Popular music can be studied academically by defining it, examining why it should be studied as part of higher education, and analyzing its history, production, consumption, and social impact. Key areas of focus include the development of the popular music industry; critiques of mass culture theory which viewed audiences as passive; and sociological analyses of genres like rock music and how they relate to youth culture. Academic study has grown since the 1970s and now includes departments, centers, and methods for analyzing popular music's musical and extramusical elements.

1. popular music as an
academic study
2013

2. What is it?
! Definitions.
! Why should we study it?
! Study as part of higher education

3. Popular music and the
masses
! One definition is that poplar music is ‘Music of the
masses’ (I.e.expanding urban middle classes).
! Mass market for pulished music since the tin-pan
alley era in the USA and Europe (1880s - 1930s).
! Dissemination by sheet music, then also gramophone
and later forms of recorded sound.
! Exploited for commercial gain. Popular because it
sold well.
! From the 60s it has become a world-wide
phenomena dominated by North American forms and
styles.

4. History of Popular Music
! The sound track to ordinary lives?
! Most obvious and universal part of
mass culture.

5. Post 1949
! Records return with the 45 and improved
gramophones.
! The era of the phonograph ends with invention of
magnetic tape and reel to reel. Studio techniques
now possible.
! 1952 brings first attempts at a chart listings.
! America with its many independent studios and radio
stations is the fulcrum for new form of popular music
aimed at a new youth audience.
! Throughout 50s sale of pop records rises though
always linked to air time on radio and tv programmes.

6. Pop Industry
! By late 50s pop industry as we know it
is in place.
! Based on Anglo-American commercial
networks.
! Has survived until now – but arguable in
crisis and has a uncertain future.

7. Other reas of Mass
Musical Activity pre
1960s – areas of
research
! Brass bands - for parades and street
marching events.
! Social Dancing - boom in cheap dance
halls.
! Music Halls - urban entertainment
before the age of television.
! Singing clubs, hand bells, etc.

8. Mass Culture Theory –
the starting point
! Concepts of Mass Culture and Mass Society based
on divisions into:
! 1. High Art – not for commercial gain (supposedly).
Beethoven, etc.
! 2. Folk Art- from below as an expression of the
people
! 3. Mass Media/Mass Culture
! Mass culture theory holds that through `atomisation’
individuals can only relate to each other like atoms in
a chemical compound. Individuals are vulnerable to
exploitation by core institutions of mass media and
pop culture. (example of rise of Nazism in 1930s and
Orwell’s 1984)

9. Critique of Mass Culture
Theory
! 1. The `view from below’ is quite different. Working
class use elements of mass culture to strike a pose.
Does not result in greater cultural uniformity. All can
interpret the American myth as they wish.
! 2. Consumers are not passive. But use different
elements of Americanisation and European culture to
construct an authentic identity.
! 3. Pop culture is diverse because it is open to diverse
uses and interpretations by different groups.
! 4. Use as a defense against middle class/upper class
elitist culture.

10. Critique continued….
! 5. Why should the superiority of elitist values and
aesthetics be taken as valid without question? What
gives them the right to pass cultural judgment?
! 6. The idea of that there was an idealised (elitist)
cultural past fated to be ruined by the rise of mass
culture is a myth.
! 7. Audiences and the consuming public are not
passive. They may construct their identity from
different elements of mass culture in a creative way.

11. Frankfurt School – 1923
School of Social
Research! 1. Full of leftwing Jewish intellectuals. To a backdrop
of the rise of Nazi party in 1930s. Most fled Europe
for America. Then turned against America and
returned to Germany.
! 2. Set terms of debate and analysis of mass culture
theory. Heavily based on reaction to pre-war popular
music in Germany and post-war American popular
music.
! 3. Main members – Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcus,
Benjamin.

12. Arguments against
popular music as
academic study
! Waste of time for highly trained
academic musicians to concern
themselves with trivial music - which
primarily about non-musical facets of
mass culture. Image, timbre, social
meaning.
! High art is in decline - if even music
students desert it who will champion it?

13. New Generation
! Sociologists interested in music as part
of mass culture.
! 1970s looking at ‘youth culture’.
! Simon Frith’s The Sociology of Rock’
1978 examines the consumption,
production and ideology of rock.

14. Sociology of Rock
! He explores rock as
! ‘leisure, as youth culture, as a force for liberation or oppression,
and a background music. He argues that rock music is mass
cultural form which derives its meaning and relevance from
being a mass medium. He discusses the differences in
perception and use of rock between the music industry and
music consumers, as well as differences within those groups:
"The industry may or may not keep control of rock's use, but it
will not be able to determine all its meanings - the problems of
capitalist community and leisure are not so easily resolved."

15. Theories
! Mass culture theory.
! Links with Sociology.
! Often placed within media studies.
! Is it really primarily concerned with
music - more about social behaviour,
commsumerism and media.

16. 1980 and 1990s
! University departments took up popular
music as a research area.
! Undergraduate teaching.
! Specialist Centres – University of
Newcastle. John Moore’s Liverpool,
Oxford Brooks
! Work of Tagg, Middleton and Covach in
1990s

17. Analysis of Pop Music
! One of the recurring themes has been
to develop methods of analysis of
popular music. That did not only look at
the harmonic melodic content but
looked at other parameters.
! Using methods of other disciplines.
Textual analysis, subject position
! Developing modified forms of notation.

18. SONG FORM
l Intro
l Hook
l Verse
l Chorus
l Pre chorus
l Middle Eight
l Instrumental
l Chorus to Fade/Outro

19. Examples in last session
! All F. Moore The Beatles Sgt Peppers
Lonely Heart’ Club band ‘Lucy in the
Sky’ (CUP).
! John Covach and Greame M. Boon
Understanding Rock (OUP)
! Shinny happy people.