of this dissertation is to produce a rigorous methodology for distinguishing between the contrapunctus structure and its elaboration in performing structural analysis of fourteenth-century diminished counterpoint. This methodology is based on historical thought by carefully analyzing contemporaneous treatises and their musical…[Read more]

A book project with the goal of documenting commercially produced recordings of Negro spirituals composed for solo concert vocalists. Portions of this information is currently available on the online site, The Spirituals Database (http://spirituals-database.com).

Over 5,600 entries cover more than a century of recordings on compact discs,…[Read more]

This co-authored piece introduces our co-edited volume ‘Dreams of Germany’. It explores how, where and by whom notions of ‘musical Germanness’ have been constituted in the modern era, and to what effect. Picking up on ideas first explored systematically by Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter in their 2002 collection ‘Music and German National…[Read more]

Studies in the Humanities 46, 1-2 (2020)

This PDF includes the contents of volume 46 (1-2) of Studies in the Humanities. It also includes the opening critical introduction to the volume dedicated to disability studies and ecocriticism.

Recursion may have an important place in cognitive processes. Recursive theoretical models may also seduce the theorist to false abstractions and pseudo-explanations. This is observed in some versions of musical and linguistic formalism, which share a common rationalist-idealist background; paradigmatically, in Chomsky’s controversial M…[Read more]

Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s Generative Theory of Tonal Music (1983) is an attempt to transform music theory into a theory of musical understanding by adopting the formal method and psychological premises of Generative Grammar, along with some Schenkerian elements. It has failed to fulfil its promise mainly because, like Schenker theory, it is…[Read more]

En aquest article presentam la relació entre Maria Antònia Salvà i Palmira Jaquetti, dues dones que des de perspectives i amb finalitats diferents, s’acostaren i s’interessaren pel món de la cançó popular.

http://www.escolademallorqui.cat/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/PAPERS-DE-SA-TORRE-72.pdf

From the earliest days of brass bands in the British Isles, they have been supported at various times and to differing extents by businesses and their owners. In some cases this support has been purely philanthropic, but there was usually a quid pro quo involved where the sponsor received benefits – e.g. advertising, income from band e…[Read more]

Journal of the Royal Musical Association 140.2 (2015): 417-443 (published by the UK musicology society). Robert Casteels (b. 1958, Belgium), Singapore citizen, migrated in 1995, L’(autre) fille aux cheveux de Bali (2002).

Music Analysis 38.3 (2019): 316-357 (published by the UK Society for Music Analysis)

As Anne Sauvagnargues suggests, in Gilles Deleuze thought “every[-thing] is defined as an assemblage of movements and affective vibrations.” Interestingly, Sauvagnargues’ proposition aligns neatly with Tim Ingold’s idea of correspondence, where things perdure, “carry on together, and answer to one another,” and where the additive ‘and…and.…[Read more]