Department of Musicology

This study explores a particular musical-cultural ideology by interpreting and contextualizing the music of a specific popular music artist.  The progressive/hard rock band Rush exemplifies what Dr. Bowman calls the “post-counterculture.”  This involves individualism, libertarianism, entrepreneurialism, technique, and an unusually large sub-community of fans who were, or are, musicians themselves.  Rush’s music also inscribes an interest not in rock music’s reactive-revolutionary tendencies but, rather, in its adaptive-evolutionary potential.  Geddy Lee’s countertenor singing style and virtuosic bass playing, Alex Lifeson’s precise-yet-tuneful guitar playing, and Neil Peart’s elaborately constructed drumming and “middle-brow” lyrics comprise the central features of Rush’s music.  The band’s music often includes aspects of progressive rock, hard rock, heavy metal, and individualism.  However, as the band evolved, it also increasingly engaged with other musical styles and lyrical themes (e.g., post-punk, society).

Rush’s “progressive” stylistic/thematic approach played an important pedagogical role for many individuals within the post-industrial, technique-oriented reconstitution of the working and lower-middle classes in the 1970s and ’80s.  Ralph Whitehead identified “New Collars” (i.e., updated blue-collar employees) and “Bright Collars” (i.e., updated white-collar employees) as central, large communities within that substantially modified socio-economic context.  The vast majority of rock critics denigrated Rush’s album-oriented rock as “pretentious boredom,” but the band’s “New Collar”/“Bright Collar” fans—especially musician-fans—frequently argued that it taught them to “grow and improve themselves.”  Also, despite the fact that the band had only one U.S. Top 40 hit, it sold over 40 million copies of its various albums from 1974 to 2003.  Thus, conflicting ideologies and contrasting reception histories figure prominently in this study.  Rush’s lyrics often provide important meanings, but so does its music—through stylistically varied approaches to melodies, harmonies, rhythms, tone colours, textures, rhetorical effects, formal structures, and the use vs. non-use of music technology.

Sustained, single-artist studies are still quite rare in popular music studies.  However, in pursuing a combination of interpretive issues surrounding specific pieces of music, Dr. Bowman’s approach engages with wider discourses about society, culture, and music.  On the whole, the study contributes cultural musicology to a relatively new discourse involving a technique-oriented post-counterculture.

On March 1, 1954, the US military detonated “Castle Bravo,” its most powerful nuclear bomb, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Two days later, the US military evacuated the Marshallese to a nearby atoll where they became part of a classified study, without their consent, on the effects of radiation on humans. In Radiation Sounds Jessica A. Schwartz examines the seventy-five years of Marshallese music developed in response to US nuclear militarism on their homeland. Schwartz shows how Marshallese singing draws on religious, cultural, and political practices to make heard the deleterious effects of US nuclear violence. Schwartz also points to the literal silencing of Marshallese voices and throats compromised by radiation as well as the United States’ silencing of information about the human radiation study. By foregrounding the centrality of the aural and sensorial in understanding nuclear testing’s long-term effects, Schwartz offers new modes of understanding the relationships between the voice, sound, militarism, indigeneity, and geopolitics.

An illustrated dictionary of names, places, and terms pertinent to the life and art of Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), containing some 400 entries and accompanied by a short biographical sketch of the composer. It also includes a comprehensive Bibliography and an up-to-date CD Discography.

From his cavernous voice and unparalleled artistry to his fearless struggle for human rights, Paul Robeson was one of the twentieth century's greatest icons and polymaths. In Everything Man Shana L. Redmond traces Robeson's continuing cultural resonances in popular culture and politics. She follows his appearance throughout the twentieth century in the forms of sonic and visual vibration and holography; theater, art, and play; and the physical environment. Redmond thereby creates an imaginative cartography in which Robeson remains present and accountable to all those he inspired and defended. With her bold and unique theorization of antiphonal life, Redmond charts the possibility of continued communication, care, and collectivity with those who are dead but never gone.

Abstract

This article listens to Marshallese radiation songs to hear how singers subject to US nuclear colonial practices—including US nuclear testing (1946–1958), extant displacement, and human radiation experimentation—continue to be ignored in official capacities, even after nuclear colonialism officially ended with the Republic of the Marshall Islands’s sovereignty through the Compact of Free Association (1986). US nuclear imperialism is persistent given the establishment of these official spaces where the Marshall Islands and United States governments are allowed to interact, politically, and the radiation communities, particularly women subject to disproportionate impacts from nuclear colonialism, are denied entrance or, (literally and metaphorically), voice. Radiation songs, which detail the ongoing and systemic violences of US nuclear imperialism, are ways that singers subversively make their petitions to US citizens and governmental representatives heard. Songs challenge the exclusionary modern systems (law, politics, mass media, biomedicine) that continue to claim specialized knowledge by advancing Marshallese epistemologies, sensibilities, and embodied, or lived experiences of nuclear violence. As a matter of the health humanities in transnational context, the uneven development of the global working class through constitutive colonial conditions and durative imperial networks are matters this essay points up.

This paper seeks to explore how the corridos of Los Tigres Del Norte, specifically discussing experiences regarding immigration aid in bringing these issues and stories to a larger audience and in turn helps foster unity and solidarity within the Latin American community. The group’s own experience as undocumented immigrants has shaped their dedication and willingness to highlight the stories of their audience, many of whom can relate closely to the experiences and events recounted in their songs. While analyzing these songs, it is important to be aware of the significant differences between corridos and narcocorridos. Although both forms share similar instrumentation, musical form, and have evolved alongside one another, both consider very different subject matter. Narcocorridos tell stories regarding the narco lifestyle while corridos can present a variety of themes such as love, religion, politics, and discrimination to name a few. Through lyrical analysis of “La Jaula De Oro,” “Tres Veces Mojado,” and “Somos Más Americanos,” and research into immigration history between the United States and Latin America, this study demonstrates how traumatic struggles are brought to light in these songs and argue that these corridos, among many others, can be tools for change, foster a collective identity, and promote unity amongst immigrant communities.

Adolescence represents an incredibly complex period of human development that is marked by rapid neurobiological and personal change. Uniquely positioned between childhood and adulthood, adolescents search intensely for a sense of personal identity. This is more than just a search, however; it reflects a ubiquitous, biologically programmed hunger to know the self and establish a connection to a transcendent force—the core of what is understood as spirituality. When properly cultivated, spirituality encourages a sense of connectedness, meaning, purpose, and contribution. When disrupted, adolescents become significantly more susceptible to depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders. While genetic predispositions and psychosocial factors have been widely discussed as contributors to depression and anxiety, verbal abuse remains an overlooked yet pervasive risk factor that directly impacts two fundamental aspects of spiritual development: parent-child relationships and the formation of identity and personal expression. Although adolescent psychotherapy is widely utilized, its focus on disease and treatment may unintentionally reinforce stigma among participants. This limitation highlights a need for approaches that prioritize positive functioning and support long-term well-being. Sound healing offers such an approach. Unlike music therapy, sound healing employs acoustic vibrations, eliminating the pressures of musical literacy and structured performance. Using a positive psychology and spirituality framework, this study examines how group participation in singing bowl and vocal sound healing sessions can help adolescents cultivate positive emotional states and well-being, foster a strong sense of spiritual identity, and reclaim an inner voice silenced by verbal abuse. 

This project investigates the history, sonic function, and authorial significance of producer tags in hip-hop. Over the past two decades, producer tags have become a ubiquitous component of rap production as a means of signaling authorship, branding, and aesthetic identity. Industry titans, such as Metro Boomin and Tay Keith, have created famous tags that rile up audiences and resonate within rap communities. Underground rap producers–especially those making “type beats” and beat tutorials on SoundCloud and YouTube–require producer tags to maintain ownership and increase visibility of their work. In these digital spaces, however, tags have transcended simple utility to undergo a process of meme-ification, where producers employ absurdist humor and ironic performances to stake their claim in the industry. Despite their prominence, producer tags remain relatively understudied within musicological scholarship. This paper seeks to examine producer tags at the intersection of authorship, authenticity, intellectual property, and musicality. Through a combination of theoretical, historical, and sonic analysis, the paper will argue that producer tags constitute a vital authorial gesture that both reflects and reconfigures the unique producer-rapper relationship in contemporary hip-hop.