Journal articles on the topic 'Bukusu (African people) – Songs and music'

ABSTRACTThe brutal, eleven-year long civil war in Sierra Leone has been understood by many scholarly observers as ‘a crisis of youth’. The national elections of 2007 were notable for an explosion of popular music by young people directly addressing some of the central issues of the election: corruption of the ruling party and lack of opportunities for youth advancement. Though produced by youth and understood locally as youth music, the sounds were inescapable in public transport, markets, and parties. The musical style is a combination of local idioms and West African hip-hop. The lyrics present a young people's moral universe in stark contrast to that of their elders. This paper addresses the themes of these election-focused songs as well as the emerging subaltern youth identity discernible in supposedly less political songs.

Indigenous Bapedi music and oral tradition have been dismissed as myth, superstition and primitive stories. Such dismissal has been based on the misconception and assumption that indigenous Bapedi music and oral tradition are proletarian, steeped in evil religious experiences and unacceptable for worship. In Bapedi society, indigenous music and traditional oral stories are utilized to buttress and demonstrate the collective wisdom of Bapedi people, as well as to transmit Bapedi culture, values, beliefs and history from generation to generation. This article examines misconceptions about indigenous Bapedi music and traditional oral stories. It argues that indigenous Bapedi music and oral tradition should not be dismissed at face value as practices overtaken by circumstances and hence irrelevant to the present Bapedi community developmental needs. The findings of the present study faithfully reflect that indigenous Bapedi songs and traditional oral stories resonate in people’s personal lives, in religious rituals and in society at large. These findings suggest that Bapedi people should keep and perpetuate their valuable heritage, which is still needed for survival and for the welfare of our next generation. The main question the study addressed is: What role do indigenous Bapedi music and oral tradition play in Bapedi culture?

This paper explores the construction of cultural identities through contemporary music from Madagascar, in particular the songs by Dama — singer-song-writer of the eponymous group of musicians- the Mahaleo. Specific focus is on the role that the discourses of and about popular Malagasy music play for the identity constructions of Malagasy people in Madagascar and abroad. Discussions about contemporary African music on the media and in the cultural studies literature, and the record industry’s own appropriation and commercialization of such music as generic ‘world music — tend to neglect the lyrics — and thus the often radical social critique — contained in these songs. Since much of African music is sung in languages not normally known to ‘Western’ audiences, their appreciation hinges on the vibrancy of rhythm and sound, to the exclusion of content. Yet to ‘home’ and ‘diapsoric’ audiences, the texts are of huge significance. Our paper discusses the significance of language choice for popular music in Madagascar in the political movement of 1972 and its aftermath. We will also analyse in detail the lyrics of some typical songs from Mahaleo’s repertoire written by Dama. These will exemplify some of the ways in which the group attempts to encapsulate aspects of Malagasy every-day life, thus providing a cohesive link not only between several generations of Malagasies in Madagascar itself, but even more pronouncedly for those Malagasies who have left Madagascar and settled overseas. Finally, we will show the ways in which audiences create and perform ‘being Malagasy’ through the medium of their popular music, demonstrating the extent to which the project of ‘Mahaleo’ is being reflexively and consciously understood and taken up by their listeners.

The influence that the use of a familiar language has on learning has long been explored with suggestions that a child’s mother tongue is the most suited initial language of instruction in school. In Zambia, however, this is not the case as the majority of people think that young children should learn to speak in English as soon as possible because this is the language of education. As a result, songs in English dominate the singing repertoire in pre-schools even when children have not mastered sufficient English vocabulary. Singing songs in English, just as teaching children in a language they do not understand, has been shown to hamper learning. The theoretical lens of indigenous African education underpins the study in order to investigate how music in the mother tongue in a cultural context can foster educational aims. Research participants included an expert in Zambian indigenous children’s songs who also acted as resource person and led 18 children aged between 5 and 6 years in sessions of music in their mother tongue. The findings of the study revealed that educational implications of children’s participation in music in the mother tongue can be found in the way in which they are organised, the activities they involve and in the music elements that characterise them.

From 1900 to 1916, the demographic makeup of the United States changed radically due to the heavy influx of people from Southern and Eastern Europe, and the schools, in particular, felt the impact of this immigration. Many music educators, like their colleagues in general education, found themselves facing an increasingly multicultural classroom for the first time. As a result of their efforts to help Americanize their immigrant students, music educators gradually came to know and accept folk songs and dances from many European countries and to make use of musics from these countries in music appreciation classes. Also during this period, some of the musics of Native Americans and African Americans were introduced into the music curriculum. Including these folk musics in the American school music curriculum resulted in an increased musical diversity that perhaps marked the beginnings of multicultural music education in the public schools.

This essay explores performance as a language by looking at its appropriation by other cultures, and the associated history of the crafted phrases that are borrowed along. I start by noting that to create awareness of the massacres that have recently occurred in some parts of Nigeria, commentators, both in and out of the country, and activist-cum-protesters created the term “Nigerian Lives Matter.” They appropriated from “Black Lives Matter,” the American-originated advocacy movement that campaigns against violence and brutality against black people. I show that these forms of lexical interchange are possible because of non-Americans’ familiarity with America’s racial history, and black performance liberation expressivity, which they have been acculturated into as a result of their long exposure to American culture. Beyond phrases however, I argue that black performance itself is a language that has a global resonance among minorities. To illustrate this further, I do a close reading of This is Nigeria, a recent music video released by Nigerian lawyer turned artist, Folarin Falana (Falz), alongside a version of the original production, This is America, also recently released by Donald Glover (Childish Gambino). Both songs continue in the older tradition of African and African American transatlantic political relations through music, the shared understanding of the similarities of anti-black oppression, and the formation of aesthetics that mediate the advocacy of black liberation. The songs are also a pointer to how black advocacy might continue to unfold in contemporary era.

This paper considers references to Oklahoma in blues recordings from 1924 to 1941, and the paradox that, although the reality of life for African-Americans in that state was little different from life in the Deep South, the recordings usually speak of migration to Oklahoma in optimistic terms. The notion that the Indian Nation (a.k.a. ‘the Territory’) had been a refuge for runaway slaves is rebutted, together with the conclusion that optimistic references in the blues preserve this idea as a collective memory. What is being recalled is rather the period between the Civil War and statehood (1907): the former slaves of Native Americans in Oklahoma became tribal members, gaining the civil and property rights accorded to tribes-people, and the black townships movement offered the prospect of autonomy and self-government on the frontier. Two songs which take a negative view of Oklahoma's Jim Crow reality are also considered.

This paper directs attention to Abigbo, an outstanding traditional music of Mbaise people of Igbo south, east of the Niger. It gears to interrupt and challenge willful observations by western-oriented music lovers’ derogatory opinion, contrary to music in traditional setting such as ‘Abigbo’. To realize this objective and prove wrong the ill-informed critics, ‘Abigbo’s uniqueness in song rendition and peculiarity in music making is conspicuously examined here as a case study. The origin and development of Abigbo, its uses, and relationship with other aspects of Mbaise culture are discussed in this work. The musical challenges are highlighted with the dance formation, movements/steps and the ensembles costumed critically analyzed. All these are essentially adumbrated in association with music making trends in contemporary Mbaise. Equally reviewed where applicable are Abigbo’s relevance and inevitable roles in achieving the goal of societal well being. Song communication supported with body language and phonic emission via vocals are equally matters of great interest here. Methods employed in the data collection are library source of information obtained from associated printed materials documented in the library shelves. The researcher consulted relevant ones, read through them during desk work, and use their extracts as backup information to the subject of discourse which he initiated. Few of the procured print media materials are equally paraphrased as and when due. Datum is also secured through participant observation. At this juncture, the researcher’s sense of sight and aural perceptions are actively utilized along with retentive memory with the view to capturing the salient points needed for the paper. A few literature reviews that border round music making in rural culture are altogether, examined to guide and back up the thrust of this discourse. Abigbo has proved its worth beyond all reasonable doubt during its performance presentation in Mbaise social culture. The musicians’ close attention to the masses, particularly the zealous ones who are inclined to get at African tribes’ traditional music to subject them to western notation is a spring board to its fame. At this juncture, we resolve that for music making through song communication to logically reign supreme in Abigbo, its practice by interested artistes should be enhanced and encouraged even beyond the ensemble’s environmental origin. This done helps to secure indigenous interest akin to norms and values within the fabric of Mbaise society.

Ethiopia upholds unique cultural heritage and diverse music history in entire African continent. The traditional music heritage of Ethiopia has been globally recognized with its distinct music culture and symbolic manifestation. The traditional songs and music of the country revolves around core chord of their life and culture. The modern music of Ethiopia has been blended with combination of elements from traditional Ethiopian music and western music which has created a new trend in the music world. The music tradition of the country not only maintains the cultural identity but also maintains social cohesion through cultural expression at different social occasions and resists cultural changes infused through globalization. The globalization has brought a series of transformation and changes in the world of Ethiopian music through commercialization, commodification and digitalization of cultural expressions apart from hijacking the cultural rights of traditional musicians. The younger generations have been attracted towards western music undermining the aesthetic and cultural value of music tradition of the country. The international enactments relating to protection and safeguarding of cultural rights of people are yet to be appropriately translated into reality. The emergence of culture industries and entertainment houses has posed serious threats to local culture and led to disappearance of local traditions, musical heritage and their replacement by popular global music. The cultural homogeneity and commodification has replaced the multiplicity of cultures in this globalized era. This paper based on review of published articles and content analysis critically unfolds sensitive areas of cultural shock and violation of cultural rights exposed to traditional musicians and traditional singers of Ethiopia during last couple of decades.Int. J. Soc. Sci. Manage. Vol-2, issue-4: 315-326

This study investigates the relationship between music and healing in the African context, as well as the relationship between music, culture, and identity. Since the traditional approach to music-making makes it a part of the institutional life of the Bapedi community, among the Bapedi people, the music itself was and is thought to enable communication with the living-dead, often inducing ancestral spirit possession, ‘causing the spirits to descend’. We observe in this study how traditional healers in the Greater Sekhukhune District Municipality express their emotions through music, and how they use music for regulating their emotions during malopo religious rituals. The main goal of the study was to examine how these emotions relate to traditional healers’ mental health and wellbeing. A range of data collection and analysis were employed in this study. The research employed a naturalistic approach and the primary source for data collection was oral interviews. The data was collected through video recordings of malopo religious rituals, interviews, and observations. Relationships between music, expression, and movement, as well as music, culture, and identity were elucidated. The results have demonstrated that during the dance itself, the healing power of the dance, is shown by both the trainees and their traditional healers, for example, during malopo ritual, after reaching a state of trance, they become spiritually healed. Villagers who witnessed the dance and participated only as an audience, also indicated a feeling of wellbeing after participating in the malopo ritual. The study has revealed that music is an integral part of the Bapedi culture and heritage. Furthermore, it was found that malopo ritual is a performance for appeasing possessing ancestral spirits such as those of the traditional healers and their trainees, which may cause illness if displeased, but on the other hand, may empower the traditional healers to execute the healing process. The research suggests that malopo ritual binds the people to their ancestors (the ancestral realm) and also provides healing therapy. Songs are sung and recited in order to create harmony between the living and the living-dead.

Jangwa music is indigenous to the Manyika people of Zimbabwe. African societies carefully craft song texts for different contexts to serve a functional and educational purpose, and an investigation was undertaken to explore the ways in which this is embodied through jangwa wedding music. The aim of this article is to discuss the cultural meanings and functions conveyed through song lyrics amongst the Manyika people of Zimbabwe. Since the young generation no longer values traditional music being performed at weddings, 150 elderly Manyika people acted as key informants, performing jangwa songs of which they had extensive knowledge and experience.Data collection strategies included participant observation, in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions. Most jangwa wedding songs have a positive outlook and encouragement for the newly-weds, while other songs are more critical and warn of the possible pitfalls in marriage. Findings revealed that the majority of jangwa wedding songs focus on the role of brides and married women as a whole, signifying the pivotal role they play within the Manyika society. Active participation in indigenous African musical arts is diminishing, therefore a concerted effort is needed to ensure that jangwa wedding music is revived and documented for future generations.

This research explores the role of community music in the lives of older Australians. This qualitative case study investigated the meanings and understandings ascribed by participants to their musical engagement in the South of the River Community Gospel Choir. This mixed a cappella SATB choir was formed in 2002 in Melbourne. The choir began with a repertoire of African-American Gospel music and South African Freedom Songs. With time their musical choices have transitioned to include more contemporary Australian composed works. The choir sings in diverse community settings such as high security prisons, palliative care, hospitals and the more common range of gigs such as community events, private events and folk festivals. Data were gathered from individual and focus group semi-structured interviews undertaken in 2016 with the members of the choir and with the Musical Director. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis and reported under the themes of Musical engagement and Social connection, Performing and Outreach. The findings confirmed the pivotal musical and social importance of the Music Director; the importance of performance opportunities that support both socialising and community outreach; and the role of ensemble membership in fostering and maintaining understandings of self-worth and self-esteem.

In the past two years an Afrocolombian hip-hop band from the Pacific region of Colombia has been getting a lot of attention in the media, especially after winning a Latin Grammy Award in 2010 and being nominated to several categories of the Grammy Music Awards in 2011 and 2012. In their lyrics, they claim to represent the black population of the Pacific coast, people of African descent who have traditionally lived in marginalized conditions of poverty and exploitation of different sorts. By borrowing some insights from African American criticism, the afrocentricity in Choquibtown's songs is explored. Additionally, through a postcolonialist approach, this band's musical production is analyzed as a voice of widespread racism and as means of resistance to political and cultural oppression.

No presente trabalho, pretende-se analisar de que forma algumas obras literárias do escritor Jorge Amado e algumas músicas do cantor e compositor Dorival Caymmi expressam, de distintas formas, os diferentes lugares da Bahia, com especial ênfase em Salvador, sua capital. As peculiaridades culturais, aspectos da cotidianidade, visões de mundo e jeito de ser de baianos e baianas inspiraram obras literárias e músicas que difundem, para além do âmbito do território baiano, os elementos dessa “baianidade” que pode ser lida, percebida e analisada sob olhares diversos em outros estados ou países. Objetiva-se discutir como algumas obras literárias e musicais importantes desses autores expressaram e ainda expressam os elementos da afro-baianidade e aspectos identitários do povo baiano. Constatou-se que, tanto nos textos literários, quanto na musicalidade dos autores em análise, os lugares e contextos paisagísticos se destacam a partir de espaços culturais e de edificações simbólicas, de elevada visibilidade, como o Pelourinho, o centro histórico de Salvador e a Igreja do Bomfim, um importante templo religioso e devocional da capital baiana. Abstract IDENTITY ISSUES AND BAHIA’S CULTURAL SPECIFICITY EXPRESSED THROUGH MUSIC AND LITERATURE: A GEOGRAPHIC VIEW This work intends to examine how some Jorge Amado’s literary works and some music from the singer and songwriter Dorival Caymmi express in different ways, different places in Bahia, specially its capital, Salvador. Specific cultural aspects of everyday life, worldviews and the ways of people from Bahia, inspired literary works and songs that spread beyond the scope of the Bahia State, the elements of this “baianidade” which can be read, understood and analyzed in different ways in other states or countries. It aims to discuss how some important literary and musical works of these authors expressed and still express the african-bahia elements and some identity aspects of the people from Bahia. It was found that in both the literary texts and the musicality of the authors under review, the places and landscape stand out as cultural spaces and symbolic buildings of high visibility, such as Pelourinho, the historic center of Salvador, and the Church of Bomfim , an important religious and devotional temple of Salvador.

Introduction This paper offers a survey of familiar popular music performers and songwriters who reference coffee in their work. It examines three areas of discourse: the psychoactive effects of caffeine, coffee and courtship rituals, and the politics of coffee consumption. I claim that coffee carries a cultural and musicological significance comparable to that of the chemical stimulants and consumer goods more readily associated with popular music. Songs about coffee may not be as potent as those featuring drugs and alcohol (Primack; Schapiro), or as common as those referencing commodities like clothes and cars (Englis; McCracken), but they do feature across a wide range of genres, some of which enjoy archetypal associations with this beverage. m.o.m.m.y. Needs c.o.f.f.e.e.: The Psychoactive Effect of Coffee The act of performing and listening to popular music involves psychological elements comparable to the overwhelming sensory experience of drug taking: altered perceptions, repetitive grooves, improvisation, self-expression, and psychological empathy—such as that between musician and audience (Curry). Most popular music genres are, as a result, culturally and sociologically identified with the consumption of at least one mind-altering substance (Lyttle; Primack; Schapiro). While the analysis of lyrics referring to this theme has hitherto focused on illegal drugs and alcoholic beverages (Cooper), coffee and its psychoactive ingredient caffeine have been almost entirely overlooked (Summer). The most recent study of drugs in popular music, for example, defined substance use as “tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and other stimulants, heroin and other opiates, hallucinogens, inhalants, prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, and nonspecific substances” (Primack 172), thereby ignoring a chemical stimulant consumed by 90 per cent of adult Americans every day (Lovett). The wide availability of coffee and the comparatively mild effect of caffeine means that its consumption rarely causes harm. One researcher has described it as a ubiquitous and unobtrusive “generalised public activity […] ‘invisible’ to analysts seeking distinctive social events” (Cooper 92). Coffee may provide only a relatively mild “buzz”—but it is now accepted that caffeine is an addictive substance (Juliano) and, due to its universal legality, coffee is also the world’s most extensively traded and enthusiastically consumed psychoactive consumer product (Juliano 1). The musical genre of jazz has a longstanding relationship with marijuana and narcotics (Curry; Singer; Tolson; Winick). Unsurprisingly, given its Round Midnight connotations, jazz standards also celebrate the restorative impact of coffee. Exemplary compositions include Burke/Webster’s insomniac torch song Black Coffee, which provided hits for Sarah Vaughan (1949), Ella Fitzgerald (1953), and Peggy Lee (1960); and Frank Sinatra’s recordings of Hilliard/Dick’s The Coffee Song (1946, 1960), which satirised the coffee surplus in Brazil at a time when this nation enjoyed a near monopoly on production. Sinatra joked that this ubiquitous drink was that country’s only means of liquid refreshment, in a refrain that has since become a headline writer’s phrasal template: “There’s an Awful Lot of Coffee in Vietnam,” “An Awful Lot of Coffee in the Bin,” and “There’s an Awful Lot of Taxes in Brazil.” Ethnographer Aaron Fox has shown how country music gives expression to the lived social experience of blue-collar and agrarian workers (Real 29). Coffee’s role in energising working class America (Cooper) is featured in such recordings as Dolly Parton’s Nine To Five (1980), which describes her morning routine using a memorable “kitchen/cup of ambition” rhyme, and Don't Forget the Coffee Billy Joe (1973) by Tom T. Hall which laments the hardship of unemployment, hunger, cold, and lack of healthcare. Country music’s “tired truck driver” is the most enduring blue-collar trope celebrating coffee’s analeptic powers. Versions include Truck Drivin' Man by Buck Owens (1964), host of the country TV show Hee Haw and pioneer of the Bakersfield sound, and Driving My Life Away from pop-country crossover star Eddie Rabbitt (1980). Both feature characteristically gendered stereotypes of male truck drivers pushing on through the night with the help of a truck stop waitress who has fuelled them with caffeine. Johnny Cash’s A Cup of Coffee (1966), recorded at the nadir of his addiction to pills and alcohol, has an incoherent improvised lyric on this subject; while Jerry Reed even prescribed amphetamines to keep drivers awake in Caffein [sic], Nicotine, Benzedrine (And Wish Me Luck) (1980). Doye O’Dell’s Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves (1952) is the archetypal “truck drivin’ country” song and the most exciting track of its type. It subsequently became a hit for the doyen of the subgenre, Red Simpson (1966). An exhausted driver, having spent the night with a woman whose name he cannot now recall, is fighting fatigue and wrestling his hot-rod low-loader around hairpin mountain curves in an attempt to rendezvous with a pretty truck stop waitress. The song’s palpable energy comes from its frenetic guitar picking and the danger implicit in trailing a heavy load downhill while falling asleep at the wheel. Tommy Faile’s Phantom 309, a hit for Red Sovine (1967) that was later covered by Tom Waits (Big Joe and the Phantom 309, 1975), elevates the “tired truck driver” narrative to gothic literary form. Reflecting country music’s moral code of citizenship and its culture of performative storytelling (Fox, Real 23), it tells of a drenched and exhausted young hitchhiker picked up by Big Joe—the driver of a handsome eighteen-wheeler. On arriving at a truck stop, Joe drops the traveller off, giving him money for a restorative coffee. The diner falls silent as the hitchhiker orders up his “cup of mud”. Big Joe, it transpires, is a phantom trucker. After running off the road to avoid a school bus, his distinctive ghost rig now only reappears to rescue stranded travellers. Punk rock, a genre closely associated with recreational amphetamines (McNeil 76, 87), also features a number of caffeine-as-stimulant songs. Californian punk band, Descendents, identified caffeine as their drug of choice in two 1996 releases, Coffee Mug and Kids on Coffee. These songs describe chugging the drink with much the same relish and energy that others might pull at the neck of a beer bottle, and vividly compare the effects of the drug to the intense rush of speed. The host of “New Music News” (a segment of MTV’s 120 Minutes) references this correlation in 1986 while introducing the band’s video—in which they literally bounce off the walls: “You know, while everybody is cracking down on crack, what about that most respectable of toxic substances or stimulants, the good old cup of coffee? That is the preferred high, actually, of California’s own Descendents—it is also the subject of their brand new video” (“New Music News”). Descendents’s Sessions EP (1997) featured an overflowing cup of coffee on the sleeve, while punk’s caffeine-as-amphetamine trope is also promulgated by Hellbender (Caffeinated 1996), Lagwagon (Mr. Coffee 1997), and Regatta 69 (Addicted to Coffee 2005). Coffee in the Morning and Kisses in the Night: Coffee and Courtship Coffee as romantic metaphor in song corroborates the findings of early researchers who examined courtship rituals in popular music. Donald Horton’s 1957 study found that hit songs codified the socially constructed self-image and limited life expectations of young people during the 1950s by depicting conservative, idealised, and traditional relationship scenarios. He summarised these as initial courtship, honeymoon period, uncertainty, and parting (570-4). Eleven years after this landmark analysis, James Carey replicated Horton’s method. His results revealed that pop lyrics had become more realistic and less bound by convention during the 1960s. They incorporated a wider variety of discourse including the temporariness of romantic commitment, the importance of individual autonomy in relationships, more liberal attitudes, and increasingly unconventional courtship behaviours (725). Socially conservative coffee songs include Coffee in the Morning and Kisses in the Night by The Boswell Sisters (1933) in which the protagonist swears fidelity to her partner on condition that this desire is expressed strictly in the appropriate social context of marriage. It encapsulates the restrictions Horton identified on courtship discourse in popular song prior to the arrival of rock and roll. The Henderson/DeSylva/Brown composition You're the Cream in My Coffee, recorded by Annette Hanshaw (1928) and by Nat King Cole (1946), also celebrates the social ideal of monogamous devotion. The persistence of such idealised traditional themes continued into the 1960s. American pop singer Don Cherry had a hit with Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye (1962) that used coffee as a metaphor for undying and everlasting love. Otis Redding’s version of Butler/Thomas/Walker’s Cigarettes and Coffee (1966)—arguably soul music’s exemplary romantic coffee song—carries a similar message as a couple proclaim their devotion in a late night conversation over coffee. Like much of the Stax catalogue, Cigarettes and Coffee, has a distinctly “down home” feel and timbre. The lovers are simply content with each other; they don’t need “cream” or “sugar.” Horton found 1950s blues and R&B lyrics much more sexually explicit than pop songs (567). Dawson (1994) subsequently characterised black popular music as a distinct public sphere, and Squires (2002) argued that it displayed elements of what she defined as “enclave” and “counterpublic” traits. Lawson (2010) has argued that marginalised and/or subversive blues artists offered a form of countercultural resistance against prevailing social norms. Indeed, several blues and R&B coffee songs disregard established courtship ideals and associate the product with non-normative and even transgressive relationship circumstances—including infidelity, divorce, and domestic violence. Lightnin’ Hopkins’s Coffee Blues (1950) references child neglect and spousal abuse, while the narrative of Muddy Waters’s scorching Iodine in my Coffee (1952) tells of an attempted poisoning by his Waters’s partner. In 40 Cups of Coffee (1953) Ella Mae Morse is waiting for her husband to return home, fuelling her anger and anxiety with caffeine. This song does eventually comply with traditional courtship ideals: when her lover eventually returns home at five in the morning, he is greeted with a relieved kiss. In Keep That Coffee Hot (1955), Scatman Crothers supplies a counterpoint to Morse’s late-night-abandonment narrative, asking his partner to keep his favourite drink warm during his adulterous absence. Brook Benton’s Another Cup of Coffee (1964) expresses acute feelings of regret and loneliness after a failed relationship. More obliquely, in Coffee Blues (1966) Mississippi John Hurt sings affectionately about his favourite brand, a “lovin’ spoonful” of Maxwell House. In this, he bequeathed the moniker of folk-rock band The Lovin’ Spoonful, whose hits included Do You Believe in Magic (1965) and Summer in the City (1966). However, an alternative reading of Hurt’s lyric suggests that this particular phrase is a metaphorical device proclaiming the author’s sexual potency. Hurt’s “lovin’ spoonful” may actually be a portion of his seminal emission. In the 1950s, Horton identified country as particularly “doleful” (570), and coffee provides a common metaphor for failed romance in a genre dominated by “metanarratives of loss and desire” (Fox, Jukebox 54). Claude Gray’s I'll Have Another Cup of Coffee (Then I’ll Go) (1961) tells of a protagonist delivering child support payments according to his divorce lawyer’s instructions. The couple share late night coffee as their children sleep through the conversation. This song was subsequently recorded by seventeen-year-old Bob Marley (One Cup of Coffee, 1962) under the pseudonym Bobby Martell, a decade prior to his breakthrough as an international reggae star. Marley’s youngest son Damian has also performed the track while, interestingly in the context of this discussion, his older sibling Rohan co-founded Marley Coffee, an organic farm in the Jamaican Blue Mountains. Following Carey’s demonstration of mainstream pop’s increasingly realistic depiction of courtship behaviours during the 1960s, songwriters continued to draw on coffee as a metaphor for failed romance. In Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain (1972), she dreams of clouds in her coffee while contemplating an ostentatious ex-lover. Squeeze’s Black Coffee In Bed (1982) uses a coffee stain metaphor to describe the end of what appears to be yet another dead-end relationship for the protagonist. Sarah Harmer’s Coffee Stain (1998) expands on this device by reworking the familiar “lipstick on your collar” trope, while Sexsmith & Kerr’s duet Raindrops in my Coffee (2005) superimposes teardrops in coffee and raindrops on the pavement with compelling effect. Kate Bush’s Coffee Homeground (1978) provides the most extreme narrative of relationship breakdown: the true story of Cora Henrietta Crippin’s poisoning. Researchers who replicated Horton’s and Carey’s methodology in the late 1970s (Bridges; Denisoff) were surprised to find their results dominated by traditional courtship ideals. The new liberal values unearthed by Carey in the late 1960s simply failed to materialise in subsequent decades. In this context, it is interesting to observe how romantic coffee songs in contemporary soul and jazz continue to disavow the post-1960s trend towards realistic social narratives, adopting instead a conspicuously consumerist outlook accompanied by smooth musical timbres. This phenomenon possibly betrays the influence of contemporary coffee advertising. From the 1980s, television commercials have sought to establish coffee as a desirable high end product, enjoyed by bohemian lovers in a conspicuously up-market environment (Werder). All Saints’s Black Coffee (2000) and Lebrado’s Coffee (2006) identify strongly with the culture industry’s image of coffee as a luxurious beverage whose consumption signifies prominent social status. All Saints’s promotional video is set in a opulent location (although its visuals emphasise the lyric’s romantic disharmony), while Natalie Cole’s Coffee Time (2008) might have been itself written as a commercial. Busting Up a Starbucks: The Politics of Coffee Politics and coffee meet most palpably at the coffee shop. This conjunction has a well-documented history beginning with the establishment of coffee houses in Europe and the birth of the public sphere (Habermas; Love; Pincus). The first popular songs to reference coffee shops include Jaybird Coleman’s Coffee Grinder Blues (1930), which boasts of skills that precede the contemporary notion of a barista by four decades; and Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee (1932) from Irving Berlin’s depression-era musical Face The Music, where the protagonists decide to stay in a restaurant drinking coffee and eating pie until the economy improves. Coffee in a Cardboard Cup (1971) from the Broadway musical 70 Girls 70 is an unambiguous condemnation of consumerism, however, it was written, recorded and produced a generation before Starbucks’ aggressive expansion and rapid dominance of the coffee house market during the 1990s. The growth of this company caused significant criticism and protest against what seemed to be a ruthless homogenising force that sought to overwhelm local competition (Holt; Thomson). In response, Starbucks has sought to be defined as a more responsive and interactive brand that encourages “glocalisation” (de Larios; Thompson). Koller, however, has characterised glocalisation as the manipulative fabrication of an “imagined community”—whose heterogeneity is in fact maintained by the aesthetics and purchasing choices of consumers who make distinctive and conscious anti-brand statements (114). Neat Capitalism is a more useful concept here, one that intercedes between corporate ideology and postmodern cultural logic, where such notions as community relations and customer satisfaction are deliberately and perhaps somewhat cynically conflated with the goal of profit maximisation (Rojek). As the world’s largest chain of coffee houses with over 19,400 stores in March 2012 (Loxcel), Starbucks is an exemplar of this phenomenon. Their apparent commitment to environmental stewardship, community relations, and ethical sourcing is outlined in the company’s annual “Global Responsibility Report” (Vimac). It is also demonstrated in their engagement with charitable and environmental non-governmental organisations such as Fairtrade and Co-operative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE). By emphasising this, Starbucks are able to interpellate (that is, “call forth”, “summon”, or “hail” in Althusserian terms) those consumers who value environmental protection, social justice and ethical business practices (Rojek 117). Bob Dylan and Sheryl Crow provide interesting case studies of the persuasive cultural influence evoked by Neat Capitalism. Dylan’s 1962 song Talkin’ New York satirised his formative experiences as an impoverished performer in Greenwich Village’s coffee houses. In 1995, however, his decision to distribute the Bob Dylan: Live At The Gaslight 1962 CD exclusively via Starbucks generated significant media controversy. Prominent commentators expressed their disapproval (Wilson Harris) and HMV Canada withdrew Dylan’s product from their shelves (Lynskey). Despite this, the success of this and other projects resulted in the launch of Starbucks’s in-house record company, Hear Music, which released entirely new recordings from major artists such as Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Elvis Costello—although the company has recently announced a restructuring of their involvement in this venture (O’Neil). Sheryl Crow disparaged her former life as a waitress in Coffee Shop (1995), a song recorded for her second album. “Yes, I was a waitress. I was a waitress not so long ago; then I won a Grammy” she affirmed in a YouTube clip of a live performance from the same year. More recently, however, Crow has become an avowed self-proclaimed “Starbucks groupie” (Tickle), releasing an Artist’s Choice (2003) compilation album exclusively via Hear Music and performing at the company’s 2010 Annual Shareholders’s Meeting. Songs voicing more unequivocal dissatisfaction with Starbucks’s particular variant of Neat Capitalism include Busting Up a Starbucks (Mike Doughty, 2005), and Starbucks Takes All My Money (KJ-52, 2008). The most successful of these is undoubtedly Ron Sexsmith’s Jazz at the Bookstore (2006). Sexsmith bemoans the irony of intense original blues artists such as Leadbelly being drowned out by the cacophony of coffee grinding machines while customers queue up to purchase expensive coffees whose names they can’t pronounce. In this, he juxtaposes the progressive patina of corporate culture against the circumstances of African-American labour conditions in the deep South, the shocking incongruity of which eventually cause the old bluesman to turn in his grave. Fredric Jameson may have good reason to lament the depthless a-historical pastiche of postmodern popular culture, but this is no “nostalgia film”: Sexsmith articulates an artfully framed set of subtle, sensitive, and carefully contextualised observations. Songs about coffee also intersect with politics via lyrics that play on the mid-brown colour of the beverage, by employing it as a metaphor for the sociological meta-narratives of acculturation and assimilation. First popularised in Israel Zangwill’s 1905 stage play, The Melting Pot, this term is more commonly associated with Americanisation rather than miscegenation in the United States—a nuanced distinction that British band Blue Mink failed to grasp with their memorable invocation of “coffee-coloured people” in Melting Pot (1969). Re-titled in the US as People Are Together (Mickey Murray, 1970) the song was considered too extreme for mainstream radio airplay (Thompson). Ike and Tina Turner’s Black Coffee (1972) provided a more accomplished articulation of coffee as a signifier of racial identity; first by associating it with the history of slavery and the post-Civil Rights discourse of African-American autonomy, then by celebrating its role as an energising force for African-American workers seeking economic self-determination. Anyone familiar with the re-casting of black popular music in an industry dominated by Caucasian interests and aesthetics (Cashmore; Garofalo) will be unsurprised to find British super-group Humble Pie’s (1973) version of this song more recognisable. Conclusion Coffee-flavoured popular songs celebrate the stimulant effects of caffeine, provide metaphors for courtship rituals, and offer critiques of Neat Capitalism. Harold Love and Guthrie Ramsey have each argued (from different perspectives) that the cultural micro-narratives of small social groups allow us to identify important “ethnographic truths” (Ramsey 22). Aesthetically satisfying and intellectually stimulating coffee songs are found where these micro-narratives intersect with the ethnographic truths of coffee culture. 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Introduction One of the ways in which ‘country’ is made to work discursively is in ‘country music’ – defining a genre and sensibility in music production, marketing and consumption. This article seeks to excavate one small niche in the historical geography of country music to explore exactly how discursive antecedents emerged, and crucially, how images associated with ‘country’ surfaced and travelled internationally via one of the new ‘global’ media of the first half of the twentieth century – sheet music. My central arguments are twofold: first, that alongside aural qualities and lyrical content, the visual elements of sheet music were important and thus far have been under-acknowledged. Sheet music diffused the imagery connecting ‘country’ to music, to particular landscapes, and masculinities. In the literature on country music much emphasis has been placed on film, radio and television (Tichi; Peterson). Yet, sheet music was for several decades the most common way people bought personal copies of songs they liked and intended to play at home on piano, guitar or ukulele. This was particularly the case in Australia – geographically distant, and rarely included in international tours by American country music stars. Sheet music is thus a rich text to reveal the historical contours of ‘country’. My second and related argument is that that the possibilities for the globalising of ‘country’ were first explored in music. The idea of transnational discourses associated with ‘country’ and ‘rurality’ is relatively new (Cloke et al; Gorman-Murray et al; McCarthy), but in music we see early evidence of a globalising discourse of ‘country’ well ahead of the time period usually analysed. Accordingly, my focus is on the sheet music of country songs in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century and on how visual representations hybridised travelling themes to create a new vernacular ‘country’ in Australia. Creating ‘Country’ Music Country music, as its name suggests, is perceived as the music of rural areas, “defined in contrast to metropolitan norms” (Smith 301). However, the ‘naturalness’ of associations between country music and rurality belies a history of urban capitalism and the refinement of deliberate methods of marketing music through associated visual imagery. Early groups wore suits and dressed for urban audiences – but then altered appearances later, on the insistence of urban record companies, to emphasise rurality and cowboy heritage. Post-1950, ‘country’ came to replace ‘folk’ music as a marketing label, as the latter was considered to have too many communistic references (Hemphill 5), and the ethnic mixing of earlier folk styles was conveniently forgotten in the marketing of ‘country’ music as distinct from African American ‘race’ and ‘r and b’ music. Now an industry of its own with multinational headquarters in Nashville, country music is a ‘cash cow’ for entertainment corporations, with lower average production costs, considerable profit margins, and marketing advantages that stem from tropes of working class identity and ‘rural’ honesty (see Lewis; Arango). Another of country music’s associations is with American geography – and an imagined heartland in the colonial frontier of the American West. Slippages between ‘country’ and ‘western’ in music, film and dress enhance this. But historical fictions are masked: ‘purists’ argue that western dress and music have nothing to do with ‘country’ (see truewesternmusic.com), while recognition of the Spanish-Mexican, Native American and Hawaiian origins of ‘cowboy’ mythology is meagre (George-Warren and Freedman). Similarly, the highly international diffusion and adaptation of country music as it rose to prominence in the 1940s is frequently downplayed (Connell and Gibson), as are the destructive elements of colonialism and dispossession of indigenous peoples in frontier America (though Johnny Cash’s 1964 album The Ballads Of The American Indian: Bitter Tears was an exception). Adding to the above is the way ‘country’ operates discursively in music as a means to construct particular masculinities. Again, linked to rural imagery and the American frontier, the dominant masculinity is of rugged men wrestling nature, negotiating hardships and the pressures of family life. Country music valorises ‘heroic masculinities’ (Holt and Thompson), with echoes of earlier cowboy identities reverberating into contemporary performance through dress style, lyrical content and marketing imagery. The men of country music mythology live an isolated existence, working hard to earn an income for dependent families. Their music speaks to the triumph of hard work, honest values (meaning in this context a musical style, and lyrical concerns that are ‘down to earth’, ‘straightforward’ and ‘without pretence’) and physical strength, in spite of neglect from national governments and uncaring urban leaders. Country music has often come to be associated with conservative politics, heteronormativity, and whiteness (Gibson and Davidson), echoing the wider politics of ‘country’ – it is no coincidence, for example, that the slogan for the 2008 Republican National Convention in America was ‘country first’. And yet, throughout its history, country music has also enabled more diverse gender performances to emerge – from those emphasising (or bemoaning) domesticity; assertive femininity; creative negotiation of ‘country’ norms by gay men; and ‘alternative’ culture (captured in the marketing tag, ‘alt.country’); to those acknowledging white male victimhood, criminality (‘the outlaw’), vulnerability and cruelty (see Johnson; McCusker and Pecknold; Saucier). Despite dominant tropes of ‘honesty’, country music is far from transparent, standing for certain values and identities, and yet enabling the construction of diverse and contradictory others. Historical analysis is therefore required to trace the emergence of ‘country’ in music, as it travelled beyond America. A Note on Sheet Music as Media Source Sheet music was one of the main modes of distribution of music from the 1930s through to the 1950s – a formative period in which an eclectic group of otherwise distinct ‘hillbilly’ and ‘folk’ styles moved into a single genre identity, and after which vinyl singles and LP records with picture covers dominated. Sheet music was prevalent in everyday life: beyond radio, a hit song was one that was widely purchased as sheet music, while pianos and sheet music collections (stored in a piece of furniture called a ‘music canterbury’) in family homes were commonplace. Sheet music is in many respects preferable to recorded music as a form of evidence for historical analysis of country music. Picture LP covers did not arrive until the late 1950s (by which time rock and roll had surpassed country music). Until then, 78 rpm shellac discs, the main form of pre-recorded music, featured generic brown paper sleeves from the individual record companies, or city retail stores. Also, while radio was clearly central to the consumption of music in this period, it obviously also lacked the pictorial element that sheet music could provide. Sheet music bridged the music and printing industries – the latter already well-equipped with colour printing, graphic design and marketing tools. Sheet music was often literally crammed with information, providing the researcher with musical notation, lyrics, cover art and embedded advertisements – aural and visual texts combined. These multiple dimensions of sheet music proved useful here, for clues to the context of the music/media industries and geography of distribution (for instance, in addresses for publishers and sheet music retail shops). Moreover, most sheet music of the time used rich, sometimes exaggerated, images to convince passing shoppers to buy songs that they had possibly never heard. As sheet music required caricature rather than detail or historical accuracy, it enabled fantasy without distraction. In terms of representations of ‘country’, then, sheet music is perhaps even more evocative than film or television. Hundreds of sheet music items were collected for this research over several years, through deliberate searching (for instance, in library archives and specialist sheet music stores) and with some serendipity (for instance, when buying second hand sheet music in charity shops or garage sales). The collected material is probably not representative of all music available at the time – it is as much a specialised personal collection as a comprehensive survey. However, at least some material from all the major Australian country music performers of the time were found, and the resulting collection appears to be several times larger than that held currently by the National Library of Australia (from which some entries were sourced). All examples here are of songs written by, or cover art designed for Australian country music performers. For brevity’s sake, the following analysis of the sheet music follows a crudely chronological framework. Country Music in Australia Before ‘Country’ Country music did not ‘arrive’ in Australia from America as a fully-finished genre category; nor was Australia at the time without rural mythology or its own folk music traditions. Associations between Australian national identity, rurality and popular culture were entrenched in a period of intense creativity and renewed national pride in the decades prior to and after Federation in 1901. This period saw an outpouring of art, poetry, music and writing in new nationalist idiom, rooted in ‘the bush’ (though drawing heavily on Celtic expressions), and celebrating themes of mateship, rural adversity and ‘battlers’. By the turn of the twentieth century, such myths, invoked through memory and nostalgia, had already been popularised. Australia had a fully-established system of colonies, capital cities and state governments, and was highly urbanised. Yet the poetry, folk music and art, invariably set in rural locales, looked back to the early 1800s, romanticising bush characters and frontier events. The ‘bush ballad’ was a central and recurring motif, one that commentators have argued was distinctly, and essentially ‘Australian’ (Watson; Smith). Sheet music from this early period reflects the nationalistic, bush-orientated popular culture of the time: iconic Australian fauna and flora are prominent, and Australian folk culture is emphasised as ‘native’ (being the first era of cultural expressions from Australian-born residents). Pioneer life and achievements are celebrated. ‘Along the road to Gundagai’, for instance, was about an iconic Australian country town and depicted sheep droving along rustic trails with overhanging eucalypts. Male figures are either absent, or are depicted in situ as lone drovers in the archetypal ‘shepherd’ image, behind their flocks of sheep (Figure 1). Figure 1: No. 1 Magpie Ballads – The Pioneer (c1900) and Along the road to Gundagai (1923). Further colonial ruralities developed in Australia from the 1910s to 1940s, when agrarian values grew in the promotion of Australian agricultural exports. Australia ‘rode on the sheep’s back’ to industrialisation, and governments promoted rural development and inland migration. It was a period in which rural lifestyles were seen as superior to those in the crowded inner city, and government strategies sought to create a landed proletariat through post-war land settlement and farm allotment schemes. National security was said to rely on populating the inland with those of European descent, developing rural industries, and breeding a healthier and yet compliant population (Dufty), from which armies of war-ready men could be recruited in times of conflict. Popular culture served these national interests, and thus during these decades, when ‘hillbilly’ and other North American music forms were imported, they were transformed, adapted and reworked (as in other places such as Canada – see Lehr). There were definite parallels in the frontier narratives of the United States (Whiteoak), and several local adaptations followed: Tex Morton became Australia’s ‘Yodelling boundary rider’ and Gordon Parsons became ‘Australia’s yodelling bushman’. American songs were re-recorded and performed, and new original songs written with Australian lyrics, titles and themes. Visual imagery in sheet music built upon earlier folk/bush frontier themes to re-cast Australian pastoralism in a more settled, modernist and nationalist aesthetic; farms were places for the production of a robust nation. Where male figures were present on sheet music covers in the early twentieth century, they became more prominent in this period, and wore Akubras (Figure 2). The lyrics to John Ashe’s Growin’ the Golden Fleece (1952) exemplify this mix of Australian frontier imagery, new pastoralist/nationalist rhetoric, and the importation of American cowboy masculinity: Go west and take up sheep, man, North Queensland is the shot But if you don’t get rich, man, you’re sure to get dry rot Oh! Growin’ the golden fleece, battlin’ a-way out west Is bound to break your flamin’ heart, or else expand your chest… We westerners are handy, we can’t afford to crack Not while the whole darn’d country is riding on our back Figure 2: Eric Tutin’s Shearers’ Jamboree (1946). As in America, country music struck a chord because it emerged “at a point in history when the project of the creation and settlement of a new society was underway but had been neither completed nor abandoned” (Dyer 33). Governments pressed on with the colonial project of inland expansion in Australia, despite the theft of indigenous country this entailed, and popular culture such as music became a means to normalise and naturalise the process. Again, mutations of American western imagery, and particular iconic male figures were important, as in Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail (Figure 3): Wagon wheels are rolling on, and the days seem mighty long Clouds of heat-dust in the air, bawling cattle everywhere They’re on the overlander trail Where only sheer determination will prevail Men of Aussie with a job to do, they’ll stick and drive the cattle through And though they sweat they know they surely must Keep on the trail that winds a-head thro’ heat and dust All sons of Aussie and they will not fail. Sheet music depicted silhouetted men in cowboy hats on horses (either riding solo or in small groups), riding into sunsets or before looming mountain ranges. Music – an important part of popular culture in the 1940s – furthered the colonial project of invading, securing and transforming the Australian interior by normalising its agendas and providing it with heroic male characters, stirring tales and catchy tunes. Figure 3: ‘Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail and Smoky Dawson’s The Overlander’s Song (1946). ‘Country Music’ Becomes a (Globalised) Genre Further growth in Australian country music followed waves of popularity in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, and was heavily influenced by new cross-media publicity opportunities. Radio shows expanded, and western TV shows such as Bonanza and On the Range fuelled a ‘golden age’. Australian performers such as Slim Dusty and Smokey Dawson rose to fame (see Fitzgerald and Hayward) in an era when rural-urban migration peaked. Sheet music reflected the further diffusion and adoption of American visual imagery: where male figures were present on sheet music covers, they became more prominent than before and wore Stetsons. Some were depicted as chiselled-faced but simple men, with plain clothing and square jaws. Others began to more enthusiastically embrace cowboy looks, with bandana neckerchiefs, rawhide waistcoats, embellished and harnessed tall shaft boots, pipe-edged western shirts with wide collars, smile pockets, snap fasteners and shotgun cuffs, and fringed leather jackets (Figure 4). Landscapes altered further too: cacti replaced eucalypts, and iconic ‘western’ imagery of dusty towns, deserts, mesas and buttes appeared (Figure 5). Any semblance of folk music’s appeal to rustic authenticity was jettisoned in favour of showmanship, as cowboy personas were constructed to maximise cinematic appeal. Figure 4: Al Dexter’s Pistol Packin’ Mama (1943) and Reg Lindsay’s (1954) Country and Western Song Album. Figure 5: Tim McNamara’s Hitching Post (1948) and Smoky Dawson’s Golden West Album (1951). Far from slavish mimicry of American culture, however, hybridisations were common. According to Australian music historian Graeme Smith (300): “Australian place names appear, seeking the same mythological resonance that American localisation evoked: hobos became bagmen […] cowboys become boundary riders.” Thus alongside reproductions of the musical notations of American songs by Lefty Frizzel, Roy Carter and Jimmie Rodgers were songs with localised themes by new Australian stars such as Reg Lindsay and Smoky Dawson: My curlyheaded buckaroo, My home way out back, and On the Murray Valley. On the cover of The square dance by the billabong (Figure 6) – the title of which itself was a conjunction of archetypal ‘country’ images from both America and Australia – a background of eucalypts and windmills frames dancers in classic 1940s western (American) garb. In the case of Tex Morton’s Beautiful Queensland (Figure 7), itself mutated from W. Lee O’Daniel’s Beautiful Texas (c1945), the sheet music instructed those playing the music that the ‘names of other states may be substituted for Queensland’. ‘Country’ music had become an established genre, with normative values, standardised images and themes and yet constituted a stylistic formula with enough polysemy to enable local adaptations and variations. Figure 6: The Square dance by the billabong, Vernon Lisle, 1951. Figure 7: Beautiful Queensland, Tex Morton, c1945 source: http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn1793930. Conclusions In country music images of place and masculinity combine. In music, frontier landscapes are populated by rugged men living ‘on the range’ in neo-colonial attempts to tame the land and convert it to productive uses. This article has considered only one media – sheet music – in only one country (Australia) and in only one time period (1900-1950s). There is much more to say than was possible here about country music, place and gender – particularly recently, since ‘country’ has fragmented into several niches, and marketing of country music via cable television and the internet has ensued (see McCusker and Pecknold). My purpose here has been instead to explore the early origins of ‘country’ mythology in popular culture, through a media source rarely analysed. Images associated with ‘country’ travelled internationally via sheet music, immensely popular in the 1930s and 1940s before the advent of television. The visual elements of sheet music contributed to the popularisation and standardisation of genre expectations and appearances, and yet these too travelled and were adapted and varied in places like Australia which had their own colonial histories and folk music heritages. Evidenced here is how combinations of geographical and gender imagery embraced imported American cowboy imagery and adapted it to local markets and concerns. 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McCarthy, James. “Rural geography: globalizing the countryside.” Progress in Human Geography 32 (2008): 132-137. McCusker, Kristine M. and Pecknold, Diane. Eds. A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music. UP of Mississippi, 2004. Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Saucier, Karen A. “Healers and heartbreakers: images of women and men in country music.” Journal of Popular Culture 20 (1986): 147-166. Smith, Graeme. “Australian country music and the hillbilly yodel.” Popular Music 13 (1994): 297-311. Tichi, Cecelia. Readin’ Country Music. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. truewesternmusic.com “True western music.”, Sept 3, 2008, http://truewesternmusic.com/. Watson, Eric. Country Music in Australia. Sydney: Rodeo Publications, 1984. Whiteoak, John. “Two frontiers: early cowboy music and Australian popular culture.” Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music. Ed. P. Hayward. Gympie: AICMP: 2003. 1-28.

Murray Forman’s text The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop provides insightful commentary on the workings of and relationship between place and space. To highlight the difference of scale between these two parameters, he writes that, “place defines the immediate locale of human interaction in the particular, whereas space is the expanse of mobile trajectories through which subjects pass in their circulation between or among distinct and varied places” (25). This statement reflects Doreen Massey’s earlier observation from her book Space, Place, and Gender that “one view of a place is as a particular articulation” of the spatial (5). These descriptions clarify how human action shapes, and is shaped by, what Forman describes as the “more narrowly circumscribed parameters” of place (25) and the broader realm of space. Clearly, these two terms describe interconnected components that are socially constructed and dynamic: that is, they operate at different scales but are constructed in time, constantly reshaped by human action and perception. “Space and time are inextricably interwoven,” states Massey. She continues: “It is not that the interrelations between objects occur in space and time; it is these relationships themselves which create/define space and time” (261). If place and space represent different scales of social interaction and space and time are interconnected, place and time must be linked as well.While this indicates that human experience and representation operate on different scales, it is important to note that these two factors are also interrelated. As Stuart Hall writes, “[I]t is only through the way in which we represent and imagine ourselves that we come to know how we are constituted and who we are” (473). There is no objective experience, only that which is subjectively represented through various means. Through depictions of these relationships between place, space, and time, rap music shapes listeners’ comprehension of these parameters. DJs, MCs, producers, and other creative artists express personal observations through the influence of both the local and global, the past and present. In rap lyrics and their musical accompaniment, countries, cities, neighbourhoods, and even specific government housing developments inform the music, but the identities of these places and spaces are not fixed – for the performers or for the audience. They are more than the backdrop for what happens, inanimate structures or coordinates of latitude and longitude. Their dynamic nature, and their representation in music, serves to continually redefine “how we are constituted and who we are” (473).In MC Solaar’s Léve-toi et Rap from his 2001 album Cinquième as and his song Nouveau Western, from 1994’s Prose Combat, this is demonstrated in two very different ways. Léve-toi et Rap, a personal history told in the first person, clearly demonstrates both American hip-hop lineage and the transnational influences of Solaar’s upbringing. This song serves as an example of the adoption of American musical and lyrical techniques as means through which personally empowering, often place-based stories are told. In Nouveau Western, the narrative demonstrates the negative effects of globalization through this story about a geographically and temporally transported American cowboy. This track employs musical materials in a way that reflects the more critical lyrical commentary on the repercussions of American cultural and economic power. Through the manner of his storytelling, and through the stories themselves, MC Solaar explicitly demonstrates his own agency in representing, and thus constructing the meaning of, dynamic place and space as they are defined from these two perspectives.As a Paris-based French rapper, MC Solaar often makes his affiliation to this geographic focal point significant in his lyrics. This is especially clear in Léve-toi et Rap, in which Parisian banlieues (HLM government housing projects), nightclubs, and other places figure prominently in the text. From the lyrics, one learns a great deal about this rapper and his background: MC Solaar was born in Senegal, but his parents brought him to France when he was young (MC Solaar, “Léve-toi et Rap”; Petetin, 802, 805). He grew up struggling with the isolation and social problems of the banlieues and the discrimination he faced as an immigrant. He began rapping, established a musical career, and now encourages others to rap as a means of making something constructive out of a challenging situation. In the excerpt below, MC Solaar explains these origins and the move to the banlieues (Solaar, “Lève-toi et rap;” All translations by the author).Lève-toi et rap elaborates on the connection between the local and global in rap music, and between place, space, and time. The lyrics and music represent these properties in part by appropriating American rap’s stylistic practices. The introductory chorus incorporates sampled lyrics of the American artists Lords of the Underground, the Beastie Boys, Nas, and Redman (Various Contributors, “‘Lève-toi et rap’ Direct Sample of Vocals/Lyrics,” whosampled.com.). A bassline originally recorded by the funk group The Crusaders grounds the musical accompaniment that begins with the first verse (partially printed above), in which MC Solaar begins to depict his own place and space as he has experienced it temporally.In this chorus, the first sample is “I remember way back in the days on my block” from Lords of the Underground’s song Tic-Toc. This leads to “Oh My God” and “Ah, Ah, Ah,” both samples from Q-Tip’s contribution to the Beastie Boys’ song Get It Together. “I Excel,” which appears in Nas’s It Ain’t Hard to Tell comes next. The last sample, “Who Got the Funk,” is from Can’t Wait by Redman (Lords of the Underground, “Tic-Tic;” Beastie Boys and Q-Tip, “Get It Together;” Nas, “It Ain’t Hard to Tell;” The Crusaders, “The Well’s Gone Dry”).Scratching begins the introductory chorus (printed below), which ends with a voice announcing “MC Solaar.” At this point, the sampled bassline from The Crusaders’ 1974 song The Well’s Gone Dry begins.[Scratching]I remember back in the days on my block... Lords of the UndergroundOh my God... Ah, Ah, Ah... Beastie Boys and Q-TipI excel… NasWho got the funk... RedmanMC Solaar[Crusaders sample begins] The rap samples all date from 1994, the year Solaar released his well-received album Prose Combat and most are strategically placed: the first sample originated in the last verse of Tic-Toc, the Q-Tip samples in the middle are from the middle of Get It Together, and the last sample, “I Excel,” is from the first line of It Ain’t Hard to Tell. As Lève-toi et rap continues, MC Solaar’s statement of the song title itself replaces the iteration “MC Solaar” of the first chorus. In a sense, “Lève-toi et rap” becomes the last sample of the chorus. Through these American references, Solaar demonstrates an affiliation with the place in which rap is commonly known to have originally coalesced. For French rappers consciously working to prove their connection to rap’s lineage, such demonstrations are useful (Faure and Garcia, 81-82). Achieved by sampling music and lyrics from 1974 and 1994 from sources that are not all that obvious to a casual listener, Solaar spatially connects his work to the roots of rap (Shusterman, 214). These particular samples also highlight a spatial relationship to particular styles of rap that represent place and space in particular ways. Nas and Lords of the Underground, for instance, have added to the discourse on street credibility and authenticity, while Q-tip has provided commentary on social and political issues. MC Solaar’s own story widens the parameters for illustrating these concepts, as he incorporates the personally significant places such as Senegal, Chad, and the Saint Denis banlieue to establish street credibility on a transnational scale; the lyrics also describe serious social and political issues, including the “skinheads” he encountered while living in Paris. Dynamic place is clear throughout all of this, as everything occurring in these places is meaningful in part because of the unavoidable relationship with the passing of time – Solaar’s birth, his upbringing, and his success occurred through his choices and social interactions in specific places.Looking more closely at the representation of place and time, Lève-toi et rap is less than straightforward. As discussed previously, some of the vocal samples are rearranged, demonstrating purposeful alteration of pre-recorded material; in contrast, the use of a repeated funk bassline sample during a clear narrative of Solaar’s life juxtaposes a linear story with a non-linear musical accompaniment. To this, MC Solaar made a contemporary textual contribution to later choruses, with the title of the song added as the chorus’s last line. Such manipulation in the context of this first-person narrative to express this movement supports the conclusion that, far from being a victim of political and economic forces, MC Solaar has used them to his advantage. After all, the title of the song itself, Lève-toi et rap, translates roughly to “get up and rap.”In addition to manipulating the materials of American rap and funk for this purpose, Solaar’s use of verlan, a type of slang used in the banlieues, brings another level of locality to Lève-toi et rap. The use of verlan brings the song’s association with French banlieue culture closer: by communicating in a dialect fluently understood by relatively few, rappers ensure that their message will be understood best by those who share the constellation of social and temporal relations of these housing developments (Milon, 75). Adding verlan to other slang and to unique grammatical rules, the rap of the banlieues is to some extent in its own language (Prévos, “Business” 902-903).Referring to MC Solaar’s 1994 album Prose Combat, André Prévos observed that this material “clearly illustrates the continuity of this tradition, all the while adding an identifiable element of social and personal protest as well as an identifiable amount of ‘signifying’ also inspired by African American hip-hip lyrics” (Prévos, “Postcolonial” 43). While it is clear at this point that this is also true for Lève-toi et rap from Cinquème as, Nouveau Western from Prose Combat demonstrates continuity in different way. To start, the samples used in this song create a more seamless texture. A sample from the accompaniment to Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie and Clyde from 1967 undergirds the song, providing a French pop reference to a story about an American character (Various Contributors, “Nouveau Western” whosampled.com). The bassline from Bonnie and Clyde is present throughout Nouveau Western, while the orchestral layer from the sample is heard during sections of the verses and choruses. Parts of the song also feature alto saxophone samples that provide continuity with the jazz-influenced character of many songs on this album.The contrasts with Lève-toi et rap continue with the lyrical content. Rather than describing his own process of acquiring knowledge and skill as he moved in time from place to place, in Nouveau Western MC Solaar tells the story of a cowboy named “Harry Zona” who was proud and independent living in Arizona, hunting for gold with his horse, but who becomes a victim in contemporary Paris. In the fabled west, the guns he carries and his method of transportation facilitate his mission: Il erre dans les plaines, fier, solitaire. Son cheval est son partenaire [He wanders the plains, proud, alone. His horse is his partner.]. After suddenly being transported to modern-day Paris, he orders a drink from an “Indian,” at a bistro and “scalps” the foam off, but this is surely a different kind of person and practice than Solaar describes Harry encountering in the States (MC Solaar, “Nouveau Western”).After leaving the bistro, Harry is arrested driving his stagecoach on the highway and shut away by the authorities in Fresnes prison for his aberrant behaviour. His pursuit of gold worked for him in the first context, but the quest for wealth advanced in his home country contributed to the conditions he now faces, and which MC Solaar critiques, later in the song. He raps, Les States sont comme une sorte de multinationale / Elle exporte le western et son monde féudal / Dicte le bien, le mal, Lucky Luke et les Dalton [The States are a kind of multinational”/ “They export the western and its feudal way/ Dictate the good the bad, Lucky Luke and the Daltons] (MC Solaar, “Nouveau Western”).Harry seems to thrive in the environment portrayed as the old west: as solitary hero, he serves as a symbol of the States’ independent spirit. In the nouveau far west [new far west] francophone comic book characters Lucky Luke and the Daltons sont camouflés en Paul Smith’s et Wesson [are camouflaged in Paul Smith’s and Wesson], and Harry is not equipped to cope with this confusing combination. He is lost as he negotiates le système moderne se noie l’individu [the modern system that drowns the individual]. To return to Bonnie and Clyde, these ill-fated and oft-fabled figures weren’t so triumphant either, and in Gainsbourg’s song, they are represented by 1960s French pop rather than by even a hint of local 1930s musical traditions. “Harry Zona” is not the only person whose story unfolds through the lens of another culture.While Solaar avoids heavy use of verlan or other Parisian slang in this song, he does use several American cultural references, some of which I have already mentioned. In addition, the word “western” refers to western movies, but it also serves as another term for the United States and its cultural exports. “Hollywood” is another term for the west, and in this context MC Solaar warns his listeners to question this fictional setting. Following his observation that John Wayne looks like Lucky Luke, “well groomed like an archduke,” he exclaims Hollywood nous berne, Hollywood berne! [Hollywood fooled us! Hollywood fools!]. This is followed by, on dit gare au gorille, mais gare à Gary Cooper [as they say watch out for the gorilla, watch out for Gary Cooper]. Slick characters like the ones Gary Cooper played have ultimately served as cultural capital that has generated economic capital for the “multinational” States that Solaar describes. As Harry moves “epochs and places,” he discovers that this sort of influence, now disguised in fashion-forward clothing, is more influential than his Smith and Wesson of the old west (MC Solaar, “Nouveau Western”).It is important to note that this narrative is described with the language of the cultural force that it critiques. As Geoffrey Baker writes, “MC Solaar delves into the masterpieces and linguistic arsenal of his colonizers in order to twist the very foundations of their linguistic oppression against them” (Baker, 241). These linguistic – and cultural – references facilitate this ironic critique of the “new Far West”: Harry suffers in the grip of a more sophisticated gold rush (MC Solaar, “Nouveau Western”).Lève-toi et rap transforms musical and verbal language as well, but the changes are more overt. Even though the musical samples are distinctly American, they are transformed, and non-American places of import to MC Solaar are described with heavy use of slang. This situates the song in American and French cultural territory while demonstrating Solaar’s manipulation of both. He is empowered by the specialized expression of place and space, and by the loud and proud references to a dynamic upbringing, in which struggle culminates in triumph.Empowerment through such manipulation is an attractive interpretation, but because this exercise includes the transformation of a colonizer’s language, it ultimately depends on understanding rap as linked to some extent to what Murray Forman and Tricia Rose describe as “Western cultural imperialism” (Rose, 19; Forman, 21). Both Rose and Forman point out that rap has benefitted from what Rose describes as “the disproportionate exposure of U.S. artists around the world,” (Rose, 19) even though this music has provided an avenue through which marginalized groups have articulated social and political concerns (Rose, 19; Forman 21). The “transnational circulation of contemporary culture industries” that Forman describes (21) has benefitted multinational corporations, but it has also provided new means of expression for those reached by this global circulation. Additionally, this process has engendered a sense of community around the world among those who identify with rap’s musical and lyrical practices and content; in many cases, rap’s connection to the African diaspora is a significant factor in the music’s appeal. This larger spatial connection occurs alongside more locally place-based connections. Lève-toi et rap clearly manifests this sense of simultaneously negotiating one’s role as a global citizen and as an individual firmly grounded in the place and space of local experience.Even though rap has been a music of resistance to hegemonic social and economic forces for people around the world, it is nonetheless important to recognize that the forces that have disseminated this music on a global scale have contributed to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Working within this system is almost always unavoidable for rappers, many of whom criticize these conditions in their music, but depend on these transnational corporations for their success. Paul A. Silverstein writes that “hip-hop formations themselves, while enunciating an explicit critique of both state interventionism and the global market, have directly benefited from both and, to be sure, simultaneously desire their end and their continuation” (47-48). This is very clear in Nouveau Western, which Silverstein writes “portrayed neo-liberalism as a ‘new Far West’ where credit cards replace Remingtons.” (48) That this critique has reached a large audience in the francophone world and elsewhere highlights the irony of the situation: under the current system of popular musical production and circulation, such material often must reach its audience through complicity with the very system it denounces. This view on the mixture of the local and global presented in these songs illustrates this confusing situation, but from another perspective, the representation of social interaction on varying scales connects to the factors that have contributed to rap since its inception. Local places and geographically broad spatial connections have been articulated in constantly changing ways through musical and lyrical sampling, original lyrical references, and the uses that creators, listeners, and the industry enact vis-à-vis global rap culture. Whether revealed through clear references to American rap that facilitate a personal narrative or through a more complicated critique of American culture, MC Solaar’s songs Lève-toi et rap and Nouveau Western expose some accomplishments of a French rapper whose work reveals personal agency both outside and within the “multinational” United States. ReferencesBaker, Geoffrey. “Preachers, Gangsters, Pranksters: MC Solaar and Hip-Hop as Overt and Covert Revolt.” The Journal of Popular Culture 44 (2011): 233-54.Beastie Boys and Q-Tip. “Get It Together.” Ill Communication. Grand Royal Records, 1994. CD.Faure, Sylvia, and Marie-Carmen Garcia. “Conflits de Valeurs et Générations.” Culture Hip Hop Jeunes des Cités et Politiques Publiques. Paris: La Dispute SNÉDIT, 2005. 69-83. Forman, Murray. “Space Matters: Hip-Hop and the Spatial Perspective.” The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2002. 1- 34. Hall, Stuart. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, Edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1996. 465-475. Lords of the Underground. “Tic-Tic.” Keepers of the Funk. Pendulum Records, 1994. CD.Massey, Doreen. Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1994. 19-24.Milon, Alain. “Pourquoi le Rappeur Chante? Le Rap comme Expression de la Relégation Urbaine.” Cités 19 (2004): 71-80.MC Solaar (Claude M’Barali). “Lève-toi et rap.” Cinquème as. Wea International, 2001. CD.———. “Nouveau Western.” Prose Combat. Cohiba, 1994. CD.Nas. “It Ain’t Hard to Tell.” Illmatic. Columbia Records, 1994. CD.Petetin, Véronique. “Slam, Rap, et ‘Mondialité.” Études 6 (June 2009): 797-808.Prévos, André J.M. “Le Business du Rap en France.” The French Review 74 (April 2001): 900-21.———. “Postcolonial Popular Music in France.” Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop outside the USA. Ed. Tony Mitchell. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2001. 39-56. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1994.Shusterman, Richard. “L’Estitique Postmoderne du Rap.” Rue Deseartes 5/6 (November 1992): 209-28.Silverstein, Paul A. “‘Why Are We Waiting to Start the Fire?’: French Gangsta Rap and the Critique of State Capitalism.” Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World. Ed. Alain-Philippe Durand. Oxford: Scarecrow Press, 2002. 45-67. The Crusaders. “The Well’s Gone Dry.” Southern Comfort. ABC/Blue Thumb Records, 1974. CD.Various Contributors. “‘Lève-toi et rap’ Direct Sample of Vocals/Lyrics.” whosampled.com.———. “‘Nouveau Western’ Direct Sample of Hook/Riff.” whosampled.com.Various Contributors. “MC Solaar – ‘Lève-toi et rap’ Lyrics.” Rap Genius.

Cut In 1964, William S. Burroughs' Nova Express is published. Part of the trilogy of books Burroughs wrote in the early 1960s (The Soft Cell and The Ticket That Exploded are the other two), Nova Express explores the problems that technology creates in the information age; and the ways in which language and thought have come under the influence of mass media. The book begins with a broad declaration against consumerism and corporate control: Listen all you boards syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth deals consummated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn feet forever - "For God's sake don't let that Coca-Cola thing out -" (Nova Express 3) Rather than opt for conventional narrative as a means of uncovering the problems ideology brings with media-driven mass consumption, in the early '60s, Burroughs develops a method of writing he calls "the cut-up". The cut-up method entails taking a page of writing (a newspaper, a poem, a novel, an advertisement, a speech) and cutting it down the middle twice so that four sections remain. One then rearranges the sections in random order to create a new page. Variations of the four section cut are permissible and can lead to further juxtapositions. The purpose of the cut-up is to disclose ideological positions within media, to recontextualise the language of media often taken for granted as natural and not as a socially and economically constructed act. Information has become addictive, Burroughs says, invoking the junkie as a metaphor for mass consumption. Its addictive state leads to hallucinations, distortions of what is real and what is illusion; what do we need to live, and what do we buy for mere consumption. The scanning pattern we accept as "reality" has been imposed by the controlling power on this planet, a power primarily oriented towards total control - In order to retain control they have moved to monopolize and deactivate the hallucinogen drugs by effecting noxious alternations on a molecular level. (Nova Express 53) The cut-up provides a means to combat the "junky" in us all by revealing the powers of technology. In the end, the cut-up leads to a collagist practice of juxtaposition. As Burroughs and collaborator Byron Gysin explained in a later work, The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passersby and juxtaposition cut-ups (Burroughs and Gysin 29). Through its structure, Nova Express is a lesson in making cut-ups, a demonstration of how power might be undermined in the digital age. Paste In 1964, the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham began. Influenced by Raymond Williams' 1958 Culture and Society, the Birmingham School legitimized the reading of popular culture as a means to uncovering dominant ideologies and power structures within institutional systems. In particular, the center proposed structuring scholasticism so that the study of media texts would allow for the questioning of social and political practices. The Birmingham school advised that curriculae supplement their agendas with the question of class; the complex relationships between power, which is an easier term to establish in the discourses of culture than exploitation, and exploitation; the question of a general theory which could, in a critical way, connect together in a critical reflection different domains of life, politics, and theory, theory and practice, economic, political ideological questions, and so on; the notion of critical knowledge itself and the production of critical knowledge as a practice. (Hall 279) One of the Birmingham School's first works was Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel's Popular Arts, which searched out ways to teach media. In particular, Hall and Whannel viewed popular culture as a place to teach the power of ideology. There is, in fact, a growing recognition that the media of mass communication play such a significant role in society, and especially in the lives of young people, that the school must embrace the study of their organization, content, and impact. But there is little agreement about how such studies should be carried out. Just what shall be studied? With what precise purpose? In what relationship to the established subjects? Ultimately the answer will depend upon our attitude towards these media, our social thinking about the kind of society in which they wield their influence and, in particular, our response to the things the media offer - individual films, television programmes, popular songs, etc. (Hall and Whannel 21) Today, the Birmingham School is recognised as the beginning of contemporary cultural studies. It answers Hall and Whannel by using texts from popular culture to uncover the semiotic cultural codes that make up popular discourse. These methods shed light on how supposedly naturally constructed messages contain deeper meanings and purposes. Mix In 1964, DJ Alan Freed was convicted of tax evasion as a result of his involvement in the payola record business scandal of 1962. Considered one of the first rock and roll DJs, Freed is often credited for breaking ‘50s racial barriers by playing African-American music on the airwaves and hosting largely attended African-American dances and concerts. Even though Freed didn't invent the phrase "rock and roll," he credited himself with the term's introduction into music vocabulary, a myth-making act with far reaching implications. As critic Nick Tosch writes: "Though he was certainly not the first who had done so; he was only the most influential of those who had - Freed [had] rinsed the Dixie Peach from its image, rendering it more agreeable to the palate of a greater public" (Tosch 9). In the same year of Freed's conviction, another legendary DJ, Murray the K, found fame again by following the Beatles around on their 1964 North American tour. Murray the K had been popular in the late '50s for "his wild stammering of syllables, fragments of words, black slang, and meaningless, rhythmical burbling" to make transitions between songs (Poschardt 75). Mass copying of Murray the K's DJ stylings led to his redundancy. When New Journalist Tom Wolfe rediscovered the DJ tagging along with the Beatles, he became intrigued, describing him as "the original hysterical disk jockey": Murray the K doesn't operate on Aristotelian logic. He operates on symbolic logic. He builds up an atmosphere of breathless jollification, comic hysteria, and turns it up to a pitch so high it can hypnotize kids and keep them frozen. (Wolfe 34) While Freed introduced African-American culture to mainstream music, Murray the K's DJing worked from a symbolic logic of appropriation: sampled sounds, bits and pieces of eccentric outtakes used as vehicles to move from song to song. Both Freed and Murray the K, however, conceived the idea of the DJ as more than a spinner of records. They envisioned the DJ as a form of media, a myth maker, a composer of ideas through sounds and politics. In a sense, they saw their work as disseminating social commentary on '60s racial politics and ideology, working from a fairly new innovation: the rock and roll record. Their DJ work became the model for contemporary hip hop artists. Instead of considering isolated train whistles or glass crashing (the technique of Murray the K) as sources for sampling, contemporary DJs and digital samplers cut and paste fragments from the history of popular music in order to compose new works, compositions which function as vehicles of cultural critique. Groups like Public Enemy and The Roots utilise their record collections to make political statements on drug usage, economic problems within the African-American community, and racism. For Tricia Rose, these artists are the cultural studies writers of the digital age. "Rappers are constantly taking dominant discursive fragments and throwing them into relief, destabilizing hegemonic discourses and attempting to legitimate counterhegemonic interpretations." (Rose 102) Remix The juxtaposition of these three events in 1964 marks an interesting place to consider the potential for new media and cultural studies. Such a juxtaposition answers the calls of Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler in their introduction to Cultural Studies, a collection of essays from the 1970s and 1980s. The editors suggest that cultural studies can be thought of, in some ways, as a collagist practice. The methodology of cultural studies provides an equally uneasy marker, for cultural studies in fact has no distinct methodology, no unique statistical, ethnomethodological, or textual analysis to call its own. Its methodology, ambiguous from the beginning, could best be seen as a bricolage. (2) For these editors, "Cultural studies needs to remain open to unexpected, unimagined, even uninvited possibilities" (3). To consider cultural studies from the perspective of 1964 is to evoke the unexpected, the unimagined, and the uninvited. It is to resituate the demands of cultural study within the context of new media - the legacy of Burroughs' cut-up reborn in the digital sampler. In response to the editors of Cultural Studies, I propose the practice of temporal juxtaposition as a way of critical writing. My initial juxtaposition of 1964 asserts that to teach such a practice, one must teach cutting and mixing. The Break The break, as a DJ method, is "any short captured sound whatsoever" (Eshun 14). The break motivates digital sampling; it provides the points from which samplers appropriate past works into their own: "Break beats are points of rupture in their former contexts, points at which the thematic elements of a musical piece are suspended and the underlying rhythms brought center stage. In the early stages of rap, these break beats formed the core of rap DJs' mixing strategies" (Rose 73-74). Breaks are determined by how DJs produce cuts in previously recorded music. "The cut is a command, a technical and conceptual operation which cuts the lines of association" (Eshun 16). For William Burroughs, cuts create shock in readers; they are tools for destroying ideology. "Once machine lines are cut, the enemy is helpless" (Ticket That Exploded 111). In Nova Express, Burroughs issues the command, "Cut word lines" (62). And in Naked Lunch, the cut provides a set of reading instructions, a way for readers to uncover Burroughs' own ideological positions. You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point . . . I have written many prefaces. . . Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book. (Naked Lunch 224 For Roland Barthes, a major influence on the founding of the Birmingham School, the How-To functioned as a place for cultural critique. Barthes felt that semiotic analysis could break ideological positions constructed in popular culture. Barthes used the How-To as one example of what he called mythologies, items of popular culture assumed to be natural but latent with ideological meanings. He treated the how-to tourist guide (how to enjoy yourself on vacation) as one such place for further analysis. The good natured image of "the writer on holiday" is therefore no more than one of these cunning mystifications which the Establishment practices the better to enslave its writers. (Barthes 30) Mythologies has inspired contemporary cultural studies. Dick Hebdige states that through Barthes' work, "It was hoped that the invisible temporary seam between language, experience and reality could be located and prised open through a semiotic analysis" (Hebdige 10). My juxtapositions of 1964, however, tell me that the How-To for cultural studies is cutting and pasting, not hermeneutical or semiotic analysis (i.e. What does this mean? What do these codes reveal?), which have long been cultural studies' focus. 1964 updates cultural studies practices by reinventing its methods of inquiry. 1964 forces academic study to ask: How would a contemporary cultural critic cut into cultural texts and paste selections into a new media work? The Sample Cuts and breaks become samples, authorial chosen selections. My sample comes from Walter Benjamin, an early DJ of media culture who discovered in 19th century Paris a source for a new compositional practice. Benjamin's unfinished Arcades project proposed that the task of the writer in the age of mechanical reproduction is to become a collector. "The collector was the true inhabitant of the interior" (Benjamin 168). Benjamin felt that the "poets find their refuse on the street" (79) preempting William Gibson's now often cited remark, "the street finds its own use for things" (Gibson 186) and modern DJs who build record collections by rummaging bargain street sales. I find in Benjamin's work a place to sample, a break for cutting into Burroughs' nova method. "The basic nova mechanism is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflict - This is done by dumping life forms with incompatible conditions of existence on the same planet" (Nova Express 53). Like Burroughs, Benjamin expressed interest in the ideological conflicts created through juxtaposition. His collections of the Parisian Arcades led to a cultural history different from that of the Frankfurt School. The Arcades' juxtapositions of consumer goods and artifacts opposed the Frankfurt School's understandings of Marxism and methods of critique. The conflict I create is that of incorporating the concerns of cultural studies into media study as an alternative practice. This practice is a system of sampling, cutting, breaking, and pasting. What might initially seem incompatible to cultural studies, I propose as a method of critique. My initial juxtaposition of 1964 becomes the first step towards doing so: I critique current cultural studies' methods of semiotic and hermeneutical analysis by way of the cut and mix I create. This Benjamin sample is pasted onto the Networked Writing Environment (NWE) at the University of Florida where I teach media classes in one of several computer networked classrooms. Working from a sampled Benjamin and the juxtaposition of the previously described temporal events of 1964, I see a place to rethink new media and cultural studies. The NWE's graphical user interface completes the cut. Our Unix operating system uses X Windows for desktop display. The metaphor of the X, the slash, the cut, becomes a place to rethink what cultural studies admits to be a cut-up, or a non-unified practice (as stated by Grossberg et al). The X also recalls the crossroads, the iconic marker of the place of decision. Standing at the crossroads, I envision the blues song of the same name, which in 1964 was cut from its Robert Johnson origins and remixed as a new recording by the Yardbirds. This decision shifts the focus of media study to cultural collections, their juxtapositions, and the alternative understandings that surface. The tools of technology (like those we use in the NWE: the Web, MOO, and e-mail) cut the structural dominance of critique and encourage us to make new pedagogical decisions, like juxtaposing a William Burroughs novel with the founding of the Birmingham School with the rise of the DJ. Putting these practices into the mix, we redefine cultural critique. 1964, then, is the place where cultural mixing begins. References Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957. Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Harry Zohn trans. London: NLB, 1973. Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch. New York: Grove, 1982 (1959). _________________. Nova Express. New York: Grove, 1992 (1964). _________________. The Ticket That Exploded. New York: Grove, 1987 (1962). Burroughs, William S. and Byron Gysin. The Third Mind. New York: Viking Press, 1978. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant Than the Sun. London: Quartet, 1999. Gibson, William. "Burning Chrome." Burning Chrome. New York: Ace Books, 1981. Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, eds. Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1992. Hall, Stuart. "Theoretical Legacies." Cultural Studies. Hall, Stuart and Paddy Whannel. The Popular Arts. New York: Pantheon, 1964. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London and New York: Routledge, 1979. Poschardt, Ulf. DJ Culture. London: Quartet, 1998. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Black Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Tosch, Nick. Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. Wolfe, Tom. "The Fifth Beatle." The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby. New York: Pocket Books, 1965.

Introduction In any list of dictators and antagonists of the West the name of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi will always rank highly as one of the most memorable, colourful and mercurial. The roles he played to his fellow Libyans, to regional groupings, to revolutionaries and to the West were complex and nuanced. These various roles developed over time but were all grounded in his self-belief as a messianic revolutionary figure. More importantly, these roles and behaviours that stemmed from them were instrumental in preserving Qaddafi’s rule and thwarting challenges to it. These facets of Qaddafi’s public self accord with the model of “persona” described by Marshall. Whilst the nature of political persona and celebrity in the Western world has been explored by several scholars (for example Street; Wilson), little work has been conducted on the use of persona by non-democratic leaders. This paper examines the aspects of persona exhibited by Colonel Qaddafi and applied during his tenure. In constructing his role as a revolutionary leader, Qaddafi was engaging in a form of public performance aimed at delivering himself to a wider audience. Whether at home or abroad, this persona served the purpose of helping the Libyan leader consolidate his power, stymie political opposition and export his revolutionary ideals. The trajectory of his persona begins in the early days of his coming to power as a charismatic leader during a “time of distress” (Weber) and culminates in his bloody end next to a roadside drainage culvert. In between these points Qaddafi’s persona underwent refinement and reinvention. Coupled with the legacy he left on the Libyan political system, the journey of Muammar Qaddafi’s personas demonstrate how political personality can be the salvation or damnation of an entire state.Qaddafi: The Brotherly RevolutionaryCaptain Muammar Qaddafi came to power in Libya in 1969 at the age of just 27. He was the leader of a group of military officers who overthrew King Idris in a popular and relatively bloodless coup founded on an ideology of post-colonial Arab nationalism and a doing away with the endemic corruption and nepotism that were the hallmarks of the monarchy. With this revolutionary cause in mind and in an early indication that he recognised the power of political image, Qaddafi showed restraint in adopting the trappings of office. His modest promotion to the rank of Colonel was an obvious example of this, and despite the fact that in practical terms he was the supreme commander of Libya’s armed forces, he resisted the temptation to formally aggrandize himself with military titles for the ensuing 42 years of his rule.High military rank was in a way irrelevant to a man moving to change his persona from army officer to messianic national leader. Switching away from a reliance on military hierarchy as a basis for his authority allowed Qaddafi to re-cast himself as a leader with a broader mission. He began to utilise titles such as “Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council” (RCC) and “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution.” The persona on display here was one of detached impartiality and almost reluctant leadership. There was the suggestion that Qaddafi was not really acting as a head of state, but merely an ordinary Libyan who, through popular acclaim, was being begged to lead his people. The attraction of this persona remained until the bitter end for Qaddafi, with his professed inability to step aside from a leadership role he insisted he did not formally occupy. This accords with the contention of Weber, who describes how an individual favoured with charisma can step forward at a time of crisis to complete a “mission.” Once in a position of authority, perpetuating that role of leadership and acclamation can become the mission itself:The holder, of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands obedience and a following by virtue of his mission. His success determines whether he finds them. His charismatic claim breaks down if his mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent. If they recognize him, he is their master—so long as he knows how to maintain recognition through ‘proving’ himself. But he does not derive his ‘right’ from their will, in the manner of an election. Rather, the reverse holds: it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader. (Weber 266-7)As his rule extended across the decades, Qaddafi fostered his revolutionary credentials via a typical cult of personality approach. His image appeared on everything from postage stamps to watches, bags, posters and billboards. Quotations from the Brother Leader were set to music and broadcast as pop songs. “Spontaneous” rallies of support would occur when crowds of loyalists would congregate to hear the Brotherly Leader speak. Although Qaddafi publicly claimed he did not like this level of public adoration he accepted it because the people wanted to adore him. It was widely known however that many of these crowds were paid to attend these rallies (Blundy and Lycett 16).Qaddafi: The Philosopher In developing his persona as a guide and a man who was sharing his natural gifts with the people, Qaddafi developed a post-colonial philosophy he called “Third Universal Theory.” This was published in volumes collectively known as The Green Book. This was mandatory reading for every Libyan and contained a distillation of Qaddafi’s thoughts and opinions on everything from sports to politics to religion to the differences between men and women. Whilst it may be tempting for outsiders to dismiss these writings as the scribbling of a dictator, the legacy of Qaddafi’s persona as political philosopher is worthy of some examination. For in offering his revelations to the Libyan people, Qaddafi extended his mandate beyond leader of a revolution and into the territory of “messianic reformer of a nation.”The Green Book was a three-part series. The first instalment was written in 1975 and focuses on the “problem of democracy” where Qaddafi proposes direct democracy as the best option for a progressive nation. The second instalment, published in 1977, focuses on economics and expounds socialism as the solution to all fiscal woes. (Direct popular action here was evidenced in the RCC making rental of real estate illegal, meaning that all tenants in the country suddenly found themselves granted ownership of the property they were occupying!) The final chapter, published in 1981, proposes the Third Universal Theory where Qaddafi outlines his unique solution for implementing direct democracy and socialism. Qaddafi coined a new term for his Islamically-inspired socialist utopia: Jamahiriya. This was defined as being a “state of the masses” and formed the blueprint for Libyan society which Qaddafi subsequently imposed.This model of direct democracy was part of the charismatic conceit Qaddafi cultivated: that the Libyan people were their own leaders and his role was merely as a benevolent agent acceding to their wishes. However the implementation of the Jamahiriya was anything but benevolent and its legacy has crippled post-Qaddafi Libya. Under this system, Libyans did have some control over their affairs at a very local level. Beyond this, an increasingly complex series of committees and regional groupings, over which the RCC had the right of veto, diluted the participation of ordinary citizens and their ability to coalesce around any individual leader. The banning of standard avenues of political organisation, such as parties and unions, coupled with a ruthless police state that detained and executed anyone offering even a hint of political dissent served to snuff out any opposition before it had a chance to gather pace. The result was that there were no Libyans with enough leadership experience or public profile to take over when Qaddafi was ousted in 2011.Qaddafi: The Liberator In a further plank of his revolutionary persona Qaddafi turned to the world beyond Libya to offer his brotherly guidance. This saw him champion any cause that claimed to be a liberation or resistance movement struggling against the shackles of colonialism. He tended to favour groups that had ideologies aligned with his own, namely Arab unity and the elimination of Israel, but ultimately was not consistent in this regard. Aside from Palestinian nationalists, financial support was offered to groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Moro National Liberation Front (Philippines), Umkhonto we Sizwe (South Africa), ETA (Spain), the Polisario Front (Western Sahara), and even separatist indigenous Australians. This policy of backing revolutionary groups was certainly a projection of his persona as a charismatic enabler of the revolutionary mission. However, the reception of this mission in the wider world formed the basis for the image that Qaddafi most commonly occupied in Western eyes.In 1979 the ongoing Libyan support for groups pursuing violent action against Israel and the West saw the country designated a State-Sponsor of Terror by the US Department of State. Diplomatic relations between the two nations were severed and did not resume until 2004. At this point Qaddafi seemed to adopt a persona of “opponent of the West,” ostensibly on behalf of the world’s downtrodden colonial peoples. The support for revolutionary groups was changing to a more active use of them to strike at Western interests. At the same time Qaddafi stepped up his rhetoric against America and Britain, positioning himself as a champion of the Arab world, as the one leader who had the courage of his convictions and the only one who was squarely on the side of the ordinary citizenry (in contrast to other, more compliant Arab rulers). Here again there is evidence of the charismatic revolutionary persona, reluctantly taking up the burden of leadership on behalf of his brothers.Whatever his ideals, the result was that Qaddafi and his state became the focus of increasing Western ire. A series of incidents between the US and Libya in international waters added to the friction, as did Libyan orchestrated terror attacks in Berlin, Rome and Vienna. At the height of this tension in 1986, American aircraft bombed targets in Libya, narrowly missing Qaddafi himself. This role as public enemy of America led to Qaddafi being characterised by President Ronald Reagan (no stranger to the use of persona himself) as the “mad dog of the Middle East” and a “squalid criminal.” The enmity of the West made life difficult for ordinary Libyans dealing with crippling sanctions, but for Qaddafi, it helped bolster his persona as a committed revolutionary.Qaddafi: Leader of the Arab and African Worlds Related to his early revolutionary ideologies were Qaddafi’s aspirations as a pan-national leader. Inspired by Egypt’s Gamel Abdul Nasser from a young age, the ideals of pan-Arab unity were always a cornerstone of Qaddafi’s beliefs. It is not therefore surprising that he developed ambitions of being the person to bring about and “guide” that unity. Once again the Weberian description of the charismatic leader is relevant, particularly the notion that such leadership does not respect conventional boundaries of functional jurisdictions or local bailiwicks; in this case, state boundaries.During the 1970s Qaddafi was involved in numerous attempts to broker Arab unions between Libya and states such as Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. All of these failed to materialise once the exact details of the mergers began to be discussed, in particular who would assume the mantle of leadership in these super-states. In line with his persona as the rightly-guided revolutionary, Qaddafi consistently blamed the failure of these unions on the other parties, souring his relationship with his fellow Arab leaders. His hardline stance on Israel also put him at odds with those peers more determined to find a compromise. Following the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat in 1981 Qaddafi praised the act as justified because of Sadat’s signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel.Having given up on the hope of achieving pan-Arab Unity, Qaddafi sought to position himself as a leader of the African bloc. In 2009 he became Chairperson of the African Union and took to having himself introduced as “The King of Kings of Africa.” The level of dysfunction of the African Union was no less than that of the Arab League and Qaddafi’s grandiose plans for becoming the President of the United States of Africa failed to materialise.In both his pan-Arab and pan-Africa ambitions, we see a persona of Qaddafi that aims at leadership beyond his own state. Whilst there may be delusions of grandeur apparent in the practicalities of these goals, this image was nevertheless something that Qaddafi used to leverage the next phase of his political transformation.Qaddafi: The Post-9/11 Statesman However much he might be seen as erratic, Qaddafi’s innate intelligence could result in a political astuteness lacking in many of his Arab peers. Following the events of 11 September 2001, Qaddafi was the first international leader to condemn the attacks on America and pledge support in the War on Terror and the extermination of al-Qaeda. Despite his history as a supporter of terrorism overseas, Qaddafi had a long history of repressing it at home, just as with any other form of political opposition. The pan-Islamism of al-Qaeda was anathema to his key ideologies of direct democracy (guided by himself). This meant the United States and Libya were now finally on the same team. As part of this post-9/11 sniffing of the wind, Qaddafi abandoned his fledgling Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program and finally agreed to pay reparations to the families of the victims of the Pan Am 107 flight downed over Lockerbie in 1987.This shift in Qaddafi’s policy did not altogether dispel his persona of brotherly leadership amongst African nations. As a bloc leader and an example of the possibility of ‘coming in from the cold’, Qaddafi and Libya were reintegrated into the world community. This included giving a speech at the United Nations in 2009. This event did little to add to his reputation as a statesman in the West. Given a 15-minute slot, the Libyan leader delivered a rambling address over 90 minutes long, which included him tearing up a copy of the UN Charter and turning his back to the audience whilst continuing to speak.Qaddafi: The Clown From the Western point of view, performances like this painted Qaddafi’s behaviour as increasingly bizarre. Particularly after Libya’s rapprochement with the West, the label of threatening terrorist supporter faded and was replaced with something along the lines of a harmless clown prince. Tales of the Libyan leader’s coterie of virgin female bodyguards were the subject of ridicule, as was his ardour for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Perhaps this behaviour was indicative of a leader increasingly divorced from reality. Surrounded by sycophants dependent on his regard for their tenure or physical survival, as well as Western leaders eager to contrast his amiability with that of Saddam Hussein, nobody was prepared to draw attention to the emperor’s new clothes.Indeed, elaborate and outlandish clothing played an increasing role in Qaddafi’s persona as the decades went on. His simple revolutionary fatigues of the early years were superseded by a vast array of military uniforms heavily decorated with medals and emblems; traditional African, Arab or Bedouin robes depending on the occasion; and in later years a penchant for outfits that included images of the African continent or pictures of dead martyrs. (In 2009 Vanity Fair did a tongue-in-cheek article on the fashion of Colonel Qaddafi entitled Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion. This spawned a number of similar features including one in TIME Magazine entitled Gaddafi Fashion: The Emperor Had Some Crazy Clothes.)The Bedouin theme was an aspect of persona that Qaddafi cultivated as an ascetic “man of the people” throughout his leadership. Despite having many palaces available he habitually slept in an elaborate tent, according once again with Weber’s description of the charismatic leader as one who eschews methodical material gain. This predisposition served him well in the 1986 United States bombing, when his residence in a military barracks was demolished, but Qaddafi escaped unscathed as he was in his tent at the time. He regularly entertained foreign dignitaries in tents when they visited Libya and he took one when travelling abroad, including pitching it in the gardens of a Parisian hotel during a state visit in 2007. (A request to camp in New York’s Central Park for his UN visit in 2009 was denied; “Inside the Tents of Muammar Gaddafi”).The role of such a clown was unlikely to have been an aim for Qaddafi, but was instead the product of his own increasing isolation. It will likely be his most enduring character in the Western memory of his rule. It should be noted though that clowns and fools do not maintain an iron grip on power for over 40 years.The Legacy of Qaddafi’s Many Personas Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was a clever and complex leader who exhibited many variations of persona during his four decades of rule. These personas were generally facets of the same core self-belief of a charismatic leader, but could be conflicting, and often confusing, to observers. His eccentricities often hid a layer of deeper cunning and ambition, but ultimately led to his marginalisation and an impression by world leaders that he was untrustworthy.His erratic performance at the UN in 2009 perhaps typifies the end stages of Qaddafi’s leadership: a man increasingly disconnected from his people and the realities of what was going on around him. His insistence that the 2011 Libyan revolution was variously a colonial or terrorist inspired piece of theatre belied the deep resentment of his rule. His role as opponent of the Western and Arab worlds alike meant that he was unsupported in his attempts to deal with the uprising. Indeed, the West’s rapid willingness to use their airpower was instrumental in speeding on the rebel forces.What cannot be disputed is the chaotic legacy this charismatic figure left for his country. Since the uprising climaxed in his on-camera lynching in October 2011, Libya has been plunged in to turmoil and shows no signs of this abating. One of the central reasons for this chaos is that Qaddafi’s supremacy, his political philosophies, and his use of messianic persona left Libya completely unprepared for rule by any other party.This ensuing chaos has been a cruel, if ironic, proof of Qaddafi’s own conceit: Libya could not survive without him.References Al-Gathafi, Muammar. The Green Book: The Solution to the Problem of Democracy; The Solution to the Economic Problem; The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory. UK: Ithaca Press, 2005.Blundy, David, and Andrew Lycett. Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution. Boston and Toronto: Little Brown & Co, 1987.Marshall, P. David. “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self”. Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-170.Qaddafi, Muammar. Speech at the United Nations 2009. ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKMyY2V0J0Y›. Street, John. “Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6 (2004): 435-52.Street, John. “Do Celebrity Politics and Celebrity Politicians Matter?” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 14.3 (2012): 346-356.TIME Magazine. “Gaddafi Fashion: The Emperor Had Some Crazy Clothes.” ‹http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2055860,00.html›.TIME Magazine. “Inside the Tents of Muammar Gaddafi.” ‹http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2058074,00.html›.Totman, Sally, and Mat Hardy. “In the Green Zone: 40 years with Colonel Qaddafi.” Ed. Geoffrey Hawker. APSA 2009: Proceedings of the APSA Annual Conference 2009. Sydney: Macquarie University, 2009. 1-19.Totman, Sally, and Mat Hardy. “The Rise and Decline of Libya as a Rogue State.” OCIS 2008: Oceanic Conference on International Studies. Brisbane: University of Queensland, 2008. 1-25.Vanity Fair. “Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion.” ‹http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/qaddafi-slideshow200908›.Weber, Max, Hans Heinrich Gerth, and C. Wright Mills. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. London: Routledge, 2009.Wilson, J. “Kevin Rudd, Celebrity and Audience Democracy in Australia.” Journalism 15.2 (2013): 202-217.