Music
Heavy Metal and Disability
The relationship between metal and disability is distinctive. Persisting across metal’s sub-genres is a preoccupation with exploring and questioning the boundary that divides the body that has agency from the body that has none. This boundary is one that is familiar to those for whom the agency of the body is an everyday matter of survival.
Metal’s preoccupation with unleashing and controlling sensorial overload acts both as an analogue of neurodiversity and as a space in which those who are neurodivergent find ways to understand and leverage their sensory capacities. Metal offers potent resources for the self-understanding of people with disabilities. It does not necessarily mean that this potential is always explored or that metal scenes are hospitable to those with disabilities. This collection is disability-positive validating people with disabilities as different but not damaged.
While metal scholars who contribute to this collection see metal as a space of possibility in which dis/ability and other intersectional identities can be validated and understood the collection does not imply that the possibilities that metal affords are always actualised. This collection situates itself in a wider struggle to open up metal challenging its power structures; a struggle in which metal studies has played a significant part.
Putting the ego aside: A case study of the peer-to-peer feedback dialogue among electronic popular music makers within higher education
Settings where students showcase their original songs to peers and teachers can seem advantageous and harmless. However beneath this surface is a complex multifaceted negotiation. In this article I engage with the construction of this complexity. I interviewed eight Norwegian electronic popular music students at the university level on how they experienced the real-time peer group song assessment (PGSA) setting. Through semi-structured interviews I seek to give a critical view on how PGSA works as a vehicle for learning. I discuss how the student’s experience of risk varies according to what the student is presenting and what the feedback focuses on. The interviews indicate that feedback that engages with elements that contain the highest degree of creative and personal investment is the hardest feedback to give and yet most desirable to receive. Appendix 1 offers suggestions for presenters peers and teachers related to the PGSA setting.
Between necessity and fragments of alternativity: DIY experiences in French roller derby
Between 1935 and 1970 roller derby was a co-ed North American sport practised on roller skates and played on a banked track. The 2000s marked its revival when a group of women decided to give it a new lease of life: roller derby is now exclusively for women and takes place on a flat track. Teams assert their independence from established institutions and follow a model of ‘do-it-yourself’ organization. According to some critics the roller derby revival is a continuation of the feminist Riot Grrrl movement. This article aims to understand how French roller derby players use the ‘alternative’ heritage of American women. By mobilizing the frameworks of Cultural Studies and Sport Subculture the article reflects on the ways in which the legacy of Riot Grrrl as a movement to challenge a dominant order enables derby teams to create alternatives to mainstream sports models. Through 90 interviews and participant observation conducted between January 2020 and the present day the study was able to show a use of the DIY ethos articulated between resourcefulness and a claim to independence. While Riot Grrrl radically defends the values of the punk movement against the prevailing economic and gender order French roller derby and its teams propose a hybrid sporting model articulated between reflections on a different way of looking at sport and a move away from the DIY model of the early days.
Family first: Yahritza y Su Esencia, family bands and the musical education of Mexican Americans
Beginning with a description of música Mexicana’s rising stars Yahritza y Su Esencia a ‘family band’ of young Mexican American musicians we suggest that school music educators become more informed of the musical interests involvements and learning styles of Mexican American students at home within their families and in the communities that surround them. Yahritza’s trademark sierreño style is described and contextualized in light of other notable genres such as mariachi música nortena son jarocho banda grupera and trap corridos. The phenomenon of family bands within Mexican American communities is explored as a means of children’s musical enculturation away from school juxtaposed with a history of exclusion of Mexican American students from school music opportunities. The article addresses limitations of the American model of school music programmes including (1) the need for opportunities for Mexican American (and other) populations to access meaningful musical education experiences and (2) the gap between the music genres offered within the curriculum and those that Mexican American (and other) students experience at home and within their communities. Even as we acknowledge and applaud the presence of family bands and other strong music community music practices among Mexican Americans we call for a national initiative among music educators to ensure that the music which students learn in school is at least germane to students’ home experiences.
Nihilism and the ‘death of God’ in the work of Siouxsie and the Banshees
This article locates Siouxsie and the Banshees within the philosophical tradition of existentialism specifically the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of 1970s British punk-rock share with Nietzsche a concern with the condition of ‘nihilism’. For Nietzsche with the western decline in the belief in God humankind no longer has an external source of authority within which meaning evaluation and morality are anchored. Nietzsche’s philosophical project can be read as an elaboration of the conditions under which the creation of new values may be possible to avoid nihilistic despair. Following Nietzsche’s retreat into the Self Heidegger is concerned with authentic existence: his philosophical project can be read as a call to an authentic life. The song ‘Israel’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees can be read as a commentary on the collective anxiety surrounding the ‘death of God’ nihilism and a preoccupation with authentic existence in the twentieth century.
The importance of teaching performance artistry
This article will explain the philosophy and methodology behind developing and teaching the performance artistry curriculum at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Students who study performance artistry are more prepared to work in the popular music industry/marketplace – personally artistically and professionally. They report being more widely informed about the business of their artistry having clearer goals owning their identities embracing communication with their audiences using a more honest voice on their social platforms and feeling freer to take risks. Success in this field is a combination of presentation forethought execution content strategy and effectiveness on top of talent. I will detail performance artistry assignments and illustrate their role in bringing out authenticity and excellence in a collegiate music major population. This curriculum contains valuable training tools in different educational configurations (lecture-style classes private instruction and workshop/masterclass settings) and all genres.
Throbbing Gristle
In 1976 the British band Throbbing Gristle emerged from the radical arts collective COUM Transmissions through core members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti joined by Hipgnosis photographer Peter Christopherson and electronics specialist Chris Carter. Though having performed previously in more low-key arts environments their major launch coincided with the COUM retrospective exhibition Prostitution at London’s ICA gallery showcasing and contextualising an array of challenging objects from COUM’s various actions in performance art and pornography. In a deliberately curated strategy inviting press civic and arts dignitaries extravagant followers of the nascent punk scene and music journalists the band created an instant controversy and media panic that tapped into the restrictive climate and encroaching conservatism of late 1970s Britain. Any opportunities that were being explored by a formative punk ethos and movement around sex censorship and transgression were amplified and exposed by Throbbing Gristle and Prostitution. An outraged Member of Parliament Nicholas Fairbairn took the bait and called the ensemble the ‘wreckers of civilisation’ providing the suitable newspaper headline that would be followed a month later by ‘the filth and the fury’ as the Sex Pistols uttered strong profanities on live television.
The switch from COUM to Throbbing Gristle encompassed a primary mode of expression in making music as opposed to art to further coincide with the energy of the nascent punk scene. The band quickly developed a radically deviant and challenging reputation through pushing the punk format past its strictures in terms of lyrical themes amateurism and considerations of what constitutes music. Through a handful or record releases on their own label Industrial Records and a sporadic string of live performances the band nurtured a strong and devoted following including key journalists and fanzine editors of the punk and post-punk scenes such as Jon Savage and Sandy Robertson. The band’s style of exploring harsh pre-recorded sounds samples of disconcerting narrative and conversation and feeding all sounds through messy electronic processing devices gave rise to the title industrial music. This was further buttressed by performing a strictly timed set of one hour and adopting a non-rockstar mode by appearing disinterested and preoccupied with electronic devices. Having given a name and impetus to the industrial music scene many of their followers and fans formed bands in later years.
Drawing on works such as Andy Bennett’s When the Lights Went Out this book looks at late 1970s Britain before during and immediately after the Winter of Discontent to situate the activism of Throbbing Gristle in this time. It explores how the band worked in and against the time and how they worked in and against punk as punk worked in and against the time and place. Punk acts as a mediating factor and nuisance value as Throbbing Gristle emerged with punk in late 1976 seemingly grappled with it through 1977 and then went on to create and eventually criticise a number of post-punk scenes that had flourished around 1979. Trowell narrates the story through a series of live performances as this is a point where Throbbing Gristle interact with the various city-scenes around England during their original period of operation (1975-1981). The band reflected (and incorporated into their live music) key tropes form the time both ‘mainstream’ and fringe (subcultural avant-garde art counter-culture taboo subjects extremes) such that Throbbing Gristle events had an impact and affect and Trowell traces these as a series of impressions and reverberations amongst fans who went on to do their own music and projects.
Throbbing Gristle
In 1976 the British band Throbbing Gristle emerged from the radical arts collective COUM Transmissions through core members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti joined by Hipgnosis photographer Peter Christopherson and electronics specialist Chris Carter. Though having performed previously in more low-key arts environments their major launch coincided with the COUM retrospective exhibition Prostitution at London’s ICA gallery showcasing and contextualising an array of challenging objects from COUM’s various actions in performance art and pornography. In a deliberately curated strategy inviting press civic and arts dignitaries extravagant followers of the nascent punk scene and music journalists the band created an instant controversy and media panic that tapped into the restrictive climate and encroaching conservatism of late 1970s Britain. Any opportunities that were being explored by a formative punk ethos and movement around sex censorship and transgression were amplified and exposed by Throbbing Gristle and Prostitution. An outraged Member of Parliament Nicholas Fairbairn took the bait and called the ensemble the ‘wreckers of civilisation’ providing the suitable newspaper headline that would be followed a month later by ‘the filth and the fury’ as the Sex Pistols uttered strong profanities on live television.
The switch from COUM to Throbbing Gristle encompassed a primary mode of expression in making music as opposed to art to further coincide with the energy of the nascent punk scene. The band quickly developed a radically deviant and challenging reputation through pushing the punk format past its strictures in terms of lyrical themes amateurism and considerations of what constitutes music. Through a handful or record releases on their own label Industrial Records and a sporadic string of live performances the band nurtured a strong and devoted following including key journalists and fanzine editors of the punk and post-punk scenes such as Jon Savage and Sandy Robertson. The band’s style of exploring harsh pre-recorded sounds samples of disconcerting narrative and conversation and feeding all sounds through messy electronic processing devices gave rise to the title industrial music. This was further buttressed by performing a strictly timed set of one hour and adopting a non-rockstar mode by appearing disinterested and preoccupied with electronic devices. Having given a name and impetus to the industrial music scene many of their followers and fans formed bands in later years.
Drawing on works such as Andy Bennett’s When the Lights Went Out this book looks at late 1970s Britain before during and immediately after the Winter of Discontent to situate the activism of Throbbing Gristle in this time. It explores how the band worked in and against the time and how they worked in and against punk as punk worked in and against the time and place. Punk acts as a mediating factor and nuisance value as Throbbing Gristle emerged with punk in late 1976 seemingly grappled with it through 1977 and then went on to create and eventually criticise a number of post-punk scenes that had flourished around 1979. Trowell narrates the story through a series of live performances as this is a point where Throbbing Gristle interact with the various city-scenes around England during their original period of operation (1975-1981). The band reflected (and incorporated into their live music) key tropes form the time both ‘mainstream’ and fringe (subcultural avant-garde art counter-culture taboo subjects extremes) such that Throbbing Gristle events had an impact and affect and Trowell traces these as a series of impressions and reverberations amongst fans who went on to do their own music and projects.