LFU:online

Identifying Europe as an analytical category within global developments; Interpreting the mainstream frame of cultural debate through a musical lens; Revealing dominant cross-local conceptions and ideologies

In this course, we will examine the prevailing aesthetics, acts, and actors of popular music through a contemporary European lens. We will discuss how the globally circulating sounds, practices, and discourses of popular music have recently been perceived and negotiated in different European (trans-)regional contexts, against the backdrop of dominant conceptions and ideologies.

The seminar takes place in parallel to the editing of the academic special issue “Listening to Mainstream Popular Music in Europe. A snapshot from the early 2020s,” which will be published in 2025 in the seminal journal “Popular Music” (Steinbrecher, Daniel, and Machek; CfP link). Thus, the course is directly linked to highly topical scholarly discourses and the disclosure of new findings in the field.

Like the special issue authors, the course participants should also strive to identify the European mainstream-related responses to cultural globalization influences. The idea of (the) mainstream(s) is considered here not as a particular musical category, but more broadly, as a discursive framework or interpretation scheme that gives listeners “the tools to make sense of the sounds they hear” (Marshall 2011, p. 159). However, likely, the upper echelon of the all-genre charts is still an indicator that the relevant music reaches a significant portion of the listening audience, which makes it a (sounding) object worth analyzing in the mainstream context.

So, the participants will analyze the current glocal meanings, identities, experiences, and values of mainstream popular music throughout (Western, Eastern, Central, North, and South) Europe, with always having an eye (or ear) on the musical aesthetics.

Introductory lecture, presentation, discussion and peer-review; written paper. The methods of the seminar are oriented, to a certain extent, towards processes of working on scholarly publications, e.g., regarding abstract writing, peer-reviewing, and poster presenting.

Continual assessment: Presentation, discussion, written paper at the end of the seminar.

Introductory literature:

Huber, A. 2013. ‘Mainstream as metaphor: Imagining dominant culture’, in Redefining Mainstream Popular Music, ed. J. Taylor, S. Baker and A. Bennett (London, Routledge), pp. 3–13

Jost, C. 2016. ‘Musikalischer Mainstream. Aufgaben, Konzepte und Methoden zu seiner Erforschung’, POP. Kultur und Kritik, 8, pp. 152–72.                                                                            

Marshall, L. 2011. ‘The sociology of popular music, interdisciplinarity and aesthetic autonomy’, The British Journal of Sociology, 62/1, pp. 154–74                              

Steinbrecher, B. 2022: ‘Mainstream popular music research: a musical update’, Popular Music, 40/3–44, pp. 406–27.

The seminar is "polyvalent", so it can also be taken in the course of a bachelor's degree.

It is part of the program "Understanding Europe" of the "Aurora European Universities Alliance". It is assigned to the “Areas of Specialization” and can therefore be completed as a supplement to the “Core Courses”.

Further information:
https://aurora-universities.eu/understanding-europe/