Music Category
Building the Pop Music Empire, Part 2 (Olivia Currin Duell)
The following is the second part in a two-part installment. The first part can be found here. Popular music artists as intertextual commodities Indeed, when fans support an artist with such ferocity, and both consume and contribute to the artist’s empire, the studio album can remain an important and lucrative…
Building The Pop Music Empire, Part 1 (Olivia Currin Duell)
The following if the first part in a two-part installment. Author Note: The following was written in 2015 and details how critical discussion of popular music is largely missing from the field of media studies. This essay discusses how popular music fits into a media studies theoretical framework, and more…
Heavy Metal As Surrogate Religion – Exploring The Metal Subculture (Katrina Lavender)
According to the Office for National Statistics, Heavy Metal has recently become an official religion, with 6200 followers in 2011. Music as a cultural artefact clearly exemplifies the intersection of religion and popular culture. Andy Bennett states, in Cultures of Popular Music, that the heavy metal genre, which originated in…
Schopenhauer And Coltrane – The Metaphysics Of Atheism Illumines “A Love Supreme” (Jon Avery)
Arthur Schopenhauer, a nineteenth century German philosopher, praised music as the highest art form because it gives us immediate access to the inner life of human existence and the reality behind appearances. To grasp the “reality behind appearances” is very similar to the goal of much of Hindu and Buddhist…
Avant-Garde Jazz and the Posthuman (Roger Green)
Recently in Boulder, Colorado I had a chance to play guitar for the Ron Miles quintet. The trumpeter / cornetist Ron Miles, is a long-time mentor and friend, and we have at times appeared together live and on each other’s recording projects. Both Ron and I come from a Denver-based…