tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/music-history-10515/articlesMusic history – The Conversation2024-03-28T05:49:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2267452024-03-28T05:49:47Z2024-03-28T05:49:47ZThe rocking story of how religion crept into popular music – where it remains even today<p>It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or '90s kid, you might be surprised to find many of your favourite tunes are more concerned about Jesus and God than you’d realised. </p>
<p>Many chart-topping songs in Western music delve into themes of faith (especially Christianity), spirituality and divinity. But unlike Christmas music, most of these come from a rock tradition.</p>
<h2>Early gospel makes the charts</h2>
<p>Hits by some of rock’s greatest guitarists, such as George Harrison, Lenny Kravitz and Prince, feature strong guitar riffs that create a sense of aural transcendence. These riffs, which involve a repeated note sequence or chord progression, help to define their songs.</p>
<p>This intertwining of guitar and Christian spirituality dates back to the emergence of rock music in the 1940s. American rock pioneer <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/sister-rosetta-tharpe-rocknroll-pioneer/">Sister Rosetta Tharpe</a> (1915–73), from the Pentecostal church, used powerful guitar riffs that surged with soulfulness. </p>
<p>Tharpe’s 1944 gospel song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4-22b72muY&ab_channel=HistoryofRockMusic-Mostpowerfulrocksongs">Strange Things Happening Every Day</a> – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IfYroJOiMg&ab_channel=RCARecords">covered by Yola</a> for the 2022 film <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_(2022_film)">Elvis</a> – is a great example.</p>
<p>Using electric guitar, and the theological message “Jesus is the holy light”, Tharpe’s was the first song to cross over from gospel into a mainstream “race” chart in the US. “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/popular-songs-of-the-day/rhythm-and-blues/">Race music</a>”, which eventually became R&B, was the term used to describe African American music (but generally just referred to secular music).</p>
<h2>The rise of spirituality and counterculture</h2>
<p>Christian rock also has roots in the 1960s US <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/1960s-counterculture">counterculture</a> “hippie” movement. The Jesus People brought a Christian vibe to this movement, leading to works such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1971 rock opera <a href="https://playbill.com/article/look-back-at-the-original-broadway-production-of-jesus-christ-superstar#">Jesus Christ Superstar</a>, which is still being performed more than 50 years later.</p>
<p>Throughout the 1960s and '70s, plenty of songs exploring themes of God, faith and spirituality climbed their way into the Top 20. For example, Norman Greenbaum’s 1970 track <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2msh0jut2Y&ab_channel=CraftRecordings">Spirit in the Sky</a> became popular during the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/24/the-unlikely-endurance-of-christian-rock">Christian rock movement</a>. </p>
<p>It was joined in the same year by Harrison’s hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04v-SdKeEpE&ab_channel=GeorgeHarrisonVEVO">My Sweet Lord</a>, which is particularly interesting because of its mix of spiritual undertones, which reflect the West’s growing interest in Eastern spirituality at the time. </p>
<p>Along with the repetition of “lord” (which is said around 40 times) and the use of the Christian/Hebrew word “Hallelujah”, the song also includes chants of “Hare Krishna” and “Hare Rama”, praising the Hindu gods.</p>
<p>My Sweet Lord became the <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/george-harrison-my-sweet-lord-music-video/">highest-selling single</a> in the United Kingdom in 1971, as well as the first solo number-one hit by a member of the Beatles. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. The song sparked controversy, and a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/09/08/archives/george-harrison-guilty-of-plagiarizing-subconsciously-a-62-tune-for.html">lawsuit that claimed</a> it was too similar to The Chiffons’s 1963 hit He’s So Fine.</p>
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<p>For some, My Sweet Lord is considered a Christian song – at least the until the Hindu chants begin. But the mixing of religious elements was seen by some conservative Christians as satanic, or pagan (even though Hinduism <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-hinduism-a-pagan-relig_b_1245373">isn’t a pagan</a> religion). </p>
<p>Music throughout the 1960s and '70s, while it still touched on religious themes, grew much more rebellious and edgy with bands like <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151027-the-satanists-who-changed-music">The Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath</a>. </p>
<p>Topics such as sex, drugs and hedonism became common – as did protesting against traditional values. From this cocktail emerged the view that rock was the <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/the-devil-has-all-the-best-tunes/">devil’s music</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jesus-people-a-movement-born-from-the-summer-of-love-82421">'Jesus People' – a movement born from the 'Summer of Love'</a>
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<h2>The 80s: when religion met raunchy</h2>
<p>The 1980s and '90s continued the trend of intertwining spirituality and popular music. Many of these tracks stirred deep discussions on faith, cementing music’s power as a medium for expressing complex themes.</p>
<p>Lenny Kravitz’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnqUK7XF54k">Are You Gonna Go My Way</a> (1993) was written to sound like the lyrics came from Jesus himself:</p>
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<p>I was born long ago, I am the chosen. I’m the one. I have come to save the day, and I won’t leave until I’m done […] But what I really want to know is, are you gonna go my way? </p>
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<p>Prince’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXJhDltzYVQ&ab_channel=Prince">Lets Go Crazy</a> (1984) was a metaphor for God and Satan, hinted at in the line “are we gonna let the elevator bring us down? Oh no let’s go!” </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Madonna’s 1989 smash Like a Prayer made more than one wave when it topped the charts 35 years ago. The music video stirred up <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/from-the-archives-outrage-over-madonna-video-20190402-p51a0s.html">quite a controversy</a> by mixing the sacred with the profane. Among other things, Madonna is shown dancing among burning crosses, and kissing a black Christ who comes to life from being a statue.</p>
<p>The video conveys messages about prejudice, racism, violence and sexuality. Some networks refused to show it, deeming it inappropriate for children. Others aired it with a warning it might offend viewers. The Catholic Church was outraged and the Vatican condemned it. </p>
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<p>Nonetheless, the video achieved huge commercial success, winning MTV’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/event/ev0003172/1989/1/">1989 Video Music Award</a> for Viewer’s Choice. Even now, it remains a pinnacle of music video art.</p>
<h2>Religion is still everywhere in music</h2>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/02/10/sam-smiths-grammys-performance-criticized-by-conservatives-and-satanists/?sh=3339c55f30b1">most of us</a> won’t bat an eyelid when we see Lil Nas X <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/lil-nas-x-montero-call-me-by-your-name-video-church-of-satan-1147634/">giving Satan a lapdance</a>, and that’s probably because of the work of artists like Madonna. </p>
<p>It’s interesting that, despite a <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/religious-affiliation-australia">rise in secularism</a>, the intersection of the sacred and secular in music has persisted. Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, with its intermingling spiritual and sexual themes, is still one of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/17/hallelujah-leonard-cohen-film-rejected-song-became-classic">most popular songs</a> of all time.</p>
<p>Today, many of the world’s most famous contemporary artists continue the tradition of engaging with spiritual and religious themes. Take Drake’s 2018 hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVfcZ0ZcFM&ab_channel=DrakeVEVO">God’s Plan</a>, or The Weeknd’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jan/07/the-weeknd-dawn-fm-review">highly acclaimed</a> 2022 album Dawn FM, replete with spiritual undertones and religious symbolism. </p>
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<p>Perhaps it’s just in the nature of religion to evoke feeling and inspire, even for those who aren’t “religious” themselves. Or perhaps we’ve collectively realised musicians can experiment with themes and take risks, and it won’t bring about the end of the world. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lil-nas-xs-dance-with-the-devil-evokes-tradition-of-resisting-mocking-religious-demonization-158586">Lil Nas X's dance with the devil evokes tradition of resisting, mocking religious demonization</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Panizza Allmark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>You’d be surprised by how many of your favourite hits are about God or Jesus in one way or another.Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2238312024-02-22T13:44:20Z2024-02-22T13:44:20ZWith Beyoncé’s foray into country music, the genre may finally break free from the stereotypes that have long dogged it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576856/original/file-20240220-24-x8s4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=461%2C17%2C2850%2C1598&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, at the 66th Grammy Awards on Feb. 4, 2024, in Los Angeles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/beyoncé-and-jay-z-onstage-during-the-66th-grammy-awards-at-news-photo/1986605934?adppopup=true">Kevin Mazur/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Super Bowl Sunday, Beyoncé released two country songs – “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhKNjTb6U1Y">16 Carriages</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=238Z4YaAr1g">Texas Hold ‘Em</a>” – that elicited a mix of admiration and indignation. </p>
<p>This is <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11526188/beyonce-country-music-black-roots">not her first foray</a> into the genre, but it is her most successful and controversial entry. As of last week, Beyoncé became the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/beyonce-first-black-woman-number-one-country-song-texas-hold-em-1234970301/">first Black woman to have a No. 1 song on the country charts</a>. At the same time, country music stations like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/arts/music/beyonce-oklahoma-radio-station.html">KYKC in Oklahoma</a> initially refused to play the record because it was “not country.”</p>
<p>Many non-listeners <a href="https://apnews.com/article/country-music-us-news-ap-top-news-lil-nas-x-music-c34fd394a0275f0726cb5bb231f70833#">stereotype country music</a> as being white, politically conservative, militantly patriotic and rural. And you can certainly find <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/06/1229407614/toby-keith-dies-cancer">artists</a> and <a href="https://americansongwriter.com/the-unabashed-meaning-behind-toby-keiths-patriotic-hit-courtesy-of-the-red-white-and-blue-the-angry-american/">songs</a> that fit that bill. </p>
<p>But the story of country has always been more complicated, and debates about race and authenticity in country are nothing new; they’ve plagued country artists, record companies and listeners for over a century.</p>
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<p>As someone who <a href="https://www.middlebury.edu/college/people/william-nash">researches and teaches Black culture and country music</a>, I hope that Beyoncé’s huge profile will change the terms of this debate.</p>
<p>To me, Beyoncé’s Blackness is not the major bone of contention here.</p>
<p>Instead, the controversy is about her “countryness,” and whether a pop star can authentically cross from one genre to the next. Lucky for Beyoncé, it’s been done plenty of times before. And her songs are arriving at a time when more and more Black musicians are charting country hits.</p>
<h2>Cross-racial collaboration</h2>
<p>Americans have long viewed country music – or, as it was known before World War II, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41446344">hillbilly music</a> – as largely the purview of white musicians. This is partly by design. The “hillbilly” category <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2013/08/23/213852227/race-and-country-music-then-and-now">was initially created as a counterpart</a> to the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-voices-of-race-records-pullman-porters-the-rev-tt-rose-and-the-man-with-a-clarinet-37907">race records</a>” aimed at Black audiences from the 1920s to the 1940s.</p>
<p>But from the start, the genre has been influenced by Black musical styles and performances.</p>
<p>White country music superstars like <a href="https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/carter-family">The Carter Family</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hank-Williams">Hank Williams</a> learned tunes and techniques from Black musicians <a href="https://birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/search-lesley-riddle/">Lesley Riddle</a> and <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15185820/rufus-payne">Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne</a>, respectively. Unfortunately, few recordings of Black country artists from the early 20th century exist, and most of those who did record had their racial identity masked. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/johnny-cash">Johnny Cash’s</a> mentor, <a href="https://www.elderly.com/pages/gus-cannon-celebrating-black-history-month">Gus Cannon</a>, proves a rare exception. Cannon recorded in the 1920s with his jug band, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/locations/lowermsdeltaregion/cannon-s-jug-stompers.htm">Cannon’s Jug Stompers</a>, and he had a second wave of success during <a href="https://www.si.edu/spotlight/american-folk-music/musicians">the folk revival of the 1960s</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Gus Cannon was an early mentor to Johnny Cash.</span>
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<p>Similarly, the genre has always included a mix of Anglo-American and Black American musical instruments. The banjo, for instance, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139880625/the-banjos-roots-reconsidered">has African roots</a> and was brought to America by enslaved people. </p>
<p>In the case of “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which begins with a lively banjo riff, Beyoncé has partnered with Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning MacArthur Fellow <a href="https://rhiannongiddens.com">Rhiannon Giddens</a>, America’s foremost contemporary Black banjoist and banjo scholar. (I would argue that this choice alone undercuts objections about the track’s country bona fides.) </p>
<h2>Different tacks to navigate race</h2>
<p>By releasing these tracks, Beyoncé joins performers like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/12/arts/music/charley-pride-dead.html">Charley Pride</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/14/mickey-guyton-takes-on-the-overwhelming-whiteness-of-country-music">Mickey Guyton</a> – country stars whose success has forced them to confront questions about the links between their racial and musical identities. </p>
<p>Pride, whose hits include “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’,” “Just Between You and Me” and “Is Anybody Going to San Antone?,” became, in 1971, the first Black American to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award. In 2000, he was the first Black American <a href="https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/charley-pride">inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame</a>. </p>
<p>But throughout his career, Pride resisted attempts to emphasize his Blackness. From his 1971 hit “I’m Just Me” to his <a href="https://andscape.com/features/charley-pride-wanted-to-be-judged-by-his-work-not-his-race/">2014 refusal to discuss his racial “firsts” with a Canadian talk show host</a>, Pride consistently strove to be seen as a country artist who happened to be Black, rather than as a country musician whose Blackness was central to his public persona and work. </p>
<p>At the other end of the spectrum is Guyton, who gained recognition and acclaim for songs like her 2020 hit “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/31/entertainment/mickey-guyton-country-singer/index.html">Black Like Me</a>” – a frank, heartfelt commentary on the challenges she’s faced as a Black woman pursuing a career in Nashville, Tennessee. </p>
<p>Both Pride and Guyton reflect the zeitgeists of their respective decades. In the wake of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Pride’s “colorblind” approach enabled him to circumvent <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/racial-tension-in-the-1970s">existing racial tensions</a>. He chose his material with an eye toward averting controversy – for example, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/946727442/theres-only-one-charley-pride">he eschewed love ballads</a>, lest they be understood as promoting interracial relationships. At the start of his career, when his music was released without artist photos, Pride made jokes about his “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music/charley-pride-biography">permanent tan</a>” to put surprised white concertgoers at ease.</p>
<p>Guyton’s work, on the other hand, resonated with the national outrage over the murder of George Floyd and tapped into the celebration of Black empowerment that was part of the ethos of Black Lives Matter. </p>
<p>And yet I cannot think of another Black musical artist with Beyoncé’s cultural cache who has taken up country music. </p>
<p>Some might argue that <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ray-Charles">Ray Charles</a>, whose groundbreaking 1962 album, “<a href="https://www.wideopencountry.com/ray-charles-modern-sounds-in-country-and-western-music/">Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music</a>,” brought legions of new listeners to country artists, is a forerunner of Beyoncé’s in this regard. </p>
<p>Without diminishing Charles’ significance, I expect that Beyoncé’s forthcoming <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/beyonce-announced-renaissance-act-ii-at-the-super-bowl-and-yes-its-a-country-album">Renaissance II</a>“ <a href="https://www.grammy.com/artists/beyonce-knowles/12474">will outshine</a> Charles’ landmark recording.</p>
<h2>Black country in the 21st century</h2>
<p>Over the past five years, in addition to the buzz over <a href="https://variety.com/2019/music/news/old-town-road-billy-ray-cyrus-fendi-sports-bra-lyric-songwriter-1203294198/">Lil Nas X’s "Old Town Road</a>,” a significant number of Black musicians – including <a href="https://dariusrucker.com">Darius Rucker</a>, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/artist/kane-brown/">Kane Brown</a> and <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/celebrities/18228636/who-country-music-singer-jimmie-allen/">Jimmie Allen</a>, to name a few – have charted country hits. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.blackopry.com">Black Opry Revue</a>, founded in 2021 by music journalist Holly G, produces tours that bring together rising Black country musicians, giving each more exposure than performing individually could. </p>
<p>Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” topped the country charts and made Chapman the first Black woman to win the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year award. Their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEqb6xbeuCo">performance of the song</a> at the 2024 Grammys went viral, demonstrating both the fluidity of genres and the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/tracy-chapman-luke-combs-fast-car-grammy-performance/677361/">power of collaboration</a>.</p>
<p>Beyoncé’s loyal fan base, known colloquially as “the Beyhive,” is already propelling “Texas Hold ‘Em” to the top of the pop and country charts. While there may continue to be pushback from traditionalist country music gatekeepers, country radio executives holding sway over national broadcast networks are calling Beyoncé’s new songs “<a href="https://variety.com/2024/music/news/beyonce-country-format-radio-bullish-texas-hold-em-1235913252/">a gift to country music</a>.” </p>
<p>As more and more listeners hear her directive to “just take it to the dance floor,” perhaps the sonic harmony of the country genre will translate to a new way of thinking about whether socially constructed categories, like race, ought to segregate art. </p>
<p>And what a revolution that would be.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Her new songs are arriving at a moment when country music’s reputation as overwhelmingly white is finally starting to crack.William Nash, Professor of American Studies and English and American Literatures, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222842024-02-15T23:16:04Z2024-02-15T23:16:04ZKiss’s debut album at 50: how the rock legends went from ‘clowns’ to becoming immortalised<p>It has been 50 years since Rock & Roll <a href="https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/kiss">Hall of Famers</a> Kiss launched their thunderock-doused debut album into the pop culture stratosphere. The eponymous album, released on February 18 1974, became a platform-stacked foot in the music industry’s door. </p>
<p>What followed established Kiss as one of the most memorable hard-rock bands of the 1970s and ’80s, with a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac.37.1.19_1">globally recognised legacy</a>.</p>
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<h2>The early days</h2>
<p>In 1972, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons shelved their first ever rock outfit following a short stint in a band called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Lester">Wicked Lester</a>. The pair then <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/kiss-self-titled-debut-album/">hatched a plan</a> to form a far more aggressive and successful rock band. Drummer Peter Criss and guitarist Ace Frehley were recruited, and the new-generation Fab Four renamed themselves Kiss.</p>
<p>By late <a href="https://www.kissonline.com/history">November of 1973</a>, the band had developed their bombastic live performance style, perfected their makeup and signed a deal with <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kiss-first-record-contract/">Casablanca Records</a>. Yet they dealt with some rocky beginnings.</p>
<p>Armed with reworked songs from Wicked Lester, Kiss entered New York’s Bell Sound Studios to record their debut. A mere three weeks later the album was complete – but the band quickly realised the studio recordings didn’t capture the essence of their high-energy live shows. As vocalist Paul Stanley <a href="https://loudwire.com/kiss-self-titled-album-anniversary/">told Loudwire</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What was put down on tape was such a timid fraction of what we were in concert. I didn’t understand it because bands who were our contemporaries had much better-sounding albums.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They took another blow while shooting the album cover with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/obituaries/31brodsky.html">Joel Brodsky</a> when, after a mishap with Criss’s makeup, the band were allegedly handed balloons by the photographer since he thought they were clowns.</p>
<p>Then, soon before the album was released, Warner Brothers pulled its financial backing and <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-casablanca-records-story">distribution deal from Casablanca Records</a> after witnessing Kiss play a New Year’s eve show. Although it’s said the band’s makeup was the last straw for the label, the show in question also featured Simmons <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/kiss-early-years-history">setting his hair alight</a> shortly after throwing a fireball at a fan’s face. </p>
<p>Despite the blunders, the release of the first album set Kiss on a path to becoming immortalised. As Stanley says in his book <a href="https://www.paulstanley.com/face-the-music/">Face The Music</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For all the minuses I felt about the sound or the cover, we now had a finished album which was the prerequisite for all the other things we wanted to do. We were in the game now.</p>
</blockquote>
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<h2>The Kiss sound</h2>
<p>I first heard Kiss as a teenager. I’d just thrift-scored a pair of ’80s-era roller-skates with the band’s logo scrawled on the heels in glitter glue. The salesperson, responsible for the glitter glue, enthusiastically recounted seeing Kiss play VFL Park (now <a href="https://footy.fandom.com/wiki/Waverley_Park">Waverley Park</a> stadium) in 1980 and made me promise I’d listen to them.</p>
<p>Overwhelmed by the band’s expansive discography, and the possibility that their name stood for <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/news/kiss-squash-long-standing-rumour-that-their-band-name-is-a-satanic-acronym-were-smart-but-were-not-that-smart">Knights In Satan’s Service</a>, I thought it best to begin from the start.</p>
<p>With their reputation of on-stage pyrotechnics and gore, I’d expected something more akin to Black Sabbath’s Paranoid than the jangly riffs of Let Me Know or Love Theme From Kiss. A 1978 review by <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/kiss-194584/">Gordon Fletcher</a> for the Rolling Stone also noted this rift. Despite calling the album exceptional, Fletcher described its sound as a cross between Deep Purple and the Doobie Brothers. </p>
<p>Stanley and Simmons have <a href="https://www.guitarworld.com/features/kiss-paul-stanley-gene-simmons-classic-tracks">spoken freely</a> about borrowing heavily from a number of mid-century legends, so it’s no surprise that sonically the album was nothing new. The Rolling Stones’ influence can be heard in the songs Deuce and Strutter, while Led Zeppelin and Neil Young are present in Black Diamond. </p>
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<p>The album initially hadn’t risen higher than #87 on <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kiss-kiss-debut-album/">Billboard’s album charts</a>. A studio cover of <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kiss-nothin-to-lose/?trackback=twitter_mobile">Bobby Rydell’s Kissin’ Time</a> was released next as the lead single, but the track only bumped them up to #83. This <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2262575">commercial unviability</a> loomed over Kiss until the release of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alive!_(Kiss_album)">Alive!</a> in 1975. </p>
<h2>Success and beyond</h2>
<p>As the band’s first live album, Alive! bridged the gap between the audacious intensity of Kiss’s performances and the timidness of their studio recordings. Their early tracks were repurposed to let listeners remotely experience the infamous Kiss live spectacle. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFMD7Usflbg&ab_channel=KissVEVO">Rock and Roll All Nite</a> claimed #12 on the <a href="https://loudwire.com/kiss-alive-album-anniversary/">Billboard charts</a>, the platform-stacked foot burst through the door to mainstream success. </p>
<p>Fifty years after Kiss first stepped into Bell Sound Studios, the band played their final sold-out show at Madison Square Garden on December 2 2023. The performance served as a crowning jewel on their End of the Road world tour, a four-year effort with more than 250 live shows. </p>
<p>Promised to be their <a href="https://www.triplem.com.au/story/kiss-add-more-dates-to-their-end-of-the-road-australian-tour-172305">biggest and best shows ever</a>, the farewell became a colossal celebration of the band’s legacy. Theatrical pyrotechnics, fake blood and Stanley’s classic opening line – “you wanted the best, you got the best” – were featured at each performance. </p>
<p>While both Kiss’s anthemic numbers and earlier catalogue were performed in these final shows, the music came second to the celebration of the Kiss live spectacle.</p>
<p>From their carefully designed makeup, to bombastic theatrics and hoards of merchandise, it was Kiss’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac.37.1.19_1">brand building</a> that <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Brands+That+Rock%3A+What+Business+Leaders+Can+Learn+from+the+World+of+Rock+and+Roll-p-9780471455172">set them apart</a> and embedded them in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2009.09.006">heritage bracket</a> of popular culture. </p>
<p>Despite the end of their live shows, Kiss endeavours to stay embedded in public memory. Referring to some of the band’s 2,500 licensed products, Simmons recently spoke on <a href="http://www.tommagazine.com.au/2022/08/19/kiss/">what’s next for Kiss</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kiss the entity will continue; what’s happening now is a metamorphosis. The caterpillar is dying, but the butterfly will be born.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>With a <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/kiss-biopic-early-years-netflix-2024-1235291572/">Netflix biopic</a> and holographic <a href="https://www.stereogum.com/2246254/kiss-hologram-era-begins-in-2027/news/">avatars on the way</a>, Stanley and Simmons – the band’s two remaining members – <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/gene-simmons-says-kiss-farewell-tour-is-end-of-the-road-for-the-band-not-the-brand-3541117">have declared Kiss immortal</a>. </p>
<p>Stanley even suggests the Kiss look has become so iconic it’s now bigger than any band member. This means the torch could be passed on to new-generation Kiss members. </p>
<p>Kiss has (quite literally) breathed fire into live rock performance. Now, they’re breathing fire into our expectations of what rock royalty retirement looks like. I have to ask, who – or what – will wear the makeup next? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-long-dead-soprano-has-taken-to-the-stage-with-the-melbourne-symphony-orchestra-are-holograms-the-future-219716">A long-dead soprano has taken to the stage with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Are holograms the future?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222284/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlotte Markowitsch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As their debut album turns 50, we look back on Kiss’s larger-than-life career – and forward to what might come next.Charlotte Markowitsch, PhD candidate in popular music studies, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209762024-01-18T15:30:58Z2024-01-18T15:30:58ZSoul Brothers: the story of a band that revolutionised South African music<p>Biographies of important South African musicians often fall into two categories: they either emerge from PhD or other university-based research, or are the fruit of dedicated digging by a fan or family member. The first kind benefit from institutional resources and support; the second from community knowledge of personal details that may be documented nowhere else. </p>
<p>Because of that very scarcity of a public record, the first kind might miss many parts of the story that can’t be checked in formal records and archives. The second risks being bent out of shape by hero-worship or fallible memory.</p>
<p>Sydney Fetsie Maluleke’s book <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Life_and_Times/1qyXtQEACAAJ?hl=en">The Life and Times of the Soul Brothers</a> benefits from an author with a foot in each camp. Maluleke is a university-schooled researcher, but also an insider fan – he’s administered the band’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/p/Soul-Brothers-100044409727019/">Facebook page</a> and comes from a family who, by his own account, were even more fanatical than he is about the legendary <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-soul-brothers-mn0000044338#biography">band</a>. </p>
<p>So the book, recently revised and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjMypAcv41g">relaunched</a> for its second edition, combines the strengths of both kinds of biography, and avoids most of their weaknesses.</p>
<h2>Who are the Soul Brothers?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVo6lHNFkz3h-aWIaR-pa-g">Soul Brothers</a>, formed in KwaZulu-Natal province in the mid-1970s by the late vocalist <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/opinion-and-analysis/2015-07-12-obituary-david-masondo-lead-singer-of-sowetos-legendary-soul-brothers/">David Masondo</a> and keyboardist <a href="https://iono.fm/e/1373266">Black Moses Ngwenya</a> (and still working as a band today, though with new players), was the outfit that shaped the sound of South African <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/mbaqanga-music-guide">mbaqanga</a>. That’s the name of a popular genre blending traditional African vocal styles and lyrical tropes with transformed borrowings from western pop. It grew from a predominantly Zulu-speaking fanbase to dominate Black South African hit parades for more than a decade.</p>
<p>The band scored multiple gold and platinum hits, and although their most recent studio recording was more than a decade ago, Soul Brothers music still gets radio play and is popular at family and neighbourhood parties. Soul Brothers were innovators. They drew in members from across language groups, and multiple inspirations, at the very time the South African <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> regime was entrenching separation and difference. </p>
<p>Incorporating Ngwenya’s soul keyboard into what had begun as Zulu close-harmony vocals and guitar work was as startling an innovation for mbaqanga as US musician <a href="https://raycharles.com">Ray Charles</a>’ introduction of electric piano had been for American rhythm and blues. </p>
<p>Tired of exploitation by big, white-run record labels, the Soul Brothers also established their own label and studio, making them part of South Africa’s first generation of modern Black music entrepreneurs too.</p>
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<p>Maluleke’s book takes us through all these developments. Though its subtitle describes the narrative as told “through the eyes of Black Moses”, he’s careful to source what he learns, label what is contested, and acknowledge that other interpretations are possible. </p>
<p>The book’s voice is resonantly human. Though chapters are organised thematically around the lives of various artists and the group’s stages of development, the story backtracks, repeats and comes at the same subject from different angles, just as people do when they speak. At points, I found myself hankering for more direct quotes from these insider voices and less paraphrase.</p>
<h2>A new edition</h2>
<p>The book’s first edition in 2017, Maluleke tells us, left out the setbacks and disputes from the tale, something for which Ngwenya himself gently rebuked the author. So in this second edition we learn also, for example, of the professionalism that permitted spellbinding and seamless ensemble performances onstage while, behind the scenes, the principals were literally not talking to one another because of disputes over leadership and power dynamics.</p>
<p>Maluleke and his family’s obsessive fandom, meanwhile, means there’s a priceless archive of press clippings, album covers and photographs to draw on. That provides nearly 40 pages of illustrative evidence to deepen the story. </p>
<p>Along the way, there are multiple bonuses not advertised on the cover: histories of associated musicians such as the veteran <a href="https://umsakazo.bandcamp.com/album/makgona-tsohle-reggi">Makgona Tsohle Band</a>, explanations of tradition, and descriptions of township community life more than half a century ago. Though the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/township-South-Africa">townships</a> – segregated and impoverished areas for black workers removed from the “white” cities – had been designed by apartheid, residents built their own rich networks of solidarity, self-help and shared culture. Music was one of its <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Soweto_Blues.html?id=_fwkCIKoTpgC&redir_esc=y">pillars</a>. </p>
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<p>For me, a big surprise was learning that the young Ngwenya – regarded today as South Africa’s finest mbaqanga keyboardist – was inspired back in the 1960s by watching the rehearsals of the band Durban Expressions, whose keyboardist became one of the country’s finest jazz players: the late <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bheki-mseleku-south-african-jazz-pianist-932017.html">Bheki Mseleku</a>. </p>
<p>All those are strengths that could make the book a storehouse of inspiration for music scholars. Each one of its details and detours could inspire a study of its own.</p>
<h2>Some flaws</h2>
<p>The book’s flaws, where they exist, emerge from the strains of producing a book on a shoestring budget. Maluleke, quoting Nigerian writer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chinua-Achebe">Chinua Achebe</a>, wrote it because he was determined the history of lions must not be written by the hunters alone. The book did have one editor: veteran broadcaster and popular music expert Max Mojapelo, whose encyclopaedic industry knowledge no doubt enriched the history. </p>
<p>But it needed another, more prosaic kind of editor as well: a copy editor. </p>
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<p>There are rather too many typographical errors and inconsistencies in, for example, the use of italics for song and album titles. Some date references are clearly unrevised from the 2017 edition. And there is no index; that makes the contents less accessible. </p>
<h2>Hugely important story</h2>
<p>Yet, if Maluleke had waited until more resources were available, he – and we – might still be waiting. A story hugely important for South African popular music history would have remained largely untold. He made the right choice. </p>
<p>Every music fan eager to understand how the “indestructible sound of Soweto” was born and shaped is in his debt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The book tells the inside story of how they changed the sound of urban pop.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2192522023-12-06T11:07:40Z2023-12-06T11:07:40ZThe enduring wartime spirit that powers classic Christmas songs<p>Eighty years ago this week, Judy Garland walked into an MGM studio and recorded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKG5X0QMSWA">Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas</a> for the first time. It was written for the musical <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037059/">Meet Me in St Louis</a> (1944), only part of which is set at Christmas – but no matter. Its music and lyrics by <a href="https://www.songhall.org/profile/Hugh_Martin">Hugh Martin</a> have come to represent the epitome of the classic Christmas song.</p>
<p>Eighty-two years ago this week, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Pearl-Harbor-attack">bombing of Pearl Harbor</a> drew the US into the second world war. Sixteen million Americans signed up to the armed forces, and many American women responded to the Rosie the Riveter campaign by joining workplaces <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/women-wwii">for the first time</a>. Family life was profoundly changed: there was a sense of displacement, absence and loss.</p>
<p>Popular music responded with conventional war songs (see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wInC4B88A2I">Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition</a> by <a href="https://frankloesser.com/">Frank Loesser</a> of Guys and Dolls fame) but it was the Christmas song that best expressed the heartache.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Irving-Berlin">Irving Berlin</a> added <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOkyBqGw2Wg">White Christmas</a> to the score of his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bing-Crosby">Bing Crosby</a> movie <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034862/">Holiday Inn</a> in 1942. He’d drafted it a couple of years earlier but now its opening line that evoked snowy holidays “just like the ones I used to know” was the perfect sentiment to tug at the heartstrings of a nation receptive to the idea of a nostalgic past, rather than a fragile present.</p>
<h2>A question of morale</h2>
<p>A year later, Crosby recorded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCy_ZDK_k0">I’ll Be Home for Christmas</a>, a number by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0448876/">Walter Kent</a> and <a href="https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0304469/bio/">Kim Gannon</a> that more explicitly addressed the zeitgeist.</p>
<p>It’s laid out in the form of a letter from a soldier writing home to his family. The strained optimism of the opening line (“I’ll be home for Christmas”) gives way to a shopping list of seasonal cliches (snow, mistletoe, presents on the tree) before the shattering final line (“if only in my dreams”) that addresses the truth: it was all unlikely to happen. </p>
<p>The sentiment was so on point that <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/unfit-for-auntie-s-airwaves-the-artists-censored-by-the-bbc-765106.html">the BBC banned the song from broadcast</a>, worrying that it might lower morale.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bing Crosby’s I’ll Be Home for Christmas.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But it was Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas that best tapped into the feeling of wartime winters. Ironically, Hugh Martin’s original lyric to the song was so drastic that there was no way it could be released to a nation in collective mourning. It read: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last. Next year we will all be living in the past.”</p>
<p>Garland and the director <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vincente-Minnelli">Vincente Minnelli</a> agreed that she would seem like a monster if Garland’s character Esther sang those words to her much younger sister Tootie (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0639684/">Margaret O’Brien</a>) in a moment of upset, so Martin tweaked them to: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the yuletide gay. From now on our troubles will be miles away.”</p>
<p>And whereas the original said that “Faithful friends who are dear to us will be near to us no more”, the revised version became “once more”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Judy Garland sings Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas in Meet Me in St Louis.</span></figcaption>
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<p>America needed the poignancy of a hopeful message delivered through tears (as in Garland’s performance in the movie), not defeatism. Yet the song’s final phrase expresses how close to the surface the separation of family was in November 1944, when the movie was released: “Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow. Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”</p>
<h2>Rewriting classics</h2>
<p>Few would disagree that Judy Garland’s original performance of the song in Meet Me in St Louis is definitive. But 13 years later, Frank Sinatra requested a few tweaks to the words for his 1957 holiday album <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/0ny6mZMBrYSO0s8HAKbcVq">A Jolly Christmas</a>.</p>
<p>When Sinatra released his album, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dwight-D-Eisenhower">Dwight D Eisenhower</a> was in office. The president was a war hero, and <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/American_foreign_policy_basic_documents/4E3Vs6EpTvIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pessimism+never+won+any+battle&pg=PA2007&printsec=frontcover">his mantra</a> was “pessimism never won any battle”.</p>
<p>Thus Sinatra’s musical version of a 1950s American Christmas was firmer, less poignant. For him, Martin replaced the line about “muddling through” with a new, neutral one: “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” He even changed “Someday soon we all will be together” to “Through the years we all will be together”, removing the equivocation of the future “someday”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Phoebe Bridgers version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.</span></figcaption>
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<p>After Sinatra’s erasure of the emotive wartime spirit of the original, subsequent cover versions of the song often opted for jolly (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsMrCFeacS0">Ella Fitzgerald</a>, 1960), lush (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SpY1K2ngLo">The Carpenters</a>, 1978) or dramatic (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZukU08k_4M">The Jackson 5</a>, whose 1970 version almost sounds like a James Bond theme in places) tones.</p>
<p>But it’s striking that in the 21st century, several leading artists who are not at all associated with the classic American songbook returned to the sadder feel of the original. Indeed, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAJJK3j6MYc">Coldplay</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnEqv8WcVq8">Sam Smith</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05DMyR5ZLHA">Phoebe Bridgers’</a> versions are almost bleaker than Garland’s – fragile music for a fragile world.</p>
<p><em>Professor Dominic Broomfield-McHugh will be <a href="https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/merry-little">giving a lecture</a> on the Christmas classic Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas at St Paul’s Church, London, December 6 at 18:00</em></p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Broomfield-McHugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Songs that evoked holidays “just like the ones I used to know” tugged at the heartstrings of a nation receptive to the idea of a nostalgic past rather than a fragile present.Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, Professor of Musicology, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2150532023-10-18T19:06:25Z2023-10-18T19:06:25ZIn 2003, one in four Aussie households owned Innocent Eyes. Delta Goodrem deserves a place in our music history<p>I remember when my family bought Innocent Eyes, at a JB Hi-Fi off the Nepean Highway. I was 12 and had just started high school. It was the first time I really understood the power of music; I felt like Delta was imparting words of wisdom through this time of transition. I played that original copy so much it started skipping and I had to buy a replacement. </p>
<p>Delta’s music has continued to define my life. It was the catalyst for lifelong friendships. The music bonded us, but our relationships transformed into something greater. We’ve worked together, travelled the world, and stood by one another on wedding days. </p>
<p>My story is one of many significantly shaped by this record. Innocent Eyes is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_Australia">second highest selling</a> Australian album in Australia of all time, only behind John Farnham’s Whispering Jack. It sold 4.5 million copies worldwide, including 1.2 million in Australia. To put that into context: one in every four Australian households owned a copy. </p>
<p>So why is Delta Goodrem overlooked in Australian music history?</p>
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<h2>A run-away success</h2>
<p>Released 20 years ago, Innocent Eyes achieved unprecedented success, staying at number one for a record-breaking 29 weeks (that’s seven-and-a-half months). She became the <a href="https://www.aria.com.au/charts/2003/singles-chart">first artist</a> to have five number one singles on the Australian charts from a debut album.</p>
<p>At the 2003 ARIA awards, the 18-year-old <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-09-22/abc-wins-first-aria-award/1482198">had a record ten nominations</a>, taking home every award she was nominated for, with the exception of album of the year (she twice lost to herself, for a total of seven wins). As Powderfinger accepted for Vulture Street, they joked “Can I see that envelope please? This is truly, completely unexpected”. </p>
<p>In the weeks leading up to the ARIAs, it was unclear whether Delta would attend: her diagnosis with Hodgkin’s lymphoma was front page news. The awards were Delta’s first public appearance in months; the night became an unofficial celebration of her return. </p>
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<p>Delta recently <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyC7XaNRwcb/">went through her archives</a> from this time as part of a sold-out 20th anniversary tour, a celebration of an album that captured the hearts and attention of the Australian public in a way that hasn’t been replicated. </p>
<p>This was not a comeback tour. Delta has remained an integral part of the Australian music scene. She’s one of our country’s standout performers, taking to the stage at AFL Grand Finals, Sydney Mardi Gras and the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony (twice). </p>
<p>She has released duets with <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1KSYEp78sFWjcmQIPCqLKd">Tony Bennett</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgurkRvgos0">Olivia Newton-John</a>, written songs for <a href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/delta-goodrem-teams-up-with-her-idol-celine-dion-ng-8ad32e6bbe66945a66c21d1328aef841">Celine Dion</a>, and <a href="https://youtu.be/8IrVorbjRdk?si=bJjM-0VAGTBymSpy&t=29">filled in for Adele</a> with less than an hour to rehearse. </p>
<p>Delta has mentored artists on The Voice; performed as Grizabella in Cats; her latest film, Love Is In The Air, has been <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cx9LvrfvBwv/">streamed 12 million times</a>; and she’s achieved five number one albums.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-roads-led-back-to-ramsay-street-for-a-cul-de-sac-of-memory-and-nostalgia-a-fitting-neighbours-finale-187774">All roads led back to Ramsay Street for a cul-de-sac of memory and nostalgia: a fitting Neighbours finale</a>
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<h2>But no hall of fame?</h2>
<p>It was <a href="https://www.aria.com.au/awards/news/jet-to-be-inducted-into-aria-hall-of-fame">recently announced</a> Jet would be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. Their debut album, Get Born, was also released in 2003, featuring the smash hit Are You Gonna Be My Girl?.</p>
<p>Jet are an incredible Australian rock success story, with <a href="https://www.bmg.com/au/news/BMG-acquires-Jets-recordings-catalogue.html">6.5 million records</a> sold worldwide. </p>
<p>But their impact and legacy doesn’t match Delta’s <a href="https://deltagoodrem.com/pages/about">9 million records</a> sold. Get Born was certified <a href="https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jet-get-born-tour-48293/">nine-times platinum</a>; Innocent Eyes is <a href="https://deltagoodrem.com/pages/about">23 times platinum</a>. </p>
<p>In the decade to 2010, <a href="https://www.aria.com.au/charts/2000/end-of-decade-albums-chart">she sold more albums in Australia</a> than any other artist – local or international.</p>
<p>Since the hall of fame began in 1988, 80 bands and artists have been celebrated. Only <a href="https://www.aria.com.au/hall-of-fame/">11 have been women</a>. The musical legacy of women <a href="https://www.soapunk.org/resources/All%20the%20girls%20in%20town%20-%20The%20missing%20women%20of%20Australian%20rock.pdf">is not recognised in the same ways</a> as their male counterparts.</p>
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<p>Many “best of” music lists are dominated by male artists. Rolling Stone’s <a href="https://au.rollingstone.com/rolling-stones-200-greatest-australian-albums-of-all-time/">Greatest Australian Albums of All Time</a> only features two females in the top 20 (Kylie and The Go-Betweens). Characteristics of “good” music and artistic integrity often hold masculine connotations. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2010.0098">This impacts</a> which artists achieve consecrated status. </p>
<p>Innocent Eyes defined a generation of Australians, many who were teenage girls. Popular music and culture with predominantly female audiences is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143001001520">often dismissed</a>. Rock is seen as “authentic” and masterful; pop is not worthy of such acclaim. While “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism_and_poptimism">poptimism</a>” helped legitimise the genre, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2017-aria-awards-are-still-off-key-when-it-comes-to-gender-88301">there’s still work to be done</a> to shift these perceptions.</p>
<p>The elevation of Jet but not Delta to the ARIA hall of fame is evidence of how Delta’s talents as a songwriter and musician are underrated. She commands the piano, and has written almost every song she’s released. When speaking with people about why I’ve been a fan for so long, I always explain you have to see her live: Delta’s vocals are phenomenal, she truly connects. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/music-recommendation-algorithms-are-unfair-to-female-artists-but-we-can-change-that-158016">Music recommendation algorithms are unfair to female artists, but we can change that</a>
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<h2>This album means everything</h2>
<p>I’ve been speaking with Delta fans as part of my PhD research on music fandoms. One fan described the album as “going home to my parent’s place […] no matter what is happening in the world, that album is a safe place.”</p>
<p>For many fans, this album means everything. These songs were the soundtrack to our adolescence, and have continued to wrap themselves around us. </p>
<p>“It is truly one of the greatest honours of my life to have written an album that might have meant something to you, or been a part of your life,” Delta said on stage last month.</p>
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<p>At the peak of Innocent Eyes’ success, weeks before her cancer diagnosis, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/delta-goodrems-secret-fan-weapon-how-she-became-the-queen-of-the-instore-appearance-spending-up-to-14-hours-meeting-her-fans/news-story/163b3a34dd35f7cdcd4ff090998e6f66">8,000 fans descended</a> on Highpoint Shopping Centre. She stayed signing CDs for 14 hours.</p>
<p>Music has a unique ability to <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/volume/4390">document time and construct identity</a>. There is a sense of nostalgia for the time we first heard these songs, and reflections of what they mean to us now.</p>
<p>“Iconic” Australian music often reinforces the pub rock canon, overlooking the significant impact of other songs and artists. </p>
<p>Innocent Eyes – and Delta Goodrem – deserve a place in the cultural memory and legacy of Australian music. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Pattison has previously worked with Delta Goodrem's social media team.</span></em></p>Delta’s music defined the lives of teenage girls like me – but she is still waiting to join the hall of fame.Kate Pattison, PhD Candidate, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2044912023-06-21T09:04:52Z2023-06-21T09:04:52ZHow the Windrush generation transformed music in Britain<p>There was a black musical presence in Britain many centuries before the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush at London’s Tilbury dock. </p>
<p>In the Tudor period, it was fashionable for wealthy households to employ and enjoy black musicians, particularly within the royal courts. The most well known were royal trumpeter <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/john-blanke/#gs.v6cfco">John Blanke</a> and violinist <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-33211440">Joseph Emidy</a>.</p>
<p>During subsequent centuries spanning the Tudor, Stuart, Georgian and Victorian periods, there were many prolific black musicians in Britain. Composers <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/george-bridgetower">George Bridgetower</a>, <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/who-was-samuel-coleridge-taylor-what-famous-for/">Samuel Coleridge-Taylor</a> and <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/ignatius-sancho">Ignatius Sancho</a> were well known. But <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183gztr">there were also many street musicians</a>, known in the 1800s as “<a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/12/the-war-against-noise">negro melodists</a>” and touring vaudeville performers, who were described by social historian <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/london-labour-and-the-london-poor-by-henry-mayhew">Henry Mayhew</a> in his writings on the London working class.</p>
<p>With Windrush, however, came <a href="http://kemetdevelopment.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Paul-Gilroy-The-Black-Atlantic.pdf">new forms of music</a>, which were emerging from the music scene across the Atlantic. A dockside performance of London Is The Place For Me by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/16/lord-kitchener-empire-windrush">Trinidad’s top calypsonian</a>, Lord Kitchener, emphasised the commitment that Windrush arrivals had with the empire through its reference to Britain as the “mother country”. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>This article is part of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/windrush-75-139220?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Windrush75&utm_content=InArticleTop">Windrush 75 series</a>, which marks the 75th anniversary of the HMT Empire Windrush arriving in Britain. The stories in this series explore the history and impact of the hundreds of passengers who disembarked to help rebuild after the second world war.</em></p>
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<p>As well as Lord Kitchener, on board the ship were several well-known musicians. Singer and actress <a href="https://epicchq.com/story/mona-baptiste-the-windrush-passenger-who-settled-in-ireland/">Mona Baptiste</a> arrived from Trinidad with fellow calypsonian compatriots <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lord-beginner-mn0000280344">Lord Beginner</a> and the too-often-forgotten <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/lord-woodbine-the-forgotten-sixth-beatle-2015140.html">Lord Woodbine</a>. </p>
<p>After settling in Liverpool, Woodbine became a singer-songwriter, promoter and uncontracted manager for a short-lived band named <a href="https://beatles.fandom.com/wiki/The_Silver_Beetles">The Silver Beetles</a>, featuring two young lads named Paul McCartney and John Lennon.</p>
<p>The Windrush arrivals generally found it difficult to gather in established municipal spaces. Clubs and public houses legally operated <a href="https://camra.org.uk/learn-discover/the-basics/what-was-the-colour-bar-2/#:%7E:text=Pubs%20throughout%20the%20country%20used,not%20be%20served%20at%20all">colour bars</a> (which prohibited non-white patrons) well into the 1960s. </p>
<p>As a result, West Indians were forced to create their own alternative spaces for leisure. Churches, shebeens (illegal drinking establishments) or Blues parties were developed as spaces that were open to all local community members.</p>
<p>It wasn’t unusual to find Irish women in West Indian shebeens, as by the end of the 1950s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/21265/bass-culture-by-lloyd-bradley/9780140237634">considerable camaraderie</a> existed between these two sets of often-despised arrivals.</p>
<p>These venues were turned into profitable business ventures that highlighted the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Black-Men-in-Britain-%20An-Ethnographic-Portrait-of-the-Post-Windrush%20Generation/Monrose/p/book/9780367647223">cultural and communal significance</a> of the newly arrived sound systems (powerful mobile speakers used to play music at events such as street parties and the collective of deejays, engineers and MCs that run them) in Britain. </p>
<h2>Rise of the sound system</h2>
<p>Sound systems transformed the way music was played and listened to in Britain. Thanks to soundmen (those who own or manage a sound system) such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jun/04/count-suckle">Count Suckle</a>, <a href="http://www.wakingthedead.org/duke-vin.html">Duke Vin</a>, <a href="https://sirlloydcoxsone.com/bio/">Lloyd Coxsone</a> and the recently deceased <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/12/jah-shaka-dub-and-reggae-pioneer-at-the-helm-of-london-sound-system-culture-has-died">Jah Shaka</a>, sounds became an important cultural possession for black people. They were one of the few manufactured commodities that were used to celebrate the aesthetics and creativity of black culture.</p>
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<p>In <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55161-2_3">Narratives from Beyond the UK Reggae Bassline</a>, sociologist Les Back explains: </p>
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<p>Since the mid-1970s, the name Jah Shaka has become synonymous with Rastafarian roots music, dubwise and Marcus Garvey’s black consciousness … Shaka sound system was a vital part of London black life.</p>
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<p>Despite the rising tide of racism during this time, the music played on sound systems began to <a href="http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/3342/">gather patronage</a> from both black and white youth subcultures. </p>
<p>In response to <a href="https://www.impressions-gallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/RAR-Info-sheet.pdf">racist comments</a> made by guitarist Eric Clapton at a concert in Birmingham in 1976, photographer Red Saunders and designer Roger Huddle organised the <a href="https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/the-bloomsbury-handbook-of-popular-music-and-social-class/ch4-it-s-up-to-you-class-status-and-punk-politics-in-rock-against-racism">Rock Against Racism movement</a>, which ran from 1976 to 1981.</p>
<p>Major record labels <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/life-death-and-afterlife-of-the-record-store-9781501384509/">seized the opportunity</a> to capitalise on the emerging marketability of reggae music and prompted moguls such as Richard Branson to form subsidiary record labels geared toward the genre.</p>
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<img alt="People marching with Rock Against Racism banners in London, black and white photo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523818/original/file-20230502-2540-1rui3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523818/original/file-20230502-2540-1rui3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523818/original/file-20230502-2540-1rui3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523818/original/file-20230502-2540-1rui3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523818/original/file-20230502-2540-1rui3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523818/original/file-20230502-2540-1rui3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523818/original/file-20230502-2540-1rui3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Rock Against Racism event in Trafalgar Square, London, 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rock_Against_Racism_1978.jpg">Sarah Wyld</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>As producer Lloyd Coxsone said in a personal conversation with me: “Reggae has its roots in Jamaica but the business end of the music was in England.” </p>
<p>Sound systems were also pivotal in honing black British talent. They led artists such as <a href="https://www.tippairie.com/">Tippa Irie</a>, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lives-in-brief-smiley-culture-35k9xndv7vw">Smiley Culture</a> and <a href="https://maxipriest.com/">Maxi Priest</a> to become household names once their material charted.</p>
<p>As sociologist <a href="https://irgg.yale.edu/event/conversation-between-william-henry-michael-veal-what-deejay-said-critique-street">Lez Henry explains</a>: “Black youths in Britain, by way of the Deejay performance (via sound systems), created a living history that challenged their negative depiction.”</p>
<p>Former soundman <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315569482-8/men-cry-lisa-%20amanda-palmer">Dennis Bovell agrees</a> and suggests that the post-Windrush generation during the 1980s grew West Indian music into something distinctively British, seen in music such as Steve McQueen’s film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/17/lovers-rock-review-steve-mcqueen-small-axe">Lovers Rock</a> for example.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/small-axe-what-steve-mcqueen-got-right-and-wrong-about-lovers-rock-151068">Small Axe: what Steve McQueen got right and wrong about lovers rock</a>
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<img alt="Men setting up a large array of speakers on a street in Notting Hilll." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523820/original/file-20230502-2540-zimc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523820/original/file-20230502-2540-zimc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523820/original/file-20230502-2540-zimc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523820/original/file-20230502-2540-zimc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523820/original/file-20230502-2540-zimc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523820/original/file-20230502-2540-zimc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523820/original/file-20230502-2540-zimc5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Setting up a sound system at Notting Hill Carnival, 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Notting_Hill_Carnival_2015_(20408408623).jpg">Adrian Scottow</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>A similar trend occurred with other subgenres, such as mod/boss reggae and two-tone in the 1970s and 1980s. It continued into the 1990s with the emergence of dubstep, jungle and more in recent times, grime.</p>
<p>In her book, <a href="https://repeaterbooks.com/product/terraformed-young-black-lives-in-the-inner-city/">Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City</a>, urban music researcher Joy White explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Grime’s sonic origins flow through the musical practice of the black diaspora, namely hip-hop, reggae (particularly dancehall) jungle and UK garage, whilst Jamaican and UK sound system culture and practice also had a significant influence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A further example of this is the impact of migrants from Africa, who have skilfully fused music from the continent into new and distinctive hybrids of black music such as Afro-beat and Afro-swing, which have become exceedingly popular in Britain.</p>
<p>The Windrush arrival transformed music in Britain, either by way of the savvy and sophisticated social commentary provided by calypsonians with their steel bands, or the sound systems and their deejays. </p>
<p>Their input assisted the development of the fertile British music scene of today and positively enhanced the cadence, rhythm and tempo of British culture.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533175/original/file-20230621-18-hw1fuf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533175/original/file-20230621-18-hw1fuf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533175/original/file-20230621-18-hw1fuf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533175/original/file-20230621-18-hw1fuf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533175/original/file-20230621-18-hw1fuf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=181&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533175/original/file-20230621-18-hw1fuf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=181&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533175/original/file-20230621-18-hw1fuf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=181&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>You can <em><a href="https://bit.ly/3DdOERY">download the e-book here</a></em>. Thank you for your interest.</p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kenny Monrose does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The arrival of Windrush brought new forms of music to Britain.Kenny Monrose, Researcher, Department of Sociology, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2064792023-05-31T12:38:25Z2023-05-31T12:38:25ZHow the sounds of ‘Succession’ shred the grandeur and respect the characters so desperately try to project<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528918/original/file-20230529-25-6xjh0a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=376%2C0%2C913%2C669&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While the Roy siblings are shielded by their wealth, the show's music chips away at their armor.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/05/21/arts/21succession/21succession-superJumbo.jpg">Macall Polay/HBO</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>HBO’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7660850/">Succession</a>” delivered its grand finale on May 28, 2023 – the climax of four award-packed seasons of searing put-downs, nihilistic humor and desperate power plays. </p>
<p>The show tells the story of ailing media tycoon Logan Roy and his four horrid children who aim to inherit his empire. I loved it because it rendered despicable people in power as human – funny, pathetic, capable of deep feeling – without once trying to redeem them.</p>
<p><a href="https://music.berkeley.edu/people/delia-casadei/">But as a music historian</a>, I will miss the series’ use of music and sound the most. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/arts/television/succession-soundtrack-classical-music.html">As many critics have noticed</a>, one of the series’ best elements is its soundtrack, which is as complex and propulsive as the drama it accompanies.</p>
<p>To me, the show’s clever sound design, combined with composer <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1615109/">Nicholas Britell’s</a> gleefully dark score, reflects a level of emotional sophistication that is unrivaled on television. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="93" data-image="" data-title="The theme song for 'Succession,' composed by Nicholas Britell" data-size="1488813" data-source="YouTube/HBO" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77PsqaWzwG0" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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The theme song for ‘Succession,’ composed by Nicholas Britell.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77PsqaWzwG0">YouTube/HBO</a><span class="download"><span>1.42 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2816/937bb330-fe5b-11ed-a833-79192378bba5.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<h2>Corrupting classical music</h2>
<p>Most contemporary political dramas are about corruption, and music is great at progressively turning something seemingly wholesome into something sour. </p>
<p>Traditionally, this is done by adding <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/markdevoto/files/2015/10/Chromaticism.pdf">chromaticism</a> – the black keys of the piano keyboard – into the chords and melody, which produces a sense of darkening and dissonance. But these days, anything sounding weird – an off-beat rhythm, an unexpected sound – can do the trick. It is the composer’s skill in layering the strangeness into the music that makes the difference. </p>
<p>Britell <a href="https://youtu.be/X0WzqanwlG0?t=216">has described</a> being inspired by European late-18th century music. And the theme of “Succession” does draw from a couple of unmemorable bars from Beethoven’s “<a href="https://youtu.be/SrcOcKYQX3c?t=139">Pathétique Sonata</a>,” slowed down and with a few changed notes. </p>
<p>However, I’d say the theme song’s soundworld is closer to the opening dance of Sergei Prokofiev’s 1935 ballet “<a href="https://youtu.be/u3r5I9RolCA?t=101">Romeo and Juliet</a>” or Sergei Rachmaninov’s <a href="https://youtu.be/L1D-EQNTZWI?t=15">famous 1892 piano prelude in C Sharp minor</a>: big romantic pieces that swing between bass notes and thick block chords like the batter of a church bell.</p>
<p>But Britell then adds details that work in outlandish tension with the romantic musical language he’s adopted.</p>
<p>For example, the piano that plays the theme song is audibly out of tune. That’s no accident. Meanwhile, the melody, which is in a high register, awkwardly tries, but ultimately fails, to squirm its way to a brighter key. Throughout the show, there are a lot of reality-show-style pans to the faces of characters saying things like “I am excited.” This is their music.</p>
<p>The rhythm is littered by small dissonant accents in the upper register of the piano that sound like a fun-house version of the “low battery” sound on a cellphone. The effect is alarming – and oddly befitting of the topic of a corrupt media conglomerate.</p>
<p>Lastly, Britell is a hip-hop beat maker and layers the theme song with a cheesy 1990s synthesizer beat. This adds bounce, and a smirk, to the romantic broodiness of the chords and melody. </p>
<p>In his very 21st-century way, Britell festoons earnest Romantic music with details that gleefully desecrate it, bringing viewers right into the psychological dynamics of the show’s protagonists: a hunger for power, accompanied by levels of self-loathing that vacillate between comedy and tragedy.</p>
<h2>Brood too much and the effect is lost</h2>
<p>For comparison, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856010/">House of Cards</a>,” which follows a crooked politician’s quest for the U.S. presidency, and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4236770/">Yellowstone</a>,” which tells the story of a Montana landowning family’s mission to ward off developers, Indigenous leaders and environmental activists, also attempt to convey a grim mood and crookedness in their music. </p>
<p>Both shows have rightly garnered attention and praise. Yet they, unlike “Succession,” have, in my view, underwhelming scores.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="96" data-image="" data-title="The title theme for 'House of Cards,' composed by Jeff Beal." data-size="1537197" data-source="YouTube/Simon" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w-O60x1bYk" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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The title theme for ‘House of Cards,’ composed by Jeff Beal.
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<p>Their theme songs are symphonic, which befits the grandeur of the topic and obscene privilege of the characters; tunes are carried in the deeper, lower range, rather than the more customary bright, high register. Both theme songs make heavy use of the lower strings of violas, cellos and double basses, which further darken the sonic palette. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="62" data-image="" data-title="The title theme for 'Yellowstone,' composed by Brian Tyler." data-size="996970" data-source="YouTube/EndtheProject" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOgBtFnZmY" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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The title theme for ‘Yellowstone,’ composed by Brian Tyler.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOgBtFnZmY">YouTube/EndtheProject</a><span class="download"><span>974 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2814/ba6dc690-fe3d-11ed-9bd9-db6d263d8a0c.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<p>The composers also make an effort to signal corruption through momentarily dissonant chords or notes. At the end of the opening credits of “House of Cards,” you can hear it <a href="https://youtu.be/9w-O60x1bYk?t=70">in the twang of the electric guitar</a>. And in “Yellowstone,” Tyler uses <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/markdevoto/files/2015/10/Chromaticism.pdf">chromaticism</a> to <a href="https://youtu.be/1WOgBtFnZmY?t=23">decorate the melody</a>. </p>
<p>These tricks, however, don’t quite land. </p>
<p>In order for the stain of corruption to stand out, musically and otherwise, it has to operate against a relatively clean background. The scores for both “House of Cards” and “Yellowstone” are already dark and twisty to begin with, which makes the “staining” effect harder to pull off. </p>
<p>This is where Britell’s astute ways of combining brightness and darkness in “Succession’s” music make all the difference.</p>
<h2>Hearing what the characters hear</h2>
<p>The unusual sound design in “Succession” also unveiled the series’ psychological complexity.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nfi.edu/sound-design/">Sound design</a> indicates the ways in which all sounds, from noises to dialogue and music, are mixed into the soundtrack.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/succession-recap-series-premiere-season-1-episode-1-celebration.html">In the pilot episode</a>, viewers meet Kendall Roy, an eminently slappable finance bro and heir apparent to his father’s company. He’s being chauffeured to a business meeting, and he’s bouncing in the back seat to the Beastie Boys’ “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny6hwUOFvlw">An Open Letter to New York</a>.” </p>
<p>It’s utterly cringeworthy: a wealthy white dude using hip-hop as emotional fluffing. </p>
<p>The Beastie Boys, as Britell and the showrunners must know, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/popular-music/article/abs/beastie-boys-jews-in-whiteface/ECA1F2EFFF95A757B7F70A9A2B183921">have been criticized</a> for being white Jewish musicians parading as white working-class boys aping, in turn, Black hip-hop artists. At first the Beastie Boys blare out on the soundtrack; seconds later, their music disappears into Kendall’s headphones, and viewers hear his whiny voice rapping the lyrics. </p>
<p>Suddenly, we suspect he might hate himself more than we already do. </p>
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<p>Film scholar <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/15053054">Claudia Gorbman</a> first theorized the effect toyed with here by “Succession’s” award-winning sound designers, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003635/">Nicholas Renbeck</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0471397/">Andy Kris</a>.</p>
<p>Gorbman highlights the distinction between “diegetic music” – music playing in the background, say, at a party, or ambient sounds, like cutlery and crockery – that can be heard by the characters in the film, and “<a href="https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/diegetic-vs-non-diegetic-sound-guide-75566/">non-diegetic music</a>,” which is music heard only by the film’s audience and not by the characters. </p>
<p>The balance between these two kinds of music and sounds creates the psychological setup for the story: Diegetic implies that the characters’ world is not quite the audience’s own. Non-diegetic, on the other hand, implies that the filmmakers are conveying the characters’ emotions to the audience, like when the music comes in as two romantic leads share a kiss. </p>
<p>The switch from non-diegetic to diegetic in Kendall’s entrance gives viewers a sense that they are spying on his fragile self-delusion. He is slippery, tweaky, unknown – even to himself.</p>
<h2>Haunted by water</h2>
<p>Britell’s music, and the show’s use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, may be one of the reasons why, even four seasons in, that none of the show’s fans could confidently anticipate who would succeed the family’s patriarch.</p>
<p>The series that begins with Kendall fittingly ends with him, too, as he walks, in a daze, along the Hudson River. The non-diegetic theme song plays in the background one last time. Then, for a brief moment – before a hard cut to a black screen – the sound goes diegetic: Viewers hear, with Kendall, the sound of the river flowing.</p>
<p>It’s a shocking moment. The show’s sound designers <a href="https://www.asoundeffect.com/succession-sound/">deliberately avoided ambient noises</a> so as to show how the Roy siblings are too privileged and too busy scheming to notice their surroundings. </p>
<p>The moment Kendall hears the Hudson, everyone understands – first by ear, then by sight – that this story is over.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206479/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Delia Casadei does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Composer Nicholas Britell festoons earnest Romantic music with sounds that gleefully desecrate it, underscoring the show’s emotional core: a lust for power joined by immense self-loathing.Delia Casadei, Assistant Professor of Music, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2063952023-05-25T07:18:39Z2023-05-25T07:18:39ZEmpowerment, individual strength and the many facets of love: why I fell for Tina Turner<p>For singers – amateur and professional alike – the name Tina Turner evokes instant reverence: Turner is a singer’s singer and perhaps the performer’s performer. </p>
<p>A highly successful songwriter, the consummate dancer and fittingly ranked as one of the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-greatest-artists-147446/">100 Greatest Artists of All Time</a> by Rolling Stone magazine, Turner was the ultimate entertainer. </p>
<p>Upon hearing of her death, I was deeply saddened. I immediately recalled the intoxicating power and timbre of her voice, her mesmerising energy and her commanding performances. </p>
<p>I started singing sections of songs such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2T5_seDNZE">Proud Mary</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Lehkou2Do">River Deep Mountain High</a> and of course iconic original songs, such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I07249JX8w4">Nutbush City Limits</a>. This was an intimate, sentimental, nostalgic and danceable song celebrating Turner’s roots growing up in the small town of Nutbush, Tennessee. </p>
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<h2>Fierce hard work</h2>
<p>My first encounter with Turner’s brilliance and might was hearing her hits of the mid-1980s, with songs like Graham Lyle’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGpFcHTxjZs">What’s Love Got To Do With It</a>, Al Green’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rFB4nj_GRc">Let’s Stay Together</a> and – love it or hate it – the powerful rock ballad <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcm-tOGiva0">We Don’t Need Another Hero</a>, the theme song to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. </p>
<p>Once introduced, I immersed myself in her extensive back catalogue, soaking in her early 1960s soul, funk and emerging rock tracks. </p>
<p>Today, I flashed back to memories of the physical energy and technical focus and practice it took just attempting to sing any Turner songs in my 20s. </p>
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<p>The degree of difficulty required to perform as Turner did cannot be understated. </p>
<p>To sing with such consistency in such high registers, belting out song after song live with impeccable pitch, breath control, fitness, articulation and rhythmic precision is one thing. To do all of this while dancing with intense pace to highly choreographed routines throughout each show is on a whole other level. </p>
<p>Her performance practice exemplified fierce hard work – with an immense energy and vitality in live performance. </p>
<p>Try singing any of her songs at a Karaoke bar. Very quickly you gain some insight into the technical demands her songs require. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-some-of-the-best-known-tunes-like-happy-birthday-are-the-hardest-to-sing-130933">Why some of the best-known tunes, like 'Happy Birthday,' are the hardest to sing</a>
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<h2>Making songs her own</h2>
<p>For every singer, selecting a repertoire to cover is an ongoing quest. </p>
<p>In a sea of the world’s great songs, Turner selected songs she could make her own. She remodelled every song she sang - realigning them so much that we now think of them as hers first.</p>
<p>There are so many examples. My favourites are Turner’s formidable versions of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIPoC6JlP38">I Can’t Stand the Rain</a> (originally by Ann Peebles), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC5E8ie2pdM">The Best</a> (Bonnie Tyler) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4QnalIHlVc">Private Dancer</a> (Mark Knopfler). </p>
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<p>A great deal of the songs Turner was known for through the 1960s were covers. Turner’s forceful and expressive vocal delivery gave new life to these songs, realigning them with her uniquely identifiable sound and choice of vocal register, her phrasing choices and her punctuated rhythmic delivery. </p>
<p>Turner is perhaps less known as a songwriter, but her diverse songwriting demonstrated her skill and thoughtful, well-crafted lyrics. On her 1972 album Feel Good, nine of the ten songs were written by Turner. From 1973 to 1977, Turner composed all the songs on each album. </p>
<p>One of my favourites of her original songs is the power ballad <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l__zi3OtrQ0">Be Tender With Me Baby</a>. It speaks of a request for understanding, of her loneliness and vulnerability, sung with Turner’s intensity. </p>
<p>Across her original songs and covers, Turner’s repertoire spoke of empowerment, individual strength and the many facets of love. Beyond performing, Turner represented inner strength, spiritual depth and resilience against adversity.</p>
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<p>In 1996, when Turner was 57, she recorded her ninth studio album, Wildest Dreams.</p>
<p>One track, Something Beautiful Remains, may not be as familiar as many of her other hits, but it is the song I have kept returning to today. In the chorus, Turner’s lyrics are sadly perfectly fitting:</p>
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<p>For every life that fades<br>
Something beautiful remains.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tina-turner-had-a-history-of-high-blood-pressure-and-kidney-disease-heres-how-one-leads-to-the-other-206392">Tina Turner had a history of high blood pressure and kidney disease. Here's how one leads to the other</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206395/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leigh Carriage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The legendary singer has died at 83. Her performance practice exemplified fierce hard work.Leigh Carriage, Senior Lecturer in Music, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1895512022-10-23T19:02:20Z2022-10-23T19:02:20ZDissecting Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, 50 years after we first heard its infectious grooves<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482851/original/file-20220905-12-jzm9ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C2%2C1847%2C1191&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Soul Train via Getty Image</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On October 24 1972, Stevie Wonder released his 15th album Talking Book and the world heard the infectious grooves and seamless vocal delivery of the song Superstition for the very first time.</p>
<p>Superstition reached number one in the Billboard Hot 100 and on the soul singles chart. </p>
<p>The song has been covered by an astounding number of artists, from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbxmmFsofA4">Mel Torme</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dNNl79_2Yc">Stevie Ray Vaughan and Macy Gray</a>, French musician <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzwiyeLvZwg">Tété</a> and a unique mashup from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QLSNwFBFyI">Pomplamoose</a>.</p>
<p>Superstition is frequently played at gigs and gatherings all over the globe because the bass riff and driving drum groove have so much <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUIpSe7lcto">dance appeal</a> – a mix of the unexpected syncopation and repetition of the chorus hook. The song feels alive.</p>
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<h2>A simple structure</h2>
<p>The listener can’t help but respond directly to the infectious opening groove played by Wonder. </p>
<p>Three key instruments forge the captivating and carefully arranged funk groove in the introduction: the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clavinet">Hohner Clavinet</a> (an electronic harpsichord – more on this later), drums and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_synthesizer">Moog bass</a>. The cohesion is musical magic. </p>
<p>Superstition’s recording engineer Malcolm Cecil <a href="https://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_D5482985134149A5927DED9849248EF">recalled</a>
how Wonder recorded the entire song on drums first, with no reference other than the song in his head, then the keyboard bass part, and then the Clavinet. </p>
<p>This illustrates how complete his conceptualisation of the song was prior to recording. </p>
<p>The song’s structure is simple. The introduction sets up the familiar groove with its static harmony, pulsing bass and keyboard riff. </p>
<p>The verse proceeds over the same static harmony, with a new bass riff introduced halfway through, effecting a shift to a higher dynamic level. </p>
<p>The chorus releases the tension with a sophisticated cadence, reflecting jazz sensibilities and revealing the breadth of Wonder’s musical knowledge. </p>
<p>This structure is repeated, followed by an instrumental version of the chorus. Then there’s a final verse and chorus before a long instrumental section built on the verse riff leads to the final fade out. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/groovy-findings-researching-how-and-why-music-moves-you-112959">Groovy findings: Researching how and why music moves you</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Unexpected instruments</h2>
<p>One of the most memorable parts of the song is the signature played on the Hohner Clavinet.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7CY6aJtegc">Clavinet</a> looks like an electric keyboard, but it is an electro-mechanical string instrument originally developed for the performance of classical harpsichord and clavichord music.</p>
<p>Like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_organ">Hammond organ</a> of the 1930s, it was soon discovered and adopted by many contemporary musicians. </p>
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<p>Wonder had already used the instrument on I Was Made to Love Her (1967), Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day (1968) and I Don’t Know Why (1969). According to music journalist <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2722025-innervisions">Martin Horn</a>, Wonder wanted to use the Clavinet on Superstition to “full effect” to “show off”. Wonder had described the instrument as “funky, dirty, stinky”.</p>
<p>In some ways, the Clavinet is doing the job a guitarist might normally do. It plays the single note riff at the core of Wonder’s song, and chord parts similar to what you would hear from a strummed guitar. But there are also several other barely audible tracks of clavinet, which subtly add to the texture. </p>
<p>Superstition’s bass line is played on an analog synthesiser called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX0XPdmSfXI">TONTO</a> (The Original New Timbral Orchestra). This is an extraordinary collection of electronics which filled an entire room, adding to the song with a totally unique sonic palette – akin to a PVC pipe hit with a thong.</p>
<h2>Standing the test of time</h2>
<p>The contributions from the horn parts are also integral, played by Steve Madaio on trumpet and Trevor Lawrence on the tenor saxophone. </p>
<p>The horns first appear playing in unison with the bass line in the second half of the verse, emphasising the lift in energy. They play long notes in the chorus emphasising the melody, then reinforce the rhythmic figure at the crest of resolution. </p>
<p>Their part culminates in a powerful instrumental hook answering the vocal hook, “superstition ain’t the way”. These parts are repeated in the ensuing verses and choruses. </p>
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<p>After the final chorus the horns cycle through a sequence containing the verse riff, the chorus hook and a short passage of long notes adapted from the chorus melody. </p>
<p>The melody of Superstition is very singable. Wonder’s delivery is fluid and highly expressive. He sings relatively short phrases, allowing the keyboard riffs to fill the space at the end of each phrase. </p>
<p>It isn’t until the chorus that Wonder delivers the first effortless vocal lick on “suffer”. His vocal delivery remains understated, with occasional punctuated phrases, gravel tones and a scream within the horn part. </p>
<p>The song ends with a long 50 second fade out, reinforcing the riff. </p>
<p>Superstition and Wonder’s vocal delivery is so dependable, groovy and secure musically. The listener feels free to give themselves over fully, to trust Wonder completely and lose themselves for a moment. </p>
<p>Superstition stands the test of time. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-were-obsessed-with-music-from-our-youth-154864">Why we're obsessed with music from our youth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leigh Carriage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On October 24 1972, the world heard the infectious grooves and seamless vocal delivery of the song Superstition for the very first time.Leigh Carriage, Senior Lecturer in Music, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1852852022-10-10T12:23:18Z2022-10-10T12:23:18ZWho invented music? The search for stone flutes, clay whistles and the dawn of song<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477916/original/file-20220805-32086-2pgf4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C10000%2C5000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Something people today have in common with civilizations past: a love of music.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/stone-statue-head-wearing-headphones-in-remote-royalty-free-image/1270407005?adppopup=true">peepo/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Who invented music? – Rom, age 7, Las Vegas, Nevada</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>The short answer is: No one knows who invented music.</p>
<p>No historical evidence exists to tell us exactly who sang the first song, or whistled the first tune, or made the first rhythmic sounds that resembled what we know today as music. </p>
<p>But researchers do know it happened thousands of years ago. The earliest civilizations throughout Africa, Europe and Asia had music. Back then, many believed it was a divine creation, a gift from the gods. </p>
<p>Indeed, gods and goddesses from many religions and mythologies are associated with music. Stories and works of art tell us that the African god Àyàn <a href="https://news.clas.ufl.edu/ede-yan-the-language-of-yan-in-yoruba-art-and-ritual-of-egungun/">was a drummer</a>; the Greek god Apollo <a href="https://www.hellenicgods.org/the-lyre-of-apollo">played the lyre</a>, a string instrument. In the Book of Genesis, Jubal – a descendant of Adam – is identified as the <a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/GEN.4.21">father of the harp and flute</a>. </p>
<p>Scientists will probably never be able to credit one person, or even a group of people, with music’s invention. <a href="https://arts.ufl.edu/directory/profile/150177">But as a musicologist</a> – that’s someone who studies the history of music – I’ve seen <a href="https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-musical-instruments-from-ur-and-ancient-mesopotamian-music/">many artifacts and much evidence</a> that can help us understand how and why the ancients played music. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477914/original/file-20220805-35296-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration, based on ancient Greek literature, depicting a man weeping as another man nearby plays the harp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477914/original/file-20220805-35296-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477914/original/file-20220805-35296-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477914/original/file-20220805-35296-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477914/original/file-20220805-35296-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477914/original/file-20220805-35296-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477914/original/file-20220805-35296-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477914/original/file-20220805-35296-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ulysses weeps as he listens to the songs of Demodocus, the blind musician. From ‘Stories From Homer’ by the Rev. Alfred J. Church, M.A.; illustrations from designs by John Flaxman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/ulysses-weeps-at-the-song-of-demodocus-royalty-free-illustration/537534415?adppopup=true">whitemay/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Singing</h2>
<p>Some scholars say singing was <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-musical-self/201209/which-came-first-music-or-language">the first kind of musical sound</a>. Not that people back then were crooning full-length songs. Instead, they made simpler vocal sounds – perhaps just a few notes put together. If that’s true, perhaps early humans began to speak and sing at about the same time. </p>
<p>Why did they sing? Maybe they had an impulse to imitate something beautiful, like bird sounds. Vocal imitations of other animal sounds, however, may have been used for hunting, like a modern-day duck call. </p>
<p>It’s also possible singing was a way to communicate with infants and toddlers, like early versions of lullabies. But again, people were not singing complete melodies or songs; our modern lullabies – like “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVLDi-FFjVo">Rock-a-bye Baby</a>” – took centuries to develop. </p>
<p>Singing in Catholic churches throughout Europe during the Middle Ages is well documented. At first there was only a single vocal melody, sung either by a soloist or a small group of male clergy. Nuns also learned to sing in convents. Later, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/polyphony-music">polyphony became increasingly common</a> – when two, three or four voices would each sing different melodies, adding to the complexity of the sound. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477917/original/file-20220805-35905-p8ackr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A set of bronze bells on display." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477917/original/file-20220805-35905-p8ackr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477917/original/file-20220805-35905-p8ackr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477917/original/file-20220805-35905-p8ackr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477917/original/file-20220805-35905-p8ackr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477917/original/file-20220805-35905-p8ackr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477917/original/file-20220805-35905-p8ackr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477917/original/file-20220805-35905-p8ackr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bianzhong, a set of bronze bells, is a Chinese musical instrument that may be more than 3,000 years old. The bells were used as part of China’s ritual and court music.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/chinese-bianzhong-in-hangzhou-confucius-temple-royalty-free-image/591468205?adppopup=true">xia yuan/Moment Open/via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Instruments</h2>
<p>Archaeologists have helped musicologists learn about <a href="https://www.imagininghistory.co.uk/post/stone-age-musical-instruments">ancient musical instruments</a> from the artifacts they’ve uncovered. For example, they have found flutes and whistles made of bone, pottery and stone. </p>
<p>The archaeologists used a process known as <a href="https://kids.kiddle.co/Radiocarbon_dating">carbon-14 dating</a> to find out how old the bone instruments were. All living organisms – animals, plants and people – have some carbon-14 in them; when they die, the amount of carbon-14 decreases, little by little, over years, decades and centuries. </p>
<p>When the scientists measured how much carbon-14 was left in the flutes – which were made from the bones of large birds – they discovered some of the instruments were more than 30,000 years old!</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Japanese-music">In Japan</a>, some ancient whistles and rattles, made of stone or clay, are about 6,000 years old. Through their small blowholes, these instruments created high, shrill tones. Those using them may have thought the sounds were somehow magical, and it’s possible they played them during religious rituals. Some of those stone whistles can still make sounds. </p>
<p>In China, pottery bells, which may be the ancestors to bronze bells, appeared at least 4,000 years ago. <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Greek_Music/">In Greece</a>, instruments like the krotola, a set of hollow blocks bound with leather, were played 2,500 years ago. The Greeks also used finger cymbals and frame drums – similar to the kind you might use at school. </p>
<p>Musical instruments could also be associated with different types of people. Shepherds played the <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Panpipes/">syrinx</a>, a whistlelike instrument, known today as the pan flute. It was a simple instrument that was easy to take into the fields. <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Aulos/">The aulos</a> was a more sophisticated woodwind instrument consisting of two pipes. Because it took more skill to play the aulos, you would need training from a teacher – or perhaps, if you were wealthy, you could just hire experienced musicians to play for you. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477912/original/file-20220805-26-ozsexd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white image of women playing musical instruments." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477912/original/file-20220805-26-ozsexd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477912/original/file-20220805-26-ozsexd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477912/original/file-20220805-26-ozsexd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477912/original/file-20220805-26-ozsexd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477912/original/file-20220805-26-ozsexd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477912/original/file-20220805-26-ozsexd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477912/original/file-20220805-26-ozsexd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This image shows three women in ancient Greece playing musical instruments. The women on the left and right are playing the lyre. The one in the middle is playing the aulos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/antique-illustration-of-ancient-greek-women-royalty-free-illustration/512729818?adppopup=true">ilbusca/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Manuscripts and artwork</h2>
<p>In Africa, 4,000-year-old rock paintings and engravings found in Egyptian tombs show musicians playing what appear to be harps. </p>
<p>Greek pottery <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grmu/hd_grmu.htm">often depicts musical scenes</a>; these images often appeared on vases and urns. The settings, though, are often unclear. Whether the musicians were part of a festival or celebration, or simply playing for their own entertainment, is not always known.</p>
<p>Handmade medieval manuscripts also provide clues. Illustrations with ink, and sometimes gold leaf, often show musicians playing an instrument. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484399/original/file-20220913-4826-lb5wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Artwork of a musician from the Middle Ages dressed in green and yellow garb playing a harp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484399/original/file-20220913-4826-lb5wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484399/original/file-20220913-4826-lb5wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484399/original/file-20220913-4826-lb5wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484399/original/file-20220913-4826-lb5wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484399/original/file-20220913-4826-lb5wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484399/original/file-20220913-4826-lb5wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484399/original/file-20220913-4826-lb5wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A reproduction of a 12th-century parchment depicts a wandering minstrel playing the harp for two soldiers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/morolf-as-spielmann-12th-century-facsimile-royalty-free-illustration/1202241555?adppopup=true">ZU_09/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A world without music</h2>
<p>Can you imagine living today without music? I can’t. Not only does it entertain and enthrall, it allows us to communicate emotions. Music helps us celebrate joyful events and consoles us when we’re sad or in pain. Certainly, ancient music made its listeners feel powerful emotions, just as music throughout this century and beyond will do the same. Think for a moment what music in the 22nd century might sound like. And who knows? Maybe – in about 78 years – you’ll find out. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QpxN2VXPMLc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An oldie but goodie, first played more than 3,400 years ago.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.</em></p>
<p><em>And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nothing to disclose.</span></em></p>For thousands of years, music has been an essential part of the human experience.Laura Dallman, Lecturer in Music History, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1857772022-10-03T19:03:08Z2022-10-03T19:03:08ZMore than a piece of furniture: it is sometimes as if these old pianos have souls<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482856/original/file-20220906-5391-e4prgw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5991%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While restructuring a collection of historical keyboard instruments at the ANU School of Music, I’ve been led to ponder the mysterious significance that pianos can have in the human psyche.</p>
<p>Due to limitations of space and funds for maintenance, a decision was made to limit the university’s collection to the most valuable instruments. “Value” was considered on the basis of an instrument’s historical uniqueness, its practical utility for research and overall condition. </p>
<p>Yet “value”, as we know, can be understood in different ways. </p>
<h2>Vehicles for musical expression</h2>
<p>Pianos still proliferate in music schools, despite predictions about the decline of acoustic music. Instruments that are used day-to-day need to be relatively new and in excellent working order. </p>
<p>Given the rate at which they are played in busy schools, they are typically replaced every 10 to 15 years. </p>
<p>Many pianists view pianos like tools, as vehicles for musical expression. Like a driver searching for a faster car, less responsive models can be dispensed with little thought. </p>
<p>Unlike an immaculately handcrafted violin from the 17th century, the sound of a piano typically does not improve with age. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482862/original/file-20220906-5279-lk16u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dusty piano." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482862/original/file-20220906-5279-lk16u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482862/original/file-20220906-5279-lk16u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482862/original/file-20220906-5279-lk16u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482862/original/file-20220906-5279-lk16u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482862/original/file-20220906-5279-lk16u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482862/original/file-20220906-5279-lk16u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482862/original/file-20220906-5279-lk16u5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sound of a piano typically does not improve with age.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet there is much that a piano student can learn from older instruments. Our collection includes a French piano built around 1770, and it can still sing if gently coaxed. As my fingers negotiate the uneven and primitive collection of levers, shafts and felts that comprise its inner action, I wonder how many musicians long-departed have listened to its voice. </p>
<p>It is a sad fact, though, that homes can be hard to find for old pianos, especially uprights. </p>
<p>While grand pianos still signify status, and square pianos have a curiosity value (also doubling as small tables), upright pianos of the Victorian era are now unloved. </p>
<p>According to a local piano removal company, two to three upright pianos from this period can be delivered to landfill in any week. Partly, this is due to their ubiquity in earlier generations. It used to be the case that every home had an old piano, often passed down through family lines. </p>
<p>Frequently of German origin and built on massive solid frames, these instruments are not timeless. Their mechanisms wear out, their felts become infested and their tuning blocks lose structural integrity. They can no longer hold their tune.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482860/original/file-20220906-20-9a5iwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A piano" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482860/original/file-20220906-20-9a5iwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482860/original/file-20220906-20-9a5iwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482860/original/file-20220906-20-9a5iwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482860/original/file-20220906-20-9a5iwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482860/original/file-20220906-20-9a5iwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482860/original/file-20220906-20-9a5iwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482860/original/file-20220906-20-9a5iwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">It used to be the case that every home had an old piano, passed down through family lines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you paid to restore one, the sum would be greater than the cheap new instrument which would always outperform it. The worst thing to do would be to buy a dilapidated piano for a budding student, who might presume the clunking responses to be a sign of talent-less activity. </p>
<p>Yet it is sometimes as if these old pianos have souls. It tugs at the heartstrings to see an instrument that has weathered over a century of faithful service get carted to the tip, or “piano heaven” as insiders say. Often there are rich memories, such as when grandma played and the family gathered around in song. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/four-indigenous-composers-and-a-piano-from-colonial-times-making-passionate-layered-honest-music-together-152080">Four Indigenous composers and a piano from colonial times — making passionate, layered, honest music together</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Members of the family</h2>
<p>The inner connections people make with musical instruments are widely known. Indeed, pianos can seem like members of a family to some. How do we account for this unusual anthropomorphism?</p>
<p>I was recently touched by a story of an elderly lady, an exceptionally fine pianist and teacher in her day. She had purchased a large grand piano of Viennese design, a concert instrument of the highest order, but was now at the point of moving to residential care. </p>
<p>Of all the considerations that beset her family at this difficult time, finding a “home” for the instrument was of the highest concern. It was more than just a piano: it was a living part of her life.</p>
<p>In another instance, I was asked to help rehouse an upright piano. Shiny, relatively new and still receptive to many hours of rigorous playing, the piano’s owner was happy to give it away. But not to just anyone – it needed to be the right person. </p>
<p>“I will always be grateful for the beautiful black piano that became a vehicle not only for my lifetime wish to learn to play, but also to make music with my son”, she wrote. </p>
<p>“My longing to make music with him was fulfilled before he finished school and left home.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482861/original/file-20220906-18-dah0al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A mother and baby at a piano." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482861/original/file-20220906-18-dah0al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482861/original/file-20220906-18-dah0al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482861/original/file-20220906-18-dah0al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482861/original/file-20220906-18-dah0al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482861/original/file-20220906-18-dah0al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482861/original/file-20220906-18-dah0al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482861/original/file-20220906-18-dah0al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Pianos often become a place of family memories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s easy to see why pianos are often more than a piece of furniture. They can embody the dreams and memories that propel us through life, sanctifying the moments in which we are united through beauty and art. </p>
<p>In a world which seems increasingly weighted toward the quantifiable, the measured, and the physically real, music still can catch us in its sway. </p>
<p>Through the process of reordering our collection, one instrument has remained. In all respects, it is neither unique nor outwardly special. Yet it carried a plaque, in loving memory of someone’s mother. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s because her song still resonates within, I’ve made no plan to remove it. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/performing-beethoven-what-it-feels-like-to-embody-a-master-on-todays-stage-129184">Performing Beethoven - what it feels like to embody a master on today's stage</a>
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</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pianos can seem like members of a family; but new homes for them can be hard to find.Scott Davie, Deputy Head of School, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1884312022-08-10T20:11:50Z2022-08-10T20:11:50ZDisco ain’t dead: how Beyoncé resurrected dance music and its queer history for Renaissance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478225/original/file-20220809-24-orxjcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2995%2C2308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason LaVeris/ Getty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you felt the world stop turning for a moment in July, it’s because Beyoncé dropped her new album, Renaissance. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-beyonce-songs-1378620/find-your-way-back-2019-1380991/">Rolling Stone</a> has described her as the world’s “greatest living entertainer”, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-beyonces-world-were-just-living-in-it-185603">a stardom that intersects</a> fashion, dance, multiple genres of music and visual albums. </p>
<p>Renaissance is her seventh solo studio album, and her first in five years. It is being widely acclaimed as an “<a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/beyonce-renaissance/">immaculate</a>” dance record. </p>
<p>Part of Beyoncé’s continued success involves her sampling from a diverse range of artists across history to layer and create new meaning. She has done this repeatedly as a way of <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyonce-has-helped-usher-in-a-renaissance-for-african-artists-188099">showcasing African artists</a>, and on Renaissance she pays special tribute to house and disco music, and especially it’s queer history.</p>
<p>In fact, the entire album is dedicated to her late gay Uncle Johnny. “He was my godmother and the first person to expose me to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/07/29/beyonce-renaissance-queerness-lgbtq-fans/">Beyonce wrote</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Thank you to all the pioneers who originate culture, to all of the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognised for far too long.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first single from the album, Break My Soul, features two key samples and songwriting credits. The first is New Orleans artist Big Freedia, previously featured on Beyoncé’s 2016 Formation. The second is from Show Me Love by Robin S., a song that typifies the house genre that grew from the 80s and became mainstream in the 90s. </p>
<p>The use of house music throughout the album, and her sampling of queer artists such as Big Freedia, points to a queer history of disco and house music that was once controversial enough to cause public riots. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-beyonces-world-were-just-living-in-it-185603">It's Beyoncé's world. We're just living in it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The day they killed disco</h2>
<p>On a warm night in July 1979, disco was murdered. </p>
<p>Referred to as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/19/disco-demolition-the-night-they-tried-to-crush-black-music">Disco Demolition Night</a>”, 50,000 people showed up to a baseball park in Chicago to watch a crate of disco records be blown up. In the aftermath, the crowd rushed onto the field. A riot followed in which over 30 people were arrested and many were injured.</p>
<p>Disco had grown in popularity across the 1970s reaching its apex with the release of Saturday Night Fever in 1977. A concentrated rebellion against the genre grew in popularity among rock music fans, who felt the genre was too fixated on mechanical sounds that lacked authenticity.</p>
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<p>Rock fans genuinely feared they would lose out to disco, but it is difficult to separate their fears from racism and homophobia. </p>
<p>John Travolta’s starring role in Saturday Night Fever in 1977 presented a different version of masculinity, concerned with fashion and dancing. Acts such as The Village People did little to ease fears of the death of rock and roll. The gradual rise in gay and queer visibility in New York and San Francisco, particularly in music clubs, were also seen as a threat.</p>
<p>Critics have since identified the anti-disco movement <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/19/disco-demolition-the-night-they-tried-to-crush-black-music">as almost completely</a> populated by white men between 18-37. The leader of the movement was <a href="https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2019/07/12/disco-demolition-dahl-veeck-chicago-white-sox">radio DJ Steve Dahl</a> and in the weeks leading up to the explosive protest, Dahl and press agencies covering the movement conflated disco with R&B and funk music, and with gay men. </p>
<p>Disco Demolition Night was the climax of a protest years in the making. To a certain extent, it was successful in its desire to kill disco. In the years that followed, disco disappeared off the charts and glam-rock began to take its place. </p>
<p>The artists and audiences who adored disco were forced underground, particularly the queer community, and such was the birth of house music.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beyonce-is-cutting-a-sample-of-milkshake-out-of-her-new-song-but-not-because-she-stole-it-188187">Beyoncé is cutting a sample of Milkshake out of her new song – but not because she 'stole' it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Don’t stop the beat</h2>
<p>As disco declined in popularity, artists were no longer able to afford the lush sounds of a full orchestral backing, forcing a reliance on cheaper, synthetic sounds. Disco clubs moved to literal warehouses, giving house music its name. </p>
<p>House music, like disco, is dance music for clubs. It focuses on mechanical sounds, fixed tempos and repetitive sounds. By the 1990s, thanks to hits like Show Me Love by Robin S., house music became mainstream, and was used by Cher, Madonna, Kylie Minogue and even Aqua’s quintessential 90s pop hit Barbie Girl.</p>
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<p>In recent years, <a href="https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/beyonce-house-break-my-soul-show-me-love">disco has seen a steady re-emergence</a>, spearheaded by producers such as Pharrell, who collaborated with Daft Punk for the 2013 hit Lose Yourself to Dance. Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia (2020) was a finely crafted, album length tribute to disco music.</p>
<p>Beyoncé’s new album also features a pantheon of <a href="https://twitter.com/WrittenByTerry/status/1552891193998151680">other queer artists</a> (Ts Madison, Honey Dijon, Syd, Moi Renee, MikeQ and Kevin Aviance), and is deliberately designed to be played in dance clubs. In contrast to her other albums, each track blends seamlessly into the next, as if the entire album is an elongated DJ set.</p>
<p>Beyoncé has been particularly open about the release of an acapella and instrumental versions of Break My Soul for use by DJs who may remix the work. She has even released a new remix of the single featuring Madonna. </p>
<p>Beyoncé’s Renaissance may secure 2022 as the year disco and house fulfilled their resurrection. Lizzo’s new album, Special, features About Damn Time, a retro-disco dance hit that is currently sitting at the top of America’s <a href="https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/">Billboard charts</a>. </p>
<p>These female artists follow a trend already set by Cher, Madonna and Kylie Minogue, who publicly ally themselves with the queer community and deliberate create dance albums for their dedicated audience. In doing so, they have become the biggest pop stars of their time. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beyonce-has-helped-usher-in-a-renaissance-for-african-artists-188099">Beyoncé has helped usher in a renaissance for African artists</a>
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</em>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188431/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Burton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On Renaissance, Beyoncé pays tribute to the queer history of house and disco music.David Burton, Lecturer, Theatre, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1884462022-08-09T07:10:53Z2022-08-09T07:10:53ZThree lessons Olivia Newton-John taught me about music – and life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478228/original/file-20220809-12-o4j68c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=39%2C0%2C5213%2C3504&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Roger Allston/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>My default mental image of Olivia Newton-John is from the mid-1970s: long, flowing floral dresses; long, centre-parted light brown hair; big inquisitive eyes; and, when called for, an irresistible smile perfect for the cover of TV Week. </p>
<p>It seemed like the counterculture had passed her by. </p>
<p>But even in the heights of my hippie and punk-inspired (imagined, toothless) rejections of society and a perceived mainstream, I respected Olivia, a figure so ubiquitous in popular culture during my first 20 years on the planet it feels natural to call her by her first name. </p>
<p>There was something about her voice, her way with a song. Through her phrasing and timbre, there was always a personal appeal to her singing. </p>
<p>Like heatstroke in December-through-February, Olivia was part of the Australian landscape. The country felt a little less hostile for her being in it - or beamed into it from the northern hemisphere, while we claimed her as “ours”. </p>
<p>There was a big sister who understood and sympathised. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pop-icon-olivia-newton-john-was-the-rare-performer-whose-career-flourished-through-different-phases-188428">Pop icon Olivia Newton-John was the rare performer whose career flourished through different phases</a>
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<hr>
<h2>1. What she taught me about murder</h2>
<p>Despite all this, Olivia did contribute to a certain loss of innocence. </p>
<p>Some of us are unlucky enough to encounter death personally as children; for the rest it will be a song or a TV show, a passing remark or a news item. </p>
<p>Newton-John’s recording of the folk ballad Banks of the Ohio was released in 1971. It concerns the protagonist luring their loved one down to the river to stab them through the heart. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I held a knife against his breast <br>
As into my arms he pressed<br>
He cried: My love! Don’t you murder me<br>
I’m not prepared for eternity.</p>
</blockquote>
<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CcwceyVxoAQ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p>I can’t think of an earlier exposure to the idea of death, let alone murder. I associate it with the tinny sound of a portable AM radio. I have the honeyed tones of ONJ forever linked to the visceral realisation one human being could wilfully kill another. </p>
<p>Heavy metal and hip hop are the traditional punching bags of parents worried about harmful content. But people let their guards down around ONJ.</p>
<h2>2. What she taught me through a cover band</h2>
<p>Shaggin’ Wagon, a cover band of mine instigated around 1993, did what it said on the label: rocked the hell out of songs from the 1970s. </p>
<p>We combined relatively obscure minor chart hits – say, Silver Lady by David Soul, or Ebony Eyes by Bob Welch – with what we thought of as a classic lineage of power pop by the likes of Big Star, The Soft Boys, The dB’s, The Sweet and Abba. </p>
<p>There was always a smattering of hard rock – Kiss, Alice Cooper – and Australian artists like The Numbers, Models and Dragon. Though the repertoire was always changing, there were a few big crowd pleasers to bring the house down. </p>
<p>One of mine, as part-time singer, was Hopelessly Devoted to You. What started as half a joke I took to with gusto. It is a great song, with a fantastic key change from A major in the verses to F major in the chorus via a devastating G minor chord. </p>
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<p>“There’s nowhere to hide”, wallows the protagonist on that pitiful chord, harmonically so removed from the plaintive longing of comfortable A major we’ve swooned through thus far. </p>
<p>I started to search for other Olivia songs. I picked up a 45 of A Little More Love and realised it was a kind of masterpiece; like Hopelessly it was composed by longtime Newton-John collaborator John Farrar. </p>
<p>It is another beautifully structured song, somewhat labyrinthine. Even now I find it a thrill to play on the guitar. </p>
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<p>Despite my party trick of (usually) being able to hit the high F at the end of Hopelessly, sustaining the upper octave required for the choruses of A Little More Love was beyond me. </p>
<p>The attempt further educated me about the technical demands Olivia shrugged off. The range is so wide that no matter how I transposed it, I could not pull off both low verses and high choruses. </p>
<p>I already knew she was good – and I’d never claim to be anywhere near ONJ’s league – but this was further proof being learned by my body.</p>
<h2>3. What she taught me about the girl-next-door</h2>
<p>Olivia wasn’t entirely convinced about Physical. She loved the song but wondered: could she get away with it? </p>
<p>Tired of the flirtation and game-playing, the protagonist wants to get down to it: “There’s nothin’ left to talk about unless it’s horizontally”. </p>
<p>The record was banned <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9972499/Olivia-Newton-John-thought-Physical-raunchy-release.html">in Utah</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=kCQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA5&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">South Africa</a> due to its explicit content (!). The video further fanned the flames, with its closing “gay scene” (two guys leaving the gym holding hands). </p>
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<p>Every bit of controversy just further hyped what was a superlative pop record. Physical topped the US charts for 10 weeks in 1981 and was one of the biggest songs of the decade. And if Physical wasn’t enough, the follow up single was Make a Move On Me.</p>
<p>You’d be forgiven for sensing a theme. </p>
<p>Physical, the album, is about more than a seasoned pop star trying on a slightly more risqué persona. None of the six images of Newton-John on the cover feature her looking at the camera, or even with her eyes open. </p>
<p>She does not challenge the camera or voyeur with her direct gaze, and so may be seen to be offering herself as an object to be consumed; the assumption along this line of reasoning is she avails herself of the male gaze. </p>
<p>I find it more compelling to consider her lost in her body. The viewer, the whole world outside her physical sensation, is irrelevant.</p>
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<p>Despite the fact the music remains eminently accessible, she is not looking to her audience for approval. </p>
<p>Physical is the definitive statement of independence – from country music radio, from her pre-1978 image as girl-next-door, from a certain level of conservatism in her audience. </p>
<p>She even cut her hair.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188446/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Encarnacao does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There was something about her voice, her way with a song. But there were lessons to be learned from her music, too.John Encarnacao, Musician, lecturer, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1884282022-08-09T02:45:58Z2022-08-09T02:45:58ZPop icon Olivia Newton-John was the rare performer whose career flourished through different phases<p>Olivia Newton-John was a versatile artist with an appeal that spanned generations, and who played an important role in claiming a space for Australian popular culture on the world stage. </p>
<p>She was the rare performer whose career flourished through different phases, and who found success exploring many facets of her talent.</p>
<p>Born in Cambridge in 1948, Newton-John moved to Melbourne at age 6 (becoming one of a myriad of non-Australian celebrities wholeheartedly claimed by this country). </p>
<p>In her teens she started to build up her profile on the local performing circuits, also appearing on pop music television program The Go!! Show. </p>
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<p>In the 1960s, Australian musical acts saw moving to the UK as a vital part of their career progression. Newton-John became part of the steady stream of expats pursuing their music in “the mother country” after winning a talent competition that provided her with tickets. </p>
<p>When her friend Pat Carroll joined her, the two found success touring as a pop duo, before visa troubles meant Carroll had to return to Australia. </p>
<p>This led to new opportunities for Newton-John as a solo artist. Her first album If Not For You (1971) was a success in the UK and Australia, establishing her as a household name in those countries – and leading to opportunities such as a performance at Eurovision representing the UK in 1974 (she lost to ABBA).</p>
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<p>Her break in the US market came as she found a niche in the country music genre. Country/pop crossover songs such as Let Me Be There were huge hits, and in 1972 she won a Grammy for Best Country Female – the first of four Grammys she would win across her career. </p>
<p>Her move to the US in the mid-1970s was accompanied by a string of number one hits in that country, establishing her as an international superstar. </p>
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<h2>Life on the silver screen</h2>
<p>Her star continued to rise with the release of the musical Grease in 1978. </p>
<p>Sandy established her as a genuinely iconic pop culture figure. </p>
<p>Grease was a huge box-office success, and produced a multi-million copy selling soundtrack. Tracks such as You’re the One That I Want and Summer Loving were not only hits in their own right at the time but have become embedded in our cultural memory, transcending generations with their appeal. </p>
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<p>Grease was the peak of her movie career. Attempts to re-create the on-screen magic between herself and co-star John Travolta in Two of a Kind and the fantastical Xanadu (a personal childhood favourite) failed to gain traction with audiences or critics. </p>
<p>But her contributions to the soundtracks of these films – including Magic and Twist of Fate – still charted highly as her musical career stayed strong. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/conversing-with-the-divine-why-we-still-need-our-muses-37051">Conversing with the divine – why we still need our muses</a>
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<h2>Away from the spotlight</h2>
<p>In the early 1980s she was seen as part of the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/07/31/australian-invasion/e05b181c-c886-46fa-ad9c-04ea7c036bb3/">Australian invasion</a>”, a period where Oz culture was particularly prominent on the international stage through acts such as Air Supply and the Little River Band. </p>
<p>Newton-John leaned into the moment. In 1983, she launched her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-k9lEdCvGg">Koala Blue boutique</a> selling Australian fashion and cultural items, in collaboration with her previous singing partner Pat Carroll. The boutique lasted a little over a decade, during which time Newton-John had a family and put less focus on her music career.</p>
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<p>A planned comeback in 1992 had to be put on hold when Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly before beginning her tour. </p>
<p>Her journey with the disease inspired her to take up advocacy and fundraising work in this area. The <a href="https://www.onjcancercentre.org/">Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre</a> fundraises in various ways, including through events such as the annual Wellness Walk. </p>
<p>The return of Newton-John’s cancer in 2017, which would eventually lead to her death, also spelled the end of her touring career.</p>
<h2>A lasting legacy</h2>
<p>Newton-John leaves a legacy as a sweet girl-next-door type with a sublime voice, who embraced the country that claimed her as its own, but who also at times showed a more risqué side, such as in Sandy’s leather jumpsuit, or the cheeky video to the unapologetically sexual Physical.</p>
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<p>She has already been recognised through awards and honours. </p>
<p>She has been inducted into the <a href="https://www.aria.com.au/hall-of-fame/">ARIA Hall of Fame</a>. In 2020 she was appointed a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-28/olivia-newton-john-elton-john-make-queen-new-year-honours-list/11830554">Dame</a> in the Queen’s New Year honours list. She has also been a continuing part of the cultural conversation through appearances on pop culture staples such as Drag Race. </p>
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<p>She remained down-to-earth and friendly, regularly turning up to events like the Wellness Walks to chat to participants and encourage them on. </p>
<p>Like many Australians, ONJ has been part of the soundtrack to my life – from arranging my own little performances to Xanadu in kindergarten, to singing along to the Grease megamix at school discos, to discovering her earlier work through my research much later in life – and many have benefitted from her non-musical work, too. </p>
<p>She will be missed but never forgotten.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australian-music-vault-moves-the-canon-beyond-pub-rock-89361">The Australian Music Vault moves the canon beyond pub rock</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188428/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Strong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Olivia Newton-John leaves a legacy as a sweet girl-next-door type with a sublime voice, who embraced the country that claimed her as its own.Catherine Strong, Associate professor, Music Industry, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1883432022-08-06T23:27:13Z2022-08-06T23:27:13ZVale Judith Durham, the cuddly Aussie ‘girl-next-door’ whose soaring voice found international fame<p>Judith Durham, one of Australia’s most recognisable voices, has passed away at 79. </p>
<p>An icon of the Australian music industry as lead singer for The Seekers and a solo artist, hers was an enduring female voice in an industry still dominated by men. Georgy Girl, A World of Our Own and The Carnival Is Over are just a few of the songs that will always ring best with her vocals.</p>
<p>Her artistry and approach was an alternative to the swinging 60s in popular music. There were no gimmicks to her art – just a soaring voice delivered with precision. </p>
<p>Born Judith Mavis Cock in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon in 1943, she studied classical piano at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium. Through connections at the university and in the local scene, she continued as a gifted musician and developed a following in the jazz community. </p>
<p>Using her mother’s maiden name she released her first EP, <a href="http://www.judithdurham.com/about-judith/biography">Judy Durham</a>, with Frank Traynor’s Jazz Preachers. The liner notes introduced her as “the most promising and talented vocalist today”. She was 19.</p>
<p>Around this time Durham also began an office job where she met Athol Guy. After a quick introduction, Durham was invited to play with Guy, Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley at a local coffee shop. </p>
<p>From here, The Seekers were born. </p>
<p>For a short time Durham recorded with both Frank Traynor and The Seekers for W&G Records, providing, as jazz historian Bruce Johnson described in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Oxford_Companion_to_Australian_Jazz.html?id=l5EYAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz</a>, an important link between jazz, folk and what would become pop mainstream.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australian-music-vault-moves-the-canon-beyond-pub-rock-89361">The Australian Music Vault moves the canon beyond pub rock</a>
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<h2>The Seekers</h2>
<p>Originally considered a folk and gospel group, The Seekers sound soon became distinct – in A World of Our Own, as their 1965 song declared. </p>
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<p>Their debut album, Introducing the Seekers, was released in 1963. In 1964, the group travelled to the UK. </p>
<p>Soon after arriving, The Seekers recorded the single I Know I’ll Never Find Another You at Abbey Road Studios. When it was released in 1965 it made them the first Australian act to gain <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/the-seekers-feted-with-australian-honor-judith-durham-on-the-mend-1565070/">number one in the UK</a>. </p>
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<p>When The Seekers’ impact was examined by the National Film and Sound Archive, curator Jenny Gall quoted another Australian popular music legend, Lillian Roxon, who <a href="https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/ill-never-find-another-you-seekers">described the band</a> as “one cuddly girl-next-door type […] and three sober cats who looked like bank tellers”. </p>
<p>Like journalist Roxon, Durham was a pioneering woman making it in and for Australian music in the epic pop culture centres of the US and UK in the booming 1960s. </p>
<p>Although apparently unassuming, she was not just “the girl next door”, but a fundamental talent who worked hard for her achievements. </p>
<h2>International fame</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjoSLPRkspI">Durham said</a> the band had originally only planned to go overseas for “an adventure […] with no idea we would stay in England and become popstars”. </p>
<p>Intentionally or not, they became some of the biggest artists in the world during the 1960s. When they won the 1965 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NME_Awards">NME award</a> for Best New Group they beat The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. </p>
<p>In the US they earned similar attention. Georgy Girl became the number one single in the US in 1967, beating Tom Jones, The Supremes and The Monkees. </p>
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<p>The band were named Australians of the Year in 1967. In 1968 Durham respectfully called it quits. </p>
<p>A goodbye concert, Farewell the Seekers, was broadcast live on the BBC. It was watched by <a href="https://www.theseekers.com.au/about-us/the-60s">more than</a> 10 million people. Their inevitable “best of” album appeared on the British charts for 125 weeks.</p>
<p>In the 1970s Durham continued as a solo artist, often recording standards and covers. </p>
<p>She returned to jazz as part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Jazz_Duo">Hot Jazz Duo</a> in 1978 with husband Ron Edgeworth. </p>
<p>The pair continued to work together in the years to come on a variety of projects until he died of motor neurone disease in 1994. </p>
<p>Since that time Durham has been a patron of the Motor Neurone Disease Association of Australia and continued to fundraise for the organisation. It was one of many charities she supported. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-there-so-little-space-for-women-in-jazz-music-79181">Why is there so little space for women in jazz music?</a>
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<h2>Musical storytelling</h2>
<p>She returned to The Seekers periodically for anniversary tours, as well as continuing to record her own work and with others. </p>
<p>From jazz to folk to classical and even contemporary pop as a cameo on silverchair’s B-side English Garden, even after a stroke in 2013 she continued to work. </p>
<p>Her last release, the single <a href="http://www.judithdurham.com/latest-news">All in a day’s work</a> with Lance Lawrence in 2020, was yet another display of a love of musical storytelling.</p>
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<p>In an industry that often demands specific types of sparkle in women especially, she was physically small with a voice that loomed large. </p>
<p>A constant in so many households of a certain age, there was nothing quite like hearing Turn Turn Turn, Morningtown Ride or The Carnival is Over on an old radio or well loved turntable. </p>
<p>When I was lucky enough to finally see her live a few years ago it was like we were all little kids singing along for the sheer joy. Her enthusiasm and skill, even in her later years, radiated off the stage and out of the speakers. </p>
<p>May she rest well at the never ending carnival in the sky.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Giuffre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Judith Durham was lead singer of The Seekers and a solo artist. One of Australia’s most recognisable voices, she has passed away at 79.Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849022022-06-22T18:12:15Z2022-06-22T18:12:15ZWas there anything real about Elvis Presley?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469881/original/file-20220620-24-8ektb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C40%2C2213%2C1450&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pinpointing Elvis Presley's true persona can depend on when and whom you ask.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-elvis-presley-looking-tired-and-somewhat-dejected-news-photo/50420521?adppopup=true">Don Cravens/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Baz Luhrmann’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkfplKD46Hs">Elvis</a>,” there’s a scene based on actual conversations that took place between Elvis Presley and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004596/">Steve Binder</a>, the director of <a href="https://www.blogtalkradio.com/feisty-side-of-fifty/2022/04/28/steve-binder-elvis-68-comeback-the-story-behind-the-special">a 1968 NBC television special</a> that signaled the singer’s return to live performing. </p>
<p>Binder, an iconoclast unimpressed by Presley’s recent work, had pushed Elvis to reach back into his past to revitalize a career stalled by years of mediocre movies and soundtrack albums. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_I4h_Wm_aY">According to the director</a>, their exchanges left the performer engrossed in <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/08/elvis-presley-comeback-special-1968-50th-anniversary">deep soul-searching</a>.</p>
<p>In the trailer to Luhrmann’s biopic, a version of this back-and-forth plays out: Elvis, portrayed by Austin Butler, says to the camera, “I’ve got to get back to who I really am.” Two frames later, Dacre Montgomery, playing Binder, asks, “And who are you, Elvis?”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p072703">scholar of southern history</a> who has written a book about Elvis, I still find myself wondering the same thing.</p>
<p>Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. Once, when informed of a potential biography in the works, <a href="https://www.proquest.com/magazines/making-presley-biography/docview/2509565622/se-2?accountid=196683">he expressed doubt</a> that there was even a story to tell. Over the years, he had submitted to numerous interviews and press conferences, but the quality of these exchanges was erratic, frequently characterized by superficial answers to even shallower questions. </p>
<p>His music could have been a window into his inner life, but since he wasn’t a songwriter, his material depended on the words of others. Even the rare revelatory gems – songs like “If I Can Dream,” “Separate Ways” or “My Way” – didn’t fully penetrate the veil shrouding the man. </p>
<p>Binder’s philosophical inquiry, then, was not merely philosophical. Countless fans and scholars have long wanted to know: Who was Elvis, really?</p>
<h2>A barometer for the nation</h2>
<p>Pinpointing Presley can depend on when and whom you ask. At the dawn of his career, admirers and critics alike branded him the “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Elvis_Presley/NqCQo9nqVHYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22elvis%22+%22bobbie+ann+mason%22&printsec=frontcover">Hillbilly Cat</a>.” Then he became the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a <a href="https://www.historynet.com/rock-n-roll-n-race-a-fresh-look-at-the-keystone-of-the-elvis-presley-legend/">musical monarch</a> that promoters placed on a mythical throne.</p>
<p>But for many, he was always the “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203700648-22/king-white-trash-culture-elvis-presley-aesthetics-excess-annalee-newitz-matt-wray">King of White Trash Culture</a>” – a working-class white southern rags-to-riches story that <a href="https://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51286&sid=9bb9e7df80f341cfbdcc376d828e8d21">never quite convinced the national establishment</a> of his legitimacy.</p>
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<img alt="Man with blue eyes and sideburns speaks into microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469880/original/file-20220620-18-h1loru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elvis Presley during a press conference at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/elvis-presley-close-up-taken-on-his-first-trip-to-nyc-at-news-photo/529306471?adppopup=true">Art Zelin/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These overlapping identities capture the provocative fusion of class, race, gender, region and commerce that Elvis embodied.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most contentious aspect of his identity was the singer’s relationship to race. As a white artist who profited greatly from the popularization of a style associated with African Americans, Presley, throughout his career, worked under <a href="https://www.southerncultures.org/article/elvis-presley-politics-popular-memory/%20%22%22">the shadow and suspicion of racial appropriation</a>.</p>
<p>The connection was complicated and fluid, to be sure. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/05/25/elvis-presley-rock-and-roll-graceland/%20%22%22">Quincy Jones</a> met and worked with Presley in early 1956 as the musical director of CBS-TV’s “Stage Show.” In his 2002 <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Q/zs1ixtkcJU8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22quincy+jones%22+%22memoir%22+%22elvis%22&printsec=frontcover">autobiography</a>, Jones noted that Elvis should be listed with Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson as pop music’s greatest innovators. However, by 2021, in the midst of a changing racial climate, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/quincy-jones-michael-jackson-elvis-presley-1234955138/">Jones was dismissing Presley as an unabashed racist</a>.</p>
<p>Elvis seems to serve as a barometer measuring America’s various tensions, with the gauge less about Presley and more about the nation’s pulse at any given moment.</p>
<h2>You are what you consume</h2>
<p>But I think there’s another way to think about Elvis – one that might put into context many of the questions surrounding him.</p>
<p><a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fellows-book/a-troubled-feast-american-society-since-1945/">Historian William Leuchtenburg</a> once characterized Presley as a “consumer culture hero,” a manufactured commodity more image than substance.</p>
<p>The assessment was negative; it also was incomplete. It didn’t consider how a consumerist disposition may have shaped Elvis prior to his becoming an entertainer. </p>
<p>Presley reached adolescence as a post-World War II consumer economy was hitting its stride. A product of unprecedented affluence and pent-up demand caused by depression and wartime sacrifice, it provided almost <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/highlights-guide-consumer">unlimited opportunities for those seeking to entertain and define themselves</a>.</p>
<p>The teenager from Memphis, Tennessee, took advantage of these opportunities. Riffing off the idiom “you are what you eat,” Elvis became what <a href="https://kennedy.byu.edu/you-are-what-you-eat/">he consumed</a>.</p>
<p>During his formative years, he shopped at <a href="https://lanskybros.com/">Lansky Brothers</a>, a clothier on Beale Street that outfitted African American performers and provided him with secondhand pink-and-black ensembles. </p>
<p>He tuned into the radio station <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/wdia-radio-station-1947/">WDIA</a>, where he soaked up gospel and rhythm and blues tunes, along with the vernacular of black disk jockeys. He turned the dial to WHBQ’s “Red, Hot, and Blue,” a program that had <a href="https://memphismusichalloffame.com/inductee/deweyphillips/">Dewey Phillips</a> spinning an eclectic mix of R&B, pop and country. He visited <a href="https://www.poplartunes.com/">Poplar Tunes</a> and <a href="http://thedeltareview.com/album-reviews/the-young-willie-mitchell-and-ruben-cherrys-home-of-the-blues-records/">Home of the Blues</a> record stores, where he purchased the music dancing in his head. And at the <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4183">Loew’s State</a> and <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14070">Suzore #2</a> movie theaters, he took in the latest Marlon Brando or Tony Curtis movies, imagining in the dark how to emulate their demeanor, sideburns, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducktail">ducktails</a>.</p>
<p>In short, he gleaned from the nation’s burgeoning consumer culture the persona that the world would come to know. Elvis alluded to this in 1971 when he provided a rare glimpse into his psyche upon receiving a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9HWlYoR40A%20%22%22">Jaycees Award</a> as one of the nation’s Ten Outstanding Young Men:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times … I’d like to say that I learned very early in life that ‘without a song, the day would never end. Without a song, a man ain’t got a friend. Without a song, the road would never bend. Without a song.’ So, I’ll keep singing a song.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In that acceptance speech, he quoted “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200215452/">Without a Song</a>,” a standard tune performed by artists including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Roy Hamilton – seamlessly presenting the lyrics as if they were words directly applicable to his own life experiences.</p>
<h2>A loaded question</h2>
<p>Does this make the Jaycees recipient some sort of “odd, lonely child reaching for eternity,” as Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, tells an adult Presley in the new “Elvis” film?</p>
<p>I don’t think so. Instead, I see him as someone who simply devoted his life to consumption, a not uncommon late 20th-century behavior. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/dec/19/highereducation.uk2">Scholars have noted that</a> whereas Americans once defined themselves through their genealogy, jobs, or faith, they increasingly started to identify themselves through their tastes – and, by proxy, what they consumed. As <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/me-the-self-and-i/201904/how-do-we-form-identities-in-consumer-society">Elvis crafted his identity</a> and pursued his craft, he did the same.</p>
<p>It also was evident in how he spent most of his downtime. A tireless worker on stage and in the recording studio, those settings nevertheless demanded relatively little of his time. For most of the 1960s, he made three movies annually, each taking no more than a month to complete. That was the extent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/elvis-presley-was-paid-a-kings-ransom-for-sub-par-movies-because-they-were-marketing-gold-81586">his professional obligations</a>.</p>
<p>From 1969 to his death in 1977, only 797 out of 2,936 days were devoted to performing <a href="https://www.concertarchives.org/bands/elvis-presley">concerts</a> or recording in the <a href="https://blackgold.org/GroupedWork/d29f6423-5784-ccf6-6ca1-cff37b9081e9-eng/Home">studio</a>. Most of his time was dedicated to vacationing, playing sports, riding motorcycles, zipping around on go-karts, horseback riding, watching TV and eating.</p>
<p>By the time he died, Elvis was a shell of his former self. Overweight, bored, and chemically dependent, he appeared <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/04/07/elvis-in-his-prime-was-america-now-america-is-elvis-in-decline/">spent</a>. A few weeks before his demise, a Soviet publication <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/07/29/archives/notes-on-people.html">described him</a> as “wrecked” – a “pitilessly” dumped product victimized by the American consumerist system. </p>
<p>Elvis Presley proved that consumerism, when channeled productively, could be creative and liberating. He likewise demonstrated that left unrestrained, it could be empty and destructive.</p>
<p>Luhrmann’s movie promises to reveal a great deal about one of the most captivating and enigmatic figures of our time. But I have a hunch it will also tell Americans a lot about themselves.</p>
<p>“Who are you, Elvis?” the trailer hauntingly probes.</p>
<p>Maybe the answer is easier than we think. He’s all of us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael T. Bertrand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. His music could have been a window into his inner life, but he didn’t even write his songs.Michael T. Bertrand, Professor of History, Tennessee State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1622542021-08-04T20:07:41Z2021-08-04T20:07:41Z50 years since Mike Oldfield began writing Tubular Bells: the pioneering album that changed the sound of music<p>English composer and multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield began writing Tubular Bells <a href="https://www.classicpopmag.com/2021/01/mike-oldfield-to-revive-tubular-bells-live-this-summer/">50 years ago, at the age of 17</a>. The record, released two years later, was the first on Richard Branson’s newly established Virgin label and remains Oldfield’s highest selling and best known album to date.</p>
<p>An instrumental work, Tubular Bells is 49 minutes and 16 seconds long presented in two parts, each taking up one side of the original vinyl release. </p>
<p>The album was pioneering in many ways, from its use of bells to electric guitars recorded at half speed, and has been credited as an early example of new age music. </p>
<p>At the time of its release — although a unique sounding album in many ways — Tubular Bells was closely associated with the progressive rock scene. Indeed, Oldfield had roots in this scene: he was previously bassist with Kevin Ayers and the Whole World, a band who, along with Soft Machine, Gong and Caravan were part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_scene">Canterbury Scene</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2GCcj0KZSfE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Tubular Bells gained further exposure when the introduction to Part One was used in William Friedkin’s 1973 film The Exorcist.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Still in his teens, Oldfield was disillusioned with the rigours of touring and the limitations of live performance. His vision was to produce an album taking full advantage of the sound production opportunities offered by the recording studio. </p>
<p>Brian Wilson and the Beatles had <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-brian-wilson-recorded-pet-sounds-and-reinvented-music">begun this trend</a> in the mid-1960s, but by the early 1970s studio technology had developed to the extent stereo recording on tape machines featuring 16 tracks was possible. </p>
<p>This significantly extended the possibilities for layering sound.</p>
<p>Several sections of music on Tubular Bells were written by Oldfield and recorded as demos on cassette before he entered the Manor — a 16th century building bought by Branson and converted into a recording studio — to begin work on the album.</p>
<h2>A repeated motif</h2>
<p>Tubular Bells is best known for Part One, particularly the first three and a half minutes of music, which feature a repeated motif in the key of A minor with a 15/8 time signature. </p>
<p>This time signature was highly unusual in rock music at the time and, combined with the stark minimalist sound of the grand piano, Oldfield created a mesmerising and slightly surreal effect.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KXatvzWAzLU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An unusual time signature and a stark sound gives Tubular Bells a surreal effect.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through a series of modulations, this motif is repeated at various stages throughout side one of Tubular Bells, ending with the motif played on a Spanish guitar in the transposed key of E major. </p>
<p>Primarily a guitarist, prior to working on Tubular Bells Oldfield had familiarised himself with a range of other stringed, keyboard and percussion instruments. A popular perception of the album’s creation is of Oldfield playing a large number of musical instruments and endlessly overdubbing his performances to produce a one-person orchestra.</p>
<p>In truth, Oldfield did play most of the instruments on the album (with the exception of the drums heard on side two) but this amounted to around ten instruments, including electric and acoustic guitars, grand piano and pipe organ, glockenspiel, timpani, tin whistle and, of course, the famed tubular bells.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/40-years-of-mtv-the-channel-that-shaped-popular-culture-as-we-know-it-165365">40 Years of MTV: the channel that shaped popular culture as we know it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Chosen as the album’s title and the subject of a great fanfare at the end of side one, tubular bells constituted something of a novelty item and source of fascination for listeners. </p>
<p>A series of metal tubes of varying length, when tubular bells are struck they resemble the sound of church bells. Commonly used in classical music, in the world of rock tubular bells were a relatively unknown quantity. </p>
<p>(Partly due to the exposure afforded by Oldfield’s work several rock and progressive rock drummers also added tubular bells to their percussive arsenal during the arena rock years of the 1970s.)</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MEfW3A2rj60?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Tubular Bells used a wide variety of instruments.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another novel aspect of Tubular Bells was the use of “speed guitars”: electric guitars recorded at half speed, then brought back to normal speed in playback. This meant the notes produced were higher than the normal range of notes possible on guitar. This technique was used to create the mandolin-like effects heard in several parts of the album. </p>
<p>A custom-made distortion was used to create the “bagpipe guitars” (so called because their sound is similar to bagpipes) heard on side two. And at the end of side two a familiar tune is heard: Oldfield’s arrangement of the Sailor’s Hornpipe brings the album to a close.</p>
<h2>A template for innovation</h2>
<p>Tubular Bells has spawned an orchestral version of the work and two sequels, Tubular Bells II and III. Aspects of the work have been incorporated into songs by metal bands Possessed and Death Angel as well as other artists including the California Guitar trio. </p>
<p>This month, 50 years after Oldfield started writing Tubular Bells, the album will again be performed live in London, directed by Oldfield’s longtime collaborator Robin A. Smith and featuring Australian circus company <a href="https://circa.org.au/show/tubular-bells-live-in-concert/">Circa</a>. A short tour is planned in 2023 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Tubular Bells’ release.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414443/original/file-20210803-12-lhl4d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A giant bell hangs above a blue stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414443/original/file-20210803-12-lhl4d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414443/original/file-20210803-12-lhl4d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414443/original/file-20210803-12-lhl4d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414443/original/file-20210803-12-lhl4d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414443/original/file-20210803-12-lhl4d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414443/original/file-20210803-12-lhl4d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414443/original/file-20210803-12-lhl4d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oldfield performing Tubular Bells as part of the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickwebb/7662481762/in/photostream/">Nick Webb/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Upon its release, Oldfield was reluctant to tour Tubular Bells. He finally agreed to a one-off concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on June 25 1973. An all-star cast of musicians was recruited for the event, including Kevin Ayers, Fred Frith, Steve Hillage and Mick Taylor (then with the Rolling Stones). </p>
<p>Preceding Queen’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ">Bohemian Rhapsody</a> and 10cc’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgJckGsR-T0">I’m Not in Love</a> (songs now regarded as the great multi-track masterpieces) by two years, Tubular Bells was undoubtedly a critical template for innovation in studio-based music during an era when album-orientated-rock commanded a hefty market share.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Bennett has received funding from the ARC. </span></em></p>Rising to prominence in The Exorcist soundtrack and the first album from Richard Branson’s Virgin Records, the layered sounds of Tubular Bells became a template for further innovation.Andy Bennett, Professor, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1570972021-03-19T14:08:22Z2021-03-19T14:08:22ZAudio cassettes: despite being ‘a bit rubbish’, sales have doubled during the pandemic – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390418/original/file-20210318-23-s3jvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4223%2C2786&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's not just old cassettes that are selling: the current crop of pop musicians are shifting their music on tapes, too.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vilnius-lithuania-september-19-2020-large-1818353072">BOOCYS/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Described by some as “<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9248209/ifa-2015-the-best-of-europes-biggest-tech-show">Europe’s biggest tech show</a>”, the Berlin Radio Show has long been famous for exhibiting the next big thing in consumer electronics. In 1963, that was the compact audio cassette, introduced at the time by its creator, the late Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/lou-ottens-cassette-tape-inventor-b1815501.html">who died</a> in early March. </p>
<p>Over the course of Ottens’ lifetime, cassette tapes came to redefine listening habits, which until then had been limited to the much more unwieldy vinyl record. Car stereos and the iconic Sony Walkman suddenly made <a href="https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/cassette-revolution/">individual listening experiences</a> possible outside of the home. The re-recordable nature of the format, meanwhile, helped music fans collate and circulate their own mixtapes. At its peak in 1989, the cassette tape was shifting <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4099904.stm">83 million units per year</a> in the UK alone.</p>
<p>Despite having been superseded in functionality first by the compact disc (CD) and then the digital file (mp3 and mp4), the audio cassette retains a special place in the history of audio technology, with mixtapes a precursor to playlists, and the Walkman the precursor to the iPod.</p>
<p>And, despite being considered aesthetically and materially inferior to the vinyl record that came before it, the audio cassette is actually experiencing something of a resurgence – partly for sentimental reasons, but also because, with gigs cancelled, it’s a smart way for smaller artists to monetise their work.</p>
<h2>Hit rewind</h2>
<p>Against a backdrop of a pandemic that has done huge <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/this-is-how-covid-19-is-affecting-the-music-industry/">damage to the music industry</a>, 2020 could justifiably be called the year of the cassette. According to British Phonographic Industry figures, <a href="https://www.bpi.co.uk/news-analysis/fans-turn-to-music-to-get-through-2020-as-a-new-wave-of-artists-fuels-streaming-growth/">156,542 cassettes</a> were sold in the UK last year, the highest figure since 2003 and an increase of 94.7% on 2019 sales. Seemingly out of the blue, global pop icons such as Lady Gaga, the 1975, and <a href="https://musicstore.dualipa.com/uk/future-nostalgia-gold-cassette.html">Dua Lipa</a> have started rushing out their new releases on cassette – and they’re selling out.</p>
<p>For those of us who are old enough to remember the cassette tape as a common format of music consumption, their resurgence is somewhat puzzling. After all, even in their heyday, cassettes were <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/cassette-tapes-dire-way-listen-music-earth-still-buying/">always a bit rubbish</a>. </p>
<p>They lacked the aesthetic appeal and the romance of the vinyl LP and its gatefold sleeve. Subsequently, they lacked the usability, flashiness and sonic fidelity of the CD. And there is not a music fan alive over the age of 35 who doesn’t have a horror story to tell about a favourite album or mixtape being chewed up by a malicious car stereo or portable boombox.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A silver boombox with a cassette tape holder in the middle" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The boombox may now appear fashionably retro – but that won’t stop it chewing up the occasional tape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/retro-ghetto-blaster-isolated-on-white-248920240">Valentin Valkov/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ottens himself was dismissive of the “nonsense” of a cassette revival, telling Dutch newspaper <a href="https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/02/15/het-cassettebandje-is-helemaal-terug-a1592250">NRC Handelsblad</a> that “nothing can match the sound” of the CD, the development of which he also played a key part in. For Ottens, the ultimate goal of any music format was clarity and precision of sound, though, in a nod to nostalgic listeners, he also conceded: “I think people mainly hear what they want to hear.”</p>
<h2>Feeling it</h2>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://journals.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/39614">popular music and material culture</a>, I can’t help but wonder if Ottens’ strict utilitarian perspective misses a deeper point about the cassette tape and its recent resurgence as a medium in popular culture. </p>
<p>After all, the cultural enjoyment of music goes far beyond narrow debates about sound quality. Our enjoyment of music, and the cultural rituals surrounding that enjoyment, is a complex and <a href="https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/PMH/article/view/41832">deeply social thing</a> that engages more than just our ears.</p>
<p>The ongoing revival of the record, for instance, is sometimes explained as a turn back to vinyl’s superior sound. But it’s just as often regarded as a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10253866.2016.1212709">cultural turn</a> back to an iconic medium, steeped in musical history, that people can feel, handle, and experience together – unlike a digital file. Though they may be less iconic, cassettes also represent cultural moments of cherished significance to music fans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hand feels a cassette tape into a stereo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Many music fans appreciate the tactile nature of old analogue formats like the audio cassette.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-hand-pick-tape-cassette-playervintage-633010601">arrowsmith2/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>In the mid 2010s, I investigated the first signs of this resurgence of cassettes within Glasgow’s indie and punk scenes as part of my <a href="https://www.academia.edu/26807403/From_Analogue_to_Digital_From_Pragmatism_to_Symbolism_The_Cassette_Tape_as_a_Hybrid_Artefact_in_Contemporary_Popular_Music">PhD</a>, talking to musicians, labels and fans about the resurgence of cassette tapes. In these conversations, the materiality of these objects – their physical, tangible presence – was often highlighted as a motivating factor. </p>
<p>As one fan remarked to me: “I just like having things. They’re all kind of becoming a bit defunct now, but I just like having something. That’s my hobby, music is my hobby, and that’s how I spend my money.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/music-collectors-seek-out-rare-albums-not-available-on-streaming-126488">Music collectors seek out rare albums not available on streaming</a>
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<p>There’s also an economic component to the cassette resurgence. With <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17510694.2015.1096618?scroll=top&needAccess=true">debates raging</a> about how music streaming services should reimburse artists, independent musicians have, for some time, been looking to the sale of <a href="https://www.prescient.digital/blog/2020/3/24/streaming-vs-merchandising-the-real-money-maker-for-musicians">physical products and merchandise</a> as a means of generating income.</p>
<p>For Glasgow’s indie and punk bands, as with today’s independent artists, cassettes actually represented a <a href="https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/cassettes-resurgence-103-percent-increase-2711548">cost-effective</a> means of providing a physical product, far cheaper than pressing a vinyl record and printing sleeves and packaging. As one label owner put it, “we tend to release on tape because it’s cheap to manufacture, it’s easy to recoup, and it leaves money left over for the bands to get something”.</p>
<p>While the practices of these small, independent artists may feel quite far removed from the recent embrace of cassette tapes by mainstream pop stars, each arguably has their roots in a desire for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2015.1061339">analogue products we can touch</a> in an increasingly digital world mediated via screens.</p>
<p>Many people have reported feelings of <a href="https://theconversation.com/lockdown-quarantine-and-self-isolation-how-different-covid-restrictions-affect-our-mental-health-153595">digital detachment and alienation</a> during the pandemic. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that a desire for something we can actually feel, embellished with a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56252465">nostalgic glow</a> from a COVID-free past, may also explain the resurgence of the audio cassette, nearly 60 years since its Berlin debut.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Iain Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cassette tapes are in again – and this time, it’s smaller artists who look likely to gain.Iain Taylor, Lecturer in Music Industries, Birmingham City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1476522020-10-07T05:58:13Z2020-10-07T05:58:13ZWith his signature guitar style, Eddie Van Halen changed rock music<p>The legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-1ttle-with-cancer/127382880-07/eddie-van-halen-dies-aged-65-after-ba">has died</a> aged 65. One of the most influential guitarists of the modern age, Van Halen was known for his mastery of the <a href="https://seeitlive.co/van-halen-guitar-tapping/">two-handed tapping</a> technique and for bringing the virtuosic rock guitar solo back into the popular music mainstream in the late 70s and 1980s. </p>
<p>One of the great innovators, Van Halen formed a bridge between 1970s rock styles and heavy metal sounds of the 1980s. He delivered his best work with a nonchalance that belied the training and dedication driving him and his band to succeed.</p>
<p>Born in the Netherlands in 1955, Van Halen came from a musical family. His father played saxophone and clarinet professionally and ensured Van Halen and his older brother, Alex, started piano lessons from a young age. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1313573192456450048"}"></div></p>
<p>The boys’ training in classical music and theory would influence Van Halen’s guitar playing, particularly the famous two-handed, finger tapping technique, where harmonic ideas derived from the keyboard found new expression on the electric guitar.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/redefining-the-rock-god-the-new-breed-of-electric-guitar-heroes-80192">Redefining the rock god – the new breed of electric guitar heroes</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Young tour de force</h2>
<p>The family immigrated to the US in 1962 and the young Van Halen brothers later discovered rock music, with Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton as early heroes. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.guitarplayer.com/players/eddie-van-halen-talks-revolutionary-gear-mods-and-the-death-of-rock-in-his-first-ever-interview-from-1978">first Guitar Player magazine interview</a> in 1978, Van Halen mentioned Clapton as a formative influence, having learnt his solos note for note.</p>
<p>In 1972, while still in high school, the brothers formed the band Mammoth, hiring a public address system from David Lee Roth. Van Halen originally sang as well as playing guitar, but he tired of combining duties so Roth (and his PA) joined the band. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">This recording, live on the Sunset Strip circa 1976, captures the energy of the band.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Mammoth caught the attention of Kiss’s Gene Simmons, who financed an early demo tape, and then producer Ted Templeman who signed the group to a record deal. Their first album, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen_(album)">Van Halen</a> (1978), was recorded quickly, drawing on their live sound and set list. </p>
<p>It was the album’s second track, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI7XiJgt0vY">Eruption</a>, that captured the attention of guitarists.</p>
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<p>This tour de force shows Van Halen had already developed his signature style by his early 20s. Opening power chords signal a call to attention while licks based on blues and rock phrases are transformed through sheer speed and intensity. The tone has a power, presence and clarity rarely heard in rock guitar recordings of the time. </p>
<p>The climax of the piece is the famous two-handed tapping section. With a concluding dive bomb – a pitch descent courtesy of subtle manipulation of the <a href="https://www.sustainpunch.com/whammy-bars/">whammy bar</a>, Van Halen ushered in a new era in electric guitar playing. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Van Halen demonstrating his two-handed tapping in 2015.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>True innovation</h2>
<p>The sounds and techniques used in Eruption seemed to be only possible on the electric guitar, exploiting the instrument’s responsiveness and tactile immediacy.</p>
<p>But Van Halen continued to seek new means of musical expression and on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen_II">Van Halen II</a> (1979), he gave us an example of what was possible when his virtuosic approach was adapted to the acoustic guitar. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Spanish Fly is a great example of his drive to innovate and adapt as a musician.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Van Halen was always modifying his guitars. Early experiments led to him creating his “Frankenstein guitar” in 1974, fusing the neck and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humbucker">humbucker pickup</a> from a Gibson guitar onto a Fender Stratocaster body. He added the stripes that became his signature.</p>
<p>He remained involved in designing new instruments throughout his career, collaborating with makers such as <a href="https://www.guitar-list.com/music-man/electric-guitars/ernie-ballmusic-man-edward-van-halen">Music Man</a>, <a href="https://www.themusiczoo.com/blogs/news/guitar-showcase-ten-eddie-van-halen-signed-charvel-evh-art-series-touring-guitars">Charvel</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT0exTVXIHI">Fender</a>.</p>
<h2>‘The brown sound’</h2>
<p>Van Halen’s sound was loud and distorted but also clear and focused. Often referred to as <a href="https://www.roland.co.uk/blog/guitarists-brown-sound/">the “brown” sound</a> for its feeling of organic warmth, this sound has gone on to inspire generations of guitarists. </p>
<p>The band’s biggest commercial success was the album <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(Van_Halen_album)">1984</a>, where Van Halen turned to keyboards in both writing and recording.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A good example of the ‘brown sound’ can be heard here on Unchained, live at Oakland Coliseum Stadium in 1981.</span></figcaption>
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<p>On the single Jump, keyboard chords ground the song but an improvised, high energy electric guitar solo reminds the listener of Van Halen’s virtuosity as he leads the band into a Bach-inspired, keyboard fantasy.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jump showed Van Halen’s skills on both keyboard and guitar.</span></figcaption>
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<p>From 1978 to 1998, the band released 11 studio albums, with their 12th and final album, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Different_Kind_of_Truth">A Different Kind of Truth</a> (2012), appearing 13 years later. But it is the searing lead break on Michael Jackson’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_It">Beat It</a> (1983) that bought Van Halen to global attention. </p>
<p>Jammed into 32 seconds, Van Halen’s solo is a masterpiece of construction, featuring pitch manipulation with the whammy bar, squealing harmonics, rapid-fire two-handed tapping, scurrying scalar licks (or quick scales) and a final ascending <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremolo">tremolo line</a> that soars to the upper reaches of the fretboard and makes you wonder what just happened.</p>
<p>It is one of the most famous rock guitar solos around.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Van Halen’s work on Beat It.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Van Halen was diagnosed with <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/van-halen-1225779">tongue cancer</a> in 2000, and declared cancer free in 2002. In 2019, it was first reported he had been battling <a href="https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/11/eddie-van-halen-hospitalized-report/">throat cancer</a> for five years.</p>
<p>In 2015, Rolling Stone named Van Halen as number eight on a list of the world’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-greatest-guitarists-153675/eddie-van-halen-3-159410/">greatest guitarists</a> of all time. But as his career shows, his talent wasn’t simply in his musical virtuosity, but in his innovation: creating a brand new sound for rock music, but also in the design of the guitar itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147652/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ken Murray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Eddie Van Halen has died aged 65. He will be remembered for his virtuoso playing, particularly his groundbreaking, two-handed, finger-tapping technique.Ken Murray, Associate Professor in Guitar, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1382952020-05-11T06:19:44Z2020-05-11T06:19:44ZRock and roll and nuclear weapons: how the Cold War shaped Little Richard<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333979/original/file-20200511-49569-7mc5fg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C62%2C1440%2C769&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Don't Knock The Rock/YouTube/Screenshot</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When he landed in Australia in October 1957, Little Richard should have been on top of the world. In just two years, the wild showman had traded the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=-grBfbKtzj8C&lpg=PT22&dq=chitlin%20circuit&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=chitlin%20circuit&f=false">chitlin’ circuit</a> for an international audience. Instead, he was pondering his future – and reading the Bible.</p>
<p>A fast-talking American entrepreneur named Lee Gordon had organised the <a href="https://collection.maas.museum/object/164523">two-week package tour</a>, which also included Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, and “the female Elvis” Alis Lesley. When the Blue Caps got stuck in Hawaii, the Sydney-based Dee Jays filled in – on the condition that their singer, a 21-year-old unknown named Johnny O’Keefe, could also do a few numbers.</p>
<p>“R. and R. may never come to Australia,” journalist Bernard Fletcher <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/41855792">wrote</a> the previous year, “but then, on the other hand, juvenile crazes have a habit of spreading.”</p>
<p>And spread it had. “[Rock and roll] is so far just a pleasant form of musical novelty to our youngsters,” one Perth journalist <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/75861406">wrote in 1956</a>, “and it is hoped it never reaches the hysterical, violent stage that is shocking America.”</p>
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<h2>A violent world</h2>
<p>“Hundreds of screaming teenagers fought with each other to souvenir a shirt, tie, belt, socks and three sets of underwear which Little Richard stripped off and threw to them”, went the review <a href="http://www.kolumbus.fi/timrei/lr/an57.html">in The Age</a>. The singer finished in only a green turban and loose-fitting pyjama pants. </p>
<p>(Commentators were more bemused than alarmed: the Melbourne Herald called the stunt “an amusing and quite decent strip tease”.)</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-lop-bam-boom-little-richards-saucy-style-underpins-todays-hits-138263">A-lop-bam-boom: Little Richard's saucy style underpins today's hits</a>
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<p>But it was the violence of the outside world that was troubling the singer: an <a href="https://medium.com/@Vinylmint/history-of-the-record-industry-1920-1950s-6d491d7cb606">exploitative</a> recording industry, <a href="https://theconversation.com/emmett-tills-life-matters-99923">racialised violence</a> of white supremacy in the US, and the looming threat of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/us/nuclear-threat-retro-report.html">nuclear armageddon</a>. </p>
<p>This final apocalyptic possibility proved too much for Little Richard’s fragile psyche. Already on edge with Great Britain conducting nuclear weapon tests at <a href="https://theconversation.com/sixty-years-on-the-maralinga-bomb-tests-remind-us-not-to-put-security-over-safety-62441">Maralinga</a> in South Australia, the Soviets’ surprise satellite launch shook the singer. Here is what the consummate fabulist, who never failed to embellish a story, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/876172.The_Life_and_Times_of_Little_Richard">told biographer</a> Charles White:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On our fifth date of the two-week tour […] forty thousand people came to see me at the municipal outdoor arena. That night Russia sent off that very first <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sputnik-launched">Sputnik</a>. It looked as though the big ball of fire came directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above our heads. It shook my mind. It really shook my mind. I got up from the piano and said, “This is it. I am through. I am leaving show business to go back to God.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The next day, Little Richard confirmed his conversion <a href="https://hunterlivinghistories.com/2019/05/06/little-richard-newcastle/">by throwing</a> thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery from the Stockton Ferry into the Hunter River. Cutting short the tour, he flew home to enrol in a theology program at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama.</p>
<p>“I’m quitting showbiz, I wanna go straight,” the now Reverend Richard Penniman sang in 1960. “I wanna serve my Lord before it’s too late.” </p>
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<p>As critic Ainslie Baker <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51597515?searchTerm=%22Little%20Richard%22&searchLimits=l-decade=196%7C%7C%7Cl-year=1960%7C%7C%7Cl-title=112">bemoaned</a> in The Australian Women’s Weekly: “Little Richard was in great vogue among the rock-‘n-rolling fraternity until he retired to ponder upon the threat to the future of man posed by the nuclear age.”</p>
<p>While he returned to secular music in 1962, he never again visited Australia.</p>
<h2>Nuclear music</h2>
<p>True or not (and the singer told many different versions of this episode), this story suggests we look closer at music’s often forgotten Cold War context. </p>
<p>Rock ‘n’ roll fans “live in a world of mixed emotions”, Phyllis Battelle <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/clip/29825283/argus-leader/">wrote in 1956</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Prosperity has built up financial security for them and their families, so they do not want. At the same time, they hear all the talk of world insecurity. Of psychiatry and psychology, of atomic warfare in abeyance. In the back of their minds, like an uncomfortable dream, is the inkling that living-for-today may be a wise course to follow.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This anxiety about young people and their place in an uncertain world travelled across the globe right alongside the big beat. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. </p>
<p>“During the past few years we have had numerous reports of bodgie activities in our larger cities,” one reader <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51774446?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F112%2F1958%2F01%2F29%2Fpage%2F4821658%2Farticle%2F51774446">wrote</a> in to Australian Women’s Day from Sunshine, Victoria in 1958. </p>
<p>“It’s not a matter to be pushed aside, either. After all, today’s youth will run tomorrow’s world.”</p>
<p>Many tributes to the late singer have included the curious saga of the rock ’n’ roll pioneer’s abrupt, if ultimately brief, retirement in Australia. His five-year departure for the gospel wilderness is not, however, merely a bit of trivia. </p>
<p>If today we can still hear a transgressive, liberatory power in Little Richard’s voice, we should also remember the political context that made that voice meaningful in the first place.</p>
<p>Rock ‘n’ roll mattered precisely because of the kind of world its young listeners inhabited – a world that frightened some of its most famous singers, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138295/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Tochka does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During a tour to Australia, Little Richard feared the nuclear apocalypse and – on stage – annonced he was giving up music.Nicholas Tochka, Head of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1251632019-10-14T12:03:59Z2019-10-14T12:03:59ZWhat lost photos of Blue Notes say about South Africa’s jazz history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296670/original/file-20191011-96226-1ehb39z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mongezi Feza on trumpet at the concert in 1964 that is the source of the rare new photos of The Blue Notes</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1964 a young South African student and photography enthusiast, Norman Owen-Smith, took his Leica camera along to a jazz concert at the then University of Natal Pietermaritzburg’s Great Hall and captured a series of black and white images of the band, the Blue Notes.</p>
<p>Through the intervention of jazz scholars, these photos have been printed, restored and exhibited, years after the band became iconic.</p>
<p>The story of the Blue Notes is inextricable from apartheid’s exiling of the musical – specifically jazz – imagination. Owen-Smith’s photos are a rare and unexpected contribution to a hungry archive for jazz lovers all over the world.</p>
<p>The Blue Notes embody the beauty of South African jazz in the 1960s, and the dynamics of its struggles during and against apartheid. The ensemble began in 1959 after a meeting between two of South Africa’s most revered jazz artists, both of whom died in exile. One was pianist and alto saxophonist Mtutuzeli ‘Dudu’ Pukwana, the other pianist Chris McGregor. By 1964 the other four members were cemented: Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums – the only surviving member – and Nikele ‘Nick’ Moyake on tenor saxophone, Mongezi Feza on trumpet and Johnny Mbizo Dyani on double bass.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Blue Notes in full swing in Pietermaritzburg on the eve of them leaving the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Owen-Smith’s joyful, simple photographs allow the ordinary to be extraordinary, showing musical fraternity, passionate performance and a racially mixed band at the height of apartheid, after the clampdown that followed the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. They capture a moment in the band’s history when they were still young – in their teens and twenties – and just before they went into exile.</p>
<p>They are a notable addition to a very thin archive. It includes an excerpt from a documentary on jazz in Britain that shows a snippet of the Blue Notes’ performance at the 1964 Antibes Jazz Festival, posted on YouTube by McGregor’s younger brother. The archival footage is owned by French TV, but even scholars of South African jazz based in France have not been able to find it. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aTXq6OH7XbU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The rare video excerpt of the band on YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the only video excerpt of the Blue Notes I have come across – even though, as I noted in my <a href="https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.697434">doctoral dissertation</a>, they are one of the more thoroughly covered jazz ensembles of the apartheid era. </p>
<p>Other elements of the archive consist of an online data base about the band built by British journalist Mike Fowler. Its source text remains Maxine McGregor’s biography Chris McGregor and the Brotherhood of Breath: My Life with a South African Jazz Pioneer. </p>
<p>Another component is an album called Township Bop that was released in 2002. The compilation was made up of previously unheard material which the band had recorded at the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s Transcription Centre in 1964. </p>
<p>And in 2013, radio station SAfm presented a two-part documentary. In addition, a number of artists have performed and even recorded tributes to the band. </p>
<p>All these contributions – now including Owen-Smith’s photos – mark a change of fortune for a group of musicians who played mostly on the live scene. Their recordings tended to go missing for long stretches, as with their 1964 live recording in Durban, Legacy: Live in South Afrika 1964, which was released in 1995. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Co-founder of the Blue Notes, pianist Chris McGregor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Memory and healing</h2>
<p>From the late 1950s, many jazz musicians left the country; others were subjected to the alienating practices of the apartheid music industry, which often would book or record them only if they complied with their demands – what to play, who to play with and how to play it; many stopped playing altogether. These are the provocations of hurt that recur, as if on a loop, each time we engage with South African jazz history. Indeed, some of these commercial imperatives remain – not just in South Africa and not just related to jazz. Musicians’ lives remain precarious. </p>
<p>Healing, then, surely entails bringing these musicians back. </p>
<p>But how, and to where? Louis Moholo-Moholo is back home in Langa, in Cape Town, and is still playing. But what of Moyake, who died in South Africa? And Dyani, who is buried in South Africa? And Feza, who left the country at the age of 19? McGregor visited the country shortly before his death, but not Pukwana. Healing the open wound caused by exile’s rupture requires physical and creative return.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Legendary drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo is the sole surviving member of the band.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tribute performances, recordings and documentaries are one way, if they do not pander to nostalgia. Teaching and research suggest another way, but only if neither succumb to a process of canonisation that sanitises the complex story of the Blue Notes. After all, exile did not rupture a smooth narrative that, whiggishly, was tending toward some apotheosis of South African jazz. Its effects were far more drastic. </p>
<p>Exile sundered a finely knit network of journalists like Todd Matshikiza, poets like Keorapetse Kgositsile, writers like Es’kia Mphahlele, and artists like Dumile Feni, from the dramatists, broadcasters, audiences and photographers who together made up mid-twentieth century South African jazz cultures. Returning the exiled musical imagination means renewing these connections: not perfectly, but imaginatively. </p>
<h2>Pictures from history</h2>
<p>In the absence of a rich sonic archive, jazz’s visual history is important. </p>
<p>Owen-Smith’s photographs join a body of documentary photography dating back decades.</p>
<p>In Lars Rasmussen’s <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/cape-town-jazz-1959-1963/">Cape Town Jazz 1959-1963</a>, Hardy Stockmann’s photographs predominantly depict a non-racial and convivial atmosphere of backstage fraternising, laughter, eating, drinking and smoking, of jam sessions and performances in Cape Town’s legendary jazz clubs, halls and other locations. </p>
<p>The jazz historian Christopher Ballantine describes <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Beyond_the_Blues.html?id=EfGyWqgkikYC&redir_esc=y">Basil Breakey’s photographs</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here, in these stark images of loneliness, anguish, resilience, and despair, are many of the most famous members of that fabulously talented young generation that lived through the deepening gloom of the 1960s. Typically, their eyes are closed, or hidden by shades; when they play, the intensity is palpable, but no one appears to be listening; so in the end (the images seem to suggest) they sit alone, their instruments fallen silent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jazz scholar Jonathan Eato counters Breakey’s dark representation and Ballantine’s bleak reading. In <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.com/2013/11/keeping-time-order-yours-now.html">Keeping Time</a>, he writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the musicians in Ian Bruce Huntley’s photographs offer people a brighter world that is touched by colour … the shades hiding the eyes of musicians do so as a consequence of music sounding under gloriously clear skies. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ordinary is extraordinary in the photos, which show music transcending apartheid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Owen-Smith’s photographs enter these debates in interesting ways. As an historical musicologist, what strikes me is that whereas the photographers I have mentioned aim to capture the jazz ethos of an era, he captures an event in one place: a once-off concert. In so doing, Owen-Smith invites us to consider how photography can help answer Christopher Small’s ever relevant question about “musicking”: What does it mean when this performance … takes place at this time, in this place, with these participants?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125163/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindelwa Dalamba receives funding from the National Research Foundation (Thuthuka) Grant (#106960). Funding for this project was provided by the Arts Research Africa (ARA) Wits School of Arts Public Humanities Grant, and by NEST: Narrative Enquiry for Social Transformation.</span></em></p>A rare set of photographs of South Africa’s most famous jazz ensemble, the Blue Notes, has added valuable insights to the music archiveLindelwa Dalamba, Music lecturer, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1105592019-02-11T11:44:40Z2019-02-11T11:44:40ZWeezer’s cover album: Is the rock band honoring or exploiting the originals?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258026/original/file-20190208-174861-nms2kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A cover song can both enhance and diminish the legacy of the original artist.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-holding-record-isolated-on-green-564528277?src=_k-lr44K8fS7yyNbgvOWhQ-1-0">PrinceOfLove/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’ve noticed the 1980s hit “Africa” playing on the radio more than usual, you likely weren’t listening to the original version by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY">Toto</a>. Instead, it was probably the recently released cover by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk5Dwg5zm2U">Weezer</a>, which has already been heard over 25 million times on Spotify.</p>
<p>Maybe you know the backstory: A teenage fan started a joke Twitter account, <a href="https://twitter.com/weezerafrica">@weezerafrica</a>, in order to persuade her favorite band to cover her favorite song. Days later, the hashtag #WeezerCoverAfrica went viral, and, after months of virtual prodding, the band indulged the request. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258004/original/file-20190208-174873-1bjfpk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258004/original/file-20190208-174873-1bjfpk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258004/original/file-20190208-174873-1bjfpk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258004/original/file-20190208-174873-1bjfpk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258004/original/file-20190208-174873-1bjfpk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258004/original/file-20190208-174873-1bjfpk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258004/original/file-20190208-174873-1bjfpk9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Weezer’s ‘Teal Album’ is entirely made up of cover songs – and the band’s fans love it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/719u61DhWdL._SS500_.jpg">Atlantic Records</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To everyone’s surprise, Weezer suddenly had a chart-topping hit – its best performing single <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/weezer/chart-history/hot-100">in a dozen years</a>. And it isn’t even the band’s own song. Now Weezer has released an entire album of covers – a self-titled EP affectionately known as the “Teal Album,” which has already hit <a href="https://www.billboard.com/charts/billboard-200">No. 5 on the Billboard 200</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.coloradocollege.edu/academics/dept/music/people/profile.html?person=banagale_ryan_raul">As a musicologist</a>, Weezer’s successful foray into cover songs made me think about the overall trajectory of the practice.</p>
<p>They’re usually a fun way to memorialize an existing song and pass it along from one generation to the next. But the practice isn’t free of controversy.</p>
<h2>Enriching our collective musical memory</h2>
<p>The editor of a book on cover songs, communication scholar <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Play_it_Again.html?id=7sMts2js234C">George Plasketes</a> writes that covers are “about favorite songs and great songs. Classics and standards.” They show how “musical artifacts are kept culturally alive, repeating as echoes.”</p>
<p>To Plasketes, regardless of what a musician might add or subtract in the process, cover songs capture and convey a collective musical history.</p>
<p>The concept of covering has been around as long as music has been written down. The earliest choirs for Catholic masses often sang versions of earlier Gregorian chants. These “covers” were intended to both teach and entertain – to attract worshippers and spread Christianity. Then, as now, covers circulated culture.</p>
<p>Scholars have identified many categories of cover songs, but people are probably most familiar with two of them: the “straight cover” and the “transformative cover.”</p>
<p>The former, also known as a “karaoke cover,” sounds almost exactly like the original, which is the route taken by Weezer. Such an approach might pay homage to a music influence, like The Beatles’ “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RicaUqd9Hg">Twist and Shout</a>,” which had been popularized by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTaqn8_gMR0">The Isley Brothers</a> but was originally recorded by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsDpc-8iR8g">The Top Notes</a>. </p>
<p>A straight cover can also form a sort of ironic commentary. Cultural theorist Steve Bailey <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0300776032000095486?src=recsys">notes that</a>, while such covers “tend to ridicule the originals,” they also “celebrate the continued vitality … of the music and its importance.” </p>
<p>Certainly, there’s a dose of irony to Weezer’s “Africa” – the band recorded it at the request of fans, not necessarily out of some deep connection to the music or as a nod to Toto’s influence. We can’t be certain, but it seems as if Weezer’s poking fun at the ‘80s hit, while still staying true to the original. </p>
<p>More frequently, covers fall into the transformative category, which is when musicians put their artistic stamp on a song. </p>
<p>Consider a hit such as Whitney Houston’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWTaaS7LdU">I Will Always Love You</a>.” Houston was able to transform Dolly Parton’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDqqm_gTPjc">original country song</a> into a pop anthem. </p>
<p>Then there’s Aretha Franklin’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0">Respect</a>,” which famously flipped the gender dynamics of Otis Redding’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvC9V_lBnDQ">original</a> – all of a sudden it was a woman asking “for a little respect when you get home.”</p>
<h2>The contradictions of the cover</h2>
<p>It’s fun to hear one performer emulate another or to experience a familiar song made anew. But the question of “who gets to cover whom” reveals one problematic aspect of the genre. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://theconversation.com/champion-or-copycat-elvis-presleys-ambiguous-relationship-with-black-america-82293">white rock 'n’ rollers usurped black rhythm and blues artists</a> in the 1950s, countless covers became known not as covers, but as the definitive version. </p>
<p>Did you know that Elvis Presley’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eHJ12Vhpyc">Hound Dog</a>” was originally performed by rhythm-and-blues singer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoHDrzw-RPg">Big Mama Thornton</a>? Or that Bill Haley’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B7xr_EjbzE">Shake, Rattle and Roll</a>” was first recorded by blues shouter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9wTQsAgktg">Big Joe Turner</a>?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yoHDrzw-RPg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Elvis Presley covered Big Mama’s ‘Hound Dog’ – and reaped the rewards.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These two versions are especially emblematic of the issue. Not only are the covers safer, less-sexualized renderings geared to a white teenage market, but their subsequent popularity severed the songs’ original associations with their black creators. Elvis and Haley earned millions of dollars off of this appropriation. Few hear “Hound Dog” and think of Big Mama Thornton. </p>
<p>On digital streaming platforms and automated playlists, cover versions of popular songs can still siphon attention and money away from the original. Enter any title from Weezer’s “Teal Album” into Spotify or YouTube and the new recordings sit right next to the originals. At the same time, this side-by-side placement might encourage deeper exploration of our musical past. If you realize that your favorite song is actually a cover, you might be inclined to listen to the original. </p>
<p>But do we need to know the original to appreciate a cover? Or even be aware that a song we know well is a cover to begin with? Listeners unfamiliar with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPz21cDK7dg">Nine Inch Nails</a> might believe Johnny Cash’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5pc">Hurt</a>” is originally his. No doubt similar assumptions have been made about Jimi Hendrix’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY">All Along the Watchtower</a>,” which is actually a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzanOzyqgas">Bob Dylan</a> tune. <a href="https://youtu.be/fOaMQ-R9YGM?t=292">Many other</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJJGMpxnJkE">artists</a> have also covered “All Along the Watchtower.”</p>
<p>If a song gets repeatedly covered, it could be a sign of its artistic strength. As professor of American literature and culture <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7sMts2js234C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA153#v=onepage&q&f=false">Russell Reising writes</a>, “There’s clearly something about the Dylan original that not only continues to inspire performers but resonates with the socio-political events of our culture.” </p>
<p>Even great originals can possess a degree of unrealized potential just waiting to be discovered by the artists that cover them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Raul Bañagale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some covers are recorded as a nod to the legacy of the original, only to end up becoming the definitive version of the song.Ryan Raul Bañagale, Crown Family Professor for Innovation in the Arts, Colorado CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/995812018-07-11T06:25:52Z2018-07-11T06:25:52ZThe album at 70: a format in decline?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226625/original/file-20180709-122250-1898t3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-girl-headphones-vinyl-store-1124468900?src=zOxaAHPjuNgxwsuUomERcA-1-31">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The album – or at least, the 33rpm vinyl record that spawned the format – turns 70 years old this year. But it isn’t ageing gracefully. Even five years ago, Bob Lefsetz declared that <a href="https://variety.com/2013/biz/news/katy-perrys-prism-a-good-example-of-how-albums-dont-work-anymore-1200824933/">“the album is dying in front of our very eyes”</a> – and given how comprehensively streaming services are decimating record sales, that still seems a reasonable observation.</p>
<p>In 2017, UK revenues from subscription streaming platforms rose 41.9% to £577m, while physical formats dropped 3.4% and online downloading dropped 23.1%. Album sales – as hard copies and digital files – have <a href="https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/uk-album-sales-have-been-cut-in-half-since-2010/">halved since 2010</a>.</p>
<p>Reports of the album’s death, however, may have been greatly exaggerated, or at least underestimated how prolonged a demise it could be. A host of <a href="https://www.stereogum.com/2002806/first-vinyl-lp-70th-birthday/news/">media outlets</a> are celebrating the album’s landmark birthday, the prestigious <a href="http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/hyundai-mercury-prize-confirm-2018-event-details__22795/">Mercury Album Prize</a> will soon be announcing its nominees, and the <a href="https://www.sayaward.com/?eligible_alpha=ko">Scottish Album of the Year Award</a> will be doing the same soon after. A cultural as much as a physical phenomenon, decades of influence have granted the album a presence in the public consciousness that goes far beyond finance.</p>
<h2>A place in the history books</h2>
<p>It was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/852886?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">progress in plastics technology</a> after World War II and the development of vinyl that created the classic 12", 33rpm record. These could last longer and play at much higher quality than their <a href="https://web.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/historyof78rpms">shellac</a> predecessors, which were sometimes packaged in literal “albums” of <a href="https://www.aiga.org/medalist-alexsteinweiss">bound booklets containing several discs</a>. The shiny new vinyl format allowed music to play fluidly, in a more tightly choreographed order.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226624/original/file-20180709-122265-4m66d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226624/original/file-20180709-122265-4m66d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226624/original/file-20180709-122265-4m66d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226624/original/file-20180709-122265-4m66d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226624/original/file-20180709-122265-4m66d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226624/original/file-20180709-122265-4m66d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226624/original/file-20180709-122265-4m66d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The great albums of the 1960s and 70s will live long in the collective memory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vinyl-record-front-collection-albums-vintage-558022447?src=VZQDOeQG7A2XDSd26shobQ-1-7">shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>These new “LPs” – literally meaning “long playing” – quickly gathered momentum through the 1950s to become a benchmark for artistic intent. Artists began to think about how an album was put together, beyond simply packaging songs for convenient listening.</p>
<p>Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours is sometimes credited as <a href="https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/7066/Frank-Sinatra-In-The-Wee-Small-Hours/">the first “concept album”</a> – the individual tracks linking together to support an overarching theme. Jazz artists also used LPs to explore new musical developments, such as Miles Davis’s <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2014/08/miles-davis-kind-of-blue-classic-jazz-album/">modal jazz on A Kind of Blue</a> and John Coltrane’s <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20020817175952/http:/www.rhino.com/features/liners/75203lin.html">“sheets of sound” on Giant Steps</a>.</p>
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<p>But it was in the mid-1960s that albums began to really hit their stride. The decade witnessed the iconic evolution of rock music, a break from singles-based pop, and a subsequent explosion in the record industry – all hinging on the success of the album. Burgeoning studio technology, and artists with the financial clout to experiment, enabled classics such as The Beach Boys’ <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/how-pet-sounds-invented-the-modern-pop-album/482940/">Pet Sounds</a> and The Beatles’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/sgt-peppers-at-50-the-greatest-thing-you-ever-heard-or-just-another-album-77458">Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band</a>. Both albums laid down cultural milestones that resonated far beyond their (still impressive) sales figures.</p>
<p>The album became an expression of artistic progress which bands could use to stretch musical boundaries. The Who, for instance, used it to push the “rock opera” format with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/12/tommy-pete-townshend">Tommy</a>, and take their concerts to wider audiences with gig recordings like <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/05394-the-who-live-at-leeds-40th-anniversary-review">Live at Leeds</a>.</p>
<p>Through the 1970s and 80s, vinyl was joined by <a href="https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/8-track-tape">8 track</a> and cassettes, and the album dominated the industry landscape. Record stores overflowed with commercial behemoths like Pink Floyd’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4xUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA12&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Dark Side of the Moon</a>, Fleetwood Mac’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumours_(album)">Rumours</a>, Michael Jackson’s <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7693419/michael-jackson-thriller-highest-certified-album">Thriller</a> and Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. The last of these, perhaps ironically, was the first album ever to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/12/brothers-in-arms-cd">sell a million copies on CD</a> and outstrip its vinyl counterpart, marking the shift towards digital that would eventually fuel the album’s decline. </p>
<p>CDs initially drummed up a windfall for record companies, and many music fans repurchased their entire <a href="https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=commstud_pubs">back catalogues</a>. But, ultimately, CDs meant that when internet capable computers became domestic mainstays, their owners had music collections in digital form, ready to be uploaded and freely swapped online.</p>
<p>By the time a viable commercial alternative arrived – in the form of iTunes – listening patterns had already shifted. Albums were now easy to delineate. Users picked and chose songs to formulate their own playlists, a trend that soared to new heights with streaming services such as Spotify. The old-fashioned “album tracklist” had become entirely domesticated.</p>
<h2>A cultural reference point</h2>
<p>So yes, the album may no longer occupy the centre of the musical economy, but it remains a central idea in popular culture. For generations of listeners and musicians, longer musical forms are now institutionalised, and the album has spent 70 years solidifying its place in our cultural ecology. A flood of <a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9676-the-33-best-33-13-books/">books</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008q118/episodes/guide">documentaries</a> have followed alongside, canonising both individual albums and the format as a whole.</p>
<p>Likewise, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b7d34964-26de-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0">“heritage acts”</a> can now base tours entirely on start-to-finish renditions of classic albums, such as Peter Gabriel’s <a href="https://consequenceofsound.net/2012/05/peter-gabriel-announces-so-anniversary-tour/">So</a>, Paul Simon’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jul/16/paul-simon-graceland-review">Graceland</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/lauryn-hill-tour-uk-ireland-miseducation-20th-anniversary-dates-london-manchester-a8364756.html">The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill</a>. </p>
<p>With lower revenue from recordings, album royalties aren’t the pension plan they once were, but the broader <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X0900045X">consecration of popular music</a> as a heartbeat of 20th and 21st century culture extends far beyond the artists themselves. Anniversary coverage has proliferated – 20 years of <a href="https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/ok-computer-50-facts-radiohead-1997-album-2087519">OK Computer</a>; 30 years of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/14/michael-jacksons-bad-at-30-share-your-favourite-albums-of-1987">Bad</a>; 70 years of “the album”. And there’s ever renewed interest in <a href="http://classicalbumslive.com/">concertising albums</a> whose creators have died or split up – reproducing a classic album live in the same way an orchestra might do with a classical score.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226622/original/file-20180709-122265-1to5rhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226622/original/file-20180709-122265-1to5rhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226622/original/file-20180709-122265-1to5rhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226622/original/file-20180709-122265-1to5rhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226622/original/file-20180709-122265-1to5rhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226622/original/file-20180709-122265-1to5rhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226622/original/file-20180709-122265-1to5rhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">I’ll just press this button instead.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/music-steaming-multimedia-listening-digital-tablet-436658593?src=VZQDOeQG7A2XDSd26shobQ-2-48">shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Nor is this mere nostalgia. New acts still celebrate their first album release as a landmark, even if touring is their bread and butter. And established artists still use the form to illustrate creative growth. Beyoncé’s Lemonade, for example, leveraged video streaming platforms and satellite television by marketing itself as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/24/beyonce-launches-new-visual-album-lemonade-hbo">“visual album”</a>.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding <a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/article/is-vinyls-comeback-here-to-stay/">a resurgence of vinyl sales</a>, albums are still suffering when compared with streaming, which has steadily ratcheted up the value of individual smash hits. But while some songs end with a sudden cut-off, others slowly and gradually fade away. It’s been a long time since the album was defined solely in economic or physical terms. Culturally and socially, the album’s carefully choreographed tracklist could run for a good while yet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p>Song by song streaming services may be hurting the album commercially, but its place in our cultural lexicon will be harder to shake.Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/793792017-06-14T09:20:34Z2017-06-14T09:20:34ZAnthill 14: Music on the mind<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173615/original/file-20170613-25855-1nt9qx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">via shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’ve got music on our minds in this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">The Anthill podcast</a>. We talked to psychologists, cultural historians, classical pianists and neuroscientists to find out more about what music does to our brains, and how it moves us.</p>
<p>If you’ve ever had a song stuck in your head, playing on a loop, that you just can’t shift, you might find our first interview useful. We spoke to music psychologist Kelly Jakubowski at Durham University who <a href="https://theconversation.com/earworms-why-some-songs-get-stuck-in-our-heads-more-than-others-68182">researches the phenomena known as earworms</a>. She explained what the most common songs are that we get stuck in our heads, why – and some tips on how to shift them. Apologies if we provoke any unwanted earworms.</p>
<p>We then sent science editor Miriam Frankel off to look into how music works in the brain – and how it can help people whose brains have been damaged. There’s still a lot of research to be done on the topic, but she spoke to three scientists to find out what is known. Lauren Stewart and her colleague Maria Herrojo Ruiz at Goldsmiths University, share the findings of some of their studies into the impact music has on our brains and how it is helping them to understand conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and stroke. And Jörg Fachner, who studies music, health and the brain at Anglia Ruskin University, gives some moving accounts of how music has been used to wake people from comas, but also how it can haunt people in the form of hallucinations.</p>
<p>After hearing about what music can do to the brain, we wanted to find out how it makes us feel. Arts and culture editor Jonathan Este spoke to cultural theorist Ian Biddle to learn more about those pieces of music specifically designed to make us feel a part of something bigger: national anthems. He also asked Elaine Chew, a digital media expert and classical pianist at Queen Mary University of London, what it is about the music of national anthems that rouses emotion. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173750/original/file-20170614-21372-mw3dg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173750/original/file-20170614-21372-mw3dg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173750/original/file-20170614-21372-mw3dg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173750/original/file-20170614-21372-mw3dg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173750/original/file-20170614-21372-mw3dg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173750/original/file-20170614-21372-mw3dg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173750/original/file-20170614-21372-mw3dg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">What is it about national anthems that moves people?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">via shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p><em>The Anthill theme music is by <a href="https://www.melodyloops.com/search/How+to+Steal+a+Million+Dollars/">Alex Grey for Melody Loops</a>. The piano music is taken from a <a href="https://www.freesound.org/people/IESP/sounds/340062/">recording by The IntraEnvrionmental Sound Project</a> of Lethbridge Sounds. The national anthems God Save the Queen, La Marseillaise, Wilhelmus and the South African National Anthem are from Wikimedia Commons. A big thanks to City University London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios.</em></p>
<p><em>Click here to listen to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/the-anthill">more episodes of The Anthill</a>, on themes including <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-10-the-future-73404">The Future</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-7-on-belief-69448">Beliefs</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-9-when-scientists-experiment-on-themselves-71852">Self-experimentation</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A podcast on what music does to our brains, and why it moves us.Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate EditorWill de Freitas, Environment + Energy Editor, UK editionAnnabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UKGemma Ware, Head of AudioMiriam Frankel, Senior Science EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.