Music

DJing in New York
Learning Processes of Underground Club DJs
DJing in New York depicts the initial learning processes of a group of underground Electronic Dance Music club DJs in New York and follows them throughout a portion of their career to gain insights as to what and how these popular musicians learn develop careers and thrive.
What unfolds is a story of a social process of musical learning in which DJs develop strong networks of friendship to initially learn their craft and later on to navigate the perils of nightlife and build careers. This type of situated learning is dependent upon friendships and is intrinsically linked to the dynamic context of an underground clubbing scene in New York. Enculturation in this nightlife scene access to professional performers and strong friendships distinguish these musical learners among popular musicians.
Because these features add a new dimension of understanding to the learning practices of popular musicians this book is of primary interest to music educators particularly those interested in popular music education and community music. It is also relevant to individuals interested in popular music studies especially scholars of electronic dance music culture.

If Colors Could be Heard
Narratives About Racial Identity in Music Education
If Colors Could Be Heard: Narratives About Racial Identity in Music Education is a platform of by and for People of Color who are music educators artists activists and students. For this book we asked authors to consider their race and ethnicity as an intimate and essential part of their music learning making and teaching.
The narratives in this collection include tales of being a music student stories of growing up and finding one’s place in musical worlds and accounts of teaching students about race ethnicity culture and identity. The chapters in this book are not research studies unless explicitly stated by the author.
Instead the chapters in tandem represent a stunning mosaic with shades of melanated skin that will serve as a scholarly picture that represents a portion of music education in the United States. Here you will find self-told stories by people from the Global Majority—a term used to describe Black African Asian Brown Latin Dual-heritage and Indigenous people.

Music, Research, and Activism
Prospects and Projects in Northern Europe
This book introduces the concept of activist music research emphasising action and social responsibility and suggests that music research can be used to promote social and ecological justice. This is discussed in a series of position papers by music researchers who engage in public debate in their various roles - educator critic journalist DJ producer promoter - and work with other actors in civil society and culture.
The book suggests that we are experiencing an activist turn in music research evidenced by the growing number of projects and publications discussing inequalities in musical practices and the impact music research can have on these inequalities. This idea is explored in a series of position papers and contemplative texts where music researchers music educators and artistic researchers reflect on how their work and the position they occupy as professionals in society serves eco-social justice and equity. What is the point of studying and teaching music in an age of ecocide neo(liberal)-colonialism rampant racial inequities persistent gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination? What does social and ecological responsibility and sustainability mean in music research?
The idea for the book was conceived within the context of Suoni a non-profit independent research association in Finland founded as a self-organizing and independent network for scholars interested in exploring methods pedagogics practices and action for eco-social equity in relation to music and music research.

The Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies
The Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies attempts a comprehensive overview of methodological approaches within the field of popular music studies. Alongside contributions from key thinkers already established in popular music studies the strength of the collection lies in its inclusion of many new and emerging writers in the field. Therefore the collection incorporates a wide range of practitioners pedagogues and academics from an extensive range of disciplines and thus drawing from a diversity of methodological approaches. These include those that are perhaps more established such as semiotics ethnography and psychology alongside exciting new approaches within popular music including eco-musicology religion intersectionality and archeology. Although previous books have provided an overall of concepts studied within popular music studies this will be the first comprehensive Handbook of popular music methodologies.

Hip-Hop Archives
The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production
This book focuses on the culture and politics involved in building hip-hop archives. It addresses practical aspects including methods of accumulation curation preservation and digitization and critically analyzes institutional power community engagement urban economics public access and the ideological implications associated with hip-hop culture’s enduring tensions with dominant social values.
The collection of essays are divided into four sections; Doing the Knowledge Challenging Archival Forms Beyond the Nation and Institutional Alignments: Interviews and Reflections. The book covers a range of official unofficial DIY and community archives and collections and features chapters by scholar practitioners educators and curators.
A wide swath of hip-hop culture is featured in the book including a focus on dance graffiti clothing and battle rap. The range of authors and their topics span countries in Asia Europe the Caribbean and North America.

Make the Dream Real
World-Building Performance by El Vez, The Mexican Elvis
El Vez performances present a powerful message of social justice and inclusion in changing US and social contexts. Make the Dream Real interrogates how this message is activated through world-building: the use of a variety of theoretical theatrical and musical tactics that bring into being a progressive social space that refutes the current economic political social and cultural configurations of the United States.
World-building in an El Vez show “makes the dream real” by imagining a society in which equal rights are guaranteed inclusivity is fostered difference is valued and the violence of economic inequality is mitigated. But world-building through performance is not content to reside exclusively in the individual imagination or the social imaginary; it temporarily creates this new social space in actual time and space for the audience to experience. Using a dramaturgical methodology which marries theoretical inquiry to theatrical practice based on dramaturgical thinking critical proximity and intellectual flexibility the book delves into the theoretical foundations that inform artist Robert Lopez’s work and each chapter analyzes a different performative component he uses.
Make the Dream Real interrogates how El Vez’s playful engagements hold the United States to its egalitarian promises voicing and enacting - however fleetingly - a just and richly inclusive social space through performance.

Analyzing NES Music
Harmony, Form, and the Art of Technological Constraint
Faced with severe technological constraints on system memory composers of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sought ways to disguise repetition in music that repeats extensively. Their efforts gave rise to a set of compositional techniques for creating the illusion of variety.
This book distills these techniques into a theory of harmony and form for the analysis of NES music. It then uses this theory to analyze five landmark scores of the NES era: Super Mario Bros. Dragon Warrior Metroid Mega Man 2 and Silver Surfer. Both theory and analysis are scaffolded by a detailed description of the NES hardware and its attendant constraints highlighting the ever-evolving dialogue between technology commercial demand and artistic sensibility that characterizes video game music of the 1980s and 1990s.

Urban Music Governance
What Busking Can Teach Us about Data, Policy and Our Cities
What happens when precarious urban cultural labourers take data collection laws and policymaking into their own hands? Buskers have been part of our cities for hundreds of years but they remain invisible to governments and in datasets. From nuisance to public art this cultural practice can help us understand the politics of data collection archives regulatory frameworks and urban planning. Busking also responds to underlying questions on the boundaries of the right to the city – and who has a voice in shaping how our cities are planned and governed.
A transnational exploration of street performance Urban Music Governance examines the intricate limits of legality data visibility and resistance from the perspective of those working at the social and regulatory margins of society. Based on a decade of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and Montreal this book puts forward a lively account on why such an often-overlooked practice mattes today.
By investigating the role of busking in contemporary society Urban Music Governance presents an original interdisciplinary study that exposes how power dynamics in policymaking decide issues of access – and exclusion – around us above and below ground.

Urban Music Governance
What Busking Can Teach Us about Data, Policy and Our Cities
What happens when precarious urban cultural labourers take data collection laws and policymaking into their own hands? Buskers have been part of our cities for hundreds of years but they remain invisible to governments and in datasets. From nuisance to public art this cultural practice can help us understand the politics of data collection archives regulatory frameworks and urban planning. Busking also responds to underlying questions on the boundaries of the right to the city – and who has a voice in shaping how our cities are planned and governed.
A transnational exploration of street performance Urban Music Governance examines the intricate limits of legality data visibility and resistance from the perspective of those working at the social and regulatory margins of society. Based on a decade of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and Montreal this book puts forward a lively account on why such an often-overlooked practice mattes today.
By investigating the role of busking in contemporary society Urban Music Governance presents an original interdisciplinary study that exposes how power dynamics in policymaking decide issues of access – and exclusion – around us above and below ground.

Shock Factory
The Visual Culture of Industrial Music
Industrial music appeared in the mid-1970s and far from being a simple sound experimentation phenomenon it quickly spawned a coherent visual culture operating at the intersection of a multitude of media (collage mail art installation film performance sound video) and initiated a close inspection of the legacy of modernity and the growing pervasive influence of technology.
Originally British the movement soon outgrew Europe extending into the United States and Japan during the 1980s. The sound experiments conducted by industrial bands – designing synthesizers manipulating and transforming recorded sounds from audio tapes either recycled or laid down by the artists – were backed up by a rich array of radical visual productions deriving their sources from the modernist utopias of the first part of the 20th century. Such saturated sounds were translated into abrasive images manipulated through the détournement of reprographic techniques (Xerox art) that investigated polemical themes: mind control criminality occultism pornography psychiatry and totalitarianism among others.
This book aims to introduce the visual and aesthetic elements of 1970a and 1980s industrial culture to a general history of contemporary art by analysing the different approaches taken and topics addressed by the primary protagonists of the movement who perceptively anticipated the current discourse concerning the media and their collective coercive power.

The impact of modern band experiences on pre-service music teachers’ creative identity: A pre–post assessment
This study explored the impact of a fifteen-week course in modern band practice on developing music teachers’ identities as creative music-makers. Modern band is a growing area of the research literature in music education. Composition improvisation and popular music-making experiences constitute current band activity. The creative identity measure (CIM-measure) evaluates self-perceptions of abilities in these areas. The measure has been used and adopted in various research studies over the past decade. For this study twelve pre-service music teachers enrolled in the course ‘Creative Performance Chamber Ensemble I’ at School of Music University of South Florida USA were assessed on their perceptions of their abilities associated with various creative musical activities. The CIM-in music was used as a pre-and post-assessment of modern band experiences at the beginning and the end of the fifteen-week class. There were significant positive changes between the pre- and post-assessments. Open-ended response items were also collected. Findings suggest that pre-service music teachers increased their confidence levels associated with their abilities to compose improvise be involved in ‘new’ music ensembles and be involved with popular music ensembles as a result of taking this course. They are more likely to plan on teaching their students to do these musical activities in the future as a result of these experiences.

More than music: The relationship between punk and mainstream/liberal politicality in Zagreb
The goal of this research is to determine what activities young actors in the punk scene view as forms of politicality that they either practise themselves or see among other actors in the punk scene in Zagreb. This research focuses on young people because of the marginalized position older people have put them in. Likewise the attitudes of young people towards politics are sometimes seen as ‘apolitical’ describing mistrust towards politicians or dislike of political parties. Regardless of these (un)conscious barriers that are often placed before young people we can see their different reactions: from accepting the political disinterest others expect of them to resisting their imposed marginal social status. Accordingly we were interested in often unrecognized alternative forms of politicality among young people. We focus on punk as an example of a subculture that revives political activity among young people. Analysing the collected data we obtained descriptions of 39 practices activities and political ideas – organized into seven categories – through which participants described their politicality or the politicality of that of other actors in the punk scene in Zagreb. This article will introduce the results of ethnographic research during which 28 interviews were conducted with participants between 20 and 36 years of age. The field part of this research was conducted in fifteen months.

Running Punks: More than just turning up
This study explored why runners have joined an online running group called the Running Punks that was set up in 2020. Running Punks espouses running for pleasure and repudiates the ‘rules’ of running groups which are mainly concerned with speed and performance. This research aimed to discover through semi-structured interviews why people joined a group that differs so significantly from others. In total 44 semi-structured interviews were undertaken and the data was analysed using thematic analysis. The results constructed three broad themes: belonging; connected; and catalyst for change which are discussed by applying two theoretical strands: community of practice (CoP) and self-determination theory (STD). The results discovered that while individuals benefited enormously from being connected and related as part of a community they identified as ‘Running Punks’ as they valued their autonomy as individuals.

Reimagining pop vocal pedagogy through the lens of disability
Singing is an embodied creative human endeavour a means of getting in touch with and communicating ideas inner feelings and emotions. The purpose of this study was to discover participatory kinaesthetic and personalized learning strategies in the context of popular vocal pedagogy (PVP) for students with disabilities. When I started working with Spencer a young composer with chronic pain caused by complex regional pain syndrome he did not feel supported by his professors. He perceived they were not supporting his musical and career goals nor were they open to making necessary accommodations for his disability. Together using a critical participatory action research methodology Spencer and I confronted masterful centuries-old patriarchal practices that often foster violence and repression on singer’s minds and bodies hoping to discover new learning and teaching strategies for disabled students in the PVP studio. Our goal was to make Spencer’s overall experience as a singer and performer in a conservatory-style music programme more student-centred and empowering. Findings from the study suggest ways that teachers in higher education might incorporate flexible teaching contexts (live and remote) engage the use of technology as a teaching tool and develop pedagogical strategies that involve the learner in reflection and self-evaluation (rather than imposing uniform standardized approaches) in order to create more accommodating classrooms for their vocal students with disabilities.

If Colors Could Be Heard: Narratives About Racial Identity in Music Education, C. Cayari, J. D. Thompson and R. S. Rajan (eds) (2025)
Review of: If Colors Could Be Heard: Narratives About Racial Identity in Music Education C. Cayari J. D. Thompson and R. S. Rajan (eds) (2025)
Bristol: Intellect 288 pp.
ISBN 978-1-83595-167-5 h/bk $124.95

Popular music pedagogy in music teacher education: A literature review
Higher education music education programmes that prioritize Eurocentric perspectives related to the western classical canon may limit future music educators’ ability to connect students’ in-school and out-of-school music experiences. Growing interest in diverse and inclusive approaches to music education has led to increased attention on the inclusion of popular music pedagogy in music teacher education. Drawing on culturally responsive pedagogies as a theoretical framework in this review of literature I examined research related to popular music pedagogy in music teacher education. Researchers suggest that incorporating popular music in music classrooms may connect students’ in-school and out-of-school music experiences resulting in greater student engagement and promoting lifelong musical involvement. Based on significant findings in this research music educators might consider reimagining music teacher education programmes to reflect the changing landscape of music education and prepare future music educators with the skills necessary to acknowledge and value the diverse musical experiences and cultural contexts of students.

Popular Music Ethnographies
Practices, Places and Identities
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.

The Capitalist Imaginaries of Popular Music
Traditionally popular music has long been said to intrinsically contest resist and defy the powers that be. This new book challenges this long-standing orthodoxy arguing that popular music more often participates in the social reproduction of the biggest power there is: neoliberal capitalism. This is done mainly through the widespread mediation of a very particular and remarkably cohesive ideology of greatness and value. This ideology is drawn from principles and prescriptions that have long been constitutive of neoliberal capitalism. We have been told this story over and over again for decades.
The music is real. The music is powerful. The music is defiant.
It is a story that has gradually spread to encompass everything from classic rock to contemporary pop to hip hop to dance music. This suite of ideas came to dominance since the mid-1980s and persist to the present an era in which the vast majority of people have been disempowered impoverished and marginalised at home at work and in politics. This book explains why such a robust pervasive and persistent set of ideas about popular music has taken such a tenacious hold in a historical era which has repeatedly and thoroughly demonstrated the utter falseness of those same ideas nearly everywhere they have been experienced.