Bring the Noise: Popular Music Studies

Curated by Sophia Frankford

Afropolitanism à la malienne

What is “Afropolitanism?” For most of its supporters and critics, this neologism in the Africanist lexicon connotes an elite cultural sensibility, celebrated by some as a sign of an artful and urbane African worldliness and derided by others for merely putting a new twist on an old idea of Africa, freshly packaged and adorned for consumption in upscale shops and trendy art galleries from London to Accra.

I, Ethnographer: A Reflection on Being (in) the Field

My first ethnographic fieldwork experience was a short trip to Jamaica, where I interviewed twenty Rastafarians regarding their perspectives on white people and non-Rastas participating in reggae music.

Cumbia Along the Autobahn: Rhizomatic Identities and Postnational Music Production

In 2000, Emperor Norton Records released El Baile Alemán, a tribute album of some of Kraftwerk’s greatest hits re-imagined as salsas, rumbas, cumbias, merengues, and cha-cha-chas, performed by Señor Coconut, the suave Latin American bandleader featured prominently on the album cover.

The 57th Grammy Awards Stay on Message

Sam Posner (PKA Sammy Bananas) is a producer and DJ living in Brooklyn, NY.

Up Against All of Those Glass Ceilings: An Interview with Martha Velez

Martha Velez has had a long career as a musical adventurer. She grew up riding NYC subways to the Bronx High School of Music, and later to New York's High School of Performing Arts.

Review | Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music, by Diane Pecknold

Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music. Edited by Diane Pecknold. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. [392 p. ISBN 9780822351634. $27.95.] Illustrations, index, bibliography.

Reviewed by Scott V. Linford

Review | "Get On Up," directed by Tate Taylor

Get On Up. Directed by Tate Taylor. 139 minutes. Imagine Entertainment, 2014.

Reviewed by Ben Doleac

 

"God's Great Dance Floor," Or, Why You Don't Need Ecstasy to Have an Ecstatic Good Time

On New Year’s Day 2013, I filed into the lower deck of the Georgia Dome along with more than 65,000 evangelical Christians between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. We were all there to attend a four-day concert event known as the Passion Conference, which occurs in Atlanta each January.

Review | If You Knew Her by Zara McFarlane (2014)

“It’s never been easy being black, British and female in the music industry. . . But in recent years, it’s seemed that black females have been few and far between – and the ones who’ve popped up haven’t been able to stick around.”

Review | Wandering Stars: Songs from Gimpel’s Lemberg Yiddish Theatre, 1906-1910

Wandering Stars: Songs from Gimpel’s Lemberg Yiddish Theatre, 1906-1910. Renair Records 2013. Compiled by Julian Futter and Michael Aytward. One compact disc (25 tracks) with liner notes (40 pp.).

Reviewed by Jana Mazurkiewicz

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