IASPM Journal

Editorial

Richard Elliott — 2024-03-18

Jacques Greene’s Aging Temporalities

David Madden — 2024-03-18

By way of a close reading of Quebec electronic dance music producer and DJ, Jacques Greene (né Philippe Aubin-Dionne), this article offers ways to think through and with aging studies, popular music studies and the notion of the career—which remains largely missing in studies of music scenes. Particular attention is devoted to Greene’s musical releases (two LPs, many EPs, singles and remixes), as well as his performance practice as a DJ and solo artist. To cut against dominant understandings of a career as a linear trajectory, developed in iterative stages of progress and decline, I consider the varied temporalities Greene experiences simultaneously and how his position in dance music scenes changes in relation to the contingencies of time. I argue that this temporal mode of analysis provides a generative theoretical tool kit for connecting studies of popular music with studies of aging.

Best Song ever - forever?

Simone Driessen — 2024-03-18

This study explores how aging One Direction and Taylor Swift fans continue their fandom in(to) adulthood. Drawing on interviews with 23 female fans, this article examines what happens if one actively pursues fandom after youth. Despite having multiple solo-careers to keep track of, or adjusting to new (Swift-)‘eras’, ‘aging pop fandom’ seems to go beyond the music: Results demonstrate that these young aging fans consider themselves ‘life-long fans’, having been fans for such a long time. Additionally, their current fandom is about friendships and belonging to a community (particularly prevalent during the pandemic) and illustrative of how they as young fans developed (media) skills vital to one’s current career. What this study reveals is that whether it’s through (re-)listening to music, attending concerts or themed club-nights, pop music fandom forms a soundtrack to their process of aging.

“I Make My Own Time”: Julio Valverde’s Temporal Agency Through Musicking

Yuri Prado — 2024-03-18

Although music’s potential to alter the perception of the passage of time is well known, a better understanding of how it works in practice is still needed. In this regard, studies on temporal agency such as those by Flaherty (2011) and Hitlin and Elder (2007) have become important references, as they seek to identify the parameters on which individuals base themselves in the making of time. Based on an ethnography centred on Julio Valverde, a 79-year-old Brazilian cook and composer, I intend to show how his different forms of musicking are capable of shaping both his own experiences of time and those of the people of his intimate circle. In addition, the article explores issues related to Julio’s aging, examining both his musical flourishing and his unique perspective on the past, present, and future.

An Ever Present Past

James Millea — 2024-03-18

This article examines age in the work of Paul McCartney. It investigates how McCartney’s ongoing engagement with his own youth has shaped his musical output and accompanying visuals at key points throughout his career. It focuses specifically on the extended trilogy of self-titled McCartney albums, which culminates in two of his most recent releases, McCartney III (Capitol 2020) and McCartney III Imagined (Capitol 2021). Exploring Paul McCartney’s voice in his music and image in his music videos, this article considers the McCartney albums as a distinct statement on the role of age in popular music.

Aging, Nostalgia and Older Punk Women’s Fandom.

Laura Way — 2024-03-18

Despite their continued engagement as audience throughout their lives, there is some suggestion that ageing, or older, fans have been at large omitted from fan studies (Middlemost, 2022). This does seem to be shifting, however, and there is a growing body of fandom scholarship concerning ageing fans. Indeed, in the context of punk, there has been a growing recognition of the continued significance of punk to older participants and fans (e.g. Andes, 2002, Bennett, 2006, Davis, 2006), contrasting earlier work which theorized punk as a youth subculture (see, for example, Hebdige, 1998). This reflects the increasing academic interest in the ageing popular music audience more broadly (Bennett and Hodkinson 2012). Despite such positive shifts, ageing women continue to be marginalised in such discussions concerning punk and older fans, meaning that much theoretical and conceptual understandings of ageing punks have failed to fully consider the interaction between ageing, gender and fandom.

Welcome to My Nightmare (I Think You’re Gonna Like It): Hermeneutics of Horror in Alice Cooper’s Metamodern Menagerie of Age

Christina Molloy — 2024-03-18

In this article, I analyze three elements of shock rocker Alice Cooper’s musical theatrics – his vocal caricatures, his menagerie of self-reflective monsters, and his stylized choreography of mobility tools (particularly canes and crutches) – that give insight into the ways that he has navigated and expressed fluctuations in perspective on age(ing). Over the past half century, his stage persona has died on stage thousands of times—via guillotine, electric chair, hanging, or otherwise— but he has never had to get “old”. Every night, the character is reborn, revived, or reanimated: eighteen years old, even as the performer himself reaches twenty-one, thirty, and now seventy-five. This work— building especially on Mikhail Bahktin’s “grotesque”, Anne Basting’s sociology of age in theatre, and the study of opera, disability, and monsters – serves as an post-postmodern opportunity to consider unarticulated ways Classic Rock musicians contending with and re-present the genre’s founding themes through musicking.

Still Here? Aging Female Vocalities in Musical Theatre.

Faye Rigopoulou — 2024-03-18

Musical theatre has a complex relationship with ageing (and especially female ageing). As youth has always been at the forefront of musicals, essentialist approaches to ageing in articulation and enactment of ageing musical characters often lead to aesthetic peripheries and creative stagnation. Aiming for a deeper understanding of how female ageing vocalities are perceived, dramaturged and performed in musical theatre, the article takes under consideration viewpoints from ‘outsiders’/ageing performers who work ‘at the centre’ of the musical theatre industry (West End and Broadway).Through a close analysis of two ageing female characters (Madame Armfeldt and Grandma) in the musicals A Little Night Music and Billy Elliot, this article discusses and critiques preconceptions of ageing in the dramaturgy and performance of these roles, and it argues that musicals frequently fail to give agency to the voice of their ageing women.

Negotiating Genre, Style, and Contemporality in an Intergenerational Irish Music Ensemble

Holly Riley — 2024-03-18

This article examines community negotiations of genre and style through the lens of intergenerational collaboration in a contemporary Irish music ensemble at Florida State University. In this ensemble, community members participated alongside university students in the ensemble through a state-funded senior education program. Throughout this process, students and community members navigated differences between local scene-established formats of musical material and new student-directed arrangements. Community members articulated desires to ‘keep the scene going’ and establish community longevity while negotiating this “shifting topography” (Shuker 2001: 6) of popular-traditional genre practice. The practices of this ensemble, explored through an autoethnographic lens with interview contributions from student and community members, build on existing studies on intergenerational ensemble practices (Harrington 2021, Conway and Hodgman 2008, Jang 2020), genre negotiation (Holt 2007), and aging identity (Bennet and Hodkinson 2012). This suggests important implications for intergenerational music-making and building music communities with deep generational and musical diversity.

“It wasn’t our song anymore”: Molchat Doma, the death of the reader and the birth of the TikToker

Marco Biasioli — 2024-03-18

The article investigates the transnational reception, circulation and remediation of music on TikTok, taking as a case study the Belarusian band Molchat Doma (The Houses Are Silent), whose song ‘Sudno’ became viral in 2020 in conjunction with the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The article argues that: a) TikTok users generally disregard the author’s encoded meaning for their own self-expression; b) depoliticize and memeify Molchat doma’s gloomy post-punk; c) prompt self-memeification in the author, who becomes an active participant in the textual rewriting. The article aims to contribute to ongoing debates around the digital consumption of popular music.

The Acquisition of Digital Audio Knowledge in the Studios of Senegalese Beatmakers.

Maël Péneau — 2024-03-18

A field study carried out in the studios of some fifteen Senegalese beatmakers revealed the omnipresence of discourses linked to self-training to explain the ways in which they acquire the digital audio knowledge on which their creative practices are based. However, most of the time, this self-taught learning corresponds to situations where neither the learners nor the trainers recognize the formative nature of learning situations that actually take place. This article examines these processes in detail, in order to identify the types of learning that take place, and the types of knowledge that are transmitted.

Sonic Signatures: Music, Migration and the City at Night

Amin Hashemi — 2024-03-18

Always Different, Always the Same: Critical Essays on The Fall

David Wilkinson — 2024-03-18

A review of the above edited collection by Dr David Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Distortion and Subversion: Punk Rock Music and the Protests for Free Public.Transportation in Brazil (1996-2011)

Victor Pires — 2024-03-18

Global Hiphopography

John Vandevert — 2024-03-18

On Dissonant Landscapes: Tore Størvold and Susan O’Shea, in conversation

Susan O'Shea — 2024-03-18

An interview with Susan O'Shea and Tore Størvold to discuss the recently published book, Dissonant Landscapes: Music, Nature and The Performance of Iceland.