Journal articles on the topic 'American rock bands'

The United States of America has long been known as the pioneer of freedom and democracy. The country promotes the idea of acquiring self-fulfillment without interfering others. Man can have his freedom upon life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness given to him ever since he was born. The long history of the United States of America recorded events and tumults testing the loftiness of American Dream. One of the American rock bands portraying the aforementioned situation is Guns N’ Roses. The lyric of “Civil War” clearly describes the paradox of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Protest against war was increasing. Thus, the waves of strike and demonstration occurred as critics toward Government policy. At this point, rock bands also have important roles in accommodating people’s hopes and wishes. By using several elements of poetry, an argumentative analysis is developed and elaborated in order to reveal the attitude of people regarding government policy on war.. Keywords: Paradox; War, Government policy; Guns N’ Roses;

A third-generation mix-raced Japanese American, Mike Shinoda is a renowned rock and rap musician. Thanks to his two bands, Linkin Park and Fort Minor, Shinoda has been able to raise his voice to condemn social injustices or environmental damage and degradation. The following paper will focus on two of his songs “Kenji” and “Nothing makes Sense Anymore,” which include references to those issues. By analyzing the lyrics, we will evince how they distill criticism on social discrimination and environmental damage.

The New Zealand popular music scene has seen a series of high points in recent years. Published in 1989 were John Dix's labour of love, Stranded in Paradise, a comprehensive history of New Zealand rock'n'roll; an influential report by the Trade Development Board, supportive of the local industry; and the proceedings of a well-supported Music New Zealand Convention held in 1987 (Baysting 1989). In the late 1980s, local bands featured strongly on the charts, with Dave Dobbyn (‘Slice of Heaven’, 1986), Tex Pistol (‘The Game of Love’, 1987) and the Holiday Makers (‘Sweet Lovers’, 1988) all having number one singles. Internationally, Shona Laing (‘Glad I'm Not A Kennedy’, 1987) and Crowded House (‘Don't Dream It's Over’, 1986) broke into the American market, while in Australia many New Zealand performers gathered critical accolades and commercial success.

Given the genre name heavy metal can be traced to a negative adjective that emerges out of 70s rock journalism and which reflects a widespread dissensus among rock critics about its value and impact on North American rock music, how are we to explain the gradual or cumulative shift away from this majority aesthetic disapprobation, in the 1980–85 period, towards a widespread economic accreditation, particularly in the pages of leading rock magazine, Rolling Stone? Is it simply a belated recognition of the longevity of the genre and its resurgent popularity with majority audiences? If so, how are we to explain the subsequent shift, clearly evident in the Rolling Stone coverage in the 1986–91 period, from economic to aesthetic approbation of selective bands, particularly those identified with a thrash metal underground, which is nevertheless seen to emerge from within the genre or to be an aesthetic development of some of its key musical features, while rejecting others? Drawing on a comprehensive survey, composed of album reviews, lead or feature articles and interviews, drawn from the Rolling Stone archive, my research reports, in Part One of this article, a definite shift in the critical reception of heavy metal to economic accreditation in the 1980–85 period, based not only on the genre’s persistence and sustained economic success but also its ability to appeal beyond its core metal audience and therefore challenge the dominant rock and pop aesthetic. For some critics this means that a selective set of popular bands, such as AC/DC, the Scorpions and Def Leppard, can be afforded a degree of aesthetic approbation, even the status of ‘artists’. But this praise also leads to the Great Metal Question: can they now seek to move beyond the musical and lyrical conventions of heavy metal in order to appeal to a wider audience beyond their core fanbase?

AbstractA historical overview of college football's participants exemplifies the diversification of mainstream American culture from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first. The same cannot be said for the sport's audience, which remains largely white American. Gerald Gems maintains that football culture reinforces the construction of American identity as “an aggressive, commercial, white, Protestant, male society.” Ken McLeod echoes this perspective in his description of college football's musical soundscape, “white-dominated hard rock, heavy metal, and country music—in addition to marching bands.” This article examines musical segregation in college football, drawing from case studies and interviews conducted in 2013 with university music coordinators from the five largest collegiate athletic conferences in the United States. These case studies reveal several trends in which music is used as a tool to manipulate and divide college football fans and players along racial lines, including special sections for music associated with blackness, musical selections targeted at recruits, and the continued position of the marching band—a European military ensemble—as the musical representative of the sport. These areas reinforce college football culture as a bastion of white strength despite the diversity among player demographics.

Satan has long served as the ultimate evil, the world’s primary scapegoat. The Devil’s role in music, especially extreme music and heavy metal, has been to shock, terrify and enrage. But what if the imagery and ideology of Satan is used to combat an immoral societal evil? Is it then possible that the radical evil could itself become a force for good? This article intends to examine the music and philosophy of three modern bands, dubbed The New Satanists: Ghost, Twin Temple and Zeal & Ardor. Each band uses varying degrees of satanic influence to raise awareness of their perceived objectionable and abject issues in society: a harsh and unjust patriarchy, the Christian conversions and role of religion during the era of American slavery and suppression of individuality from the Catholic Church. Through the examination of these bands, social issues and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of symbolic evil, this article will examine theories of traditional evil potentially becoming a force for good when it combats the moral sickness existent in society. An alternate perspective – that of Satan as a liberator – could serve as a cure for a gamut of ills.

Boy bands embody contradictory representations of their own individuality and authenticity and the corporate nature of their genesis and presentation. Boy band members, the impresarios and entrepreneurs behind them, and the producers of television shows about them must contend in their work and relationships with the social and symbolic conventions of their historical moment. In this article I analyse representations of boy bands on the American TV shows The Monkees (1966-8) and Making the Band (2000-) in order to highlight shifts in the ways the performers and production personnel have been represented and have sought to represent themselves. The internal push for legitimacy and autonomy of the young stars of these shows, acting from within a perceived but unstable gap between ‘musician’ and ‘employee’, exists in tension with the external push of TV and music producers, network, record label and marketing departments for rational, predictable products and behaviours that fit within an overall business plan. While the rock ideology of authenticity has lost much of the force it had in the 1960s and change in representational conventions seem to indicate a general acceptance of the overt commercialism of chart-busting pop, this article shows that even within the mainstream flows a strong current of concern over issues of authenticity, legitimacy and autonomy.

The article is devoted to defining the role of thrash metal music in the foundation of extreme heavy music in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Attention focused on the importance of a separate sub-genre of heavy metal music in forming a new style of heavy music, including new vocal techniques, building more complex compositions, and expanding the lyrics' themes. Analyzed the criteria by which extreme heavy music can attribute among other sub-genres of heavy metal and defined thrash metal as a transitional stage between heavy metal and extreme music. The work is interdisciplinary, which manifested in the use of methodological approaches to history and cultural studies. The article examined various areas of development of thrash metal music, particularly the United States, where the phenomenon has appeared; Germany and Switzerland, which differed qualitatively from the American scene; and Brazil, whose musicians have set recording standards for much of the extreme music. The article identified the reasons for the popularity decline of thrash metal in the early 1990s in the context of the general development of rock music and identified the features of the evolution into extreme metal. In addition to the musical component, the article outlined the social and behavioral elements of thrash metal fans during bands' performances, which also formed the image of the extremity of metal music. Special attention in the article is devoted to the Slayer and Megadeth bands, the foundation of controversy in the subject of lyrics, which, in turn, is characterized by extreme metal. Evolving from the New Wave of British heavy metal, American thrash metal develop new features in heavy music, including fast, aggressive riffs, and sharpened the lyrics' themes, primarily political and anti-religious. Rebelled against the dominance of glam metal, thrash metal fans developed their image, which consisted of aggression and appropriate behavior during concerts. Developed in the United States, thrash metal has gained popularity in other parts of the world, whose scenes have developed their characteristics, which, in the future, influenced the formation of extreme heavy music. In the late 1980s, the US radio format shifted the demand for grunge, which supplanted thrash metal from the radio. The sub-genre began to decline and was replaced by death and black metal in the heavy metal music underground.

THE WANTED The Unauthorized Biography, livro escrito pelo jornalista e biógrafo americano, Chas Newkey-Burden, e publicado em 2012. Esta obra não ficcional, que foi traduzida para o vernáculo por Mariana Varella e lançada pela Prumo em 2013, com o título de The Wanted: A Biografia Não Autorizada, descreve a trajetória de cinco jovens do Reino Unido que se juntaram em 2009 para formar uma banda juvenil de pop rock. Até hoje, The Wanted é considerada uma das boy bands que mais tempo permaneceu no show business.

Crno-bijeli svijet [Black-White World, HRT, 2015–] is an on-going Croatian television series set in the early 1980s depicting the then-current pop music scene in Zagreb. The storyline follows several characters whose lives are intertwined by complex family relations, while also following the beginnings of new wave/punk rock bands and artists, and their influence on the Yugoslav youth who almost religiously listened to their music, like some of the series’ characters do.The role of music in television series is a complicated question that caught the attention of film music scholars in recent years. The significance – and, at the same time, the complexity – that music produces or can produce, as the bearer of cultural, social and/or political meanings in television series brings its own set of difficulties in setting out possible frameworks of research. In the case of Crno-bijeli svijet that is even more challenging considering that it revolves around popular music that is actively involved in, not just the series soundtrack, but several aspects of different narrative elements.Jon Burlingame calls the music of American television “The soundtrack of our lives”, and I find this quote is appropriate for this occasion as well. The quote summarizes and expresses the creators’ personal note that is evident in the use of music in this television series and myriad ways music is connected to other narrative and extra-narrative elements, and in a way, grasps the complicity of the problem I will address. Article received: March 31, 2018; Article accepted: May 10, 2018; Published online: October 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Đorđević, Ana. “'The soundtrack of their lives': The Music of Crno-bijeli svijet." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 17 (2018): 25−36. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i17.267

AbstractThis paper examines the performances of Taiwanese American Jack Hsu and his New Jersey-based progressive erhu-rock band The Hsu-nami, in transnational contexts fraught by ethnonationalism and race. Through an ethnographic approach, this paper highlights the band's depoliticising practice to deflect the geopolitics across the Taiwan Strait. It also discusses how Hsu adapts the musical and gender ideologies in rock music culture to diffuse racial ideologies surrounding his ethnicity and instrument. Finally, an analysis of the band's deployment of cultural diplomacy discusses pragmatic multiculturalism, a mode that reflects the tension between rock music's ostensibly counter-cultural front and its commercial foundation.

Gambar cadas di Indonesia mulai diteliti sejak sebelum abad 20. Sejumlah publikasi ilmiah sebelumnya mencatat keberadaan situs gambar cadas di Pulau Seram, Provinsi Maluku yaitu di tebing Sawai dan Sungai Tala. Survei arkeologi terkini di kawasan Seram Timur dan Seram Laut yang dilakukan oleh gabungan Tim Peneliti Indonesian-American berhasil menemukan Situs gambar cadas baru di pesisir Seram Timur. gambar cadas ini terlukiskan di permukaan dinding tebing bernama lokal tebing Watu Sika. Gambar cadas di Situs Watu Sika tampak mirip dengan sejumlah situs gambar cadas lainnya di Indonesia Timur yang sebagian besar terlukis di dinding tebing karst sepanjang wilayah pesisir. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode perekaman verbal dan piktorial dibantu aplikasi Dstretch untuk memperjelas gambar-gambar agar mudah diidentifikasi. Penelitian ini menganalisis sejumlah pola figuratif dan non figuratif pada motif-motif gambar cadas di Situs Watu Sika. Hasil identifikasi terhadap sejumlah motif gambar cadas di situs ini diketahui terdapat motif gambar cadas berbentuk figur manusia, hewan, ikan, perahu, hand stencils negatif, dan pola geometris. Penelitian ini juga membahas analisis latar belakang konteks sosial terhadap tradisi gambar cadas di wilayah sekitarnya, yaitu wilayah Laut Banda. Berdasarkan jaringan persebaran temuan gambar cadas di Indonesia Timur, maka menghasilkan pengetahuan baru bahwa analisis data sementara ini menunjukkan Situs Watu Sika merupakan kunci penghubung jalur persebaran gambar cadas yang berasal dari wilayah barat ke dua jalur, pertama jalur ke arah Timur Laut, yaitu wilayah Papua dan Jalur ke Selatan, yaitu ke arah Kepulauan di sekitar Laut Banda.Rock art in Indonesia has been investigated before the 20th century. A number of previous scientific publications noted the existence of rock art sites on Seram Island, Maluku Province, which was on the cliff of Sawai and Tala River. Recent archaeological surveys in the area of East Seram and Seram Laut conducted by a joint Indonesian-American Research Team discovered a new rock art site in the coast of East Seram. The rock art is painted on the cliff wall which is called by the locals as Watu Sika. Rock art on the Watu Sika Site is similar to a number of rock art at other sites in Eastern Indonesia which were mostly painted on karstic cliffs along the coast. This study used verbal and pictorial recording methods using the Dstretch application to clarify images to support identification. This study analyzed a number of figurative and non-figurative patterns of rock art motifs at Watu Sika Site. The results of the identification of a number of rock art motifs on this site show that there are several patterns including figures of human, animal, fish, boats, negative hand stencils, and geometric patterns. This study also discussed an analysis of the social context background of rock art tradition in the surrounding region, particularly at the Banda Sea region. Based on the distribution network of rock art findings in eastern Indonesia, new insights are generated that this interim data analysis show that Watu Sika Site is the key to connecting the distribution path of rock art originating from the western region into two lanes. The first lane to the Northeast, which is the Papua region and South Lane, expanding towards the Islands around the Banda Sea.

The Echo Lake intrusion in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan, USA, was formed during the 1.1 Ga Midcontinent Rift event in North America. Troctolite is the predominant rock unit in the intrusion, with interlayered bands of peridotite, mafic pegmatitic rock, olivine gabbro, magnetite-bearing gabbro, and anorthosite. Exploratory drilling has revealed a platinum group element (PGE)-enriched zone within a 45 m thick magnetite-ilmenite-bearing olivine gabbro unit with grades up to 1.2 g/t Pt + Pd and 0.3 wt. % Cu. Fine, disseminated grains of sulfide minerals such as pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite occur in the mineralized interval. Formation of Cu-PGE-rich sulfide minerals might have been caused by sulfide melt saturation in a crystallizing magma, which was triggered by a sudden decrease in fO2 upon the crystallization and separation of titaniferous magnetite. This PGE-enriched zone is comparable to other well-known reef-like PGE deposits, such as the Sonju Lake deposit in northern Minnesota.

Background. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in research of global and pivotal changes of world’s sound image in musical art, this shift being incarnated in a tendency towards conception of new sound images of music instruments, which would be simultaneously relevant to new sound realm and being capable of “encapsulating” culture’s memory and experience. The domra, which is one of the carriers of this cultural memory, has its sound image transfigured in dimensions of academic, folklore, jazz and stage types of performance traditions in the works by V. Solomin. The objectives of this study to reveal ways of creative self-identification of V. Solomin as well as of conception of domra’s new sound image in his works. The complex of the analytical methods (analysis, synthesis, comparative studies), as well as the historical-typological approach was used in this research. Results of the research. Specific of world’s modern sound image is marked by conceptualization of a sound, destruction of established hierarchy of means of musical expression and new understanding of statuses of musical instruments. These features transpire in creation of new sonic images of musical instruments, including the domra, whose evolution during XX century was connected with the academic tradition of music. On the verge of XX–XXI centuries ample transformations of instrument’s sound image, related to diffusion, intertextuality and plurality of modern culture, are stamped in the creativity of those connected to the Ukrainian domra art. In V. Solomin’s creativity the sound image of the domra is characterized by universality, as in different forms of performance (such as solo, ensemble, orchestral) this instrument appeals to stylistic layers of folklore, classical academic heritage of various cultural epochs as well as to new kinds of art, the one of stage and jazz. Classical musical pieces being interpreted for the domra by V. Solomin allow to broaden vistas of perception of this instrument since they represent “known” content in new and somewhat unexpected timbre variant, thus creating re-intonation and re-semantization of content. Personal re-intonation and re-semantization in the interpretation of J. S. Bach’s works, carried out by V. Solomin, relies on modification of articulation and new understanding of source’s timbre characteristics; it is a complex intertwining of pre-Baroque, Baroque and modern performance art, as well as of lute, violin and domra traditions, and of modern and academic layers of musical performing. Innovation of domra’s sound image implies accretion of its repertoire with “modern classics” as well. V. Solomin’s interpretation of A. Schnittke’s “Suite in Old Style” might be seen as “condensed” reincarnation of spiritual values, manipulation with signs of the Past (for instance, Baroque era), crucial for postmodern culture. Another aspect of innovation of the domra’s sound image lies in the fact that V. Solomin adds to its repertoire pieces, not quite traditional for its national and stylistic appeal. In this regard, interpretation of I. Albéniz’s “Asturias” becomes multi-layered combination of signs, typical for different cultures. This transcription manifests stylistic mobility of domra’s sound image as well as its capability to adapt to technical devices, stemming from other instruments. The fact that V. Solomin created two bands, “Solominband” (2004) and “DomRa” (2009), proves ability of the domra’s sound image to undergo drastic stylistic modifications. The activity of “Solominband” (including a project in partnership with the singer Katia Chilly) and “DomRa” demonstrated author’s intentional orientation towards synthesis of authentic tradition and jazz, desire to reveal timbre colors of the domra, special attention to the sound as a carrier of intonation sense, understanding of the domra’s leading role in the context of ensemble performance while simultaneously proclaiming “performer’s equality”, its reflexivity and co-dependence from other participants of the ensemble. Expansion of timbre, articulatory, dynamical and technical “aura” of the domra, achieved by usage of its electric variant, allowed the author to create large-scaled multi-layered synthesis of cultures: authentic (Ukrainian, Celtic, Latin-American), academic, jazz and rock. Electric variant of the domra enriched expressive and technical possibilities of the domra art with now ways of playing, while also added variety to timbre-sonic layers of modern jazz and rock, thus becoming a basis for new stylistic mixes. As an example of such mix, we can regard V. Solomin’s versions of modern pop-music. Program “The Rain”, based on interpretations of songs by Sting (G. M. T. Sumner) is marked by synthesis of folklore, jazz and pop-music (which is relevant to pluralistic foundations of modern multi-culture); by representation of sound image of the domra as of the instrument, capable of recreation of vocal cantilena; by rich palette of technical and expressive devices; by functional versatility of the domra, acquiring both solo and accompaniment roles, as well as status of bearer of a melodic line and stimulus of intonation and rhythmic movement, instigator of jazz-like “improvisatory competition” etc. Conclusions. The present results are significant in understanding that creativity of V. Solomin foreshadows new vectors of the domra art’s evolution and re-semantization of its sound image. The domra’s modulation into spheres of academic musical art, pop and rock culture, authentic performance and jazz results in new, culturally polyphonic sound image of this instrument and its new status of the poly-functional multi-stylistic mediator between cultural dimensions, of concentrated, timbre-sonic expressive, and conceptually flexible carrier of cultural memory. Perspectives of further research lie in examination of features, characteristic for interpretations of the domra’s innovative sound image by Ukrainian musicians who work in the sphere of the domra music, including jazz, pop and rock music.

The two Archaean greenstone belts (Bandas and Bogoin) in the Central African Republic (Equatorial Africa) are 250 and 150 km long. The metavolcanic rocks in the belts are predominantly komatiitic and tholeiitic basalts. Komatiites include both Al-depleted and Al-undepleted types. The komatiites and light-REE-depleted tholeiites were probably derived from a similar upper mantle source. However, the tholeiitic basalts enriched in light REE from the upper volcanic strata of the Bandas belt were generated from a different source. The dolerites from Proterozoic dyke swarms and sills differ from the basalts mainly in their abundances and ratios of several incompatible elements such as K, Rb, Th, and light REE. They were derived from a distinct, incompatible-element-enriched upper mantle source.The average background gold levels in the Bandas belt and dolerite dyke swarms are comparable to those in equivalent rocks from North America. The exception is the Bogoin greenstone belt, which has anomalously high gold abundances.

Walstromite, BaCa2Si3O9, known only from metamorphic rocks of North America, was found in small veins of unusual rankinite paralava within gehlenite hornfelses of the Hatrurim Complex, Israel. It was detected at two localities—Gurim Anticline and Zuk Tamrur, Hatrurim Basin, Negev Desert. The structure of Israeli walstromite [with P 1 ¯ space group and cell parameters a = 6.74874(10) Å, b = 9.62922(11) Å, c = 6.69994(12) Å, α = 69.6585(13)°, β = 102.3446(14)°, γ = 96.8782(11)°, Z = 2, V = 398.314(11) Å3] is analogous to the structure of walstromite from type locality—Rush Creek, eastern Fresno County, California, USA. The Raman spectra of all tree minerals exhibit bands related to stretching symmetric vibrations of Si-O-Si at 650–660 cm−1 and Si-O at 960–990 cm−1 in three-membered rings (Si3O9)6−. This new genetic pyrometamorphic type of walstromite forms out of the differentiated melt portions enriched in Ba, V, S, P, U, K, Na, Ti and F, a residuum after crystallization of rock-forming minerals of the paralava (rankinite, gehlenite-åkermanite-alumoåkermanite, schorlomite-andradite series and wollastonite). Walstromite associates with other Ba-minerals, also products of the residual melt crystallization as zadovite, BaCa6[(SiO4)(PO4)](PO4)2F and gurimite, Ba3(VO4)2. The genesis of unusual barium mineralization in rankinite paralava is discussed. Walstromite is isostructural with minerals—margarosanite, BaCa2Si3O9 and breyite, CaCa2(Si3O9), discovered in 2018.

AbstractBradford Cox's physical appearance has mystified audiences, critics, and fans since the inception of his American indie rock band Deerhunter in the early 2000s. As the band's frontman, Cox is 6’4” with an exceptionally thin, angular frame, physical effects associated with Marfan syndrome. Yet many critics and fans do not recognize that he has a disability per se, instead speculating about possible anorexia, drug abuse, mental illness, and even his gender and sexual orientation. Through analysis of Cox's reception and creative output, I argue that the simultaneous fetishization and normalization of his body is due to its resonance with two overlapping countercultural discourses: the current idealization of thinness in indie rock as it both extends and departs from an earlier tradition of freakery and androgyny in punk. I show that Cox resists what he views as the masculine heteronormativity and performative apathy of indie rock through “freakish” sartorial reference to his androgynous punk idols PJ Harvey, Joey Ramone, and Patti Smith, an aesthetic that for Cox is vitally queer. Cox uses his solo musical output to further convey his alienation as a queer-disabled male artist: through his lyrics, album art, and specific vocal affectations and production techniques, he establishes a continuity across the visual and sonic registers of his identity to ultimately achieve a sense of belonging.

AbstractSince the international breakthrough of The Sugarcubes and Björk in the late 1980s, the Anglophone discourse surrounding Icelandic popular music has proven to be the latest instance of a long history of representation in which the North Atlantic island is imagined as an icy periphery on the edge of European civilization. This mode of representation is especially prominent in the discourse surrounding post-rock band Sigur Rós. This article offers a critical reading of the band's reception in the Anglo-American music press during the period of their breakthrough in the UK and USA. Interpretative strategies among listeners and critics are scrutinised using the concept of borealism (Schram 2011) in order to examine attitudes towards the Nordic regions evident in the portrayals of Sigur Rós. Reception issues then form the basis for a musical analysis of a seminal track in the band's history, aiming to demonstrate how specific details in Sigur Rós's style relate to its reception and the discourse surrounding it. The article finds that much of the metaphorical language present in the band's reception can be linked to techniques of musical spatiality, the unusual sound of the bowed electric guitar and non-normative uses of voice and language.

The Gangfelum Banded Iron Formation (BIF) is located within the basement complex of northeastern Nigeria. It is characterized by alternate bands of iron oxide and quartz. Petrographic studies show that the BIF consist mainly of hematite, goethite subordinate magnetite and accessory minerals including rutile, apatite, tourmaline and zircon. Chemical data from inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) show that average Fe2O3(t) is 53.91 wt.%. The average values of Al2O3 and CaO are 1.41 and 0.05 wt.% respectively, TiO2 and MnO are less than 0.5 wt. % each. The data suggested that the BIF is the oxide facies type. Trace element concentrations of Ba (67-332 ppm), Ni (28-35 ppm), Sr (13-55 ppm) and Zr (16-25 ppm) in the Gangfelum BIF are low and similar to the Maru and Muro BIF in northern Nigeria and also the Algoma iron formation from North America, the Orissa iron oxide facies of India and the Itabirite from Minas Gerais in Brazil. The evolution of the Gangfelum BIF involved metamorphism of chemically precipitated or rhythmically deposited iron-rich sediments into hematite-quartz rocks. The banding of the BIF suggested a break in iron precipitation probably due to iron oxide deficiency.

Within southeast British Columbia, mid-Cretaceous granitoid batholiths are exposed in the Omineca Belt, a north–south-trending metamorphic and plutonic orogenic belt. The Bugaboo, Horsethief Creek, and Fry Creek batholiths are post-kinematic with respect to regional metamorphism that affected their host rocks, and are composed of hornblende and biotite granodiorites and granites in all three batholiths, and two-mica granites in Fry Creek. The biotite granites are weakly peraluminous, have initial εSr ranging from + 36 to + 56 and initial εNd ranging from −4.8 to −7.5, and overlap the range of Nd–Sr isotopic compositions for Precambrian basement gneisses and Proterozoic metasediments found in southeast British Columbia. The initial 206Pb/204Pb versus 208Pb/204Pb and 207Pb/204Pb for these granitoids lie in bands between model lower and upper crustal Pb isotopic compositions above the Northern Hemisphere Reference Line for oceanic basalts. These granitoids have high Nb and Rb and low Ba abundances relative to granites found in volcanic arcs. The two-mica granites are strongly peraluminous and have εSr ranging from + 170 to + 470, εNd ranging from −10 to−21, and more radiogenic initial Pb-isotope ratios than the biotite granites. The two-mica granites have trace element compositions similar to those of granites found in within-plate and collisional tectonic settings.We favor a model for crustal anatexis of Precambrian basement gneisses and Proterozoic metapelites to produce the mid-Cretaceous biotite granites and two-mica granites, respectively. Crustal anatexis was likely in response to crustal thickening that occurred during the Mesozoic in southeast British Columbia as exotic terranes collided with and were accreted to the western edge of the North American continent.

Los números de comienzo de año de Contrapulso son de temática libre dentro del amplio campo multidisciplinario de los estudios en música popular en América Latina que nos convoca. Los de mediados de año, en cambio, están orientados hacia temáticas específicas dentro de este campo, como han sido los dedicados a “Música y sexualidad” (2019), “Música y política” (2020), “Voces y vocalidades” (2021), y “Música, sentimientos y afectos”, dosier convocado para el próximo número (2022) https://contrapulso.uahurtado.cl/index.php/cp/announcement En algunos casos, un dosier puede irradiar su temática hacia el número siguiente, como ocurre en este de temática libre, pero con tres artículos provenientes de la llamada al dosier del número anterior –“Voces y vocalidades”–. Incluso en la editorial pasada anunciamos que publicaríamos una segunda parte del dosier con esta entrega, pero finalmente hemos preferido no hacerlo y así mantener el ritmo de la revista señalado al comienzo. Nos disculpamos por ello, aunque el origen de esos tres artículos, transforman este ejemplar en un número híbrido. El primero de los textos irradiados, de Dulce María Dalbosco, aborda comparativamente las figuras de Amália Rodrigues y de Carlos Gardel, buscando convergencias entre el fado y el tango en las ciudades puerto de Lisboa y Buenos Aires, junto al desarrollo de las nuevas tecnologías del disco y del cine. A partir de su canto y de su agencia, ambos artistas se proyectaron como referentes culturales y sociales, se convirtieron en figuras transmediales, modelaron subjetividades y devinieron en agentes culturales íconos internacionales de los géneros musicales que representan. Amália y Gardel son también testimonio de la manera en que el cuerpo del artista se convierte en receptáculo donde se cruzan, se contradicen o se potencian las distintas voces articuladas por ellos: la de sus canciones, sus personajes, sus papeles cinematográficos, y sus discursos. El segundo artículo vinculado al dosier del número anterior, de Maria Pilar Jarpa, aborda la obra del escritor, artista y activista chileno de género Pedro Lemebel, que toma la voz de la cantante mexicana Paquita la del Barrio para trasvestir su propia voz, produciendo una diversidad de alianzas con “lo femenino” que dan cuenta de un devenir irreverente de mujer respecto a las categorías dominantes. En las crónicas y programas de radio de Lemebel, vemos como la canción sentimental y de despecho se transforma en dispositivo de subversión del imaginario heteronormativo y también revolucionario latinoamericano. En el tercer artículo de la revista, de temática libre, María de los Ángeles Montes, aborda el paradigma tradicional del cuarteto cordobés tal como se manifestó hasta finales la década del setenta antes de la propuesta disruptiva de la banda Chébere y de La Mona Jiménez. Para ello la autora revisa un cuerpo considerable de canciones, abordando sus aspectos sonoros, lingüísticos y narrativos en su sentido amplio, enfatizando los valores dominantes de matrimonio, familia y trabajo y sus transgresiones en el espacio festivo del cuarteto, a través del humor y la picaresca. Es en esa suspensión momentánea de la seriedad de la vida cotidiana que impone la fiesta, donde el cuarteto tradicional anima a la relajación de las normas morales imperantes, como la fidelidad masculina, el ascetismo, y el decoro en la mujer. A partir del cuarto artículo incluimos estudios sobre música popular abordados desde la música y la musicología, a diferencia de los tres primeros, escritos desde la literatura, los estudios de género y la semiótica, que enriquecen la diversidad de enfoques de este campo de estudios. Es así como Roberto Serafini, se enfoca en el primera arreglo de Astor Piazzolla para la orquesta de Aníbal Troilo: la milonga-candombe “Azabache” que, a pesar de tener buena recepción del público y de la industria de la época, Troilo nunca llevó al disco. En su artículo, Serafini aborda las posibles razones de esta omisión en el contexto de los años cuarenta en Buenos Aires. Lo hace, a partir de un minucioso estudio de la obra, transcribiendo el manuscrito inédito, relevando la bibliografía, analizando comparativamente distintos arreglos de la época y produciendo un video con su montaje. Por su parte, Nilda Godoy, ofrece un análisis intermedial de la interpretación de Mercedes Sosa para canciones sobre la poesía de Armando Tejada Gómez, enfocándose en la voz como portadora de palabra y música. La autora identifica recursos expresivos en relación al fraseo, el tratamiento dinámico, las acentuaciones, las prolongaciones de sonido, y las decisiones de tempo y altura sobre las letras de las canciones, en un minucioso estudio de vocalidad que completa los tres artículos irradiados del número pasado de Contrapulso al actual. El sexto artículo, de Tomás Mariani, se centra en el disco El incendio del poniente (1984) del cantante argentino de folklore, Jacinto Piedra, publicado en el marco de la llamada primavera democrática argentina, buscando su relación con las culturas juveniles de los ochenta. Para ello, el autor considera lo visual, lo literario y lo sonoro-musical del disco y la red de relaciones que conforma, que se articulan con un discurso en el que folklore y juventud pueden formar parte de una misma construcción de identidad, compartiendo además espacios con el rock. El último artículo, de Víctor Navarro, aborda una canción del poeta-rockero chileno Mauricio Redolés que ofrece una crónica de la lucha de los estudiantes secundarios contra la dictadura militar en la década de los ochenta. La canción es abordada desde la historia cultural y los postulados sobre música y profecía de Jacques Attali, intentando descifrar la microhistoria que subyace en la letra, la clase subalterna que se describe, y sus posibilidades de diálogo con el Chile actual, ofreciendo un interesante análisis de la estructura cultural de la canción. Este número culmina con tres reseñas críticas de libros de reciente aparición. La primera, de Andrés Celis, aborda un extenso estudio colectivo sobre el heavy-metal en América Latina. La segunda, de Sebastián Carrillo, está referida a un no menos extenso recuento de 200 discos de rock chileno. La tercera, de Tomás G. Márques, nos informa de una autoedición sobre la práctica del hip-hop femenino en Chile. Junto con agradecer a lo/as autore/as que han depositado su confianza en Contrapulso, enviándonos sus manuscritos según las normas de la revista y luego haciendo correcciones y modificaciones según lo hemos ido solicitando, queremos reconocer muy especialmente a quienes han realizado los acuciosos referatos ciegos del material recibido, contribuyendo a mantener el buen nivel de la revista y sirviendo como instancia de perfeccionamiento para los propios autores. Estos fueron Ana Belén Disandro, Angélica Adorni, Ariel Durán, Christina Baker, Claudia Rolando, Daniel Domingo Gómez, Daniel Party, Federico Eisner, Héctor Rojas, Heloísa Valente, Joshua Katz, Juan Sebastián Rojas, Juliana Pérez, Lucio Carnicer, Marina Cañardo, Pablo Toro, Rodrigo Arrey, Simón Palominos y Tania Costa. El contenido de Contrapulso 4/1 (1/2022) es el siguiente: Dulce María Dalbosco. “De la voz al símbolo: Amália y Gardel como estrellas de la canción portuaria” María del Pilar Jarpa. “Devenir rabiosa: Lemebel, Paquita la del Barrio y ‘el lenguaje de la ira’”María de los Ángeles Montes. “El paradigma tradicional del cuarteto cordobés. Sonidos, palabras y relatos” Andrés Serafini. “Misterioso ‘Azabache’: contextualización y análisis del primer arreglo de Astor Piazzolla para la orquesta de Aníbal Troilo” Nilda Godoy. “La voz de Mercedes Sosa cantando la poesía de Armando Tejada Gómez. Un análisis de la interpretación como aporte al estudio del canto” Tomás Mariani. “El incendio del poniente (1984) en la primavera democrática argentina: folklore y juventud en el disco solista de Jacinto Piedra” Víctor Navarro. “‘Química’, de Mauricio Redolés: una crónica del movimiento estudiantil en la dictadura militar chilena” Reseñas Andrés Celis: Nelson Varas-Díaz, Daniel Nevárez Araújo y Eliut Rivera-Segarra eds. 2021. Heavy Metal Music in Latin America: Perspectives from the Distorted South. Lanham, Maryland: Lexiton Books. Sebastián Carrillo: Gabriel Chacón, Felipe Godoy, Cristofer Rodríguez y César Tudela. 2020. 200 discos de rock chileno. Una historia del vinilo al streaming. Santiago: Ocho libros. Tomás G. Marqués: Paulina Briceño (A.K.A Brita la Matriarca). 2021. Ser Bgirl. Filosofía del Hip Hop. Santiago: Autoedición.

This action research study provides insight into the learning of university music education students who participated in a popular musicianship experience. The participants were thirty-four music education students (i.e. pre-service music educators) at an American university enrolled in a student-directed Popular Musicianship course. Although given access to “rock band” instruments and sound equipment during the semester-long experience, they did not receive any direct instruction from the faculty instructor of record. After organizing into bands, the participants were challenged to prepare for performance two or three songs, including one cover and one original song. They also indicated the confidence they had in their ability to lead their future students in popular music making. This measure of self-efficacy was collected at the beginning, middle, and end of the experience. Also, participant written descriptions of their experiences was analyzed qualitatively. The findings of the study indicated that participants believed their overall musicianship benefited from the experience due to the challenging nature of vernacular music making, which was also enjoyable and rewarding. The experience also appeared to impact their teaching philosophies for the future. Finally, their self-efficacy increased significantly across the experience.

Introduction – Polish GrungeThe main objective of this article is to examine the grunge scene of the 1990s in Poland in the context of acculturation and assimilation processes. Polish grunge was, on the one hand, the expression of trends that were observable in music industry since the late 1980s. On the other hand, it was symptomatic of a rapid systemic transformation. Youth culture was open for the diffusion of cultural patterns and was ready to adopt certain patterns from the West.Thus, we suggest that the local grunge scene was completely modelled on the American one: the flow of cultural practices and subcultural fashion were the manifestations of the assimilation processes in Poland, observable not only in art (i.e. rock music), but also in the domains of politics and economy, as well as in the broader social sphere. We explore how young people were ready to adopt only the surface level of the phenomenon as they were familiar with it through the media coverage it received. Young people in Poland circa the early ‘90s primarily wanted to gain access to an imaginary Western lifestyle rather than learn about real living conditions in capitalist societies, and they could do this through their involvement in grunge culture.Grunge as a Cultural PhenomenonGrunge as a popular music trend arose in the USA during the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the work of bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. Grunge was initially opposed to consumerism and capitalist values. Nevertheless, A&R scouts recognised the commercial potential of this music: for example, Nirvana’s Nevermind was released by Geffen Company, and Pearl Jam’s Ten by Epic. As Grzegorz Brzozowicz and Filip Łobodziński put it (313),the success of Nirvana was a post-mort triumph of punk rock and, more importantly, it indicated the potential of alternative music, which suddenly stepped outside an aesthetic ghetto and became a hot stuff. This influence was also visible as regards fashion and customs – Dr. Martens’ shoes, flannel shirts, frayed jeans, and wool caps became an outfit common for the young (…). Grunge influenced visual art, film and photography.In Poland, grunge as a subculture and sub-genre of rock music emerged in the early 1990s following the international commercial success of bands such as those listed above, and it entailed the assimilation of the Western cultural patterns. Although assimilation processes were typical primarily for youth culture, they were observed in the wider context of the changes and adaptations that Polish system underwent after the fall of the centrally planned economy and subjugation to the communist party power after the Yalta agreements (1945-1989/1990).In this context, the concept Centre/Periphery (Gopinathan, Saravanan and Altbach; Hannerz; Langholm; Pisciotta) appears as the field for the dissemination of popular culture. Popular culture is a battlefield for creating and negotiating the meanings that are inherent within cultural practices (Barker). Cultural practices play a double role in the dissemination of ideas or objects. Firstly, they come as a result of adaptation in a defined culture, and secondly, they make new cultural patterns stabile, visible, and easy to practice by people as flexible patterns of behaviour. This point is clearly visible in the context of the East European states that underwent rapid acculturation processes in which new patterns of economic and social solutions were established in centre-planned economies: the tensions of the “old” and the “new” patterns dominating in the political and social systems of those countries (e.g. Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.) were visible and affected societies to a considerable degree (Pisciotta). Thus, the practices generated in cultural Centres tend to disseminate easily and to “conquer” other cultural systems, especially in the Periphery.In the case of popular culture, the flow of influences usually takes a one-dimensional form and is disseminated from the Centre to the Periphery. As Marek Jeziński (162-163) argues, both Centre and Periphery are functional systems. These systems have generated their own mythology, which separates one from another. However, as in the case of mythological systems in general, Centre and Periphery tales overlap frequently, and there are evidence that the bands that originated in the Periphery were assimilated by the Centre. For example, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were both successful in market terms and both built their own status based on the Peripheral components that were skilfully overtaken by the Centre narrative. While the Peripheral narratives are concentrated mainly on the undermining of the definition of situation and present dysfunctional character towards cultural system as such, the Centre narratives aim to maintain the definition of situation supporting mainstream values and their prevailing position in a system (Jeziński 164). Grunge is the epitome of such an implementation of cultural patterns. That is, grunge started as a fringe peripheral cultural phenomenon. The major records companies, however, recognised its potential and provided the space in the music market to support the new bands. Most of the groups in the US started as independent local acts related to independent record companies that built their status.In relation to the assimilation of grunge culture in Poland, we can distinguish two key phenomena. The first is concerned with the adaptation of general subcultural components, e.g. fashion and group identification. Here, the acculturation processes run as a primary form of mimicry, as the Polish grunge scene adopted elements typical of the grunge subculture, such as oversize sweaters, flannel shirts, Dr. Martens shoes or Converse trainers, long hair, and beanies. A newly formed subculture was different from the others popular in the 1990s. For example, punk and metal subcultures implied strong group identity, style homogeneity, rigid group limitations, and firm membership rules. Conversely, it seems that the grunge subculture was based more on a level of liquid and fragmented patchwork identity than on very inflexible group values and internal ideology or political attitudes (cf. Muggleton). Such patchwork identity formation was a result of a rapid clash between the adaptation of grunge cultural patterns from the West and the Polish economic transformation of the early 1990s.Poland underwent rapid changes that were also visible in the politics, culture and social domain, joining liberal democracies and liberal free market economies of the West. These changes resulted from a transformation of the system as a whole: from a central planned system to decentralisation of the power at both local and state levels (Sarnecki). Equally important were the changes in the political culture of Poles and their value system: they accepted the democratic changes but simultaneously, the mentality of Poles remained traditionalist (which is visible in surveys— the most important values for them were “family” and “work”), and their attitude towards the processes of cultural and institutional changes was impermanent (Garlicki; Jasińska-Kania).During the transformation, the changes were visible in the everyday lives of Polish citizens: examples include the shortages in the market that were evident after the socialist regime ended, and the easy availability of Western clothes such as jeans, shirts, denim jackets in ordinary stores. Consequently, the economic rates in the 1990s were higher in comparison to the previous decade (Bałtowski and Miszewski). Those changes resulted in a phase shift in the modernisation process, where patterns of economic and cultural development and were faster than the enculturation and socialisation processes.On the one hand, the free market allowed for almost unlimited commodification with unprecedented access to goods and services. On the other hand, the low cultural capital and economic possibilities of the citizens evolved rapidly. The communist-shaped social division fell apart, and the new class designations based of consumption/commodification patterns were established (Jeziński; Wojtkowski). Those factors resulted in high cross-generational mobility, lower entrance barriers, and higher openness indicators (cf. Polska klasa średnia; O ruchliwości społecznej w polsce).Hence, in cultural conditions based on capitalist consumption practices, the grunge subculture evolved with a commodified sense of style rather than with a firm identity. Yet, in the case of grunge style, relatively high costs of subculture commodities (e.g. Dr. Martens shoes, Converse trainers, or band t-shirts) led to DIY practices such as buying cheaper no-name shoes, and sewing badges with the names of bands and albums on jackets or backpacks.The second phenomenon encompasses the adaptation of music patterns. The Polish grunge scene was not as diversified in terms of genre variations as its US counterpart. In the beginning, the Polish grunge scene was more distressed geographically, with no specific Centre-Periphery relations. However, one of the most important bands, Hey, was established in the Northwest. When one looks at Polish grunge evolution as a ‘clash’ of American genre and the specific character of a time and place where Polish bands were recording, she or he will notice multiple similarities with the US scene.Firstly, we could name two approaches to grunge music among Polish performers: ‘intellectual’ and ‘rebel’. The ‘intellectual’ approach encompasses the group Hey. This band was established in Szczecin (the Northwest Poland), but after the success of their first album – Fire (1993), they moved to Warsaw. Hey released 11 studio records, but only the first three could be classified as “grunge” (cf. Sankowski). On the level of musical references, Fire sounds like a mixture of early Pearl Jam combined with Alice in Chains. With English lyrics and song topics that were typical for grunge— e.g., The Choice (“You’ve got a gun/You can use it now”)—similarities with Pearl Jam, in particular, are striking. The band evolved, and on their second album, Ho! (1994), Hey mixed equally Polish and English lyrics with the dynamic and specific Seattle sound (cf. Prato). Hey’s most distinctive feature comparing with other Polish grunge bands is its highly developed melodic approach to music and the poetic, sensual style of its lyrics. The third record, ? (1995), closes the band’s early stage. The next album, Karma (1997), opens the period when the amalgamation of electronics, hard rock and grunge dominated Hey’s music, with the album [sic!] (2001) representing the turning point in the group’s music style. The band suspended their work in 2017 and will probably never reunite.Over time, Hey gained one of the most dedicated audiences in Polish rock music. The music industry and critics have acknowledged Hey as one of the best Polish groups in the post-communist period. Hey has received the most nominations in the history of Fryderyki, the key Polish music awards. The group and Nosowska have won twenty-three times in multiple categories. As the longest-operating grunge-origin band in the country, Hey could be considered as a most important trend setting and scene-forming group.The more “rebellious” approach to grunge encompasses bands such as Illusion (1992-1999, 2014-present) and Houk. The former was based on the grunge and hardcore mixture of influences from Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Rage Against the Machine (especially in terms of rap-oriented lyrics). With the preservation of certain consistency, the band named first three albums: Illusion (1993), Illusion II (1994), and Illusion III (1995). Illusion marks the band’s aggressive style and lyrics simplicity but the studio production flattens the whole and gives an impression of a post-punk DIY venture rather than a coherent composition. The second record, however, is entirely conceptualised and thought out in terms of music and lyrics. Sharp riffs, hard rock tuning of instruments and aggressive lyrics that were focused on Polish life gave the album a needed consistency. The band’s third record is the most varied stylistically and politically engaged in their history. The harder-edged tunes from previous releases are accompanied by more psychedelic compositions (Wrona) that recall Alice in Chains’ slow songs and Layne Staley’s voice.Houk’s music similarly to other Polish grunge bands was the amalgamation of various genres and their style evolved in time. Initially, the band was regarded as an example of alternative rock music. The first album Soul Ammunition (1992) was named by music monthly Tylko Rock as a debut of the year (polskirock.art.pl). The combination of grunge, hardcore, hard rock, reggae and socio-politically engaged lyrics helped the group to establish a strong fan base. The band’s unique style was recognised internationally and Houk supported New Model Army and Bad Brains during the performances in the mid-1990’s (polskirock.art.pl). The band’s second studio release Generation X (1995) was recorded prior the multiple membership reorganizations that finally ended the grunge-orientation period of Houk’s history. One of the songs, Sleep, was dedicated to Kurt Cobain and reflected Nirvana’s approach to songwriting, which can be heard in songs such as “Lithium” (1991). Such a commemoration of Cobain’s figure is characteristic of Polish grunge culture’s establishment of strong ties with the American equivalent. Here and in many similar cases, Cobain serves not only as a grunge hero (or even a martyr) but also as a commodified pop culture figure (cf. Strong). Concerning both spheres - that is, the adaptation of grunge subculture and a development of the music scene -Polish grunge follows a different pattern to the US genre. Grunge was introduced to Poland after it was popularised and commodified by the major labels and media industry in the USA, so the adopted version was the mainstream one rather than the underground movement. Hence, the simplistic dichotomy between “underground” and “mainstream” culture does not function in terms of the Polish grunge culture, and probably is misstated even when it comes to the American phenomenon. Grunge could be perceived in Poland as both the first and the last “true” subcultural trend. At the same time, though, it was an affirmation not of ‘the rebel’ and ‘the underground’ but of capitalism and the cultural values of the West. Indeed, the Polish grunge culture couldn’t be fully aware of what grunge was warning us against while Polish society faced the rapid market and cultural transformation that allowed for its opening to Western trends.Conclusion – Is Grunge Really Dead?Although the popularity of grunge phenomenon in Poland was relatively short, the most important groups of this sub-genre - Illusion, Hey, Ahimsa, Houk, and Kr’shna Brothers - widely contributed to the emergence of the new wave of fashion for rock and hard-rock music in Poland in the mid-1990s. The most successful group of the era, Hey epitomises the transformation of grunge in Poland. Starting as a typical grunge band (modelled heavily on the US groups), they underwent a serious transition, substantially changing their music into more mainstream-oriented rock (that is, as music that was considered acceptable by rock music and AOR-focused radio stations). At the same time, grunge as a rock sub-genre underwent the contrary changes: it broke into the mainstream relatively quickly in the first half of the 1990s, establishing new rock stars of the scene (Illusion, Houk, Ahimsa, Hey), but in the late 1990s it went back to being a rock niche again. It seems that today grunge serves as a point of reference (in fact, it was an important period of rock history) for the new bands that intentionally use this sub-genre as a form of commodified, media-friendly nostalgia.ReferencesBałtowski, Maciej, Miszewski, Maciej. Transformacja gospodarcza w Polsce. Warszawa: PWN, 2006.Biografia Houk. 25 Nov. 2018 <https://www.polskirock.art.pl/houk,z346,biografia.html>.Brzozowicz, Grzegorz, and Filip Łobodziński. Sto płyt, które wstrząsnęły światem: Kronika czasów popkultury. Warszawa: Iskry, 2000.Domański, Henryk. Polska klasa średnia. Wrocław: FNP i W. Wrocławskie, 2002.Domański, Henryk. O ruchliwości społecznej w Polsce. Warszawa: IFiS PAN, 2004.Garlicki, Jan. “Tradycje i dynamika kultury politycznej społeczeństwa polskiego.” Dylematy polskiej transformacji. Ed. Jan Błuszkowski. Warszawa: DW Elipsa, 2007. 155-174.Gopinathan, Saravanan, and Philip G. Altbach. “Rethinking Centre–Periphery.” Asia Pacific Journal of Education 25.2 (2005): 117-123.Hannerz, Ulf. “Culture between Center and Periphery: Toward a Macroanthropology.” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 54.3-4 (1989): 200-216.Houk. Soul Ammunition. 23 Nov. 2018 <https://www.polskirock.art.pl/soul-ammunition,houk,3051,plyta.html>.Jasińska-Kania, Aleksandra. “Dynamika zmian wartości Polaków na tle europejskim: EVS 1990-1999-2008.” Polska po 20 latach wolności. Eds. Marta Bucholc, Sławomir Mandes, Tadeusz Szawiel and Joanna Wawrzyniak. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011. 225-239.Jeziński, Marek. Mitologie muzyki popularnej. Toruń: WN Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2014.Jeziński, Marek, and Łukasz Wojtkowski. “Nostalgia Commodified: Towards the Marketization of the Post-Communist Past through the New Media.” Medien und Zeit 4 (2016): 96–104.Langholm, Sivert. “On the Concepts of Center and Periphery.” Journal of Peace Research 8.3-4 (1971): 273-278.Muggleton, David. Inside Subculture. The Postmodern Meaning of Style. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.Pisciotta, Barbara. “The Center-Periphery Cleavage Revisited: East and Central Europe from Postcommunism to Euroscepticism.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 22.2 (2016): 193-219.Sankowski, Robert. “Hey, czyli któtka historia polskiego popu.” Wyborcza.pl, 3 Nov. 2012. 1 Aug. 2018 <http://wyborcza.pl/1,75410,12788097,Hey__czyli_krotka_historia_polskiego_popu.html>. Sarnecki, Paweł. “Od kumulacji do podziału władzy.” Transformacja ustrojowa w Polsce 1989-2009. Eds. Maria Kruk and Jan Wawrzyniak. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2011. 37-58.Strong, Catherine. Grunge and the Memory. London: Routledge, 2016.

One of the greatest joys in watching Foxtel is to see all the crazy people who run talk shows. Judgement, ridicule and generalisations slip from their tongues like overcooked lamb off a bone. From Oprah to Rikki, from Jerry to Mother Love, the posterior of pop culture claims a world-wide audience. Recently, a new talk diva was added to the pay television stable. Dr Laura Schlessinger, the Mother of Morals, prowls the soundstage. attacking 'selfish acts' such as divorce, de facto relationships and voting Democrat. On April 11, 2001, a show aired in Australia that added a new demon to the decadence of the age. Dr Laura had been told that a disgusting video clip, called 'Rock DJ', had been televised at 2:30pm on MTV. Children could have been watching. The footage that so troubled our doyenne of daytime featured the British performer Robbie Williams not only stripping in front of disinterested women, but then removing skin, muscle and tissue in a desperate attempt to claim their gaze. This was too much for Dr Laura. She was horrified: her strident tone became piercing. She screeched, "this is si-ee-ck." . My paper is drawn to this sick masculinity, not to judge - but to laugh and theorise. Robbie Williams, the deity of levity, holds a pivotal role in theorising the contemporary 'crisis' of manhood. To paraphrase Austin Powers, Williams returned the ger to singer. But Williams also triumphed in a captivatingly original way. He is one of the few members of a boy band who created a successful solo career without regurgitating the middle of the road mantras of boys, girls, love, loss and whining about it. Williams' journey through post-war popular music, encompassing influences from both Sinatra and Sonique, forms a functional collage, rather than patchwork, of masculinity. He has been prepared to not only age in public, but to discuss the crevices and cracks in the facade. He strips, smokes, plays football, wears interesting underwear and drinks too much. My short paper trails behind this combustible masculinity, focussing on his sorties with both masculine modalities and the rock discourse. My words attack the gap between text and readership, beat and ear, music and men. The aim is to reveal how this 'sick masculinity' problematises the conservative rendering of men's crisis. Come follow me I'm an honorary Sean Connery, born '74 There's only one of me … Press be asking do I care for sodomy I don't know, yeah, probably I've been looking for serial monogamy Not some bird that looks like Billy Connolly But for now I'm down for ornithology Grab your binoculars, come follow me. 'Kids,' Robbie Williams Robbie Williams is a man for our age. Between dating supermodels and Geri 'Lost Spice' Halliwell [1], he has time to "love … his mum and a pint," (Ansen 85) but also subvert the Oasis cock(rock)tail by frocking up for a television appearance. Williams is important to theories of masculine representation. As a masculinity to think with, he creates popular culture with a history. In an era where Madonna practices yoga and wears cowboy boots, it is no surprise that by June 2000, Robbie Williams was voted the world's sexist man [2]. A few months later, in the October edition of Vogue, he posed in a British flag bikini. It is reassuring in an era where a 12 year old boy states that "You aren't a man until you shoot at something," (Issac in Mendel 19) that positive male role models exist who are prepared to both wear a frock and strip on national television. Reading Robbie Williams is like dipping into the most convincing but draining of intellectual texts. He is masculinity in motion, conveying foreignness, transgression and corruption, bartering in the polymorphous economies of sex, colonialism, race, gender and nation. His career has spanned the boy bands, try-hard rock, video star and hybrid pop performer. There are obvious resonances between the changes to Williams and alterations in masculinity. In 1988, Suzanne Moore described (the artist still known as) Prince as "the pimp of postmodernism." (165-166) Over a decade later, the simulacra has a new tour guide. Williams revels in the potency of representation. He rarely sings about love or romance, as was his sonic fodder in Take That. Instead, his performance is fixated on becoming a better man, glancing an analytical eye over other modes of masculinity. Notions of masculine crisis and sickness have punctuated this era. Men's studies is a boom area of cultural studies, dislodging the assumed structures of popular culture [3]. William Pollack's Real Boys has created a culture of changing expectations for men. The greater question arising from his concerns is why these problems, traumas and difficulties are emerging in our present. Pollack's argument is that boys and young men invest energy and time "disguising their deepest and most vulnerable feelings." (15) This masking is difficult to discern within dance and popular music. Through lyrics and dancing, videos and choreography, masculinity is revealed as convoluted, complex and fragmented. While rock music is legitimised by dominant ideologies, marginalised groups frequently use disempowered genres - like country, dance and rap genres - to present oppositional messages. These competing representations expose seamless interpretations of competent masculinity. Particular skills are necessary to rip the metaphoric pacifier out of the masculine mouth of popular culture. Patriarchal pop revels in the paradoxes of everyday life. Frequently these are nostalgic visions, which Kimmel described as a "retreat to a bygone era." (87) It is the recognition of a shared, simpler past that provides reinforcement to heteronormativity. Williams, as a gaffer tape masculinity, pulls apart the gaps and crevices in representation. Theorists must open the interpretative space encircling popular culture, disrupting normalising criteria. Multiple nodes of assessment allow a ranking of competent masculinity. From sport to business, drinking to sex, masculinity is transformed into a wired site of ranking, judgement and determination. Popular music swims in the spectacle of maleness. From David Lee Roth's skied splits to Eminem's beanie, young men are interpellated as subjects in patriarchy. Robbie Williams is a history lesson in post war masculinity. This nostalgia is conservative in nature. The ironic pastiche within his music videos features motor racing, heavy metal and Bond films. 'Rock DJ', the 'sick text' that vexed Doctor Laura, is Williams' most elaborate video. Set in a rollerdrome with female skaters encircling a central podium, the object of fascination and fetish is a male stripper. This strip is different though, as it disrupts the power held by men in phallocentralism. After being confronted by Williams' naked body, the observing women are both bored and disappointed at the lack-lustre deployment of masculine genitalia. After this display, Williams appears embarrassed, confused and humiliated. As Buchbinder realised, "No actual penis could every really measure up to the imagined sexual potency and social or magical power of the phallus." (49) To render this banal experience of male nudity ridiculous, Williams then proceeds to remove skin and muscle. He finally becomes an object of attraction for the female DJ only in skeletal form. By 'going all the way,' the strip confirms the predictability of masculinity and the ordinariness of the male body. For literate listeners though, a higher level of connotation is revealed. The song itself is based on Barry White's melody for 'It's ecstasy (when you lay down next to me).' Such intertextuality accesses the meta-racist excesses of a licentious black male sexuality. A white boy dancer must deliver an impotent, but ironic, rendering of White's (love unlimited) orchestration of potent sexuality. Williams' iconography and soundtrack is refreshing, emerging from an era of "men who cling … tightly to their illusions." (Faludi 14) When the ideological drapery is cut away, the male body is a major disappointment. Masculinity is an anxious performance. Fascinatingly, this deconstructive video has been demeaned through its labelling as pornography [4]. Oddly, a man who is prepared to - literally - shave the skin of masculinity is rendered offensive. Men's studies, like feminism, has been defrocking masculinity for some time. Robinson for example, expressed little sympathy for "whiny men jumping on the victimisation bandwagon or playing cowboys and Indians at warrior weekends and beating drums in sweat lodges." (6) By grating men's identity back to the body, the link between surface and depth - or identity and self - is forged. 'Rock DJ' attacks the new subjectivities of the male body by not only generating self-surveillance, but humour through the removal of clothes, skin and muscle. He continues this play with the symbols of masculine performance throughout the album Sing when you're winning. Featuring soccer photographs of players, coaches and fans, closer inspection of the images reveal that Robbie Williams is actually every character, in every role. His live show also enfolds diverse performances. Singing a version of 'My Way,' with cigarette in tow, he remixes Frank Sinatra into a replaying and recutting of masculine fabric. He follows one dominating masculinity with another: the Bond-inspired 'Millennium.' Some say that we are players Some say that we are pawns But we've been making money Since the day we were born Robbie Williams is comfortably located in a long history of post-Sinatra popular music. He mocks the rock ethos by combining guitars and drums with a gleaming brass section, hailing the lounge act of Dean Martin, while also using rap and dance samples. Although carrying fifty year's of crooner baggage, the spicy scent of homosexuality has also danced around Robbie Williams' career. Much of this ideology can be traced back to the Take That years. As Gary Barlow and Jason Orange commented at the time, Jason: So the rumour is we're all gay now are we? Gary: Am I gay? I am? Why? Oh good. Just as long as we know. Howard: Does anyone think I'm gay? Jason: No, you're the only one people think is straight. Howard: Why aren't I gay? What's wrong with me? Jason: It's because you're such a fine figure of macho manhood.(Kadis 17) For those not literate in the Take That discourse, it should come as no surprise that Howard was the TT equivalent of The Beatle's Ringo Starr or Duran Duran's Andy Taylor. Every boy band requires the ugly, shy member to make the others appear taller and more attractive. The inference of this dialogue is that the other members of the group are simply too handsome to be heterosexual. This ambiguous sexuality has followed Williams into his solo career, becoming fodder for those lads too unappealing to be homosexual: Oasis. Born to be mild I seem to spend my life Just waiting for the chorus 'Cause the verse is never nearly Good enough Robbie Williams "Singing for the lonely." Robbie Williams accesses a bigger, brighter and bolder future than Britpop. While the Gallagher brothers emulate and worship the icons of 1960s British music - from the Beatles' haircuts to the Stones' psychedelia - Williams' songs, videos and persona are chattering in a broader cultural field. From Noel Cowardesque allusions to the ordinariness of pub culture, Williams is much more than a pretty-boy singer. He has become an icon of English masculinity, enclosing all the complexity that these two terms convey. Williams' solo success from 1999-2001 occurred at the time of much parochial concern that British acts were not performing well in the American charts. It is bemusing to read Billboard over this period. The obvious quality of Britney Spears is seen to dwarf the mediocrity of British performers. The calibre of Fatboy Slim, carrying a smiley backpack stuffed with reflexive dance culture, is neither admitted nor discussed. It is becoming increasing strange to monitor the excessive fame of Williams in Britain, Europe, Asia and the Pacific when compared to his patchy career in the United States. Even some American magazines are trying to grasp the disparity. The swaggering king of Britpop sold a relatively measly 600,000 copies of his U.S. debut album, The ego has landed … Maybe Americans didn't appreciate his songs about being famous. (Ask Dr. Hip 72) In the first few years of the 2000s, it has been difficult to discuss a unified Anglo-American musical formation. Divergent discursive frameworks have emerged through this British evasion. There is no longer an agreed centre to the musical model. Throughout 1990s Britain, blackness jutted out of dance floor mixes, from reggae to dub, jazz and jungle. Plied with the coldness of techno was an almost too hot hip hop. Yet both were alternate trajectories to Cool Britannia. London once more became swinging, or as Vanity Fair declared, "the nerve centre of pop's most cohesive scene since the Pacific Northwest grunge explosion of 1991." (Kamp 102) Through Britpop, the clock turned back to the 1960s, a simpler time before race became 'a problem' for the nation. An affiliation was made between a New Labour, formed by the 1997 British election, and the rebirth of a Swinging London [5]. This style-driven empire supposedly - again - made London the centre of the world. Britpop was itself a misnaming. It was a strong sense of Englishness that permeated the lyrics, iconography and accent. Englishness requires a Britishness to invoke a sense of bigness and greatness. The contradictions and excesses of Blur, Oasis and Pulp resonate in the gap between centre and periphery, imperial core and colonised other. Slicing through the arrogance and anger of the Gallaghers is a yearning for colonial simplicity, when the pink portions of the map were the stable subjects of geography lessons, rather than the volatile embodiment of postcolonial theory. Simon Gikandi argues that "the central moments of English cultural identity were driven by doubts and disputes about the perimeters of the values that defined Englishness." (x) The reason that Britpop could not 'make it big' in the United States is because it was recycling an exhausted colonial dreaming. Two old Englands were duelling for ascendancy: the Oasis-inflected Manchester working class fought Blur-inspired London art school chic. This insular understanding of difference had serious social and cultural consequences. The only possible representation of white, British youth was a tabloidisation of Oasis's behaviour through swearing, drug excess and violence. Simon Reynolds realised that by returning to the three minute pop tune that the milkman can whistle, reinvoking parochial England with no black people, Britpop has turned its back defiantly on the future. (members.aol.com/blissout/Britpop.html) Fortunately, another future had already happened. The beats per minute were pulsating with an urgent affirmation of change, hybridity and difference. Hip hop and techno mapped a careful cartography of race. While rock was colonialisation by other means, hip hop enacted a decolonial imperative. Electronic dance music provided a unique rendering of identity throughout the 1990s. It was a mode of musical communication that moved across national and linguistic boundaries, far beyond Britpop or Stateside rock music. While the Anglo American military alliance was matched and shadowed by postwar popular culture, Brit-pop signalled the end of this hegemonic formation. From this point, English pop and American rock would not sail as smoothly over the Atlantic. While 1995 was the year of Wonderwall, by 1996 the Britpop bubble corroded the faces of the Gallagher brothers. Oasis was unable to complete the American tour. Yet other cultural forces were already active. 1996 was also the year of Trainspotting, with "Born Slippy" being the soundtrack for a blissful journey under the radar. This was a cultural force that no longer required America as a reference point [6]. Robbie Williams was able to integrate the histories of Britpop and dance culture, instigating a complex dialogue between the two. Still, concern peppered music and entertainment journals that British performers were not accessing 'America.' As Sharon Swart stated Britpop acts, on the other hand, are finding it less easy to crack the U.S. market. The Spice Girls may have made some early headway, but fellow purveyors of pop, such as Robbie Williams, can't seem to get satisfaction from American fans. (35 British performers had numerous cultural forces working against them. Flat global sales, the strength of the sterling and the slow response to the new technological opportunities of DVD, all caused problems. While Britpop "cleaned house," (Boehm 89) it was uncertain which cultural formation would replace this colonising force. Because of the complex dialogues between the rock discourse and dance culture, time and space were unable to align into a unified market. American critics simply could not grasp Robbie Williams' history, motives or iconography. It's Robbie's world, we just buy tickets for it. Unless, of course you're American and you don't know jack about soccer. That's the first mistake Williams makes - if indeed one of his goals is to break big in the U.S. (and I can't believe someone so ambitious would settle for less.) … Americans, it seems, are most fascinated by British pop when it presents a mirror image of American pop. (Woods 98 There is little sense that an entirely different musical economy now circulates, where making it big in the United States is not the singular marker of credibility. Williams' demonstrates commitment to the international market, focussing on MTV Asia, MTV online, New Zealand and Australian audiences [7]. The Gallagher brothers spent much of the 1990s trying to be John Lennon. While Noel, at times, knocked at the door of rock legends through "Wonderwall," he snubbed Williams' penchant for pop glory, describing him as a "fat dancer." (Gallagher in Orecklin 101) Dancing should not be decried so summarily. It conveys subtle nodes of bodily knowledge about men, women, sex and desire. While men are validated for bodily movement through sport, women's dancing remains a performance of voyeuristic attention. Such a divide is highly repressive of men who dance, with gayness infiltrating the metaphoric masculine dancefloor [8]. Too often the binary of male and female is enmeshed into the divide of rock and dance. Actually, these categories slide elegantly over each other. The male pop singers are located in a significant semiotic space. Robbie Williams carries these contradictions and controversy. NO! Robbie didn't go on NME's cover in a 'desperate' attempt to seduce nine-year old knickerwetters … YES! He used to be teenybopper fodder. SO WHAT?! So did the Beatles the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, etc blah blah pseudohistoricalrockbollocks. NO! Making music that gurlz like is NOT a crime! (Wells 62) There remains an uncertainty in his performance of masculinity and at times, a deliberate ambivalence. He grafts subversiveness into a specific lineage of English pop music. The aim for critics of popular music is to find a way to create a rhythm of resistance, rather than melody of credible meanings. In summoning an archaeology of the archive, we begin to write a popular music history. Suzanne Moore asked why men should "be interested in a sexual politics based on the frightfully old-fashioned ideas of truth, identity and history?" (175) The reason is now obvious. Femininity is no longer alone on the simulacra. It is impossible to separate real men from the representations of masculinity that dress the corporeal form. Popular music is pivotal, not for collapsing the representation into the real, but for making the space between these states livable, and pleasurable. Like all semiotic sicknesses, the damaged, beaten and bandaged masculinity of contemporary music swaddles a healing pedagogic formation. Robbie Williams enables the writing of a critical history of post Anglo-American music [9]. Popular music captures such stories of place and identity. Significantly though, it also opens out spaces of knowing. There is an investment in rhythm that transgresses national histories of music. While Williams has produced albums, singles, video and endless newspaper copy, his most important revelations are volatile and ephemeral in their impact. He increases the popular cultural vocabulary of masculinity. [1] The fame of both Williams and Halliwell was at such a level that it was reported in the generally conservative, pages of Marketing. The piece was titled "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing, August 2000: 17. [2] For poll results, please refer to "Winners and Losers," Time International, Vol. 155, Issue 23, June 12, 2000, 9 [3] For a discussion of this growth in academic discourse on masculinity, please refer to Paul Smith's "Introduction," in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. [4] Steve Futterman described Rock DJ as the "least alluring porn video on MTV," in "The best and worst: honour roll," Entertainment Weekly 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. [5] Michael Bracewell stated that "pop provides an unofficial cartography of its host culture, charting the national mood, marking the crossroads between the major social trends and the tunnels of the zeitgeist," in "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman .(February 21 1997): 36. [6] It is important to make my point clear. The 'America' that I am summoning here is a popular cultural formation, which possesses little connection with the territory, institution or defence initiatives of the United States. Simon Frith made this distinction clear, when he stated that "the question becomes whether 'America' can continue to be the mythical locale of popular culture as it has been through most of this century. As I've suggested, there are reasons now to suppose that 'America' itself, as a pop cultural myth, no longer bears much resemblance to the USA as a real place even in the myth." This statement was made in "Anglo-America and its discontents," Cultural Studies 5 1991: 268. [7] To observe the scale of attention paid to the Asian and Pacific markets, please refer to http://robbiewilliams.com/july13scroll.html, http://robbiewilliams.com/july19scroll.html and http://robbiewilliams.com/july24scroll.html, accessed on March 3, 2001 [8] At its most naïve, J. Michael Bailey and Michael Oberschneider asked, "Why are gay men so motivated to dance? One hypothesis is that gay men dance in order to be feminine. In other words, gay men dance because women do. An alternative hypothesis is that gay men and women share a common factor in their emotional make-up that makes dancing especially enjoyable," from "Sexual orientation in professional dance," Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997). Such an interpretation is particularly ludicrous when considering the pre-rock and roll masculine dancing rituals in the jive, Charleston and jitterbug. Once more, the history of rock music is obscuring the history of dance both before the mid 1950s and after acid house. [9] Women, gay men and black communities through much of the twentieth century have used these popular spaces. For example, Lynne Segal, in Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990, stated that "through dancing, athletic and erotic performance, but most powerfully through music, Black men could express something about the body and its physicality, about emotions and their cosmic reach, rarely found in white culture - least of all in white male culture,": 191 References Ansen, D., Giles, J., Kroll, J., Gates, D. and Schoemer, K. "What's a handsome lad to do?" Newsweek 133.19 (May 10, 1999): 85. "Ask Dr. Hip." U.S. News and World Report 129.16 (October 23, 2000): 72. Bailey, J. Michael., and Oberschneider, Michael. "Sexual orientation in professional dance." Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997):expanded academic database [fulltext]. Boehm, E. "Pop will beat itself up." Variety 373.5 (December 14, 1998): 89. Bracewell, Michael. "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman.(February 21 1997): 36. Buchbinder, David. Performance Anxieties .Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998. Faludi, Susan. Stiffed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1999. Frith, Simon. "Anglo-America and its discontents." Cultural Studies. 5 1991. Futterman, Steve. "The best and worst: honour roll." Entertainment Weekly, 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. Gikandi, Simon. Maps of Englishness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Kadis, Alex. Take That: In private. London: Virgin Books, 1994. Kamp, D. "London Swings! Again!" Vanity Fair ( March 1997): 102. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Mendell, Adrienne. How men think. New York: Fawcett, 1996. Moore, Susan. "Getting a bit of the other - the pimps of postmodernism." In Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (ed.) Male Order .London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988. 165-175. Orecklin, Michele. "People." Time. 155.10 (March 13, 2000): 101. Pollack, William. Real boys. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 1999. Reynolds, Simon. members.aol.com/blissout/britpop.html. Accessed on April 15, 2001. Robinson, David. No less a man. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University, 1994. Segal, Lynne. Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990. Smith, Paul. "Introduction" in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. Swart, S. "U.K. Showbiz" Variety.(December 11-17, 2000): 35. Sexton, Paul and Masson, Gordon. "Tips for Brits who want U.S. success" Billboard .(September 9 2000): 1. Wells, Steven. "Angst." NME.(November 21 1998): 62. "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing.(August 2000): 17. Woods, S. "Robbie Williams Sing when you're winning" The Village Voice. 45.52. (January 2, 2001): 98.

Abstract The Grass Valley orogenic gold district in the Sierra Nevada foothills province, central California, is the largest historical gold producer of the North American Cordillera. Gold mineralization is associated with shallowly dipping north-south veins hosted by the 160 Ma Grass Valley granodiorite to the southwest of the Grass Valley fault and steeply dipping east-west veins in accreted oceanic rocks to the northeast of this major fault. Quartz veins from both vein types show well-preserved primary textural relationships. Using a combination of petrographic and microanalytical techniques, the paragenetic sequence of minerals within the veins and the compositions of ore minerals were determined to constrain the mechanisms of quartz vein formation and gold deposition. The veins are composed of early quartz that formed through cooling of hydrothermal fluids derived from a geopressured reservoir at depth. The early quartz shows growth zoning in optical cathodoluminescence and contains abundant growth bands of primary inclusions. The primary inclusion assemblages and myriads of crosscutting secondary fluid inclusions have been affected by postentrapment modification, suggesting that early quartz formation was postdated by pronounced pressure fluctuations. These pressure fluctuations, presumably involving changes from lithostatic to hydrostatic conditions, may be related to fault failure of the host structure as predicted by the fault-valve model. Fluid flow associated with pressure cycling took place along microfractures and grain boundaries resulting in extensive recrystallization of the early quartz. Deposition of pyrite, arsenopyrite, and first-generation gold from these hydrothermal fluids causing recrystallization of the early quartz occurred as a result of wall-rock sulfidation. The gold forms invisible gold in the compositionally zoned pyrite or micron-sized inclusions within pyrite growth zones. The latest growth zones in euhedral quartz crystals that formed in association with this stage of the paragenesis contain very rare primary fluid inclusions that have not been affected by postentrapment modification. The hydrothermal system transitioned entirely to hydrostatic conditions immediately after formation of the latest quartz, explaining the preservation of the primary fluid inclusions. The formation of minor quartz in open spaces was followed by the deposition of second-generation native gold and telluride minerals that are commonly associated with base metal sulfides. Ore formation at this stage of the paragenesis is attributed to the rapid decompression of hydrothermal fluids escaping from the geopressured part of the crust into the overlying hydrostatic realm. There is no fluid inclusion evidence that this pressure drop resulted in fluid immiscibility of the hydrothermal fluids. Fluid inclusion evidence suggests that the north-south veins formed at a paleodepth of ~8 km, whereas the east-west veins appear to have formed at ~10 to 11 km below surface, confirming previous inferences that the NE-dipping Grass Valley reverse fault accommodated a large displacement. The findings of the study at Grass Valley have significant implications for the model for orogenic gold deposits, as the reconstruction of the paragenetic relationships provides evidence for the occurrence of two discrete events of gold introduction that occurred at different conditions during the evolution of the hydrothermal system.

Neste texto apresento uma breve análise semiótica concentrada na intersecção de linguagens no videoclipe de The zephyr song, da banda de rock norte-americana Red Hot Chili Peppers. Para isso, optei pela descrição e pela análise, em detrimento de uma discussão teórica. O objetivo central é identificar o modo como se estabelecem as relações intersemióticas nesse videoclipe especificamente e não no videoclipe em geral. Observo, portanto, como se articulam as linguagens musical, visual e lingüística no produto audiovisual de massa contemporâneo selecionado, bem como os efeitos de sentido alcançados pelas relações engendradas. Palavras-chave: Videoclipe. Música. Visualidade. Canção. Intersemioticidade.

Uma leitura semiótica do videoclipe Fell in love with a girl é o que apresentamos neste texto. Procuramos oferecer uma mirada analítico-interpretativa da obra, observando as relações intersemióticas instauradas pela composição verbo-músico-visual de Michel Gondry para a canção da banda de rock norte-americana The White Stripes. Nosso objetivo principal é, a partir da observação dos arranjos sintáticos, identificar o modo como o referido videoclipe constrói sentido na contemporaneidade. Para tanto, empregamos as noções de propriedade icônica e propriedade plástica oferecidas pela retórica visual do Groupem, um coletivo de autores cuja contribuição consideramos profícua para a análise de produtos comunicacionais massivos. Complementamos tal apropriação das referidas noções, propondo operadores de análise que julgamos eficientes na análise do videoclipe.

Uma leitura semiótica do videoclipe Fell in love with a girl é o que apresentamos neste texto. Procuramos oferecer uma mirada analítico-interpretativa da obra, observando as relações intersemióticas instauradas pela composição verbo-músico-visual de Michel Gondry para a canção da banda de rock norte-americana The White Stripes. Nosso objetivo principal é, a partir da observação dos arranjos sintáticos, identificar o modo como o referido videoclipe constrói sentido na contemporaneidade. Para tanto, empregamos as noções de propriedade icônica e propriedade plástica oferecidas pela retórica visual do Groupem, um coletivo de autores cuja contribuição consideramos profícua para a análise de produtos comunicacionais massivos. Complementamos tal apropriação das referidas noções, propondo operadores de análise que julgamos eficientes na análise do videoclipe.

The 12 recognized species of the genus Homonota are geographically restricted to central and southern South America in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Paraguay. The phylogenetic relationships within the genus are well known where three groups are identified, each of them containing four species: the whitii group (Homonota darwinii, H. williamsii, H. whitii, and H. andicola), the borellii group (H. borellii, H. taragui, H. rupicola, and H. uruguayensis) and the horrida group (H. horrida, H. underwoodi, H. septentrionalis, and H. marthae). During fieldwork in Paraguay, we found a specimen of Homonota with unique morphological and geographical traits. Thus, we performed a comparative morphological analysis against specimens housed in different Paraguayan collections. Additionally, we performed a DNA analysis of our specimen to assess its relationships within the genus. Results suggest that this specimen represents a new species of the Homonota horrida group based on molecular and morphological evidence. The new species is characterized by a robust body, 10 longitudinal rows of strongly keeled scales separated by one or two granular scales, square-shaped mental scales, small postmental scales, one or two rows of rectangular scales in the upper eye scales, rostral scale divided, edge of auditory meatus serrated posteriorly, and black and brown background coloration with one white vertebral line and seven white transverse bands. The new species is restricted to Paraguarí Department, characterized by herbaceous grasslands with rocky outcrops.

In the 2019 documentary Chasing Happiness, recording artist/musician Joe Jonas tells audiences that the band was “living the dream”. Similarly, in the 2012 documentary Artifact, lead singer Jared Leto remarks that at the height of Thirty Seconds to Mars’s success, they “were living the dream”. However, for both the Jonas Brothers and Thirty Seconds to Mars, their experiences of the music industry (much like other commercially successful recording artists) soon transformed into nightmares. Similar to other commercially successful recording artists, the Jonas Brothers and Thirty Seconds to Mars, came up against the constraints of the industry which inevitably led to a forfeiting of authenticity, a loss of creative control, increased exploitation, and unequal remuneration. This work will consider how working in the music industry is not always a dream come true and can instead be viewed as a proverbial nightmare. Living the DreamIn his book Dreams, Carl Gustav Jung discusses how that which is experienced in sleep, speaks of a person’s wishes: that which might be desired in reality but may not actually happen. In his earlier work, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud argued that the dream is representative of fulfilling a repressed wish. However, the creative industries suggest that a dream need not be a repressed wish; it can become a reality. Jon Bon Jovi believes that his success in the music industry has surpassed his wildest dreams (Atkinson). Jennifer Lopez considers the fact that she held big dreams, had a focussed passion, and strong aspirations the reason why she pursued a creative career that took her out of the Bronx (Thomas). In a Twitter post from 23 April 2018, Bruno Mars declared that he “use [sic] to dream of this shit,” in referring to a picture of him performing for a sold out arena, while in 2019 Shawn Mendes informed his 24.4 million Twitter followers that his “life is a dream”. These are but a few examples of successful music industry artists who are seeing their ‘wishes’ come true and living the American Dream.Endemic to the American culture (and a characteristic of the identity of the country) is the “American Dream”. It centres on “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability and achievement” (Adams, 404). Although initially used to describe having a nice house, money, stability and a reasonable standard of living, the American Dream has since evolved to what the scholar Florida believes is the new ‘aspiration of people’: doing work that is enjoyable and relies on human creativity. At its core, the original American Dream required striving to meet individual goals, and was promoted as possible for anyone regardless of their cultural, socio-economic and political background (Samuel), because it encourages the celebrating of the self and personal uniqueness (Gamson). Florida’s conceptualisation of the New American dream, however, tends to emphasise obtaining success, fame and fortune in what Neff, Wissinger, and Zukin (310) consider “hot”, “creative” industries where “the jobs are cool”.Whether old or new, the American Dream has perpetuated and reinforced celebrity culture, with many of the young generation reporting that fame and fortune were their priorities, as they sought to emulate the success of their famous role models (Florida). The rag to riches stories of iconic recording artists can inevitably glorify and make appealing the struggle that permits achieving one’s dream, with celebrities offering young, aspiring creative people a means of identification for helping them to aspire to meet their dreams (Florida; Samuel). For example, a young Demi Lovato spoke of how she idolised and looked up to singer Beyonce Knowles, describing Knowles as a role model because of the way she carries herself (Tishgart). Similarly, American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson cited Aretha Franklin as her musical inspiration and the reason that she sings from a place deep within (Nilles). It is unsurprising then, that popular media has tended to portray artists working in the creative industries and being paid to follow their passions as “a much-vaunted career dream” (Duffy and Wissinger, 4656). Movies such as A Star Is Born (2018), The Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), Dreamgirls (2006), Begin Again (2013) and La La Land (2016) exalt the perception that creativity, talent, sacrifice and determination will mean dreams come true (Nicolaou). In concert with the American dream is the drive among creative people pursuing creative success to achieve their dreams because of the perceived autonomy they will gain, the chance of self-actualisation and social rewards, and the opportunity to fulfil intrinsic motivations (Amabile; Auger and Woodman; Cohen). For these workers, the love of creation and the happiness that accompanies new discoveries (Csikszentmihalyi) can offset the tight budgets and timelines, precarious labour (Blair, Grey, and Randle; Hesmondhalgh and Baker), uncertain demand (Caves; Shultz), sacrifice of personal relationships (Eikhof and Haunschild), the demand for high quality products (Gil & Spiller), and the tense relationships with administrators (Bilton) which are known to plague these industries. In some cases, young, up and coming creative people overlook these pitfalls, instead romanticising creative careers as ideal and worthwhile. They willingly take on roles and cede control to big corporations to “realize their passions [and] uncover their personal talent” (Bill, 50). Of course, as Ursell argues in discussing television employees, such idealisation can mean creatives, especially those who are young and unfamiliar with the constraints of the industry, end up immersed in and victims of the “vampiric” industry that exploits workers (816). They are socialised towards believing, in this case, that the record label is a necessary component to obtain fame and fortune and whether willing or unwilling, creative workers become complicit in their own exploitation (Cohen). Loss of Control and No CompensationThe music industry itself has been considered by some to typify the cultural industries (Chambers). Popular music has potency in that it is perceived as speaking a universal language (Burnett), engaging the emotions and thoughts of listeners, and assisting in their identity construction (Burnett; Gardikiotis and Baltzis). Given the place of music within society, it is not surprising that in 2018, the global music industry was worth US$19.1billion (IFPI). The music industry is necessarily underpinned by a commercial agenda. At present, six major recording companies exist and between them, they own between 70-80 per cent of the recordings produced globally (Konsor). They also act as gatekeepers, setting trends by defining what and who is worth following and listening to (Csikszentmihalyi; Jones, Anand, and Alvarez). In essence, to be successful in the music industry is to be affiliated with a record label. This is because the highly competitive nature and cluttered environment makes it harder to gain traction in the market without worthwhile representation (Moiso and Rockman). In the 2012 documentary about Thirty Seconds to Mars, Artifact, front man Jared Leto even questions whether it is possible to have “success without a label”. The recording company, he determines, “deal with the crappy jobs”. In a financially uncertain industry that makes money from subjective or experience-based goods (Caves), having a label affords an artist access to “economic capital for production and promotion” that enables “wider recognition” of creative work (Scott, 239). With the support of a record label, creative entrepreneurs are given the chance to be promoted and distributed in the creative marketplace (Scott; Shultz). To have a record label, then, is to be perceived as legitimate and credible (Shultz).However, the commercial music industry is just that, commercial. Accordingly, the desire to make money can see the intrinsic desires of musicians forfeited in favour of standardised products and a lack of remuneration for artists (Negus). To see this standardisation in practice, one need not look further than those contestants appearing on shows such as American Idol or The Voice. Nowhere is the standardisation of the music industry more evident than in Holmes’s 2004 article on Pop Idol. Pop Idol first aired in Britain from 2001-2003 and paved the way for a slew of similar shows around the world such as Australia’s Popstars Live in 2004 and the global Idol phenomena. According to Holmes, audiences are divested of the illusion of talent and stardom when they witness the obvious manufacturing of musical talent. The contestants receive training, are dressed according to a prescribed image, and the show emphasises those melodramatic moments that are commercially enticing to audiences. Her sentiments suggest these shows emphasise the artifice of the music industry by undermining artistic authenticity in favour of generating celebrities. The standardisation is typified in the post Idol careers of Kelly Clarkson and Adam Lambert. Kelly Clarkson parted with the recording company RCA when her manager and producer Clive Davis told her that her album My December (2007) was “not commercial enough” and that Clarkson, who had written most of the songs, was a “shitty writer… who should just shut up and sing” (Nied). Adam Lambert left RCA because they wanted him to make a full length 80s album comprised of covers. Lambert commented that, “while there are lots of great songs from that decade, my heart is simply not in doing a covers album” (Lee). In these instances, winning the show and signing contracts led to both Clarkson and Lambert forfeiting a degree of creative control over their work in favour of formulaic songs that ultimately left both artists unsatisfied. The standardisation and lack of remuneration is notable when signing recording artists to 360° contracts. These 360° contracts have become commonplace in the music industry (Gulchardaz, Bach, and Penin) and see both the material and immaterial labour (such as personal identities) of recording artists become controlled by record labels (Stahl and Meier). These labels determine the aesthetics of the musicians as well as where and how frequently they tour. Furthermore, the labels become owners of any intellectual property generated by an artist during the tenure of the contract (Sanders; Stahl and Meier). For example, in their documentary Show Em What You’re Made Of (2015), the Backstreet Boys lament their affiliation with manager Lou Pearlman. Not only did Pearlman manufacture the group in a way that prevented creative exploration by the members (Sanders), but he withheld profits to the point that the Backstreet Boys had to sue Pearlman in order to gain access to money they deserved. In 2002 the members of the Backstreet Boys had stated that “it wasn’t our destinies that we had to worry about in the past, it was our souls” (Sanders, 541). They were not writing their own music, which came across in the documentary Show Em What You’re Made Of when singer Howie Dorough demanded that if they were to collaborate as a group again in 2013, that everything was to be produced, managed and created by the five group members. Such a demand speaks to creative individuals being tied to their work both personally and emotionally (Bain). The angst encountered by music artists also signals the identity dissonance and conflict felt when they are betraying their true or authentic creative selves (Ashforth and Mael; Ashforth and Humphrey). Performing and abiding by the rules and regulations of others led to frustration because the members felt they were “being passed off as something we aren’t” (Sanders 539). The Backstreet Boys were not the only musicians who were intensely controlled and not adequately compensated by Pearlman. In the documentary The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story 2019, Lance Bass of N*Sync and recording artist Aaron Carter admitted that the experience of working with Pearlman became a nightmare when they too, were receiving cheques that were so small that Bass describes them as making his heart sink. For these groups, the dream of making music was undone by contracts that stifled creativity and paid a pittance.In a similar vein, Thirty Seconds to Mars sought to cut ties with their record label when they felt that they were not being adequately compensated for their work. In retaliation EMI issued Mars with a US$30 million lawsuit for breach of contract. The tense renegotiations that followed took a toll on the creative drive of the group. At one point in the documentary Artifact (2012), Leto claims “I can’t sing it right now… You couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to sing this song the way it needs to be sung right now. I’m not ready”. The contract subordination (Phillips; Stahl and Meier) that had led to the need to renegotiate financial terms came at not only a financial cost to the band, but also a physical and emotional one. The negativity impacted the development of the songs for the new album. To make music requires evoking necessary and appropriate emotions in the recording studio (Wood, Duffy, and Smith), so Leto being unable to deliver the song proved problematic. Essentially, the stress of the lawsuit and negotiations damaged the motivation of the band (Amabile; Elsbach and Hargadon; Hallowell) and interfered with their creative approach, which could have produced standardised and poor quality work (Farr and Ford). The dream of making music was almost lost because of the EMI lawsuit. Young creatives often lack bargaining power when entering into contracts with corporations, which can prove disadvantaging when it comes to retaining control over their lives (Phillips; Stahl and Meier). Singer Demi Lovato’s big break came in the 2008 Disney film Camp Rock. As her then manager Phil McIntyre states in the documentary Simply Complicated (2017), Camp Rock was “perceived as the vehicle to becoming a superstar … overnight she became a household name”. However, as “authentic and believable” as Lovato’s edginess appeared, the speed with which her success came took a toll on Lovato. The pressure she experienced having to tour, write songs that were approved by others, star in Disney channel shows and movies, and look a certain way, became too much and to compensate, Lovato engaged in regular drug use to feel free. Accordingly, she developed a hybrid identity to ensure that the squeaky clean image required by the moral clauses of her contract, was not tarnished by her out-of-control lifestyle. The nightmare came from becoming famous at a young age and not being able to handle the expectations that accompanied it, coupled with a stringent contract that exploited her creative talent. Lovato’s is not a unique story. Research has found that musicians are more inclined than those in other workforces to use psychotherapy and psychotropic drugs (Vaag, Bjørngaard, and Bjerkeset) and that fame and money can provide musicians more opportunities to take risks, including drug-use that leads to mortality (Bellis, Hughes, Sharples, Hennell, and Hardcastle). For Lovato, living the dream at a young age ultimately became overwhelming with drugs her only means of escape. AuthenticityThe challenges then for music artists is that the dream of pursuing music can come at the cost of a musician’s authentic self. According to Hughes, “to be authentic is to be in some sense real and true to something ... It is not simply an imitation, but it is sincere, real, true, and original expression of its creator, and is believable or credible representations or example of what it appears to be” (190). For Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers, being in the spotlight and abiding by the demands of Disney was “non-stop” and prevented his personal and musical growth (Chasing Happiness). As Kevin Jonas put it, Nick “wanted the Jonas Brothers to be no more”. The extensive promotion that accompanies success and fame, which is designed to drive celebrity culture and financial motivations (Currid-Halkett and Scott; King), can lead to cynical performances and dissatisfaction (Hughes) if the identity work of the creative creates a disjoin between their perceived self and aspirational self (Beech, Gilmore, Cochrane, and Greig). Promoting the band (and having to film a television show and movies he was not invested in all because of contractual obligations) impacted on Nick’s authentic self to the point that the Jonas Brothers made him feel deeply upset and anxious. For Nick, being stifled creatively led to feeling inauthentic, thereby resulting in the demise of the band as his only recourse.In her documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two (2017), Lady Gaga discusses the extent she had to go to maintain a sense of authenticity in response to producer control. As she puts it, “when producers wanted me to be sexy, I always put some absurd spin on it, that made me feel like I was still in control”. Her words reaffirm the perception amongst scholars (Currid-Halkett and Scott; King; Meyers) that in playing the information game, industry leaders will construct an artist’s persona in ways that are most beneficial for, in this case, the record label. That will mean, for example, establishing a coherent life story for musicians that endears them to audiences and engaging recording artists in co-branding opportunities to raise their profile and to legitimise them in the marketplace. Such behaviour can potentially influence the preferences and purchases of audiences and fans, can create favourability, originality and clarity around artists (Loroz and Braig), and can establish competitive advantage that leads to producers being able to charge higher prices for the artists’ work (Hernando and Campo). But what impact does that have on the musician? Lady Gaga could not continue living someone else’s dream. She found herself needing to make changes in order to avoid quitting music altogether. As Gaga told a class of university students at the Emotion Revolution Summit hosted by Yale University:I don’t like being used to make people money. It feels sad when I am overworked and that I have just become a money-making machine and that my passion and creativity take a backseat. That makes me unhappy.According to Eikof and Haunschild, economic necessity can threaten creative motivation. Gaga’s reaction to the commercial demands of the music industry signal an identity conflict because her desire to create, clashed with the need to be commercial, with the outcome imposing “inconsistent demands upon” her (Ashforth and Mael, 29). Therefore, to reduce what could be considered feelings of dissonance and inconsistency (Ashforth and Mael; Ashforth and Humphrey) Gaga started saying “no” to prevent further loss of her identity and sense of authentic self. Taking back control could be seen as a means of reorienting her dream and overcoming what had become dissatisfaction with the commercial processes of the music industry. ConclusionsFor many creatives working in the creative industries – and specifically the music industry – is constructed as a dream come true; the working conditions and expectations experienced by recording artists are far from liberating and instead can become nightmares to which they want to escape. The case studies above, although likely ‘constructed’ retellings of the unfortunate circumstances encountered working in the music industry, nevertheless offer an inside account that contradicts the prevailing ideology that pursuing creative passions leads to a dream career (Florida; Samuel). If anything, the case studies explored above involving 30 Seconds to Mars, the Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert and the Backstreet Boys, acknowledge what many scholars writing in the creative industries have already identified; that exploitation, subordination, identity conflict and loss of control are the unspoken or lesser known consequences of pursuing the creative dream. That said, the conundrum for creatives is that for success in the industry big “creative” businesses, such as recording labels, are still considered necessary in order to break into the market and to have prolonged success. This is simply because their resources far exceed those at the disposal of independent and up-and-coming creative entrepreneurs. Therefore, it can be argued that this friction of need between creative industry business versus artists will be on-going leading to more of these ‘dream to nightmare’ stories. The struggle will continue manifesting in the relationship between business and artist for long as the recording artists fight for greater equality, independence of creativity and respect for their work, image and identities. 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Introduction: Socialism – from Eternal Reality to Passing DreamThe Year of Revolutions in 1989 presaged the end of the Cold War. For many people, it must have felt like the end of the Twentieth Century, and the 1990s a period of waiting for the Millennium. However, the 1990s was, in fact, a period of profound transformation in the post-Socialist world.In early representations of Socialism’s end, a dominant narrative was that of collapse. Dramatic events, such as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in Germany enabled representation of the end as an unexpected moment. Senses of unexpectedness rested on erstwhile perceptions of Socialism as eternal.In contrast, the 1990s came to be a decade of revision in which thinking switched from considering Socialism’s persistence to asking, “why it went wrong?” I explore this question in relation to former-Yugoslavia. In brief, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was replaced through the early 1990s by six independent nation states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Kosovo came much later. In the states that were significantly ethnically mixed, the break-up was accompanied by violence. Bosnia in the 1990s will be remembered for an important contribution to the lexicon of ideas – ethnic cleansing.Revisionist historicising of the former-Yugoslavia in the 1990s was led by the scholarly community. By and large, it discredited the Ancient Ethnic Hatreds (AEH) thesis commonly held by nationalists, simplistic media commentators and many Western politicians. The AEH thesis held that Socialism’s end was a consequence of the up-swelling of primordial (natural) ethnic tensions. Conversely, the scholarly community tended to view Socialism’s failure as an outcome of systemic economic and political deficiencies in the SFRY, and that these deficiencies were also, in fact the root cause of those ethnic tensions. And, it was argued that had such deficiencies been addressed earlier Socialism may have survived and fulfilled its promise of eternity (Verdery).A third significant perspective which emerged through the 1990s was that the collapse of Socialism was an outcome of the up-swelling of, if not primordial ethnic tensions then, at least repressed historical memories of ethnic tensions, especially of the internecine violence engendered locally by Nazi and Italian Fascist forces in WWII. This perspective was particularly en vogue within the unusually rich arts scene in former-Yugoslavia. Its leading exponent was Slovenian avant-garde rock band Laibach.In this article, I consider Laibach’s career and methods. For background the article draws substantially on Alexei Monroe’s excellent biography of Laibach, Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK (2005). However, as I indicate below, my interpretation diverges very significantly from Monroe’s. Laibach’s most significant body of work is the cover versions of Western pop songs it recorded in the middle part of its career. Using a technique that has been labelled retroquotation (Monroe), it subtly transforms the lyrical content, and radically transforms the musical arrangement of pop songs, thereby rendering them what might be described as martial anthems. The clearest illustration of the process is Laibach’s version of Opus’s one hit wonder “Live is Life”, which is retitled as “Life is Life” (Laibach 1987).Conventional scholarly interpretations of Laibach’s method (including Monroe’s) present it as entailing the uncovering of repressed forms of individual and collective totalitarian consciousness. I outline these ideas, but supplement them with an alternative interpretation. I argue that in the cover version stage of its career, Laibach switched its attention from seeking to uncover repressed totalitarianism towards uncovering repressed memories of ethnic tension, especially from WWII. Furthermore, I argue that its creative medium of Western pop music is especially important in this regard. On the bases of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bosnia (University of Melbourne Human Ethics project 1544213.1), and of a reading of SFRY’s geopolitical history, I demonstrate that for many people, Western popular cultural forms came to represent the quintessence of what it was to be Yugoslav. In this context, Laibach’s retroquotation of Western pop music is akin to a broader cultural practice in the post-SFRY era in which symbols of the West were iconoclastically transformed. Such transformation served to reveal a public secret (Taussig) of repressed historic ethnic enmity within the very heart of things that were regarded as quintessentially and pan-ethnically Yugoslav. And, in so doing, this delegitimised memory of SFRY ever having been a properly functioning entity. In this way, Laibach contributed significantly to a broader process in which perceptions of Socialist Yugoslavia came to be rendered less as a reality with the potential for eternity than a passing dream.What Is Laibach and What Does It Do?Originally of the industrial rock genre, Laibach has evolved through numerous other genres including orchestral rock, choral rock and techno. It is not, however, a rock group in any conventional sense. Laibach is the musical section of a tripartite unit named Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) which also encompasses the fine arts collective Irwin and a variety of theatre groups.Laibach was the name by which the Slovenian capital Ljubljana was known under the Austrian Habsburg Empire and then Nazi occupation in WWII. The choice of name hints at a central purpose of Laibach and NSK in general, to explore the relationship between art and ideology, especially under conditions of totalitarianism. In what follows, I describe how Laibach go about doing this.Laibach’s central method is eclecticism, by which symbols of the various ideological regimes that are its and the NSK’s subject matter are intentionally juxtaposed. Eclecticism of this kind was characteristic of the postmodern aesthetics typical of the 1990s. Furthermore, and counterintuitively perhaps, postmodernism was as much a condition of the Socialist East as it was the Capitalist West. As Mikhail N. Epstein argues, “Totalitarianism itself may be viewed as a specific postmodern model that came to replace the modernist ideological stance elaborated in earlier Marxism” (102). However, Western and Eastern postmodernisms were fundamentally different. In particular, while the former was largely playful, ironicising and depoliticised, the latter, which Laibach and NSK may be regarded as being illustrative of, involved placing in opposition to one another competing and antithetical aesthetic, political and social regimes, “without the contradictions being fully resolved” (Monroe 54).The performance of unresolved contradictions in Laibach’s work fulfils three principal functions. It works to (1) reveal hidden underlying connections between competing ideological systems, and between art and power more generally. This is evident in Life is Life. The video combines symbols of Slovenian romantic nationalism (stags and majestic rural landscapes) with Nazism and militarism (uniforms, bodily postures and a martial musical arrangement). Furthermore, it presents images of the graves of victims of internecine violence in WWII. The video is a reminder to Slovenian viewers of a discomforting public secret within their nation’s history. While Germany is commonly viewed as a principal oppressor of Slovenian nationalism, the rural peasantry, who are represented as embodying Slovenian nationalism most, were also the most willing collaborators in imperialist processes of Germanicisation. The second purpose of the performance of unresolved contradictions in Laibach’s work is to (2) engender senses of the alienation, especially as experienced by the subjects of totalitarian regimes. Laibach’s approach in this regard is quite different to that of punk, whose concern with alienation - symbolised by safety pins and chains - was largely celebratory of the alienated condition. Rather, Laibach took a lead from seminal industrial rock bands such as Einstürzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle (see, for example, Walls of Sound (Throbbing Gristle 2004)), whose sound one fan accurately describes as akin to, “the creation of the universe by an angry titan/God and a machine apocalypse all rolled into one” (rateyourmusic.com). Certainly, Laibach’s shows can be uncomfortable experiences too, involving not only clashing symbols and images, but also the dissonant sounds of, for example, martial music, feedback, recordings of the political speeches of totalitarian leaders and barking dogs, all played at eardrum-breaking high volumes. The purpose of this is to provide, as Laibach state: “a ritualized demonstration of political force” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 44). In short, more than simply celebrating the experience of totalitarian alienation, Laibach’s intention is to reproduce that very alienation.More than performatively representing tyranny, and thereby senses of totalitarian alienation, Laibach and NSK set out to embody it themselves. In particular, and contra the forms of liberal humanism that were hegemonic at the peak of their career in the 1990s, their organisation was developed as a model of totalitarian collectivism in which the individual is always subjugated. This is illustrated in the Onanigram (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst), which, mimicking the complexities of the SFRY in its most totalitarian dispensation, maps out in labyrinthine detail the institutional structure of NSK. Behaviour is governed by a Constitution that states explicitly that NSK is a group in which, “each individual is subordinated to the whole” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 273). Lest this collectivism be misconceived as little more than a show, the case of Tomaž Hostnik is instructive. The original lead singer of Laibach, Hostnik committed ritual suicide by hanging himself from a hayrack, a key symbol of Slovenian nationalism. Initially, rather than mourning his loss, the other members of Laibach posthumously disenfranchised him (“threw him out of the band”), presumably for his act of individual will that was collectively unsanctioned.Laibach and the NSK’s collectivism also have spiritual overtones. The Onanigram presents an Immanent Consistent Spirit, a kind of geist that holds the collective together. NSK claim: “Only God can subdue LAIBACH. People and things never can” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 289). Furthermore, such rhetorical bombast was matched in aspiration. Most famously, in one of the first instances of a micro-nation, NSK went on to establish itself as a global and virtual non-territorial state, replete with a recruitment drive, passports and anthem, written and performed by Laibach of course. Laibach’s CareerLaibach’s career can be divided into three overlapping parts. The first is its career as a political provocateur, beginning from the inception of the band in 1980 and continuing through to the present. The band’s performances have touched the raw nerves of several political actors. As suggested above, Laibach offended Slovenian nationalists. The band offended the SFRY, especially when in its stage backdrop it juxtaposed images of a penis with Marshal Josip Broz “Tito”, founding President of the SFRY. Above all, it offended libertarians who viewed the band’s exploitation of totalitarian aesthetics as a route to evoking repressed totalitarian energies in its audiences.In a sense the libertarians were correct, for Laibach were quite explicit in representing a third function of their performance of unresolved contradictions as being to (3) evoke repressed totalitarian energies. However, as Žižek demonstrates in his essay “Why Are Laibach and NSK Not Fascists”, Laibach’s intent in this regard is counter-totalitarian. Laibach engage in what amounts to a “psychoanalytic cure” for totalitarianism, which consists of four envisaged stages. The consumers of Laibach’s works and performances go through a process of over-identification with totalitarianism, leading through the experience of alienation to, in turn, disidentification and an eventual overcoming of that totalitarian alienation. The Žižekian interpretation of the four stages has, however been subjected to critique, particularly by Deleuzian scholars, and especially for its psychoanalytic emphasis on the transformation of individual (un)consciousness (i.e. the cerebral rather than bodily). Instead, such scholars prefer a schizoanalytic interpretation which presents the cure as, respectively collective (Monroe 45-50) and somatic (Goddard). Laibach’s works and pronouncements display, often awareness of such abstract theoretical ideas. However, they also display attentiveness to the concrete realities of socio-political context. This was reflected especially in the 1990s, when its focus seemed to shift from the matter of totalitarianism to the overriding issue of the day in Laibach’s homeland – ethnic conflict. For example, echoing the discourse of Truth and Reconciliation emanating from post-Apartheid South Africa in the early 1990s, Laibach argued that its work is “based on the premise that traumas affecting the present and the future can be healed only by returning to the initial conflicts” (NSK Padiglione).In the early 1990s era of post-socialist violent ethnic nationalism, statements such as this rendered Laibach a darling of anti-nationalism, both within civil society and in what came to be known pejoratively as the Yugonostagic, i.e. pro-SFRY left. Its darling status was cemented further by actions such as performing a concert to celebrate the end of the Bosnian war in 1996, and because its ideological mask began to slip. Most famously, when asked by a music journalist the standard question of what the band’s main influences were, rather than citing other musicians Laibach stated: “Tito, Tito and Tito.” Herein lies the third phase of Laibach’s career, dating from the mid-1990s to the present, which has been marked by critical recognition and mainstream acceptance, and in contrasting domains. Notably, in 2012 Laibach was invited to perform at the Tate Modern in London. Then, entering the belly of what is arguably the most totalitarian of totalitarian beasts in 2015, it became the first rock band to perform live in North Korea.The middle part in Laibach’s career was between 1987 and 1996. This was when its work consisted mostly of covers of mainstream Western pop songs by, amongst others Opus, Queen, The Rolling Stones, and, in The Final Countdown (1986), Swedish ‘big hair’ rockers. It also covered entire albums, including a version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. No doubt mindful of John Lennon’s claim that his band was more popular than the Messiah himself, Laibach covered the Beatles’ final album Let It Be (1970). Highlighting the perilous hidden connections between apparently benign and fascistic forms of sedentarism, lead singer Milan Fras’ snarling delivery of the refrain “Get Back to where you once belong” renders the hit single from that album less a story of homecoming than a sinister warning to immigrants and ethnic others who are out of place.This career middle stage invoked critique. However, commonplace suggestions that Laibach could be characterised as embodying Retromania, a derivative musical trend typical of the 1990s that has been lambasted for its de-politicisation and a musical conservatism enabled by new sampling technologies that afforded a forensic documentary precision that prohibits creative distortion (Reynolds), are misplaced. Several scholars highlight Laibach’s ceaseless attention to musical creativity in the pursuit of political subversiveness. For example, for Monroe, the cover version was a means for Laibach to continue its exploration of the connections between art and ideology, of illuminating the connections between competing ideological systems and of evoking repressed totalitarian energies, only now within Western forms of entertainment in which ideological power structures are less visible than in overt totalitarian propaganda. However, what often seems to escape intellectualist interpretations presented by scholars such as Žižek, Goddard and (albeit to a lesser extent) Monroe is the importance of the concrete specificities of the context that Laibach worked in in the 1990s – i.e. homeland ethno-nationalist politics – and, especially, their medium – i.e. Western pop music.The Meaning and Meaningfulness of Western Popular Culture in Former YugoslaviaThe Laibach covers were merely one of many celebrations of Western popular culture that emerged in pre- and post-socialist Yugoslavia. The most curious of these was the building of statues of icons of screen and stage. These include statues of Tarzan, Bob Marley, Rocky Balboa and, most famously, martial arts cinema legend Bruce Lee in the Bosnian city of Mostar.The pop monuments were often erected as symbols of peace in contexts of ethnic-national violence. Each was an ethnic hybrid. With the exception of original Tarzan Johnny Weismuller — an ethnic-German American immigrant from Serbia — none was remotely connected to the competing ethnic-national groups. Thus, it was surprising when these pop monuments became targets for iconoclasm. This was especially surprising because, in contrast, both the new ethnic-national monuments that were built and the old Socialist pan-Yugoslav monuments that remained in all their concrete and steel obduracy in and through the 1990s were left largely untouched.The work of Simon Harrison may give us some insight into this curious situation. Harrison questions the commonplace assumption that the strength of enmity between ethnic groups is related to their cultural dissimilarity — in short, the bigger the difference the bigger the biffo. By that logic, the new ethnic-national monuments erected in the post-SFRY era ought to have been vandalised. Conversely, however, Harrison argues that enmity may be more an outcome of similarity, at least when that similarity is torn asunder by other kinds of division. This is so because ownership of previously shared and precious symbols of identity appears to be seen as subjected to appropriation by ones’ erstwhile comrades who are newly othered in such moments.This is, indeed, exactly what happened in post-socialist former-Yugoslavia. Yugoslavs were rendered now as ethnic-nationals: Bosniaks (Muslims), Croats and Serbs in the case of Bosnia. In the process, the erection of obviously non-ethnic-national monuments by, now inevitably ethnic-national subjects was perceived widely as appropriation – “the Croats [the monument in Mostar was sculpted by Croatian artist Ivan Fijolić] are stealing our Bruce Lee,” as one of my Bosnian-Serb informants exclaimed angrily.However, this begs the question: Why would symbols of Western popular culture evoke the kinds of emotions that result in iconoclasm more so than other ethnically non-reducible ones such as those of the Partisans that are celebrated in the old Socialist pan-Yugoslav monuments? The answer lies in the geopolitical history of the SFRY. The Yugoslav-Soviet Union split in 1956 forced the SFRY to develop ever-stronger ties with the West. The effects of this became quotidian, especially as people travelled more or less freely across international borders and consumed the products of Western Capitalism. Many of the things they consumed became deeply meaningful. Notably, barely anybody above a certain age does not reminisce fondly about the moment when participation in martial arts became a nationwide craze following the success of Bruce Lee’s films in the golden (1970s-80s) years of Western-bankrolled Yugoslav prosperity.Likewise, almost everyone above a certain age recalls the balmy summer of 1985, whose happy zeitgeist seemed to be summed up perfectly by Austrian band Opus’s song “Live is Life” (1985). This tune became popular in Yugoslavia due to its apparently feelgood message about the joys of attending live rock performances. In a sense, these moments and the consumption of things “Western” in general came to symbolise everything that was good about Yugoslavia and, indeed to define what it was to be Yugoslavs, especially in comparison to their isolated and materially deprived socialist comrades in the Warsaw Pact countries.However, iconoclastic acts are more than mere emotional responses to offensive instances of cultural appropriation. As Michael Taussig describes, iconoclasm reveals the public secrets that the monuments it targets conceal. SFRY’s great public secret, known especially to those people old enough to have experienced the inter-ethnic violence of WWII, was ethnic division and the state’s deceit of the historic normalcy of pan-Yugoslav identification. The secret was maintained by a formal state policy of forgetting. For example, the wording on monuments in sites of inter-ethnic violence in WWII is commonly of the variety: “here lie the victims in Yugoslavia’s struggle against imperialist forces and their internal quislings.” Said quislings were, of course, actually Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (i.e. fellow Yugoslavs), but those ethnic nomenclatures were almost never used.In contrast, in a context where Western popular cultural forms came to define the very essence of what it was to be Yugoslav, the iconoclasm of Western pop monuments, and the retroquotation of Western pop songs revealed the repressed deceit and the public secret of the reality of inter-ethnic tension at the heart of that which was regarded as quintessentially Yugoslav. In this way, the memory of Yugoslavia ever having been a properly functioning entity was delegitimised. Consequently, Laibach and their kind served to render the apparent reality of the Yugoslav ideal as little more than a dream. ReferencesEpstein, Mikhail N. After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture. Amherst: U of Massachusettes P, 1995.Goddard, Michael. “We Are Time: Laibach/NSK, Retro-Avant-Gardism and Machinic Repetition,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 11 (2006): 45-53.Harrison, Simon. “Identity as a Scarce Resource.” Social Anthropology 7 (1999): 239–251.Monroe, Alexei. Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.NSK. Neue Slowenische Kunst. Ljubljana: NSK, 1986.NSK. Padiglione NSK. Ljubljana: Moderna Galerija, 1993.rateyourmusic.com. 2018. 3 Sep. 2018 <https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/throbbing-gristle>.Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber, 2011.Taussig, Michael. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Žižek, Slavoj. “Why Are Laibach and NSK Not Fascists?” 3 Sep. 2018 <www.nskstate.com/appendix/articles/why_are_laibach.php.>

There are many ways to construct, shape and frame a history of popular music. From a focus on performers to a stress on cities, from theories of modernity to reveling in ‘the post,’ innovative music has been matched by evocative writing about it. One arc of analysis in popular music studies focuses on the record label. Much has been written about Sun, Motown, Factory and Apple, but there are many labels that have not reached this level of notoriety and fame but offer much to our contemporary understanding of music, identity and capitalism. The aim of this article is to capture an underwritten history of 21st century music, capturing and tracking moments of collaboration, movement and contact. Through investigating a specific record label, we explore the interconnectiveness of electronica and city-based creative industries’ initiatives. While urban dance culture is still pathologised through drug scares and law and order concerns, clubbing studies and emerging theories of sonic media and auditory cultures offer a significant trigger and frame for this current research. The focus on Off World Sounds (OWS) traces a meta-independent label that summons, critiques, reinscribes and provokes the conventional narratives of capitalism in music. We show how OWS has remade and remixed the collaborations of punk to forge innovative ways of thinking about creativity, policy and popular culture. While commencing with a review of the origin, ideology and intent of OWS, the final part of the paper shows where the experiment went wrong and what can be learnt from this sonic label laboratory. Moving Off World Popular cultural studies evoke and explore discursive formations and texts that activate dissent, conflict and struggle. This strategy is particularly potent when exploring how immigration narratives fray the borders of the nation state. At its most direct, this analysis provides a case study to assess and answer some of Nabeel Zuberi’s questions about sonic topography that he raises in Sounds English. I’m concerned less with music as a reflection of national history and geography than how the practices of popular music culture themselves construct the spaces of the local, national, and transnational. How does the music imagine the past and place? How does it function as a memory-machine, a technology for the production of subjective and collective versions of location and identity? How do the techniques of sounds, images, and activities centered on popular music create landscapes with figures? (3) Dance music is mashed between creativity, consumerism and capitalism. Picking up on Zuberi’s challenge, the story of OWS is also a history of what happens to English migrants who travel to Australia, and how they negotiate the boundaries of the Australian nation. Immigration is important to any understanding of contemporary music. The two proprietors of OWS are Pete Carroll and, one of the two writers of this current article, Stephen Mallinder. Both English proprietors immigrated to Perth in Australia. They used their contacts to sign electronica performers from beyond this single city. They encouraged the tracks to move freely through lymphatic digital networks for remixing—‘lymphatic’ signalling a secondary pathway for commerce and creativity where new musical relationships were being formed outside the influence of major record companies. Performers signed to OWS form independent networks with other performers. This mobility of sound has operated in parallel with the immigration policies of the Howard government that have encouraged insularity and xenophobia. In other eras of racial inequality and discrimination, the independent record label has been not only an integral part of the music industry, but a springboard for political dissent. The histories of jazz and rhythm and blues capture a pivotal moment of independent entrepreneurialism that transformed new and strange sounds/noises into popular music. In monitoring and researching this complex process of musical movement and translation, the independent label has remained the home of the peripheral, the misunderstood, and the uncompromising. Soul music in the United States of America is an example of a sonic form that sustained independence while corporate labels made a profit. Labels like Atlantic Records became synonymous with the success of black vocal music in the 1960s and 1970s, while the smaller independent labels like Chess and Invicta constructed a brand identity. While the division between the majors and the independents increasingly dissolves, particularly at the level of distribution, the independent label remains significant as innovator and instigator. It retains its status and pedagogic function in teaching an audience about new sounds and developing aural literacies. OWS inked its well from an idealistic and collaborative period of label evolution. The punk aesthetic of the late 1970s not only triggered wide-ranging implications for youth culture, but also opened spaces for alternative record labels and label identity. Rough Trade was instrumental in imbuing a spirit of cooperation and a benign mode of competition. A shift in the distribution of records and associated merchandizing to strengthen product association—such as magazines, fanzines and T-Shirts—enabled Rough Trade to deal directly with pivotal stores and outlets and then later establish cartels with stores to provide market security and a workable infrastructure. Links were built with ancillary agents such as concert promoters, press, booking agents, record producers and sleeve designers, to create a national, then European and international, network to produce an (under the counter) culture. Such methods can also be traced in the history of Postcard Records from Edinburgh, Zoo Records from Liverpool, Warp in Sheffield, Pork Recordings in Hull, Hospital Records in London, and both Grand Central and Factory in Manchester. From the ashes of the post-1976 punk blitzkrieg, independent labels bloomed with varying impact, effect and success, but they held an economic and political agenda. The desire was to create a strong brand identity by forming a tight collaboration between artists and distributors. Perceptions of a label’s size and significance was enhanced and enlarged through this collaborative relationship. OWS acknowledged and rewrote this history of the independent label. There was a desire to fuse the branding of the label with the artists signed, released and distributed. No long term obligations on behalf of the artists were required. A 50/50 split after costs was shared. While such an ‘agreement’ appeared anachronistic, it was also a respectful nod to the initial label/artist split offered by Rough Trade. Collaboration with artists throughout the process offered clear statements of intent, with idealism undercut by pragmatism. From track selection, sleeve design, promotion strategy and interview schedule, the level of communication created a sense of joint ownership and dialogue between label and artist. This reinscription of independent record history is complex because OWS’ stable of performers and producers is an amalgamation of dub, trance, hip hop, soul and house genres. Much of trans-localism of OWS was encouraged by its base in Perth. Metaphorically ‘off world’, Perth is a pad for international music to land, be remixed, recut and re-released. Just as Wellington is the capital of Tolkien’s Middle Earth as well as New Zealand, Perth is a remix capital for Paris or New York-based performers. The brand name ‘Off World Sounds’ was designed to emphasise isolation: to capture the negativity of isolation but rewrite separation and distinctiveness with a positive inflection. The title was poached from Ridley Scott’s 1980s film Bladerunner, which was in turn based on Philip K. Dick’s story, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Affirming this isolation summoned an ironic commentary on Perth’s geographical location, while also mocking the 1980s discourses of modernity and the near future. The key was to align punk’s history of collaboration with this narrative of isolation and independence, to explore mobility, collaboration, and immigration. Spaces in the Music Discussions of place dictate a particular methodology to researching music. Dreams of escape and, concurrently, intense desires for home pepper the history of popular music. What makes OWS important to theories of musical collaboration is that not only was there a global spread of musicians, producers and designers, but they worked together in a series of strategic trans-localisms. There were precedents for disconnecting place and label, although not of the scale instigated by OWS. Fast Products, although based in Glasgow, signed The Human League from Sheffield and Gang of Four from Leeds. OWS was unique in signing artists disconnected on a global scale, with the goal of building collaborations in remixing and design. Gripper, from the north east of England, Little Egypt from New York, The Bone Idle from Vienna, Hull and Los Angeles, Looped for Pleasure from Sheffield, Barney Mullhouse from Australia and the United Kingdom, Ooblo from Manchester, Attache from Adelaide, Crackpot from Melbourne and DB Chills from Sydney are also joined by artists resident in Perth, such as Soundlab, the Ku-Ling Bros and Blue Jay. Compact Disc mastering is completed in Sydney, London, and Perth. The artwork for vinyl and CD sleeves, alongside flyers, press advertising and posters, is derived from Manchester, England. These movements in the music flattened geographical hierarchies, where European and American tracks were implicitly valued over Australian-derived material. Through pop music history, the primary music markets of the United Kingdom and United States made success for Australian artists difficult. Off World emphasised that the product was not licensed. It was previously unreleased material specifically recorded for the label and an exclusive Australian first territory release. Importantly, this licensing agreement also broadened definitions and interpretations of ‘Australian music’. Such a critique and initiative was important. For example, Paul Bodlovich, Director of the West Australian Music Industry (WAM), believed he was extending the brief of his organisation during his tenure. Once more though, rock was the framework, structure and genre of interest. Explaining the difference from his predecessor, he stated that: [James Nagy] very much saw the music industry as being only bands who were playing all original music—to him they were the only people who actually constituted the music industry. I have a much broader view on that, that all those other people who are around the band—the manager, the promoters, the labels, the audio guys, the whole shebang—that they are part of the music industry too. (33) Much was absent from his ‘whole shebang,’ including the fans who actually buy the music and attend the pubs and clubs. A diversity of genres was also not acknowledged. If hip hop, and urban music generally, is added to his list of new interests, then clubs, graf galleries, dance instructors and fashion and jewelry designers could extend the network of musical collaborations. A parody of corporate culture and a pastiche of the post-punk aesthetic, OWS networked and franchised itself into existence. It was a cottage industry superimposed onto a corporate infrastructure. Attempting to make inroads into an insular Perth arts community and build creative industries’ networks without state government policy support, Off World offered an optimistic perspective on the city’s status and value in a national and global electronic market. Yet in commercial terms, OWS failed. What OWS captures through its failures conveys more about music policy in Australia than any success. The label has been able to catalogue the lack of changes to Perth’s music policy. The proprietors, performers and designers were not approached in 2002 by the Western Australian Contemporary Music Taskforce to offer comment. Yet Matthew Benson and Poppy Wise, researchers for that report, stated that “the solution lies in the industry becoming more outwardly focused, and to do this, it must seek the input of successful professionals who have proven track records in the marketing of music nationally and globally” (9). The resultant document argued that the industry needed to the look to Sydney and Melbourne for knowledge of “international” markets. Yet Paul Bodlovich, the Director of WAM, singled out the insularity of ‘England,’ not Britain, and ‘America’ in comparison to the ‘outward’ Perth music industry: To us, they’re all centre of the universe, but they don’t look past their walls, they don’t have a clue what goes in other parts of the world … All they see say in England is English TV, or in America it’s American TV. Whereas we sit in a very isolated part of the world and we absorb culture from everywhere because we think we have to just to be on an equal arc with everyone else. We think we have to absorb stuff from other cultures because unless we do then we really are isolated … It’s a similar belief to the ongoing issue of women in the workplace, where there’s a belief that to be seen on equal footing you have to be better. (33) This knight’s move affiliation of Perth’s musicians with women in the workplace is bizarre and inappropriate. This unfortunate connection is made worse when recognizing that Perth’s music institutions and organisations, such as WAM, are dominated by white, Australian-born men. To promote the outwardness of Perth culture while not mentioning the role and function of immigration is not addressing how mobility, creativity and commerce is activated. To unify ‘England’ and ‘America,’ without recognizing the crucial differences between Manchester and Bristol, New York and New Orleans, is conservative, arrogant, and wrong. National models of music, administered by Australian-born white men and funded through grants-oriented peer review models rather than creative industries’ infrastructural initiatives, still punctuate Western Australian music. Off World Sounds has been caught in non-collaborative, nationalist models for organising culture and economics. It is always easy to affirm the specialness and difference of a city’s sound or music. While affirming the nation and rock, outsiders appear threatening to the social order. When pondering cities and electronica, collaboration, movement and meaning dance through the margins. References Benson, Matthew, and Poppy Wise. A Study into the Current State of the Western Australian Contemporary Music Industry and Its Potential for Economic Growth. Department of Culture and the Arts, Government of Western Australia, December 2002. Bodlovich, Paul. “Director’s Report.” X-Press 940 (17 Feb. 2005): 33. Zuberi, Nabeel. Sounds English: Transnational Popular Music. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2001. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brabazon, Tara, and Stephen Mallinder. "Off World Sounds: Building a Collaborative Soundscape." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/13-brabazonmallinder.php>. APA Style Brabazon, T., and S. Mallinder. (May 2006) "Off World Sounds: Building a Collaborative Soundscape," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/13-brabazonmallinder.php>.

If you have a look at the concert schedules around Australia (and elsewhere in the Western world) these days, you could be forgiven for thinking that you've suddenly been transported back in time: there is a procession of old players, playing (mainly) old songs. The Rolling Stones came through a while ago, as did the Eagles, Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty, and James Brown. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant played updated versions of Led Zeppelin's music, with some new songs strewn in on occasion. The Beach Boys served up a double blast from the past, touring with America ("Horse with No Name") as their opening act. Australian content in this trend is provided by the odd assortment of media darling John Farnham, ex-Grease girl Olivia Newton-John, and former Phantom of the Opera Anthony Warlow, who are touring under the unlikely name of 'The Main Event'; Australian rock legends Cold Chisel have also reformed recently, with a reunion tour to follow. On the more prestigious end of the pop mainstream, The Three Tenors have only had one concert in Australia recently, but publicity-savvy as they have proven themselves to be during the Football World Cup it's a fairly safe bet that they'll be rolling into Sydney Opera House in time for the last Olympics of this millennium, in the year 2000. Thankfully, we've so far been spared of a remaining-Beatles reunion and tour (they did release their Anthology CDs and videos, though), but it wouldn't really come as a surprise anymore. Why this wave of musical exhumations; why now? Admittedly, some of the reunions produced interesting results (Page & Plant's update of Led Zeppelin songs with world music elements comes to mind), but largely the bands involved have restricted themselves to playing old favourites or producing new music that is content with plagiarising older material, and so it's unlikely that the Beach Boys are touring, for example, because they have a strong desire to take surf music to the next level of art. A better explanation, it seems, can be found in the music industry and its structures, and in the way those structures are increasingly becoming inadequate for today's mediascape. For much of this century, popular music in the Western world -- while music itself is a global obsession, the marketing industry largely remains dominated by the West -- has come in waves: to give a broad overview, jazz was outdone by rock'n'roll, which was followed by the British invasion and the British blues revival, leading to the stadium rock of the 1970s (co-existing with disco), which in turn caused the punk revolution that fizzled out into New Wave and the new romantics, which were superseded by Alternative Rock and Britpop. Looking at this succession, it's not difficult to see that the waves have become smaller over time, though: recent styles have failed by far to reach the heights of interest and influence that earlier waves like rock'n'roll and the British invasion achieved. How many people will remember, say, Oasis in three decades; how many will The Beatles? The question seems unfair. This gradual decrease in wave amplitude over the years is directly linked to changes in the media structure in the Western world: earlier, new musical waves swept the few available channels of radio and TV to their full extent; severe bandwidth limitations forced the broadcasters to divert their entire attention to the latest trends, with no air time to be spared for the music of yesteryear. As the number of channels increased, however, so did the potential for variety; today, most cities of sufficient size at least have stations catering for listeners of classical music, over-40s easy listening, mainstream rock, and alternative rock, and perhaps there's also an open-access channel for the more obscure styles; stations for more specific tastes -- all-jazz, all-heavy metal, all-goth -- are now also viable in some cities. As new style waves come in, they might still sweep through the mainstream stations, but will only manage to cause some minor ripples amongst the less central channels. Similar trends exist among music stores, and the music press. The mainstream might remain in the middle of the musical spectrum, therefore, but it's been narrowed considerably, with more and more music fans moving over to the more specialised channels. There is now "an increasingly fragmented international marketplace of popular musics" (Campbell Robinson et al. 272). In media-rich Western nations, this trend is strengthened further by changes to the mediascape brought on by the Internet: the Net is the ultimate enpander of bandwidth, where anyone can add another channel if their needs aren't met by the existing ones. With an unlimited number of specialised channels, with fans deciding their musical diet for themselves instead of having radio DJs or music journalists do it for them, and with the continued narrowing of the mainstream as it loses more and more listeners, new waves of musical styles lose their impact almost immediately now. Whatever your specific tastes, you'll find like-minded people, specialty labels and CD retailers, perhaps even an Internet radio station -- there is now less need than ever to engage with outside trends. Whether that development is entirely desirable remains a point of debate, of course. The paradox for the big old players in the music industry is that the ongoing globalisation of their markets hasn't also led to a globalisation of musical tastes -- largely because of this exponential increase and diversification of channels. Music is a powerful instrument of community formation, and community formation implies first and foremost a drawing of boundaries to everything that isn't part of the community (Turner 2): as musical styles diversify, therefore, there are now more musical taste communities than anyone would care to list. Instead of turning to some mainstreamed, global style of music, listeners are found to turn to the local -- either to the music produced geographically local to them, or to a form of virtually local music, that is, the music of a geographically dispersed, but (through modern communications technologies) otherwise highly unified taste community (Bruns sect. 1 bite 8ff.). There certainly are more such groupings than the industry would care to cater for: the division of their resources in order to follow musical trends in a large number of separate communities is eating into the profits of the large multinationals, while small specialty labels are experiencing a resurgence (despite the major labels' attempts to discourage them). As Wallis & Malm note, "the transformation of the business side of the music industry into a number of giant concerns has not stopped small enterprises, often run by enthusiasts, from cropping up everywhere" (270). The large conglomerates are remarkably ill-prepared to deal with such a plurality of styles: everything in their structure is crying out for a unified market with few, major, and tightly controlled trends. This is where we (and the industry) return to the Beach Boys & Co., then. Partly out of a desire for the good old times when the music business was simple, partly to see if a revival of the old marketing concepts may not reverse the tide once more, the industry majors have unleashed this procession of the musical undead (with only a few notable exceptions) upon us; it is a last-stand attempt to regather the remaining few servicable battleships of the mainstream fleet to grab whatever riches are still to be found there. Judging by ticket prices alone (Page & Plant charged over A$110 per head), there still is money to be made, but these prices also indicate that such 'mainstream' acts are now largely a spectacle for well-to-do over-35s. Amongst younger audiences, the multinationals remain mostly clueless, despite a few efforts to create massively hyped, but musically lobotomised lowest-common-denominator acts, from the Spice Girls to Céline Dion or U2. Most of the acts the major industry players cling to as their main attractions have quite simply lost relevance to all but the most gullible of audiences -- in this context, the advertisment of the travelling Farnham / Newton-John / Warlow show as 'The Main Event' seems almost touching in its denial of reality. It's not like the industry hasn't tried this strategy before, of course: reacting to the fragmented musical world of the early 1970s, with styles from folk to hard rock all equally vying for a share of the audience, the labels created stadium rock -- oversized concerts of overproduced bands who eventually became alienated from their audiences, causing the radical back-to-the-roots revolution of punk. Stadium rock mark II is bound to fail even more quickly and decisively: with most of its proponents not even creating any excitement in the all-important 'young adults' market in the first place, it's the wave that wasn't, and should properly be seen as the best sign yet of the industry's loss of touch with its fragmenting market(s). It's time for new, smaller, and more mobile players to take over from the multinationals, it seems. References Bruns, Axel. "'Every Home Is Wired': The Use of Internet Discussion Fora by a Subcultural Community." 1998. 17 Dec. 1998 <http://www.uq.net.au/~zzabruns/uni/honours/thesis.php>. Campbell Robinson, Deanna, et al. Music at the Margins: Popular Music and Global Cultural Diversity. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1991. Wallis, Roger, and Krister Malm. Big Sounds from Small Peoples: The Music Industry in Small Countries. London: Constable, 1984. Turner, Graeme. "Rock Music, National Culture and Cultural Policy." Rock Music: Politics and Policy. Ed. Tony Bennett. Brisbane: Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith U, 1988. 1-6. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Axel Bruns. "Old Players, New Players: The Main Event That Isn't." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/main.php>. Chicago style: Axel Bruns, "Old Players, New Players: The Main Event That Isn't," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 5 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/main.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Axel Bruns. (1998) Old players, new players: the Main Event that isn't. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/main.php> ([your date of access]).

“Power often comes in deceptive packages” (Myers, 2002) Hello Kitty is the ultimate icon of Japanese cuteness. She/it is simply the image of a cat with black eyes, a button nose and no mouth wearing a pink bow on her head. A product without context, Hello Kitty is a blank signifier with the potential to be loaded with codes and meanings as diverse as the ideas of those who consume her/it. Yet Hello Kitty encompasses, and holds contradictory associations with, discourses as diverse as debates over reappropriation of symbols, consumerism and nationalism. As a symbol of cuteness, with her inability to communicate verbally and her pink bow, Hello Kitty has become a player in the wider debate on “girlie” culture and whether symbols traditionally (by feminists) held to play a part in the oppression of women, can now be used as tools of cultural subversion (Greer, 1999). Riot grrrl was a movement which came to prominence in the early 1990s with all-female punk rock bands such as Bikini Kill, L7 and Babes in Toyland, and incorporated gender politics in to rock music, creating a new girl-focused subculture. The scene is still going strong now, although it receives less mainstream media attention (see Live Journal riot_grrls on-line community). It is often associated with the “girlie” look and many current riot grrrls consider themselves third-wave feminists. Girlie culture and riot grrrl are not to be confused with the girl power propagated by pop music, which is seen to be “insipid spice girl shit” (Riot Grrrl London) by riot grrrl feminists. A common mistake of older feminist’s criticisms is to equate mainstream “girl power” with the sub-cultural movement of riot grrrl, incorporating within it girlie feminism (See for examples the chapter on Girl power in Greer, 1999). Girlie Feminism: Separate But Equal Within the riot grrrl movement there has been a reappropriation of girliness as demonstrated by the use of “grrrl” as opposed to “girl”, severing its connotations of weakness and femininity and, thus, transforming its meaning. Hello Kitty and the debate around her/its consumption by riot grrrls can been used to examine the debates, contradictions, criticisms, reappropriations and ironies which are central to third-wave feminisms. One more sympathetic reading of the current “girlie” culture and its use of Hello Kitty as a logo assumes that it is highly ironic and that the girls involved have all the cultural savvy natural to the third-wave generation who have been raised in a pop culture driven world. From this point of view, young women/girls are naturally wielding signifiers like semiotics professors in their everyday lives. For example see the on-line “What fucked version of hello kittie are you?” Quiz (Sarcasticwhore, 2003) which uses Hello Kitty as a blank signifier that can represent many different types of subcultural image (interestingly the username of the creator of this quiz, “sarcasticwhore” is itself reappropriation of the word “whore”). Certainly there are some self-professed third-wave riot grrrls who are aware of the meanings of their actions: like the hello kitty pink fluffy thing - on the one hand if you're 'grown up' it can be a way of going against what's expected of you - to be respectable, orderly, lookin like you stepped out of Gap. on another hand it's a way of 'reclaiming yr femininity' which i am dubious about . . . . i feel that wearing particular things to convey an idea such as in this case reinforces the whole girl = one thing boy = another. But i totally agree, whole - heartedly, that women shouldn't bow down to the way of the man and attempt to be/look like them (i.e. deny their 'femininity' or wear suits and attempt to charge around blowing up the world like george bush) (Sabotage, 2003) My research with the riot grrrl Birmingham collective suggests that many of the girls involved understand the political implications of their behaviour and that their aim is not assimilation in to the “male” identity but a “separate but equal” identity wherein femaleness does not equate to weakness. Riot Grrrl foremother Kathleen Hanna explains that the original philosophy of riot grrrl had the same basic principles as those expressed by Sabotage above: dressing like a little girl . . . was also about being people who are oppositional to the whole American system, and not wanting to look like adults and our parents, who we saw as fucking up the world. And it was also when that Carol Gilligan book came out about how girls lose their self-esteem around twelve or thirteen, so everyone was talking about being nine. Like trying to go back there, and remembering what it was like when we were friends with each other, and we weren't totally competitive, and we were creating our own weird games and ideas. (Hanna in Hex, 2000) As Hanna pointed out, psychological research which focused on the negative effects of adolescence on girls showed that “the secrets of the female adolescent pertain to the silencing of her own voice, a silencing enforced by the wish not to hurt others but also by the fear that, in speaking, her voice will not be heard” (Gilligan, 1982, 51). This lead to a return to, and positivisation of, girlhood, a “nod to our joyous youth” (Baumgardner & Richards, 2001, 136) and a rejection of hegemonic ways of adult female behaviour. In relation to this psychological context, the mouth-less Hello Kitty takes on even more interesting connotations as a logo for third-wave riot grrrl feminism, as a logo which could also be seen to represent the voicelessness of girls, a logo re-contextualised by parody. Criticisms: Irony and Context Linda Hutcheon, a postmodern / feminist theorist, sees parody and irony as defining features of postmodernism and feminisms in the age of post modernism: It seems to me that . . . women are often in the position of defining themselves AGAINST a dominant culture or discourse. One way to do that, a way with great subversive potential, is to speak the language of the dominant (which allows you to be heard), but then to subvert it through ironic strategies of exaggeration, understatement, or literalization (1998). The main criticism of reappropriating symbols of oppression is the question of who creates the meaning and whether it is redundant if misinterpreted by the majority of people who see it. Moreover does postmodernism in relation to feminism suggest an acceptance of post-feminism or even an acceptance that ideas of girliness are no longer symbols of patriarchal oppression? The wearers may not think so, but the majority of “readers” may be oblivious to the complex connotations of a Hello Kitty t-shirt. Thus, the issue of context creates some problems for the effective use of girliness and, specifically, for Hello Kitty as a subversive tool, “The test of irony is that people get the joke – and if they had enough understanding to ‘get it’ in the first place, then this type of humour wouldn’t need to exist” (Direct Action 23, 2002). In response to criticism that the ironic “girlie” use of Hello Kitty may be misinterpreted, I suggest juxtaposition of signifiers in order to upset hegemonic readings in a similar way to that suggested by Paul Sweetham (1990). That is, it seems more effective to confuse the signified of the reader by taking elements of, for example Hello Kitty with its connotations of girliness, and simultaneously incorporate signs of punk imagery. This serves to create a look which cannot be read as merely girly or as merely punk, which changes the function of both signifiers. Consumerism Another element of the use of Hello Kitty as a logo for third-wave riot grrrl feminists is that Hello Kitty is the ultimate symbol of pure irrational consumerism and commodity fetishism, a “trap of material slavery” (Ko, 2000, 9). The uniqueness of Hello Kitty as a commodity is that the logo is the product; there is no (or at least was not originally) any story or context. This is especially problematic for Hello Kitty as a logo for Riot Grrrl, as this is a culture which sets itself apart from, and as a critique of, mainstream culture. This does not necessarily entail, however, a complete rejection of material culture and could simply mean an alternate or subverted form of it. Conclusion Despite its flaws, Hello Kitty can be seen to effectively, semeiologically speaking, represent a subculture inextricably set within and created from a pop-culture driven society. And while this use of Hello Kitty is entirely reliant on its context, in the context I have suggested it seems to effectively symbolise the ideologies of third-wave riot grrrls. Works Cited Baumgardner, Jennifer and Richards, Amy. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future. Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000. Direct Action. ‘Travelling Backwards? (No, we're just being ironic)’ Direct Action 23, Culturejam. (http://www.directa.force9.co.uk/back%20issues/DA%2023/articl... ...es.htm), 2002. Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Massachusetts: Harvard, 1982. Greer, Germaine. The Whole Woman. London: Doubleday, 1999. Hex, Celina. Fierce, Funny, Feminists: Gloria Steinem and Kathleen Hanna talk shop, and prove that grrrls – and womyn - rule. (**from the Winter 2000 "Feminist" issue of BUST) cited on http://busygrrrl.homestead.com/files/Bust_Interview.doc, 2002. Hutcheon, Linda in O’Grady, Kathleen. Theorizing Feminism and Postmodernity: A conversation with Linda Hutcheon http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Hutcheon.html, 1998 Ko, Yu-Fen. Hello Kitty and Identity Politics in Taiwan. Hsih-Shin University, October 2000 http://www.international.ucla.edu/cira/paper/TW_Ko.pdf , Live Journal riot-grrls community http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=riot_grrls Myers, Holly. ‘Hello Kitty finally gets to talk back’. L.A. Times, Fri Oct 25 2002. Riot Grrrl London. Riot Grrrl: a manifesto. www.gurlpages.com/riotgirl.london. 2002. Sabotage. RGBham smartgroup. http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/rgbham. 2003. Sarcasticwhore. ‘What fucked version of hello kitty are you?’. Quizilla.com. http://quizilla.com/users/sarcasticwhore/quizzes/what%20fuck... ...ed%20version%20of%20hello%20kittie%20are%20you%3F/ Sweetman, Paul. ‘Marked Bodies, Oppositional Identities? Tatooing, Piercing and the Ambiguity of Resistance’.in Roseneil, S & Seymour, J (eds.) Practising Identities: Power and Resistance. London: Macmillan Press, 1999. Links http://busygrrrl.homestead.com/files/Bust_Interview.doc http://quizilla.com/users/sarcasticwhore/quizzes/what%20fucked%20version%20of%20hello%20kittie%20are%20you%3F/ http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Hutcheon.html http://www.directa.force9.co.uk/back%20issues/DA%2023/articles.htm http://www.gurlpages.com/riotgirl.london http://www.international.ucla.edu/cira/paper/TW_Ko.pdf http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=riot_grrls http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/rgbham Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Nicholas, Lucy. "“What fucked version of hello kitty are you?” " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/07-hellokitty.php>. APA Style Nicholas, L. (2003, Jun 19). “What fucked version of hello kitty are you?” . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/07-hellokitty.php>

Rodrigo Sarmiento es licenciado en Historia del Arte y candidato a magíster en Literatura Peruana y Latinoamericana por la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Perú. Su tesis de licenciatura, “Felipe Pinglo y la canción criolla. Estudio estilístico de la obra musical del Bardo Inmortal”, ganó el Premio a la Investigación 2018 otorgado por el Vicerrectorado de Investigación y Posgrado y fue publicada por el Fondo Editorial de esta casa de estudios. Es también autor del libro encargado por el Ministerio de Cultura, Llegó rasgando cielos, luz y viento. Vida y obra de Chabuca Granda, para celebrar el centenario del nacimiento de la compositora peruana, así como de diversos artículos y ponencias que giran en torno a la música peruana y su historia cultural. Actualmente, se encuentra investigando sobre la canción popular americana de finales del siglo XIX e inicios del siglo XX, en el marco del programa de Doctorado en Música con mención en Etnomusicología de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Natalia Elisa Díaz es Licenciada en Sociología por la Universidad Siglo XXI, especialista en estudios de performance y Doctora en Ciencias Antropológicas por la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. Desarrolla tareas de investigación en el Instituto de Humanidades de la misma universidad. Además, se desempeña como productora de contenidos en línea para el Instituto Superior de Estudios Pedagógicos de la provincia de Córdoba. Sus áreas de investigación abarcan los estudios socio-antropológicos sobre músicas populares, en especial, le interesan los procesos de creación de sentido en la producción y recepción del folklore argentino desde una perspectiva socio-discursiva. Actualmente trabaja sobre las culturas afectivas en el campo del folklore y el rock argentino desde los estudios de performances y el género. Gimena Pacheco es maestranda en Antropología Social por la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Argentina. Es música, etnomusicóloga, profesora de artes en música y miembro del equipo de investigación de la sección Etnohistoria del Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas, UBA. Participa en dos proyectos de Investigación UBACyT y PICT, que abordan los usos y apropiaciones en torno al culto a la Virgen de Copacabana en Argentina, siglos XIX al XXI. Sus investigaciones han estado centradas en las prácticas musicales y performáticas vinculadas con procesos de (re)definiciones identitarias en Argentina, enmarcados en el área de los estudios etnomusicológicos contemporáneos con perspectiva antropológica. Actualmente investiga los procesos de apropiación de la música folklórica involucrados en la construcción de identidades étnico-nacionales con foco en el Noroeste argentino. Becaria del Fondo Nacional de las Artes, (2019) y del Fondo para la Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, Argentina (2020/21). Luciano Oyarzún es antropólogo por la Universidad de Concepción (2014) y magíster en musicología latinoamericana por la Universidad Alberto Hurtado (2018). Su formación académica está complementada con estudios particulares de música, participando en proyectos locales como Pichicahuin y Concepción 14, lo que le otorga un campo de observación privilegiado en su área de investigación en música popular. Ha colaborado con el colectivo Historia Mapuche de la ciudad de Concepción en el área etnomusicológica y lleva a cabo investigaciones arqueomusicológicas con aerófonos líticos del wallmapu, a partir de las colecciones CAP del laboratorio de arqueología de la Universidad de Concepción y la muestra de aerófonos líticos del MHNCO. Actualmente se desempeña como músico e investigador de música popular chilena. Aníbal Fuentealba Acuña es sociólogo por la Universidad ARCIS, magister en sociología y diplomado en estudios de música popular por la Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Docente e investigador independiente en temas de sociología de la música, en particular vinculado a temáticas de género, política y movimientos sociales, además ha trabajado en metodologías de investigación cualitativa. Se desempeñó como coordinador de proyectos y en el archivo de la Fundación Víctor Jara por más de diez años. Luis Pérez Valero es doctorando en música por la Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, compositor, musicólogo, director de orquesta, docente y productor musical. Posee un máster universitario en música española e hispanoamericana por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2012), un magíster en música por la Universidad Simón Bolívar (2009) y una licenciatura en música, mención composición por IUDEM-UNEARTE (2005). Como investigador ha publicado los libros Producción musical. Pedagogía e investigación en artes (2020) y El discurso tropical. Industrias culturales y producción musical (2018), así como artículos en diversas revistas arbitradas. Como compositor su obra es publicada y distribuida por la editorial estadounidense Cayambis Music Press. Es docente e investigador de la Universidad de las Artes del Ecuador en Guayaquil. Néstor Dueñas-Torres es Magister en Musicología por la Universidad Nacional de Colombia y egresado del programa de Music Business y Recording Arts de Full Sail University. Fue chelista de la Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil de Colombia y bajista en grupos de música popular; actualmente toca tiple. Ha compuesto música para documentales y tiene experiencia en producción musical, postproducción de audio para audiovisuales, diseño de sonido y sonido directo. Actualmente investiga temas relacionados con la industria cultural, el rock en español y la historia de la música. También es docente y administra su estudio de grabación. Además, colabora con el manejo de redes, produce y edita los podcasts de la Maestría en Musicología de la Universidad Nacional, y es miembro de la IMS –International Musicological Society–. María Jesús Silva es Licenciada en Educación y Pedagogía en Música por la Facultad de Artes y Educación Física de la Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación de Santiago de Chile. Actualmente opta al título de Profesora de Música con una memoria vinculada a cancioneros del siglo XX como herramienta pedagógica. Es guitarrista y cantante de la banda Sargento Merkén www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZQbIuEag8U Javier Paredes es Magister en Musicología Latinoamericana por la Universidad Alberto Hurtado y Licenciado en Música por la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile con mención en Interpretación en Guitarra Clásica y Musicología. Su área de interés está enfocada en los estudios en música popular, específicamente, el desarrollo de géneros musicales en Chile y el análisis musical. Ha trabajado como ayudante de investigación en proyectos Fondecyt relacionados con la música popular chilena y publicado artículos en revistas académicas y medios independientes. Sus investigaciones recientes están enfocadas en la emergencia y desarrollo del Nuevo Pop Chileno en los años ochenta y el análisis musical del LP Pájaros de Arcilla de la banda chilena de fusión Congreso. Este número fue arbitrado por Agustín Ruiz, Alejandro Gana, Ana María Alarcón, Eileen Karmy, Ignacia Cortés, Jaime Camilo Ramírez, Javier A. Silva-Zurita, Juan Carlos Poveda, Juan David Luján, María de los Ángeles Montes, Martín Farías, Renato Romero y Viviana Silva.

IntroductionThe “North” is given explicitly “Nordic” value in extreme metal, as a vehicle for narratives of identity, nationalism and ideology. However, we also contend that “Nordicness” is articulated in diverse and contradictory ways in extreme metal contexts. We examine Nordicness in three key iterations: firstly, Nordicness as a brand tied to extremity and “authenticity”; secondly, Nordicness as an expression of exclusory ethnic belonging and ancestry; and thirdly, Nordicness as an imagined community of liberal democracy.In situating Nordicness across these iterations, we call into focus how the value of the “North” in metal discourse unfolds in different contexts with different implications. We argue that “Nordicness” as it is represented in extreme metal scenes cannot be considered as a uniform, essential category, but rather one marked by tensions and paradoxes that undercut the possibility of any singular understanding of the “North”. Deploying textual and critical discourse analysis, we analyse what Nordicness is made to mean in extreme metal scenes. Furthermore, we critique understandings of the “North” as a homogenous category and instead interrogate the plural ways in which “Nordic” meaning is articulated in metal. We focus specifically on Nordic Extreme Metal. This subgenre has been chosen with an eye to the regional complexities of the Nordic area in Northern Europe, the popularity of extreme metal in Nordic markets, and the successful global marketing of Nordic metal bands and styles.We use the term “Nordic” in line with Loftsdóttir and Jensen’s definition, wherein the “Nordic countries” encompass Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland, and the autonomous regions of Greenland: the Faroe Islands and the Aland Islands (3). “Nordic-ness”, they argue, is the cultural identity of the Nordic countries, reified through self-perception, internationalisation and “national branding” (Loftsdóttir and Jensen 2).In referring to “extreme metal”, we draw from Kahn-Harris’s characterisation of the term. “Extreme metal” represents a cluster of heavy metal subgenres–primarily black metal, death metal, thrash metal, doom metal and grindcore–marked by their “extremity”; their impetus towards “[un]conventional musical aesthetics” (Kahn-Harris 6).Nonetheless, we remain acutely aware of the complexities that attend both terms. Just as extreme metal itself is “exceptionally diverse” (Kahn-Harris 6) and “constantly developing and reconfiguring” (Kahn-Harris 7), the category of the “Nordic” is also a site of “diverse experiences” (Loftsdóttir & Jensen 3). We seek to move beyond any essentialist understanding of the “Nordic” and move towards a critical mapping of the myriad ways in which the “Nordic” is given value in extreme metal contexts.Branding the North: Nordicness as Extremity and AuthenticityMetal’s relationship with the Nordic countries has become a key area of interest for both popular and scholarly accounts of heavy metal as the genre has rapidly expanded in the region. The Nordic countries currently boast the highest rate of metal bands per capita (Grandoni). Since the mid-2000s, metal scholars have displayed an accelerated interest in the “cultural aesthetics and identity politics” of metal in Northern Europe (Brown 261). Wider popular interest in Nordic metal has been assisted by the notoriety of the Norwegian black metal scene of the early 1990s, wherein a series of murders and church arsons committed by scene members formed the basis for popular texts such as Moynihan and Søderlind’s book Lords of Chaos and Aites and Ewell’s documentary Until the Light Takes Us.Invocations of Nordicness in metal music are not a new phenomenon, nor have such allusions been strictly limited to Northern European artists. Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden displayed an interest in Norse mythology, while Venom and Manowar frequently drew on Nordic imagery in their performance and visual aesthetics.This interest in the North was largely ephemeral–the use of popular Nordic iconography stressed romanticised constructions of the North as a site of masculine liberty, rather than locating such archetypes in a historical context. Such narratives of Nordic masculinity, liberty and heathenry nevertheless become central to heavy metal’s contextual discourses, and point to the ways in which “Nordicness” becomes mobilised as a particular branded category.Whilst Nordic “branding” for earlier heavy metal bands was largely situated in romantic imaginings of the ancient North, in the late 1980s there emerged “a secondary usage” of Nordic identity and iconography by Northern European metal bands (Trafford & Pluskowski 58). Such “Nordicness” laid far more stress on historical context, national identity and notions of ancestry, and, crucially, a sense of extremity and isolation. This emphasis on metal’s extremity beyond the mainstream has long been a crucial component in the marketing of Nordic scenes.Such “extremity” is given mutually supportive value as “authenticity”, where the term is understood as a value judgement (Moore 209) applied by audiences to discern if music remains committed to its own premises (Frith 71). Such questions of sincerity and commitment to metal’s core continue to circulate in the discourses of Nordic extreme metal. Sweden’s death metal underground, for example, was considered at “the forefront of one of the most extreme varieties of music yet conceived” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32), with both the Stockholm and Gothenburg “sounds” proving influential beyond Northern Europe (Kahn-Harris 106).Situating Nordicness as a distinct identity beyond metal’s commercial appeal underscores much of the marketing of Nordic extreme metal to international audiences. Such discourses continue in contemporary contexts–Finland’s official website promotes metal as a form of Finnish art and culture: “By definition, heavy metal fans crave music from outside the mainstream. They champion material that boldly stands out against the normality of pop” (Weaver).The focus on Nordic metal existing “outside” the mainstream is commensurate with understandings of extreme metal as “on the edge of music” (Kahn-Harris 5). Such sentiments are situated in a wider regional narrative that sees the Nordic region at the geographic “edge” of Europe, as remote and isolated (Grimley 2). The apparent isolation that enables the distinctiveness of “Nordic” forms of extreme metal is, however, potentially undercut by the widespread circulation of “Nordicness” as a particular brand.“Nordic extreme metal” can be understood as both a generic and place-based scene, where genre and geography “cross cut and coincide in complex ways” (Kahn-Harris 99). The Bergen black metal sound, for example, much like the Gothenburg death metal sound, is both a geographic and stylistic marker that is replicated in different contexts.This Nordic branding of musical styles is further affirmed by the wider means through which “Nordic”, “Scandinavian” and the “North” become interchangeable frameworks for the marketing of particular styles of extreme metal. “Nordic metal”, Von Helden thus argues, “is a trademark and a best seller” (33).Nordicness as Exclusory Belonging and AncestryMarketing strategies that rely on constructions of Nordic metal as “beyond the mainstream” at once exotify and homogenise the “Nordic”. Sentiments of an “imagined community of Nordicness” (Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen 279) have created problematic boundaries of who, or what, may be represented in such categories.Understandings of “Nordicness” as a site of generic “purity” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32) are therefore both tacitly and explicitly underscored by projections of ethnic purity and “belonging”. As such, where we have previously considered the cultural capital of the “Nordic” as it emerges as a particular branding exercise, here we examine the exclusory impetus of homogenous understandings of the Nordic.Nordicness in this context connotes explicitly racialised value, which interpellates images of Viking heathenry to enable fantasies of the pure, white North. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the context of Norwegian black metal, which bases its own self-mythologising in explicitly Nordic parameters. Norwegian black metal bands and members of the broader scene have often taken steps to continually affirm their Nordicness through various representational strategies. The widespread church burnings associated with the early Norwegian black metal scene, for instance, can be framed as a radical rejection of Christianity and an embracing of Norway’s Viking, pagan past.The ethnoromanticisation of Nordic regions and landscapes is underscored by problematic projections of national belonging. An interest in pagan mythology, as Kahn-Harris notes, can easily become an interest in racism and fascism (41). The “uncritical celebration of pagan pasts, the obsession with the unpolluted countryside and the distrust of the cosmopolitan city” that mark much Norwegian black metal were also common features of early fascist and racist movements (Kahn-Harris 41).Norwegian black metal has thus been able to link the genre, as a global music commodity, to “the conscious revival of myths and ideologies of an ancient northern European history and nationalist culture” (Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen 279). The conscious revival of such myths materialised in the early Norwegian scene in deliberately racist sentiments. Mayhem drummer Jan Axel Blomberg (“Hellhammer”) demonstrates this in his brief declaration that “Black metal is for white people” (in Moynihan and Søderlind 305); similarly, Darkthrone’s original back cover of Transylvanian Hunger (1994) prominently featured the phrase “Norsk Arisk Black Metal” (“Norwegian Aryan Black Metal”). Nordicness as exclusory white, Aryan identity is further mobilised in the National Socialist Black Metal scene, which readily caters to ontological constructions of Nordic whiteness (Spracklen, True Aryan; Hagen).However, Nordicness is also given racialised value in more tacit, but nonetheless troubling ways in wider Nordic folk and Viking metal scenes. The popular association of Vikings with Nordic folk metal has enabled such figures to be dismissed as performative play or camp romanticism, ostensibly removed from the extremity of black metal. Such metal scenes and their appeals to ethnosymbolic patriarchs nevertheless remain central to the ongoing construction of Nordic metal as a site that enables the instrumentality of Northern European whiteness precisely through hiding such whiteness in plain sight (Spracklen, To Holmgard, 359).The ostensibly “camp” performance of bands such as Sweden’s Amon Amarth, Faroese act Týr, or Finland’s Korpiklaani distracts from the ways in which Nordicness, and its realisations through Viking and Pagan symbolism, emerges as a claim to ethnic exclusivity. Through imagining the Viking as an ancestral, genetic category, the “common past” of the Nordic people is constructed as a self-identity apart from other people (Blaagaard 11).Furthermore, the “Viking” itself has cultural capital that has circulated beyond Northern Europe in both inclusive and exclusive ways. Nordic symbolism and mythologies are invoked within the textual aesthetics of heavy metal communities across the globe–there are Viking metal bands in Australia, for instance. Further, the valorising of the “North” in metal discourse draws on the symbols of particular ethnic traditions to give historicity and local meaning to white identity.Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen map the rhetorical power of the “North” in English folk metal. However, the same international flows of Nordic cultural capital that have allowed for the success and distinctiveness of Nordic extreme metal have also enabled the proliferation of increasingly exclusionary practices. A flyer signed by the “Wiking Hordes” in May of 1995 (in Moynihan and Søderlind 327) warns that the expansion of black and death metal into Asia, Eastern Europe and South America posed a threat to the “true Aryan” metal community.Similarly, online discussions of the documentary Pagan Metal, in which an interviewee states that a Brazilian Viking metal band is “a bit funny”, shifted between assertions that enjoyment should not be restricted by cultural heritage and declarations that only Nordic bands could “legitimately” support Viking metal. Giving Nordicness value as a form of insular, ethnic belonging has therefore had exclusory and problematic implications for how metal scenes market their dominant symbols and narratives, particularly as scenes continue to grow and diversify across multiple national contexts.Nordicness as Liberal DemocracyNordicness in heavy metal, as we have argued, has been ascribed cultural capital as both a branded, generic phenomenon and as a marker of ancestral, ethnonational belonging. Understandings of “Nordic” as an exclusory ethnic category marked by strict boundaries however come into conflict with the Nordic region’s self-perceptions as a liberal democracy.We propose an additional iteration for “Nordicness” as a means of pointing to the tensions that emerge between particular metallic imaginings of the “North” as a remote, uncompromising site of pagan liberty, and the material realities of modern Nordic nation states. We consider some new parameters for articulations of “Nordicness” in metal scenes: Nordicness as material and political conditions that have enabled the popularity of heavy metal in the region, and furthermore, the manifestations of such liberal democratic discourses in Nordic extreme metal scenes.Nordicness as a cultural, political brand is based in perceptions of the Nordic countries as “global good citizens”, “peace loving”, “conflict-resolution oriented” and “rational” (Loftsdóttir and Jensen 2). This modern conception of Nordicness is grounded in the region’s current political climate, which took its form in the post-World War II rejection of fascism and the following refugee crisis.Northern Europe’s reputation as a “famously tolerant political community” (Dworkin 487) can therefore be seen, one on hand, as a crucial disconnect from the intolerant North mediated by factions of Nordic extreme metal scenes and on the other, a political community that provides the material conditions which allow extreme metal to flourish. Nordicness here, we argue, is a crucial form of scenic infrastructure–albeit one that has been both celebrated and condemned in the sites and spaces of Nordic extreme metal.The productivity and stability of extreme metal in the Nordic countries has been attributed to a variety of institutional factors: the general relative prosperity of Northern Europe (Terry), Scandinavian legal structures (Maguire 156), universal welfare, high levels of state support for cultural development, and a broad emphasis on musical education in schools.Kahn-Harris argues that the Swedish metal scene is supported by the strength of the Swedish music industry and “Swedish civil society in general” (108). Music education is strongly supported by the state; Sweden’s relatively generous welfare and education system also “provide [an] effective subsidy for music making” (108). Furthermore, he argues that the Swedish scene has benefited from being closer to the “cultural mainstream of the country than is the case in many other countries” (108). Such close relationships to the “cultural mainstream” also invite a critical backlash against the state. The anarchistic anti-government stance of Swedish hardcore bands or the radical individualism of Norwegian black metal embodies this backlash.Early black metal is seen as a targeted response to the “oppressive and numbing social democracy which dominated Norwegian political life” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32). This spurning of social democracy is further articulated by Darkthrone founder Fenriz, who states that black metal “…is every man for himself… It is individualism above all” (True Norwegian Black Metal). Nordic extreme metal’s emphasis on independence and anti-modernity is hence immediately troubled by the material reality of the conditions that allow it to flourish. Nordicness thus gains complex realisation as both radical individualism and democratic infrastructural conditions.In looking towards future directions for expressions of the “Nordic” in extreme metal scenes, we want to consider how Nordicness can be articulated not as exclusory ethnic belonging and individualist misanthropy, but rather illustrate how Nordic scenes have also proffered sites for progressive, anti-racist discourses that speak to the cultural branding of the North as a tolerant political community.Imaginings of the North as ethnically homogenous or pure are complicated by Nordic bands and fans who actively critique such racialised discourses, and instead situate “Nordic” metal as a site of heterogeneity and anti-racist activism. The liberal politics of the region are most clearly articulated in the music of Swedish hardcore and extreme metal bands, particularly those originating in the northern university town of Umeå. Like much of Europe’s underground music scene, Umeå hardcore bands are often aligned with the anti-fascist movement and its message of tolerance and active anti-racist, anti-homophobic and anti-sexist resistance and protest. Refused is the most well-known example, speaking out against capitalism and in favour of animal rights and civil liberties. Scandinavian DIY acts have also long played a crucial role in facilitating the global diffusion of anti-capitalist punk and hardcore music (Haenfler 287).Nonetheless, whilst such acts remain important sites of progressive discourses in homogenous constructions of Nordicness, such an argument for tolerance and diversity is difficult to maintain when the majority of the scene’s successful bands are made up of white, ethnically Scandinavian men. As such, in moving towards future considerations for Nordicness in extreme metal scenes, we thus call into focus a fragmentation of “Nordicness”, precisely to divorce it from homogenous constructions of the “Nordic”, and enable greater critical interrogation and plurality of the notion of the “North” in metal scholarship.ConclusionThis article has pointed towards a multiplicity of Nordic discourses that unfold in metal: Nordic as a marketing tool, Nordic as an ethnic signifier, and Nordic as the political reality of liberal democratic Northern Europe–and the tensions that emerge in their encounters and intersections. In arguing for multiple understandings of “Nordicness” in metal, we contend that the cultural capital that accompanies the “Nordic” actually emerges as a series of fragmented, often conflicting categories.In examining how images of the North as an isolated location at the edge of the world inform the branded construction of Nordic metal as sites of presumed authenticity, we considered how scenes such as Swedish death metal and Norwegian black metal were marketed precisely through their Nordicness, where their geographic isolation from the commercial centre of heavy metal was used to affirm their “Otherness” to their mainstream metal counterparts. This “otherness” has in turn enabled constructions of Nordic metal scenes as sites of not only metallic purity in their isolation from “commercial” metal scenes, but also ethnic homogeneity. Nordicness, in this instance, becomes inscribed with explicitly racialised value that interpellates images of Viking heathenry to bolster phantasmic imaginings of the pure, white North.However, as we argue in the third section, such exclusory narratives of Nordic belonging come into conflict with Northern Europe’s own self image as a site of progressive liberal democracy. We argue that Nordicness here can be taken as a political imperative towards socialist democracy, wherein such conditions have enabled the widespread viability of extreme metal; yet also invited critical backlashes against the modern political state.Ultimately, in responding to our own research question–what is the cultural capital of “Nordicness” in metal?–we assert that such capital is realised in multiple iterations, undermining any possibility of a uniform category of “Nordicness”, and exposing its political tensions and paradoxes. 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'He did what the cipher could not, he rescued himself.' -- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (23) On many levels, the new Nine Inch Nails album The Fragile is a gritty meditation about different types of End: the eternal relationship cycle of 'fragility, tension, ordeal, fragmentation' (adapted, with apologies to Wilhelm Reich); fin-de-siècle anxiety; post-millennium foreboding; a spectre of the alien discontinuity that heralds an on-rushing future vastly different from the one envisaged by Enlightenment Project architects. In retrospect, it's easy for this perspective to be dismissed as jargon-filled cyber-crit hyperbole. Cyber-crit has always been at its best too when it invents pre-histories and finds hidden connections between different phenomena (like the work of Greil Marcus and early Mark Dery), and not when it is closer to Chinese Water Torture, name-checking the canon's icons (the 'Deleuze/Guattari' tag-team), texts and key terms. "The organization of sound is interpreted historically, politically, socially ... . It subdues music's ambition, reins it in, restores it to its proper place, reconciles it to its naturally belated fate", comments imagineer Kodwo Eshun (4) on how cyber-crit destroys albums and the innocence of the listening experience. This is how official histories are constructed a priori and freeze-dried according to personal tastes and prior memes: sometimes the most interesting experiments are Darwinian dead-ends that fail to make the canon, or don't register on the radar. Anyone approaching The Fragile must also contend with the music industry's harsh realities. For every 10 000 Goth fans who moshed to the primal 'kill-fuck-dance' rhythms of the hit single "Closer" (heeding its siren-call to fulfil basic physiological needs and build niche-space), maybe 20 noted that the same riff returned with a darker edge in the title track to The Downward Spiral, undermining the glorification of Indulgent hedonism. "The problem with such alternative audiences," notes Disinformation Creative Director Richard Metzger, "is that they are trying to be different -- just like everyone else." According to author Don Webb, "some mature Chaos and Black Magicians reject their earlier Nine Inch Nails-inspired Goth beginnings and are extremely critical towards new adopters because they are uncomfortable with the subculture's growing popularity, which threatens to taint their meticulously constructed 'mysterious' worlds. But by doing so, they are also rejecting their symbolic imprinting and some powerful Keys to unlocking their personal history." It is also difficult to separate Nine Inch Nails from the commercialisation and colossal money-making machine that inevitably ensued on the MTV tour circuit: do we blame Michael Trent Reznor because most of his audience are unlikely to be familiar with 'first-wave' industrial bands including Cabaret Voltaire and the experiments of Genesis P. Orridge in Throbbing Gristle? Do we accuse Reznor of being a plagiarist just because he wears some of his influences -- Dr. Dre, Daft Punk, Atari Teenage Riot, Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), Tom Waits's Bone Machine (1992), David Bowie's Low (1977) -- on his sleeve? And do we accept no-brain rock critic album reviews who quote lines like 'All the pieces didn't fit/Though I really didn't give a shit' ("Where Is Everybody?") or 'And when I suck you off/Not a drop will go to waste' ("Starfuckers Inc") as representative of his true personality? Reznor evidently has his own thoughts on this subject, but we should let the music speak for itself. The album's epic production and technical complexity turned into a post-modern studio Vision Quest, assisted by producer Alan Moulder, eleventh-hour saviour Bob Ezrin (brought in by Reznor to 'block-out' conceptual and sonic continuity), and a group of assault-technicians. The fruit of these collaborations is an album where Reznor is playing with our organism's time-binding sense, modulating strange emotions through deeply embedded tonal angularities. During his five-year absence, Trent Reznor fought diverse forms of repetitious trauma, from endogenous depression caused by endless touring to the death of his beloved grandmother (who raised him throughout childhood). An end signals a new beginning, a spiral is an open-ended and ever-shifting structure, and so Reznor sought to re-discover the Elder Gods within, a shamanic approach to renewal and secular salvation utilised most effectively by music PR luminary and scientist Howard Bloom. Concerned with healing the human animal through Ordeals that hard-wire the physiological baselines of Love, Hate and Fear, Reznor also focusses on what happens when 'meaning-making' collapses and hope for the future cannot easily be found. He accurately captures the confusion that such dissolution of meaning and decline of social institutions brings to the world -- Francis Fukuyama calls this bifurcation 'The Great Disruption'. For a generation who experienced their late childhood and early adolescence in Reagan's America, Reznor and his influences (Marilyn Manson and Filter) capture the Dark Side of recent history, unleashed at Altamont and mutating into the Apocalyptic style of American politics (evident in the 'Star Wars'/SDI fascination). The personal 'psychotic core' that was crystallised by the collapse of the nuclear family unit and supportive social institutions has returned to haunt us with dystopian fantasies that are played out across Internet streaming media and visceral MTV film-clips. That such cathartic releases are useful -- and even necessary (to those whose lives have been formed by socio-economic 'life conditions') is a point that escapes critics like Roger Scruton, some Christian Evangelists and the New Right. The 'escapist' quality of early 1980s 'Rapture' and 'Cosmocide' (Hal Lindsey) prophecies has yielded strange fruit for the Children of Ezekiel, whom Reznor and Marilyn Manson are unofficial spokes-persons for. From a macro perspective, Reznor's post-human evolutionary nexus lies, like J.G. Ballard's tales, in a mythical near-future built upon past memory-shards. It is the kind of worldview that fuses organic and morphogenetic structures with industrial machines run amok, thus The Fragile is an artefact that captures the subjective contents of the different mind produced by different times. Sonic events are in-synch but out of phase. Samples subtly trigger and then scramble kinaesthetic-visceral and kinaesthetic-tactile memories, suggestive of dissociated affective states or body memories that are incapable of being retrieved (van der Kolk 294). Perhaps this is why after a Century of Identity Confusion some fans find it impossible to listen to a 102-minute album in one sitting. No wonder then that the double album is divided into 'left' and 'right' discs (a reference to split-brain research?). The real-time track-by-track interpretation below is necessarily subjective, and is intended to serve as a provisional listener's guide to the aural ur-text of 1999. The Fragile is full of encrypted tones and garbled frequencies that capture a world where the future is always bleeding into a non-recoverable past. Turbulent wave-forms fight for the listener's attention with prolonged static lulls. This does not make for comfortable or even 'nice' listening. The music's mind is a snapshot, a critical indicator, of the deep structures brewing within the Weltanschauung that could erupt at any moment. "Somewhat Damaged" opens the album's 'Left' disc with an oscillating acoustic strum that anchor's the listener's attention. Offset by pulsing beats and mallet percussion, Reznor builds up sound layers that contrast with lyrical epitaphs like 'Everything that swore it wouldn't change is different now'. Icarus iconography is invoked, but perhaps a more fitting mythopoeic symbol of the journey that lies ahead would be Nietzsche's pursuit of his Ariadne through the labyrinth of life, during which the hero is steadily consumed by his numbing psychosis. Reznor fittingly comments: 'Didn't quite/Fell Apart/Where were you?' If we consider that Reznor has been repeating the same cycle with different variations throughout all of his music to date, retro-fitting each new album into a seamless tapestry, then this track signals that he has begun to finally climb out of self-imposed exile in the Underworld. "The Day the World Went Away" has a tremendously eerie opening, with plucked mandolin effects entering at 0:40. The main slashing guitar riff was interpreted by some critics as Reznor's attempt to parody himself. For some reason, the eerie backdrop and fragmented acoustic guitar strums recalls to my mind civil defence nuclear war films. Reznor, like William S. Burroughs, has some powerful obsessions. The track builds up in intensity, with a 'Chorus of the Damned' singing 'na na nah' over apocalyptic end-times imagery. At 4:22 the track ends with an echo that loops and repeats. "The Frail" signals a shift to mournful introspectiveness with piano: a soundtrack to faded 8 mm films and dying memories. The piano builds up slowly with background echo, holds and segues into ... "The Wretched", beginning with a savage downbeat that recalls earlier material from Pretty Hate Machine. 'The Far Aways/Forget It' intones Reznor -- it's becoming clear that despite some claims to the contrary, there is redemption in this album, but it is one borne out of a relentless move forward, a strive-drive. 'You're finally free/You could be' suggest Reznor studied Existentialism during his psychotherapy visits. This song contains perhaps the ultimate post-relationship line: 'It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, did it?' It's over, just not the way you wanted; you can always leave the partner you're with, but the ones you have already left will always stain your memories. The lines 'Back at the beginning/Sinking/Spinning' recall the claustrophobic trapped world and 'eternal Now' dislocation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder victims. At 3:44 a plucked cello riff, filtered, segues into a sludge buzz-saw guitar solo. At 5:18 the cello riff loops and repeats. "We're in This Together Now" uses static as percussion, highlighting the influence of electricity flows instead of traditional rock instrument configurations. At 0:34 vocals enter, at 1:15 Reznor wails 'I'm impossible', showing he is the heir to Roger Waters's self-reflective rock-star angst. 'Until the very end of me, until the very end of you' reverts the traditional marriage vow, whilst 'You're the Queen and I'm the King' quotes David Bowie's "Heroes". Unlike earlier tracks like "Reptile", this track is far more positive about relationships, which have previously resembled toxic-dyads. Reznor signals a delta surge (breaking through barriers at any cost), despite a time-line morphing between present-past-future. At 5:30 synths and piano signal a shift, at 5:49 the outgoing piano riff begins. The film-clip is filled with redemptive water imagery. The soundtrack gradually gets more murky and at 7:05 a subterranean note signals closure. "The Fragile" is even more hopeful and life-affirming (some may even interpret it as devotional), but this love -- representative of the End-Times, alludes to the 'Glamour of Evil' (Nico) in the line 'Fragile/She doesn't see her beauty'. The fusion of synths and atonal guitars beginning at 2:13 summons forth film-clip imagery -- mazes, pageants, bald eagles, found sounds, cloaked figures, ruined statues, enveloping darkness. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Pilgrimage" utilises a persistent ostinato and beat, with a driving guitar overlay at 0:18. This is perhaps the most familiar track, using Reznor motifs like the doubling of the riff with acoustic guitars between 1:12-1:20, march cries, and pitch-shift effects on a 3:18 drumbeat/cymbal. Or at least I could claim it was familiar, if it were not that legendary hip-hop producer and 'edge-of-panic' tactilist Dr. Dre helped assemble the final track mix. "No, You Don't" has been interpreted as an attack on Marilyn Manson and Hole's Courntey Love, particularly the 0:47 line 'Got to keep it all on the outside/Because everything is dead on the inside' and the 2:33 final verse 'Just so you know, I did not believe you could sink so low'. The song's structure is familiar: a basic beat at 0:16, guitars building from 0:31 to sneering vocals, a 2:03 counter-riff that merges at 2:19 with vocals and ascending to the final verse and 3:26 final distortion... "La Mer" is the first major surprise, a beautiful and sweeping fusion of piano, keyboard and cello, reminiscent of Symbolist composer Debussy. At 1:07 Denise Milfort whispers, setting the stage for sometime Ministry drummer Bill Reiflin's jazz drumming at 1:22, and a funky 1:32 guitar/bass line. The pulsing synth guitar at 2:04 serves as anchoring percussion for a cinematic electronica mindscape, filtered through new layers of sonic chiaroscuro at 2:51. 3:06 phase shifting, 3:22 layer doubling, 3:37 outgoing solo, 3:50-3:54 more swirling vocal fragments, seguing into a fading cello quartet as shadows creep. David Carson's moody film-clip captures the end more ominously, depicting the beauty of drowning. This track contains the line 'Nothing can stop me now', which appears to be Reznor's personal mantra. This track rivals 'Hurt' and 'A Warm Place' from The Downward Spiral and 'Something I Can Never Have' from Pretty Hate Machine as perhaps the most emotionally revealing and delicate material that Reznor has written. "The Great Below" ends the first disc with more multi-layered textures fusing nostalgia and reverie: a twelve-second cello riff is counter-pointed by a plucked overlay, which builds to a 0:43 washed pulse effect, transformed by six second pulses between 1:04-1:19 and a further effects layer at 1:24. E-bow effects underscore lyrics like 'Currents have their say' (2:33) and 'Washes me away' (2:44), which a 3:33 sitar riff answers. These complexities are further transmuted by seemingly random events -- a 4:06 doubling of the sitar riff which 'glitches' and a 4:32 backbeat echo that drifts for four bars. While Reznor's lyrics suggest that he is unable to control subjective time-states (like The Joker in the Batman: Dark Knight series of Kali-yuga comic-books), the track constructions show that the Key to his hold over the listener is very carefully constructed songs whose spaces resemble Pythagorean mathematical formulas. Misdirecting the audience is the secret of many magicians. "The Way Out Is Through" opens the 'Right' disc with an industrial riff that builds at 0:19 to click-track and rhythm, the equivalent of a weaving spiral. Whispering 'All I've undergone/I will keep on' at 1:24, Reznor is backed at 1:38 by synths and drums coalescing into guitars, which take shape at 1:46 and turn into a torrential electrical current. The models are clearly natural morphogenetic structures. The track twists through inner storms and torments from 2:42 to 2:48, mirrored by vocal shards at 2:59 and soundscapes at 3:45, before piano fades in and out at 4:12. The title references peri-natal theories of development (particularly those of Stanislav Grof), which is the source of much of the album's imagery. "Into the Void" is not the Black Sabbath song of the same name, but a catchy track that uses the same unfolding formula (opening static, cello at 0:18, guitars at 0:31, drums and backbeat at 1:02, trademark industrial vocals and synth at 1:02, verse at 1:23), and would not appear out of place in a Survival Research Laboratories exhibition. At 3:42 Reznor plays with the edge of synth soundscapes, merging vocals at 4:02 and ending the track nicely at 4:44 alone. "Where Is Everybody?" emulates earlier structures, but relies from 2:01 on whirring effects and organic rhythms, including a flurry of eight beat pulses between 2:40-2:46 and a 3:33 spiralling guitar solo. The 4:26 guitar solo is pure Adrian Belew, and is suddenly ended by spluttering static and white noise at 5:13. "The Mark Has Been Made" signals another downshift into introspectiveness with 0:32 ghostly synth shimmers, echoed by cello at 1:04 which is the doubled at 1:55 by guitar. At 2:08 industrial riffs suddenly build up, weaving between 3:28 distorted guitars and the return of the repressed original layer at 4:16. The surprise is a mystery 32 second soundscape at the end with Reznor crooning 'I'm getting closer, all the time' like a zombie devil Elvis. "Please" highlights spacious noise at 0:48, and signals a central album motif at 1:04 with the line 'Time starts slowing down/Sink until I drown'. The psychic mood of the album shifts with the discovery of Imagination as a liberating force against oppression. The synth sound again is remarkably organic for an industrial album. "Starfuckers Inc" is the now infamous sneering attack on rock-stardom, perhaps at Marilyn Manson (at 3:08 Reznor quotes Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain'). Jungle beats and pulsing synths open the track, which features the sound-sculpting talent of Pop Will Eat Itself member Clint Mansell. Beginning at 0:26, Reznor's vocals appear to have been sampled, looped and cut up (apologies to Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs). The lines 'I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype/I listened to everyone now I know everyone was right' is a very savage and funny exposure of Manson's constant references to Friedrich Nietzsche's Herd-mentality: the Herd needs a bogey-man to whip it into submission, and Manson comes dangerous close to fulfilling this potential, thus becoming trapped by a 'Stacked Deck' paradox. The 4:08 lyric line 'Now I belong I'm one of the Chosen Ones/Now I belong I'm one of the Beautiful Ones' highlights the problem of being Elect and becoming intertwined with institutionalised group-think. The album version ditches the closing sample of Gene Simmons screaming "Thankyou and goodnight!" to an enraptured audience on the single from KISS Alive (1975), which was appropriately over-the-top (the alternate quiet version is worth hearing also). "The danger Marilyn Manson faces", notes Don Webb (current High Priest of the Temple of Set), "is that he may end up in twenty years time on the 'Tonight Show' safely singing our favourite songs like a Goth Frank Sinatra, and will have gradually lost his antinomian power. It's much harder to maintain the enigmatic aura of an Evil villain than it is to play the clown with society". Reznor's superior musicianship and sense of irony should keep him from falling into the same trap. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "The Big Come Down" begins with a four-second synth/static intro that is smashed apart by a hard beat at 0:05 and kaleidoscope guitars at 0:16. Critics refer to the song's lyrics in an attempt to project a narcissistic Reznor personality, but don't comment on stylistic tweaks like the AM radio influenced backing vocals at 1:02 and 1:19, or the use of guitars as a percussion layer at 1:51. A further intriguing element is the return of the fly samples at 2:38, an effect heard on previous releases and a possible post-human sub-text. The alien mythos will eventually reign over the banal and empty human. At 3:07 the synths return with static, a further overlay adds more synths at 3:45 as the track spirals to its peak, before dissipating at 3:1 in a mesh of percussion and guitars. "Underneath It All" opens with a riff that signals we have reached the album's climatic turning point, with the recurring theme of fragmenting body-memories returning at 0:23 with the line 'All I can do/I can still feel you', and being echoed by pulsing static at 0:42 as electric percussion. A 'Messiah Complex' appears at 1:34 with the line 'Crucify/After all I've died/After all I've tried/You are still inside', or at least it appears to be that on the surface. This is the kind of line that typical rock critics will quote, but a careful re-reading suggests that Reznor is pointing to the painful nature of remanifesting. Our past shapes us more than we would like to admit particularly our first relationships. "Ripe (With Decay)" is the album's final statement, a complex weaving of passages over a repetitive mesh of guitars, pulsing echoes, back-beats, soundscapes, and a powerful Mike Garson piano solo (2:26). Earlier motifs including fly samples (3:00), mournful funeral violas (3:36) and slowing time effects (4:28) recur throughout the track. Having finally reached the psychotic core, Reznor is not content to let us rest, mixing funk bass riffs (4:46), vocal snatches (5:23) and oscillating guitars (5:39) that drag the listener forever onwards towards the edge of the abyss (5:58). The final sequence begins at 6:22, loses fidelity at 6:28, and ends abruptly at 6:35. At millennium's end there is a common-held perception that the world is in an irreversible state of decay, and that Culture is just a wafer-thin veneer over anarchy. Music like The Fragile suggests that we are still trying to assimilate into popular culture the 'war-on-Self' worldviews unleashed by the nineteenth-century 'Masters of Suspicion' (Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche). This 'assimilation gap' is evident in industrial music, which in the late 1970s was struggling to capture the mood of the Industrial Revolution and Charles Dickens, so the genre is ripe for further exploration of the scarred psyche. What the self-appointed moral guardians of the Herd fail to appreciate is that as the imprint baseline rises (reflective of socio-political realities), the kind of imagery prevalent throughout The Fragile and in films like Strange Days (1995), The Matrix (1999) and eXistenZ (1999) is going to get even darker. The solution is not censorship or repression in the name of pleasing an all-saving surrogate god-figure. No, these things have to be faced and embraced somehow. Such a process can only occur if there is space within for the Sadeian aesthetic that Nine Inch Nails embodies, and not a denial of Dark Eros. "We need a second Renaissance", notes Don Webb, "a rejuvenation of Culture on a significant scale". In other words, a global culture-shift of quantum (aeon or epoch-changing) proportions. The tools required will probably not come just from the over-wordy criticism of Cyber-culture and Cultural Studies or the logical-negative feeding frenzy of most Music Journalism. They will come from a dynamic synthesis of disciplines striving toward a unity of knowledge -- what socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson has described as 'Consilience'. Liberating tools and ideas will be conveyed to a wider public audience unfamiliar with such principles through predominantly science fiction visual imagery and industrial/electronica music. The Fragile serves as an invaluable model for how such artefacts could transmit their dreams and propagate their messages. For the hyper-alert listener, it will be the first step on a new journey. But sadly for the majority, it will be just another hysterical industrial album promoted as selection of the month. References Bester, Alfred. The Stars My Destination. London: Millennium Books, 1999. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books, 1998. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. "Trauma and Memory." Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. Eds. Bessel A. van der Kolk et al. New York: Guilford Press, 1996. Nine Inch Nails. Downward Spiral. Nothing/Interscope, 1994. ---. The Fragile. Nothing, 1999. ---. Pretty Hate Machine. TVT, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Alex Burns. "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php>. Chicago style: Alex Burns, "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Alex Burns. (1999) 'This machine is obsolete': a listeners' guide to Nine Inch Nails' The fragile. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionMusically-inclined people often speak about the soundtrack of their life, with certain songs indelibly linked to a specific moment. When hearing a particular song, it can “easily evoke a whole time and place, distant feelings and emotions, and memories of where we were, and with whom” (Lewis 135). Music has the ability to provide maps to real and imagined spaces, positioning people within a larger social environment where songs “are never just a song, but a connection, a ticket, a pass, an invitation, a node in a complex network” (Kun 3). When someone is lost in the music, they can find themselves transported somewhere else entirely without physically moving. This can be a blessing in some situations, for example, while living in a disaster zone, when almost any other time or place can seem better than the here and now. The city of Christchurch, New Zealand was hit by a succession of damaging earthquakes beginning with a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the early hours of 4 September 2010. The magnitude 6.3 earthquake of 22 February 2011, although technically an aftershock of the September earthquake, was closer and shallower, with intense ground acceleration that caused much greater damage to the city and its people (“Scientists”). It was this February earthquake that caused the total or partial collapse of many inner city buildings, and claimed the lives of 185 people. Everybody in Christchurch lost someone or something that day: their house or job; family members, friends, or colleagues; the city as they knew it; or their normal way of life. The broken central city was quickly cordoned off behind fences, with the few entry points guarded by local and international police and armed military personnel.In the aftermath of a disaster, circumstances and personal attributes will influence how people react, think and feel about the experience. Surviving a disaster is more than not dying, “survival is to do with quality of life [and] involves progressing from the event and its aftermath, and transforming the experience” (Hodgkinson and Stewart 2). In these times of heightened stress, music can be a catalyst for sharing and expressing emotions, connecting people and communities, and helping them make sense of what has happened (Carr 38; Webb 437). This article looks at some of the ways that popular songs and musical memories helped residents of a broken city remember the past and come to terms with the present.BackgroundExisting songs can take on new significance after a catastrophic event, even without any alteration. Songs such as Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? and Prayer for New Orleans have been given new emotional layers by those who were displaced or affected by Hurricane Katrina (Cooper 265; Sullivan 15). A thirty year-old song by Randy Newman, Louisiana, 1927, became something of “a contemporary anthem, its chorus – ‘Louisiana, they’re trying to wash us away’ – bearing new relevance” (Blumenfeld 166). Contemporary popular songs have also been re-mixed or revised after catastrophic events, either by the original artist or by others. Elton John’s Candle in the Wind and Beyonce’s Halo have each been revised twice by the artist after tragedy and disaster (Doyle; McAlister), while radio stations in the United States have produced commemorative versions of popular songs to mark tragedies and their anniversaries (Beaumont-Thomas; Cantrell). The use and appreciation of music after disaster is a reminder that popular music is fluid, in that it “refuses to provide a uniform or static text” (Connell and Gibson 3), and can simultaneously carry many different meanings.Music provides a soundtrack to daily life, creating a map of meaning to the world around us, or presenting a reminder of the world as it once was. Tia DeNora explains that when people hear a song that was once heard in, and remains associated with, a particular time and place, it “provides a device for unfolding, for replaying, the temporal structure of that moment, [which] is why, for so many people, the past ‘comes alive’ to its soundtrack” (67). When a community is frequently and collectively casting their minds back to a time before a catastrophic change, a sense of community identity can be seen in the use of, and reaction to, particular songs. Music allows people to “locate themselves in different imaginary geographics at one and the same time” (Cohen 93), creating spaces for people to retreat into, small ‘audiotopias’ that are “built, imagined, and sustained through sound, noise, and music” (Kun 21). The use of musical escape holes is prevalent after disaster, as many once-familiar spaces that have changed beyond recognition or are no longer able to be physically visited, can be easily imagined or remembered through music. There is a particular type of longing expressed by those who are still at home and yet cannot return to the home they knew. Whereas nostalgia is often experienced by people far from home who wish to return or those enjoying memories of a bygone era, people after disaster often encounter a similar nostalgic feeling but with no change in time or place: a loss without leaving. Glenn Albrecht coined the term ‘solastalgia’ to represent “the form of homesickness one experiences when one is still at home” (35). This sense of being unable to find solace in one’s home environment can be brought on by natural disasters such as fire, flood, earthquakes or hurricanes, or by other means like war, mining, climate change or gentrification. Solastalgia is often felt most keenly when people experience the change first-hand and then have to adjust to life in a totally changed environment. This can create “chronic distress of a solastalgic kind [that] would persist well after the acute phase of post-traumatic distress” (Albrecht 36). Just as the visible, physical effects of disaster last for years, so too do the emotional effects, but there have been many examples of how the nostalgia inherent in a shared popular music soundtrack has eased the pain of solastalgia for a community that is hurting.Pop Songs and Nostalgia in ChristchurchIn September 2011, one year after the initial earthquake, the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) announced a collaboration with Christchurch hip hop artist, Scribe, to remake his smash hit, Not Many, for charity. Back in 2003, Not Many debuted at number five on the New Zealand music charts, where it spent twelve weeks at number one and was crowned ‘Single of the Year’ (Sweetman, On Song 164). The punchy chorus heralded Scribe as a force to be reckoned with, and created a massive imprint on New Zealand popular culture with the line: “How many dudes you know roll like this? Not many, if any” (Scribe, Not Many). Music critic, Simon Sweetman, explains how “the hook line of the chorus [is now] a conversational aside that is practically unavoidable when discussing amounts… The words ‘not many’ are now truck-and-trailered with ‘if any’. If you do not say them, you are thinking them” (On Song 167). The strong links between artist and hometown – and the fact it is an enduringly catchy song – made it ideal for a charity remake. Reworded and reworked as Not Many Cities, the chorus now asks: “How many cities you know roll like this?” to which the answer is, of course, “not many, if any” (Scribe/BNZ, Not Many Cities). The remade song entered the New Zealand music charts at number 36 and the video was widely shared through social media but not all reception was positive. Parts of the video were shot in the city’s Red Zone, the central business district that was cordoned off from public access due to safety concerns. The granting of special access outraged some residents, with letters to the editor and online commentary expressing frustration that celebrities were allowed into the Red Zone to shoot a music video while those directly affected were not allowed in to retrieve essential items from residences and business premises. However, it is not just the Red Zone that features: the video switches between Scribe travelling around the broken inner city on the back of a small truck and lingering shots of carefully selected people, businesses, and groups – all with ties to the BNZ as either clients or beneficiaries of sponsorship. In some ways, Not Many Cities comes across like just another corporate promotional video for the BNZ, albeit with more emotion and a better soundtrack than usual. But what it has bequeathed is a snapshot of the city as it was in that liminal time: a landscape featuring familiar buildings, spaces and places which, although damaged, was still a recognisable version of the city that existed before the earthquakes.Before Scribe burst onto the music scene in the early 2000s, the best-known song about Christchurch was probably Christchurch (in Cashel St. I wait), an early hit from the Exponents (Mitchell 189). Initially known as the Dance Exponents, the group formed in Christchurch in the early 1980s and remained local and national favourites thanks to a string of hits Sweetman refers to as “the question-mark songs,” such as Who Loves Who the Most?, Why Does Love Do This to Me?, and What Ever Happened to Tracey? (Best Songwriter). Despite disbanding in 1999, the group re-formed to be the headline act of ‘Band Together’—a multi-artist, outdoor music event organised for the benefit of Christchurch residents by local musician, Jason Kerrison, formerly of the band OpShop. Attended by over 140,000 people (Anderson, Band Together), this nine-hour event brought joy and distraction to a shaken and stressed populace who, at that point in time (October 2010), probably thought the worst was over.The Exponents took the stage last, and chose Christchurch (in Cashel St. I Wait) as their final number. Every musician involved in the gig joined them on stage and the crowd rose to their feet, singing along with gusto. A local favourite since its release in 1985, the verses may have been a bit of a mumble for some, but the chorus rang out loud and clear across the park: Christchurch, In Cashel Street I wait,Together we will be,Together, together, together, One day, one day, one day,One day, one day, one daaaaaay! (Exponents, “Christchurch (in Cashel St. I Wait)”; lyrics written as sung)At that moment, forming an impromptu community choir of over 100,000 people, the audience was filled with hope and faith that those words would come true. Life would go on and people would gather together in Cashel Street and wait for normality to return, one day. Later the following year, the opening of the Re:Start container mall added an extra layer of poignancy to the song lyrics. Denied access to most of the city’s CBD, that one small part of Cashel Street now populated with colourful shipping containers was almost the only place in central Christchurch where people could wait. There are many music videos that capture the central city of Christchurch as it was in decades past. There are some local classics, like The Bats’ Block of Wood and Claudine; The Shallows’ Suzanne Said; Moana and the Moahunters’ Rebel in Me; and All Fall Down’s Black Gratten, which were all filmed in the 1980s or early 1990s (Goodsort, Re-Live and More Music). These videos provide many flashback moments to the city as it was twenty or thirty years ago. However, one post-earthquake release became an accidental musical time capsule. The song, Space and Place, was released in February 2013, but both song and video had been recorded not long before the earthquakes occurred. The song was inspired by the feelings experienced when returning home after a long absence, and celebrates the importance of the home town as “a place that knows you as well as you know it” (Anderson, Letter). The chorus features the line, “streets of common ground, I remember, I remember” (Franklin, Mayes, and Roberts, Space and Place), but it is the video, showcasing many of the Christchurch places and spaces only recently lost to the earthquakes, that tugs at people’s heartstrings. The video for Space and Place sweeps through the central city at night, with key heritage buildings like the Christ Church Cathedral, and the Catholic Basilica lit up against the night sky (both are still damaged and inaccessible). Producer and engineer, Rob Mayes, describes the video as “a love letter to something we all lost [with] the song and its lyrics [becoming] even more potent, poignant, and unexpectedly prescient post quake” (“Songs in the Key”). The Arts Centre features prominently in the footage, including the back alleys and archways that hosted all manner of night-time activities – sanctioned or otherwise – as well as many people’s favourite hangout, the Dux de Lux (the Dux). Operating from the corner of the Arts Centre site since the 1970s, the Dux has been described as “the city’s common room” and “Christchurch’s beating heart” by musicians mourning its loss (Anderson, Musicians). While the repair and restoration of some parts of the Arts Centre is currently well advanced, the Student Union building that once housed this inner-city social institution is not slated for reopening until 2019 (“Rebuild and Restore”), and whether the Dux will be welcomed back remains to be seen. Empty Spaces, Missing PlacesA Facebook group, ‘Save Our Dux,’ was created in early March 2011, and quickly filled with messages and memories from around the world. People wandered down memory lane together as they reminisced about their favourite gigs and memorable occasions, like the ‘Big Snow’ of 1992 when the Dux served up mulled wine and looked more like a ski chalet. Memories were shared about the time when the music video for the Dance Exponents’ song, Victoria, was filmed at the Dux and the Art Deco-style apartment building across the street. The reminiscing continued, establishing and strengthening connections, with music providing a stepping stone to shared experience and a sense of community. Physically restricted from visiting a favourite social space, people were converging in virtual hangouts to relive moments and remember places now cut off by the passing of time, the falling of bricks, and the rise of barrier fences.While waiting to find out whether the original Dux site can be re-occupied, the business owners opened new venues that housed different parts of the Dux business (live music, vegetarian food, and the bars/brewery). Although the fit-out of the restaurant and bars capture a sense of the history and charm that people associate with the Dux brand, the empty wasteland and building sites that surround the new Dux Central quickly destroy any illusion of permanence or familiarity. Now that most of the quake-damaged buildings have been demolished, the freshly-scarred earth of the central city is like a child’s gap-toothed smile. Wandering around the city and forgetting what used to occupy an empty space, wanting to visit a shop or bar before remembering it is no longer there, being at the Dux but not at the Dux – these are the kind of things that contributed to a feeling that local music writer, Vicki Anderson, describes as “lost city syndrome” (“Lost City”). Although initially worried she might be alone in mourning places lost, other residents have shared similar experiences. In an online comment on the article, one local resident explained how there are two different cities fighting for dominance in their head: “the new keeps trying to overlay the old [but] when I’m not looking at pictures, or in seeing it as it is, it’s the old city that pushes its way to the front” (Juniper). Others expressed relief that they were not the only ones feeling strangely homesick in their own town, homesick for a place they never left but that had somehow left them.There are a variety of methods available to fill the gaps in both memories and cityscape. The Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand (HITLab), produced a technological solution: interactive augmented reality software called CityViewAR, using GPS data and 3D models to show parts of the city as they were prior to the earthquakes (“CityViewAR”). However, not everybody needed computerised help to remember buildings and other details. Many people found that, just by listening to a certain song or remembering particular gigs, it was not just an image of a building that appeared but a multi-sensory event complete with sound, movement, smell, and emotion. In online spaces like the Save Our Dux group, memories of favourite bands and songs, crowded gigs, old friends, good times, great food, and long nights were shared and discussed, embroidering a rich and colourful tapestry about a favourite part of Christchurch’s social scene. ConclusionMusic is strongly interwoven with memory, and can recreate a particular moment in time and place through the associations carried in lyrics, melody, and imagery. Songs can spark vivid memories of what was happening – when, where, and with whom. A song shared is a connection made: between people; between moments; between good times and bad; between the past and the present. Music provides a soundtrack to people’s lives, and during times of stress it can also provide many benefits. The lyrics and video imagery of songs made in years gone by have been shown to take on new significance and meaning after disaster, offering snapshots of times, people and places that are no longer with us. Even without relying on the accompanying imagery of a video, music has the ability to recreate spaces or relocate the listener somewhere other than the physical location they currently occupy. This small act of musical magic can provide a great deal of comfort when suffering solastalgia, the feeling of homesickness one experiences when the familiar landscapes of home suddenly change or disappear, when one has not left home but that home has nonetheless gone from sight. The earthquakes (and the demolition crews that followed) have created a lot of empty land in Christchurch but the sound of popular music has filled many gaps – not just on the ground, but also in the hearts and lives of the city’s residents. 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The Shallows. “Suzanne Said.” [single]. New Zealand: self-released, 1985.

Luis Pérez Valero es doctorando en música por la Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina “Santa María de los Buenos Aires”; Máster universitario en música española e hispanoamericana (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2012); Magister en música (Universidad Simón Bolívar, 2009); Licenciado en música mención composición (Instituto Universitario de Estudios Musicales-UNEARTE, 2005). Sus investigaciones giran en torno al análisis de la música popular, la producción musical, estética de la grabación, entre otros. Ha publicado en diversas revistas académicas artículos de investigación en musicología para la producción musical y en artes. Ha publicado los libros El discurso tropical. Producción musical e industrias culturales (2018) y coautor de Producción musical. Pedagogía e investigación en artes (2020). Es compositor asociado a Cayambis Music Press. Actualmente se desempeña como docente, investigador y coordinador de la Unidad de Titulación en la Escuela de Artes Sonoras de la Universidad de las Artes, Carrera de Producción Musical. Juan Diego Parra Valencia tiene un PhD en Filosofía, especialista en literatura y músico. Docente-Investigador de la Facultad de Artes y Humanidades del Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano de Medellín. Ensayista y escritor con diversos artículos en áreas de filosofía, estética, arte, filosofía de la técnica, semiótica, cine y música. Ganador del Premio Nacional de Periodismo Simón Bolívar por el trabajo investigativo en el reportaje documental Cuando el chucu-chucu se vistió de frac (2014). Director y coguionista del documental Paparí. El pionero del rock tropical (2018). Publicaciones sobre música: El libro de la Cumbia. Resonancias, transferencias y transplantes de las cumbias latinoamericanas (2019-autor/compilador); Deconstruyendo el chucu-chucu. Auges, declives y resurrecciones de la música tropical colombiana (2017); Arqueología del chucu-chucu. La revolución sonora tropical urbana antioqueña. Medellín, años 60 y 70 (2014), Afrosound acústico para dúo de guitarras. Tramas y urdimbres de la interpretación clásica en el rock tropical colombiano (2020-coautor) Mónica Alexandra Herrera Colorado es Magíster en Artes Digitales del Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, Licenciada en Música de la Universidad de Antioquia. Músico y cantante desde hace más de 20 años en diferentes agrupaciones musicales, además tiene estudios técnicos en música, Tecnóloga en Informática Musical de Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano de Medellín y Administradora de empresas Agropecuarias. Nacida en Caldas Antioquia, Colombia. Ha participado en diferentes seminarios y asociaciones como ponente de investigaciones en temas relacionados con el análisis expresivo de la voz de la mujer y el canto de la música tropical colombiana. Actualmente es docente en el área de música del Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano. Juan Francisco Sans es Doctor en Humanidades, Magister Scientiarum en Musicología Latinoamericana y Licenciado en Artes de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, Profesor Ejecutante de Piano de la Escuela de Música Juan Manuel Olivares, y Maestro Compositor del Conservatorio Nacional de Música Juan José Landaeta en Caracas. Ha publicado cuatro libros, 60 artículos en revistas especializadas y capítulos en libros monográficos, 35 ediciones críticas de partituras, 13 discos compactos como productor, pianista y compositor. Ha ganado diversos premios y reconocimientos como compositor, ejecutante y musicólogo. Es profesor titular de la Universidad Central de Venezuela. Desde hace dos años y medio se desempeña como profesor-investigador en el Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano de Medellín. Ana María Díaz-Pinto es doctoranda en Etnomusicología por la Universidad de California, Davis y Licenciada en Música mención Musicología por la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Ha sido merecedora de la Beca del Rector en Artes, Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales para estudios doctorales de su casa de estudios y ha presentado sus trabajos académicos en conferencias organizadas por sociedades como IASPM-AL, Sociedad Chilena de Musicología y Asociación Latinoamericana de Antropología, entre otras. Sus intereses de investigación se relacionan con la música popular latinoamericana, cultura juvenil, performance y movimiento. Macarena Robledo-Thompson cursa el Magíster en Artes mención Música por la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile y Licenciada en Música mención Musicología por la misma casa de estudios. Es becaria ANID para Magíster Nacional y se ha desempeñado como asistente de investigación en proyectos FONDECYT y como ayudante de cátedra en el Instituto de Música de la PUC, de forma paralela a su trabajo como anotadora de programas en instituciones culturales. Sus principales intereses de investigación tienen relación con la música en Chile y Latinoamérica, específicamente los ámbitos relativos a la música y género y los estudios sobre ópera y voz. Paula Cristina Vilas es cantora, trabajadora vocal e investigadora. Profesora de la Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda, Departamento de Humanidades y Artes, y Maestría en Estéticas Latinoamericanas Contemporáneas. Es docente de Canto Colectivo I y II Escuela de Música Popular de Avellaneda y Escuela de Arte de Florencio Varela, provincia de Buenos Aires. Es Doctora en Artes Escénicas por la Universidad Federal de Bahía, Brasil con tesis y realización escénica centradas en la voz entre la etnografía y el trabajo vocal en escena. Realizó estudios en el Departamento de Etnomusicología de la Escuela de Antropología e Historia, México DF. Ha sido profesora visitante del Instituto de Arte de la Universidad de Brasilia y ha dictado seminarios en la Maestría en Arte Latinoamericano de Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Coordinó el grupo de investigación Voces y Vocalidades del Instituto de Investigación en Etnomusicología de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Ha publicado artículos, capítulos de libros y libros en coautoría; realizó conciertos, registros fonográficos y algunas producciones audiovisuales. María Pía Latorre es musicoterapeuta egresada de la Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, y docente en el Instituto Vocacional de Arte “José Manuel de Labardén”, dependiente del Ministerio de Cultura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Coordina talleres de Canto y Técnica Vocal para estudiantes de música y teatro. Se ha desempeñado como adjunta en el grupo de Investigación Voces y Vocalidades del Instituto de Investigación en Etnomusicología, del Ministerio de Cultura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y en los en seminarios: Voces y Vocalidades, Voces y técnicas en perspectiva de la vocalidad (2011- 2016) y proyectos de Investigación (2013-2016) coordinados por la Dra. Paula Vilas, con quien también ha presentado ponencias y talleres en congresos (UNNE, EMPA). Como cantante ha realizado diversas presentaciones y grabaciones y actualmente es integrante de Comando Pampero, trío de estilos pampeanos y milongas. Gabriela Mariana Castelli es Directora del Centro Fonoaudiológico Fonoar de la ciudad de La Plata y docente de la Tecnicatura en Fonoaudiología ISFDyT9 Es Doctoranda de la Universidad del Museo Social Argentino, UMSA y licenciada en Fonoaudiología por la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, entrenada en Voz, con formación de postgrado en Análisis Acústico de la Voz. Es cantante y compositora de canciones. Maria Virginia Zangroniz es Licenciada en Fonoaudiología por la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, entrenada en Voz y actriz de la Escuela de Teatro de La Plata. Integró la comisión de Voz del Colegio de Fonoaudiólogos de Buenos Aires, La Plata, y fue profesora de su posgrado en Voz profesional. Fue profesora titular de Eufonía y Educación vocal en la Licenciatura en Fonoaudiología, UCALP. Es docente a cargo de materias de Voz y Trabajo vocal, profesora del curso Una voz libre, formación de posgrado para docentes universitarios de la UNAJ, Florencio Varela. Profesora invitada de la Facultad de Medicina y Ciencias de la Salud de la Universidad de Barcelona; la Facultad de Trabajo Social, Universidad Nacional de La Plata; la Diplomatura en Salud Sexual y Reproductiva, Universidad Nacional de San Martín; y del proyecto de extensión “Más y más voces trans”, Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Es concurrente ad honorem desde el 2013 al Hospital “Dr. Ricardo Gutiérrez” de La Plata, integra el Equipo de atención de la Salud Integral de la Diversidad Sexual. Trabaja en el acompañamiento en la transición vocal de personas trans. Marcelo Fabián Martínez es músico, compositor y artista sonoro. Licenciado en Composición con Medios Electroacústicos por la Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, UNQ, es también clarinetista por el Conservatorio Nacional de Música “Carlos López Buchardo” y técnico en electrónica. Desde el año 2001 se dedica a realizar música original, diseño sonoro y puesta sonora para espectáculos escénicos y audiovisuales en festivales de arte de diversos países: Chile, Uruguay, Brasil, Colombia, México, Cuba, Canadá, Polonia, Holanda, Francia, España, Bélgica, Alemania y Argentina.Como docente, se desarrolla en el Área Transdepartamental de Artes Multimediales, y en la Especialización en Teatro de Objetos de la Universidad Nacional de las Artes; en el Conservatorio Superior de Música de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y en la Maestría en Arte Sonoro, (UNQ). Como docente investigador integra proyectos en la UNQ y en la UNA. Actualmente es director y profesor de la carrera “Producción Musical y Nuevas Tecnologías” de la UNQ. Liliana Toledo es doctoranda en Historia y Etnomusicología por la Universidad de Arizona, Maestra en Historia especializada en la historia cultural del México posrevolucionario y licenciada en Música. En sus tesis de maestría estudió el proyecto de educación musical rural de las Misiones Culturales. De 2010 a 2017 fue investigadora del CENIDIM, donde clasificó, describió y organizó el Archivo Histórico. Sus artículos han sido publicados en dos ocasiones en la Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Entre 2016-2020 fue parte del proyecto del CIESAS La razón cultural en el capitalismo contemporáneo. Un análisis comparativo sobre las representaciones y los estereotipos culturales en México y América Latina, auspiciado por el CONACYT. Los trabajos derivados de este proyecto fueron publicados en 2019 y 2020 en los volúmenes Cultura en venta 1 y 2, publicados por Random House. Se interesa en temas de género, migración y nacionalismo. Lorena Ardito Aldana es doctoranda en Estudios Latinoamericanos por la Universidad de Chile y Docente asociada de la Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano. Es música y tiene un magíster en Estudios Latinoamericanos de la UNAM. Ha desarrollado investigaciones y proyectos culturales sobre música, carnavales, afrodescendencia, género y derechos colectivos, e integrado diversas agrupaciones musicales y carnavaleras, así como colectivos de investigación interdisciplinaria. Actualmente es parte de la Escuela de Artes Comunitarias y Carnavaleras “La Remolino”, la Colectiva Tiesos pero Cumbiancheros, la Cooperativa T´ikana Ediciones, el Núcleo Kuriche, la Red Chilena de Estudios Afrodescendientes y el Festival de Marimbas Tradicionales Chile. Coordina junto a Mauricio Fidel Camacho el proyecto web La Caracola, dedicado a compilar y divulgar el legado de la maestra, intelectual, activista y folclorista afrocolombiana Alicia Camacho Garcés, y produce el Programa radial comunitario online Cultoras, junto a la percusionista chilena Karen Gómez. César Puentes Arcos es sociólogo de la Universidad de Chile y Magíster en Educación en la Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano. Desarrolló tareas de asesor para la Agencia de Calidad de la Educación y el Programa Interdisciplinario de Investigación en Educación. Desarrolla asesorías organizacionales con visión sistémica de integralidad. Además se desempeña como gestor cultural en el área del carnaval y la música popular. Actualmente trabaja como asesor educacional en innovación para la calidad y mediación de conflictos además de realizar gestión territorial desde una concepción participativa. Marisol García es periodista independiente, Premio Pulsar 2019 al Fomento de la Música y el Patrimonio. Cursa un magíster en Arte, Pensamiento y Cultura Latinoamericanos en el instituto IDEA-USACh. Mantiene desde 1995 un constante trabajo de colaboración en diarios, revistas y radios en escritura, entrevistas e investigación sobre canción popular, y ha desarrollado el mismo tema en encargos para documentales, libros y exposiciones en museos y bibliotecas. Consultora de bandas sonoras de cine chileno –Una mujer fantástica y Gloria, entre otras–. Es coeditora del sitio enciclopédico MusicaPopular.cl y parte del equipo que anualmente organiza el Festival IN-EDIT Chile, dedicado al cine y documental musical mundial. Es autora de los libros Canción valiente. 1960-1989. Tres décadas de canto social y político en Chile (Premio Municipal 2014 a la Mejor Investigación Periodística), Llora, corazón. El latido de la canción cebolla (Premio Pulsar 2018 a la Mejor Publicación Musical Literaria), Claudio Arrau (Finalista Premio Municipal 2020, en Género Referencial) y Lucho Gatica (2019). Además, ha editado libros sobre Violeta Parra, Los Jaivas, Osvaldo Gitano Rodríguez y Panteras Negras. Ricardo Salton ejerce la crítica y el periodismo musical en la ciudad de Buenos Aires; actualmente en la revista Noticias, el diario La Nación y Radio Nacional Clásica. Por décadas, fue el redactor sobre música popular del diario Ámbito Financiero. Además, trabaja en gestión cultural y, actualmente, en el Ministerio de Cultura nacional, como productor artístico y programador de elencos nacionales. Recibió los premios Konex y José Arverás por su labor periodística. Es Licenciado en Musicología por la Universidad Católica Argentina. Su área es la música popular y, en especial, el tango. Fue investigador del Instituto Nacional de Musicología Carlos Vega. Ejerció la docencia en distintas universidades del país. Publicó artículos en revistas académicas y presentó artículos en congresos y conferencias de musicología. Fue uno de los redactores sobre música popular argentina para el Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana. Nelson Rodríguez Vega es doctorando en Artes mención Música –modalidad investigación– por la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Es Profesor de Música y Licenciado en Educación por la Universidad de Concepción de Chile. Es Magíster en Artes mención Musicología por la Universidad de Chile. Actualmente. Es Becario de la Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo/Programa de Becas/Beca de Doctorado Nacional 21200805. También posee un diplomado en Estética y Filosofía por la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Se especializa en el estudio del rap/hip-hop chileno atendiendo problemáticas relativas a la identidad, práctica musical, influencia de la industria cultural y autenticidad. Su actual tesis de doctorado se centra en la emergencia del freestyle o batallas de gallos en Chile, una performance del hip-hop que basa en los duelos de improvisación. Ha publicado artículos y reseñas de libros, preferentemente sobre hip-hop, en revistas académicas chilenas y extranjeras. Este número fue arbitrado por Alejandro Gana, Carolina Santa María, Enrique Cámara, Fernanda Vera, Javier Silva, Jordi Tercero Bustamante, Juan Carlos Poveda, Julio Arce, Leonardo Díaz, Lizette Alegre, Natalia Bieletto, Nayive Ananías, Omar García Brunelli, Pablo Alabarces, Paloma Martin, Sebastián Muñoz, Silvia Martínez y Soledad Venegas.

Getting the Family Together: A Fieldwork Account The final gig of Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band’s 2013 tour is a hometown show at New Lambton Community Hall in Newcastle on the coast of New South Wales, Australia. The tour had already covered Newcastle and surrounds at various locations within 50 to 100km of the Newcastle CBD. In addition to lead singer and guitarist Bob Corbett, there are three main members of the Roo Grass Band, Sue Carson on fiddle and mandolin, Dave Carter on banjo, bass and bagpipes and Robbie Long on guitar, mandolin and bass. I enter the building and at the top of the stairs a tall, slim woman with a shock of red hair rushes to greet me with a hug, “It is so good to see you!”This is Veronica, Bob Corbett’s Mum. She’s been busy setting up the merchandise desk, taking tickets, and greeting almost every member of the audience by name. Veronica has functioned as de facto tour manager throughout the band’s Lucky Country Hall Tour. As well as running the merchandise desk and ticketing, she’s occasionally acted as roadie, and has supervised the packing of cars and trailers. These day-to-day jobs on the tour have been done with help from either her sister Roberta or, for most of the tour, a close friend of the band, Jenny. I deposit home-made chocolate brownies and biscuits in the kitchen, setting them up alongside fruit brownies made by Veronica for the audience. Bob’s wife, Kirrily, comes and says hello, followed by their son Marley, who heads straight for the goodies. Their daughter Matilda is running around with her best friend and next-door neighbour, Sophie. Dave, who plays banjo, bass and bagpipes in the band, greets his wife Karen as she arrives with their kids. The band’s fiddle player, Sue, is pacing around, looking fractious. I ask if she’s okay. “Yeah, it is just that my family is meant to be here already and they’re running late. They’re going to miss it.”Not long after, Sue’s partner, Michael (who is also Veronica’s brother, Bob’s uncle) arrives with their son Elijah and his son Gabe, in time for the show. This final gig of the tour seemed to have been largely arranged for the families of the band, and there was little advertising for it. In the way of family get-togethers a mix of tension and excitement fill the room. But once the band starts playing things calm down, a group of kids occupy the dance floor, twirling, swaying, skipping and running along with the music. Family, Authenticity, and Commercial Practices in Australian Country MusicI open with this fieldwork account to illuminate how the presence and involvement of family, through parents, spouses, aunts, uncles, children and even close friends are central to the experience of what it is to be a country music artist in Australia. In the case of Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band, for example, band members make choices to involve family in the activity of “being” a band—touring, performing, engaging with fans—and these choices have emotional value for them, but are also yoked to broader discourses of family which circulate in the field of Australian country music. This field story reveals that “family” is not something carved off from artists’ public engagement with the field of Australian country music but is central to it. Discourses of and around “family” are implicit in the practices of Australian country music artists and are strategically used by artists to define what country music is and what is valued in the field. Crucially, the discourse of family is used to support claims to authenticity within country music culture. Ideas about and associated practices concerning, “authenticity” permeate the culture of country music. The discourse reaches across all aspects of the field, and all participants in the scene are compelled to at least turn their minds to questions of authenticity, and develop strategies for dealing with them. Value is conferred on artists seen to convey so-called “true” and “genuine” personas. Indeed the country music community demands something referred to as “honesty” from performers. It needs to be noted that country music is a commercial popular music form and culture. Many agents in the scene have an uneasy symbolic relationship with the commercial aspects of country music, but it is a basic premise within the field: the music exists to make money. This is not to say that financial and popular success (in their quantifiable forms: money made, units sold, crowd sizes, radio spins) is the only thing valued in country music. As a form of cultural capital, authenticity is also valued. But within Australian country music a tension exists between the part of field underpinned by commercial logic and the idea of the popular and those underpinned by notions of creativity, independence and musical integrity. Authenticity is deployed to distinguish country music from other styles of music in a number of keys ways. Authenticity can be taken as an essential quality of music, which “honestly” reflects or expresses an identity or experience (e.g., Australian national identity, rural experience, heartbreak) (Watson, Volume 1; Watson, Volume 2; Sanjek); as a proper way of relating music, artist and audience (Smith); as a ideological watchword which tempers commerciality (Sanjek); or as something “fabricated” or constructed in the codification of the genre (Akenson; Peterson; Carriage and Hayward). I am not positing authenticity as a feature unique to Australian country music. A number of authors have highlighted the role authenticity plays in many forms of popular music to navigate, understand or obfuscate the functions of the commercial music industry and shape its output (Frith; Sanjek; Barker and Taylor). The scholarship on country music and popular music in general often explores how authenticity is inscribed in the products of country music, rather than the processes and practices behind those products: the everyday, extra-musical activities of participants in the scene. This article is concerned then with how discourses of authenticity are sutured to business, musical and promotional practices, and how such tropes function alongside discourses and practices concerning “family” in the negotiation of commercial realities in Australian country music. Rather than looking at end products, my research takes a ground-up approach, exploring what people are doing and how they talk about their practices and decisions. Discourses of “family”, and practices around kin, provide one of many possible entry points for this exploration. MethodologyThis article is based on ethnographic research on Australian country music. Between 2012-2014 I spent many months of focused immersion with Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band at festivals and on tour. This research was part of broader participant observation I conducted which included attending more than 150 country music events across New South Wales and Queensland. I also conducted hundreds of informal interviews at these events, as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key informants, including band members Bob Corbett, Sue Carson, Robbie Long, and Michael Carpenter (sometimes drummer).Bob Corbett was recognised by the “mainstream” Australian country music scene in 2012 after winning the Star Maker competition. Since the win Bob and the band’s success within the field has increased—higher album sales, larger crowds, more airplay, recognition, sponsorships and nomination for Golden Guitar Awards (the main Australian country music industry awards). They play a mercurial mix of styles including bluegrass, Western swing, pop folk, and rock. At the core is a concern with storytelling and live, acoustic based performance is central. Bob and the band are primarily engaging with the field of Australian country music (through festivals, media, and self-identification), rather than the folk or bluegrass scenes, which, while related, are distinct fields with different logics, rules and relations.The conceptual framework for this article is indebted to Pierre Bourdieu. In using the term “field” to talk about Australian country music, I understand it as a discrete, relatively autonomous social microcosm, which is located within the social space of Australian society and the broader music industry, yet it is ruled by logics which are “specific and irreducible to those that regulate other fields” (Bourdieu in Bourdieu and Wacquant 97). Australian country music consists of systems of relations, which define the occupants of the field—country musicians, country music stars, or country music fans (to name but a few)—and shape the products and practices of the field. Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band are participants in the field of Australian country music, and work to differentiate their position, and gain a monopoly over authority and influence within the field—to be recognised as successful, authentic country music artists (Bourdieu and Wacquant 100). This framework allows analytic space for exploring and understanding a tension between authenticity, as a form of cultural capital, and the commercial imperatives of country music as a popular music form.Family Bands and the Family BusinessThe significance and foregrounded presence of “family” within Australian country music is a result of the history of the field in which family bands have been prominent. The practice of touring with your spouse, children or other kin has been connected to a discourse of the “Family Band” in Australian country music. Slim Dusty and his family, as pioneers in the Australian country music industry, and arguably the most commercially and culturally successful artists in the scene’s history, are held up as an example par excellence of the country music canon, and provide the model for how country music should or could be done as a family. Slim, his wife Joy, daughter Anne Kirkpatrick and other extended family worked as a “family band” touring, performing, songwriting, recording, and being country music artists. As the “first family” Australian country music band (Baker; Ellis) they dominate the social and cultural imaginary of Australian country music. They represent a tradition of family involvement in the business of country music as a way of dealing with the practical realities of touring, providing emotional support and enjoyment, and as a part of a relatively conservative set of values drawn from country life­. These features work together to discursively distance the “family band” from the commercial music industry and imbue integrity and naturalness in those artists’ engagement with the music business. Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band is a family band: fiddle player Sue is Bob’s aunty; her partner Michael Stove, Bob’s uncle, was an original member of the Roo Grass Band. But more than that, the band understands themselves as a “family”. Sometimes-drummer in the band, Michael Carpenter, talked at length about the “Roo Grass Family” when I interviewed him, including the affective value he places on those relationships:I love it when Bob says… ‘Michael’s been a part of the Roo Grass family for a long time’ … it’s a very country music thing to say … when Bob says it, it actually means something, there’s a certain level of weight to it, because I know the way he treats his bands, I know the way he treats the people who are involved ... it does make them feel like they are a part of something special and so, and that’s beyond just doing a gig … it kind of creates this sense of loyalty that is important to me.The other members of the band also understand and value their involvement with the band in a similar way, and it spills into the chemistry the band has on stage, and the enjoyment they derive from playing together. The idea of the family band opens out beyond the actual band as well: the “Roo Grass Family” includes friends, fans and others with strong ties and involvement with the band.Practical, on the ground support (both on tour and also at home) offered by family to artists in Australian country music is a significant source of capital for those artists. However, participants also talk about this family help as a chance to spend time together, and couch it within discourses of loyalty, love, fun and commitment. Practices and discourses of small, DIY business are also sutured to discourse of family, as a way of reinforcing the fierce independence from big business and record companies. The fieldwork account at the beginning of this article reveals some of the work done by family on tour for Bob and the band, mainly through the presence of Bob’s mum, Veronica, as defacto tour manager. During the gig Bob offered a series of acknowledgments for the tour. After thanking the audiences and tour sponsors, he moved on to family:Bob: I’d like to thank my aunty Roberta, she came along and helped us on a tour leg … Ah, I’m going to forget people, I’m going to leave the special ones to last … I would like to thank Kirrily personally, but as Sue said, all partners and stuff, so I love you Kiz. But the most special one of all: Mrs Veronica Corbett [loud applause and cheers]. She’s the backbone! Of the tour, so thanks mum, thanks for everything.Veronica: Absolute pleasure Bobby.Bob: It’s been, it’s been a pleasure. You love doing it.Veronica: I love it.Bob: Yeah, you do love doing it, it’s been great, you know. I don’t want to get too, too sentimental, but, um just before dad died, he turned to me and said ‘look after mum’, and I don’t, I don’t look after mum, but in a way, just sharing all these experiences, like, we’re looking after each other, so, thank you for doing that.In this account, I am interested in the ways in which Bob, Veronica and Sue talk about the labour provided by family. There are a number of ways that participants talk about the practice of getting family to help do the work of touring and performing country music, which emerge here, and are consistently used by Bob and the band. It is spoken of in terms of “spending time” with each other, and of loving that time. Discourses of enjoyment and sociality permeate Bob, Veronica, and others’ discussions of the practical reality of people giving up their time to help. This is part of the cultural capital of authenticity: being a professional country music band out on the road is about more than hard slog, making money and cold business; it is an enjoyable experience, underpinned with love. To be authentic, it should be about more than the dollars.While the involvement of family in the activities of the band is discussed and understood as a chance to spend time together, an enjoyable experience, there are also discourses of support and help tied to these practices by those in and around the band. It is often acknowledged as a practical reality that family members are involved in the activities of the band (or in maintaining the home front) as a source of free or cheap labour which makes touring and performing possible. Sue acknowledged the importance of family support to the band, particularly as an independent band, in the interview: Main sources of support? … the management from Toyota and everything … after winning Star Maker, that was really great, so they’ve really helped … and also family … you certainly need that support, because you can’t, you’ve got to get out there and do it, that’s the only way to do it … it’s very personal support in a lot of ways … we’re not at that stage where, we’re not at a bigger level where there’s plenty of money being thrown around by record companies, that sort of support.In acknowledging the role of family at home while the band tours, as well as the “personal support” given to the band, Sue binds the practices of individuals staying at home, minding kids and maintaining home life, to the discourse of family. She is also linking the practices to the band’s “independent” status and the lack of “money being thrown around by record companies” as the reason this support and other on the road, tour based work, is essential. Within Sue’s account here, and at other times during my fieldwork, there was a sense that she saw the need for family support as a sign of inadequacy, a sign that the band had not yet “made it” to the level where the support comes from record companies, and there will be money thrown around to support the activities of the band. This touches on a broader set of discourses that circulate in the country music community about professionalism and amateurism, which are also linked to ideas about family. While the foregrounding of family has value within the field of country music, there is something else going on here. A division is often drawn between “commercial” and “creative” endeavours in Australian country music. By linking practices involving kin and discourses of family, Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band position themselves as authentic, or real, grass roots, and with creative freedom, in contrast to being creatively constrained or selling out. Within this division, a reliance on one’s family can be understood in some ways as a rejection of the commercial, business networks of country music. In the case of Sue’s account above there is a sense that it is also a way of negotiating success when you do not have access to a record label or other big business support, which may seem the easier route. Sue’s view differs somewhat from Bob’s in this respect. Bob often expressed pride in the fact that they are “doing it on their own” and boasting an independent DIY model of music business (for example through ticketing, tour organisation and production); a business model that relies on the support of their family, but which is respected and valued within Australian country music. ConclusionArtists such as Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band all occupy “positions” in the field of Australian country music, and the discourses of “commercial”, “creative”, and “authentic” all work to categorise artists, and their position in the field. Economic and material circumstances limit, enable or influence the decisions to involve families or not: for Bob, a desire to remain in control of his creative output and career, and the need to maximise income to feed his family makes DIY ticketing, and taking his mum and friends on the road a good choice. But these material factors work with symbolic and cultural factors, in the game of cultural legitimisation about what it is to be a country music artist. The way in which Bob and the band invoked particular discourses of family, loyalty, fun and enjoyment, to talk about the on-the-ground practices of having family involved (or not) in their working lives as musicians is part of the work these bands and artists are doing to represent themselves to the country music community; they are attempting to establish themselves as adequately, legitimately and authentically “country”. In the process they are also shaping what it is to be a country music artist and what is valued within the field—in this case “family”. The constant struggles over what country music is, what is “authentic” country and what represents success, are struggles over the “schemata of classification … which construct social reality” (Bourdieu 20). 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