The popular music performance undergraduate degree is a growing area within UK higher education. These courses carry a vocational emphasis and are popular with students looking to establish professional performing careers. As such, they are often marketed as an intermediary step towards this aspiration but, despite their popularity, there has been…

This article describes a collaborative and emergent approach utilizing Tupac Shakur's "Brenda's Got a Baby" to leverage theory education. This song/video uses a fictionalized account of a pregnant 12-year-old African American girl to chronicle the ecological realities of life in the inner city (e.g., teen pregnancy, drug addiction and…

Over 700 reference materials, songbooks, and recordings on pop, rock, country, folk, blues, and soul music from the 1950s to the present are listed. The bibliography was compiled because the study of popular music is becoming increasingly important to disciplines such as history, communications, and popular culture as well as music. Entries are…

"Bosstown Sound" was a slogan used to promote several Boston (Massachusetts) rock bands in 1968. In theory, the Bosstown Sound was a logical development to follow the San Francisco "sound," which included the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, and other Bay Area bands that had been commercially successful in 1967.…

Analyzes the results of an experiment involving 449 undergraduate students (180 music majors and 269 nonmusic majors). They completed a preference-rating scale concerning musical characteristics from world music excerpts. Delineates the various characteristics preferred by both. In general, musicians had higher preference means. (MJP)