1st Edition
Mixing Pop and Politics Political Dimensions of Popular Music in the 21st Century
The political has always been part of popular music, but how does that play out in today’s musical and political landscape? Mixing Pop and Politics: Political Dimensions of Popular Music in the 21st Century provides an innovative exploration of the complex politics of popular music in its contemporary formations.
Amid the shifting paradigms of power in the 2020s, the chapters in this book go beyond the idea of popular music as protest to explore how resistance, subversion, containment, and reconciliation all interact in the popular music realm. Covering a wide range of international artists and genres, from South African hip-hop to Polish punk, and addressing topics such as climate change and environmentalism, feminism, diasporic identity, political parties, music-making as labour, the far right, conservatism and nostalgia, and civic engagement, the contributors expand our understanding of how popular music is political.
For students and scholars of music, popular culture, and politics, the volume offers a broad, exciting snapshot of the latest scholarship on contemporary popular music and politics.
Introduction
Catherine Hoad, Geoff Stahl, and Oli Wilson
- Navigating a neoliberal city: Experimental music making in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s ‘cultural capital’
Geoff Stahl - Sharing languages through contemporary song in the third space: A case study of intercultural collaboration between Indigenous Australian, Polynesian and Melanesian women
Katelyn Barney and Lexine Solomon - The Personal and the Political: African Popular Music and Diasporic Heritage in Australia.
Bonnie McConnell - Resisting through music under the neoliberal authoritarian regime: Political themes in Turkish rap songs
Gülüm Şener - Rapping about our history, imagining our future! The Great Legacy project in the Korean variety show Infinite Challenge
Jeeyun Sophia Baik - Yes, indeed: Trap and politics
Eduardo Barros-Grela - Looping alone, together: Music, community, and environmental self-sustainability in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Catherine Hoad and Oli Wilson - ‘Half-Moghul, half-Mowgli’: The representation of South Asian diasporas in hip hop music
Julia Szivak - Locating labour subjectivities in contemporary popular music texts
Ellis Jones - Beyond hegemony: Siksa and the politics of affect
Artur Szarecki - ‘A message etched on broken ships’: Radical environmentalism and extreme ecometal
Ian Collinson - Good citizenship, telethon and benefit concert: The politics of the achievable
David Baker and Andy Bennett - Solidarity as strategy. Anti-racism and feminism in the work of Titiyo
Ann Werner - Nostalgia, anti-victim discourse, and neoliberalism in early 1990s pop: The postfeminist approach of Wilson Phillips
Saesha Senger - White skin, black masks: Die Antwoord, post-apartheid South Africa, and global hip hop studies.
Seth Cosimini - ‘I am the cause to all your problems’: Brand New, tattoo coverups, and (im)permanence.
Paige Klimentou - Neon-nazis: A fascist foray into vaporwave’s synaesthetic world
Alican Koc
Afterword
Martin Cloonan
Biography
Catherine Hoad is Senior Lecturer in the School of Music and Creative Media Production at Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa/Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Geoff Stahl is Senior Lecturer and Programme Director of Media & Communication, Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Oli Wilson is Associate Professor in the College of Creative Arts at Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa/ Massey University, Wellington New Zealand., Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand.
