Musical Communities of Chicago
This course introduces students to the diverse musical communities of Chicago through texts and media, workshops with local musicians and arts workers, experiential activities, and your own research projects. Our five-week program in Chicago provides a unique opportunity for us to explore a range of musical practices and intersecting issues: arts policy, gentrification, tourism, and urban development, among others. Experiential learning activities are a core of our time together in Chicago as we engage in this city’s musical life. These include attending concerts and festivals together, excursions to historical musical sites within Chicago, interviewing local experts, and soundwalks, among others.
Ethnographic Research and the Study of Christian Music
SCSM conference roundtable panelist (2022). The recent turn to ethnography in various disciplines has prompted renewed reflection on the basis of knowledge for scholars of religious music. Join us for a rousing conversation on the role of ethnomusicology and both its contributions and limitations in the study of religious musicking.
Oral History Interviews as Primary Sources
While conducting the research for God Rock, Inc., I was fortunate to interview many current and former Christian music industry executives and musicians. I also used the archives at MTSU’s Center for Popular Music, and I was thrilled to find several relevant interview transcripts available through Baylor’s Institute for Oral History. In this post I discuss these components of my research methodology and approach to oral history interviews.
Studying Congregational Music: Chapter 7
Studying Congregational Music, Routledge (2021). Chapter 7, “Political Economy and Capital in Congregational Music Studies: Commodities, Worshipers, and Worship,” by Andrew Mall.
Looking Towards the Future: Popular Music Studies and Music Scholarship
Twentieth-Century Music (2021). In this forum, we have collected articles from participants in a recent symposium on the future of popular music studies to reflect more deeply on the challenges we all face in in an increasingly diverse and divided world -- challenges of teaching, studying, comprehending, and embodying pop music in all its richness. The field must reckon with these challenges if it is to remain relevant, and in doing so (we argue) it perhaps models a way forward for music scholarship as a whole.
Conference Report: “The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century,” AMS Pre-Conference Symposium
Journal of Popular Music Studies (2020). In this article, we report on the two-day event, “The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century,” at Northeastern University in October 2019. The event was sponsored by the Popular Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society (AMS-PMSG), Northeastern University, and Amherst College as a pre-conference symposium tied to the AMS’s annual meeting in Boston.
The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century
AMS pre-conference symposium (2019). Despite the normalization of popular music studies over the last 50 years, complex questions linger about the state of the field and the directions it will take. “The Future of Pop” fostered interdisciplinary collaborations between scholars of different ranks and diverse backgrounds by encouraging conversations about the future of popular music studies.
Ethnography in Creative Industries
In this course, we consider the various roles that ethnography can play in creative industries. What do we learn from ethnography? For what purposes is ethnographic research best suited? How might ethnography contribute to strategic decision-making? What unique methodological issues might ethnographic research in creative industries pose? In what ways could ethnography enrich creative practice and artmaking? How have the social sciences reacted to the ethnography of creative industries?
Archival Research Methods and Music Industry Pedagogy
Proceedings of the 2018 MEIEA International Summit (2018). In this article, I discuss the value of archival research and primary document sources to pedagogy in music industry education. I describe the archival methods I have employed in a research project documenting contemporaneous discourse about the corporate consolidation of Christian record labels within (secular) major record labels in the early 1990s.
Music Industry Research Methodology
This course introduces students to a number of research methodologies and analytical approaches used in music industry studies and the music industry itself. As an interdisciplinary area, music industry methods draw from disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and business. Success as a scholar of or professional in the music industry frequently depends upon one’s ability to collect, interpret, and analyze data from a variety of sources and perspectives.
Selling Out or Buying In? Archival Research of Consumer Discourse about Christian Record Label Consolidation
MEIEA conference presentation (2018). In this paper I consider the role of archival research in music industry studies to address fan discourse as a barometer of anxieties over corporate consolidation. As a result of MEIEA-funded research into CCM magazine (at Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Popular Music), I discuss methodological approaches for discerning the diverse range of opinions expressed by committed fans (as a kind of historical ethnography and reception study) and present my findings not only in light of their importance to the historical record but also in terms of their practical significance to music and entertainment industry decision-makers considering an acquisition today.
The Ethnomusicology of Religion: Fieldwork Methods and Ethics
SEM conference roundtable panelist (2017). Ethnographic fieldwork is often shaped by logistical issues including access, documentation, rapport, and fluency (both cultural and linguistic). Ethnomusicologists researching musics within religious or sacred contexts, however, face additional challenges. For example, moments of spiritual transcendence complicate participant-observation, both for ethnographers who belong to the faith tradition they are researching and for those who do not. Similarly, the varied expectations of the researcher’s audiences problematize documentation and representation. In this roundtable, participants consider these and other issues, addressing the ethical and methodological challenges of fieldwork posed by the ethnomusicology of religion.
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