Contemporary post-Soviet popular music: Politics and aesthetics

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5429/2079-3871(2024)v14i2.1en

Keywords:

popular music studies, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, post-Soviet space, politics, aesthetics

Abstract

Popular music is produced, listened to and distributed all over the world. While there is no doubt that popular music studies, as well as popular music histories and the commercial popular music industry is predominantly Anglophone, popular music is not. This might seem like an obvious statement but looking at current discussions in the field of popular music studies it is a statement that needs to be made again. While there are exceptions, popular music studies in general have a problem with pseudo-universalism. As if the Western English-speaking mainstream reflected ‘popular music’ as a whole. This special issue of IASPM Journal focuses on popular music in the post-Soviet space, imagined as located between Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, but also all over the world in reproduction of sounds and the diaspora. The contributions challenge the Anglophone centre of popular music studies. 

Author Biography

Ann Werner, IASPM Norden, Uppsala University

Ann Werner’s research interests are in gender, power, music and media, she has published widely on for example streaming and algorithmic culture, and gendered uses of music, drawing on feminist theory. Her articles include ‘Organizing music, organizing gender: Algorithmic culture and Spotify recommendations’, Popular Communication (2020) and her latest book is Feminism and Gender Politics in Mediated Popular Music (2022, Bloomsbury Academic). She is a senior lecturer in Musicology at Uppsala University and an associate professor in Gender Studies at Södertörn Univeristy, Sweden. She is currently the PI of two research projects Conservatory Cultures (2021-2024) examining the construction of nation and gender in European classical music higher education and Culture of Silence (2022-2025) examining sexual harassment and preventive measures after #metoo in the Swedish performing arts.

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author: Sashajuve. CC-BY-SA-4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Naviband_at_Mirum_Music_Festival.jpg

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Published

06-11-2024

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2024): Special Issue. Contemporary post-Soviet popular music: Politics and aesthetics

Section

Editorial

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