Popular Music Ethnographies
Popular Music Ethnographies (Book)
Practices, Places and Identities
This interdisciplinary book takes the reader on global journeys from the UK to China, from Ecuador to Jamaica, through a melange of music genres. In doing so, it raises key questions as the contributors reflect upon doing and communicating ethnographic research on popular music. 14 b&w illus.
Edition
This edited collection offers evocative ways into a range of fascinating worlds of popular music, from the Ecuadorian indie scene to Chinese rock. In exploring the experiences of musicians, fans, industry professionals and academics, the rich complexity of popular music is brought to life through ethnography as an immersive approach to undertaking and communicating research.
Experimenting with ethnography through the joys and tribulations of musical production, fandom and scholarship, these collated studies critically consider what it means to be a popular music ethnographer and to take an ethnographic approach to studying popular music.
Alongside these chapters, musicians, venue owners, music writers, live music photographers, and fans add their voices and experience in the form of shorter vignettes, ordering the content into three overlapping themes: practices; places; and identities.
Dr Sarah Raine is a Science Foundation Ireland-Irish Research Council (SFI-IRC) Pathway Fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland.
Shane Blackman is a Professor in Cultural Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University (UK), Research Fellow of the Danish National Centre for Social Research and a Research Associate in the Sociology Department of Goldsmiths, University of London.
Dr Robert McPherson is a Senior Lecturer in Media & Communications at Canterbury ChristChurch University, UK.
Dr Iain A. Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Music, and Programme Leader of BA (Hons) Commercial Music at University of the West of Scotland, UK.
Foreword – Afterword: Ethnographic waves
Will Straw
Introduction – Popular Music and Ethnography: An introduction to studies, from musicology to ethnomusicology and beyond
Shane Blackman, Robert McPherson, Sarah Raine and Iain A. Taylor
Part I: Practice
Vignette 1. From the Subs Desk
Frances Morgan
Chapter 1. Raving Potentialities: Navigating Queer Fields in Post-Austerity Lisbon
Jasemin Anika Khaleli
Chapter 2. Conviviality and Collaboration: The intimacies of ethnographic practice and popular music production between Tanzania and the United Kingdom
David Kerr and Hashim Rubanza
Chapter 3. Developing Digital Intimacies: Examples from lockdown Ireland of a sustainable and hopeful popular music ethnography
Sarah Raine and Aileen Dillane
Chapter 4. Cineworlding PolyMUSICamory: Cinematic Research-Creation’s Speculative Worldings
Michael B. MacDonald
Chapter 5. A Two-Way Street! Reflections on Supervising Ethnographic Popular Music Ph.D. Projects
Andy Bennett
Vignette 2. Fight, Flight or Freeze: A Full Circle Breakthrough in Improvisation
Diljeet Kaur Bhachu
Part II: Place
Vignette 3. Putting the Work in: Finding a Community within the DIY Music Industries
Rebecca Wallace
Chapter 6. Breaking in Tokyo: Socially Constructed ‘Sacred Places’ for Hip Hop Dance
Jason Ng
Chapter 7. Queering Carnival: Soca and Safe Spaces in Jamaica
Erin MacLeod with research assistance from J-Flag
Chapter 8. ‘I Need More of You’: Popular Music, Public Space and Political Mobilization
Kai Ginkel
Chapter 9. Notes on Studying Ecuadorian Independent Music: Endogenous Ethnography as Counter-Colonial Practice and the Politics of Affect
Juan Pablo Viteri
Chapter 10. Carving Out Our Own Spaces: Accessing Chinese Rock Music Scenes through a Multi-method Ethnographic Approach
Mengyao Jiang
Vignette 4. One Man, One Vision, Two Iconic Black Country Venues: Keepin’ Music Live
Mike Hamblett
Part III: Identity
Vignette 5. In Conversation with Michelle Grace Hunder
Chapter 11. Dynamic Reggae/Dancehall Bodies: An Ethnography into the Dance of Identity and Visibility
‘H’ Patten
Chapter 12. ‘Chaperone Ethnography’ within Popular Music Studies in Algeria: Fieldwork Explorations of the MA-GNI-FICENT Show of Belles Nuits de Tigzirt
Radia Kasdi
Chapter 13. Rebels in Society? Ethnographic Moments of ‘Street Politics’ and Organic Intellectuals in the Historical and Contemporary UK Oi! Punk Scene
Nathan Kerrigan and Aidan O’Sullivan
Chapter 14. Policing Popular Music – ‘Therapy in the Trap’: An Online Ethnography of UK Drill and Grime Artists, Producers and Listeners
Isobel Ingram and Shane Blackman
Chapter 15. ‘But Anyway … You Know How It Is, How Things Go’: The Value of Group Interpretation in Understanding Researcher Positionality during Insider Research
Eva Krisper
Chapter 16. Scattered Diaries: Biographical Dialogues on the Ethnographic Imagination, Friendship and Popular Music Research
Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman
Vignette 6. ‘Latching Onto Music’: A Personal Journey through UK Subculture
Grant Sullivan
Concluding Thoughts – Ethnography as a Basis to Study Popular Music: From Obvious Statements to Original Endeavors
Marie Buscatto
Notes on Contributors
