Using Youtube in the English Classroom

2003

In recent years we have read of the decline in CD sales and the blame for this directed towards the downloading of illegal files from the Internet. However dissatisfaction with the CD as the primary mode of music experience has been evident for some time as a broad set of cultural factors have changed the role of music within everyday life – the Internet just happened to offer a solution to consumers who already had a problem.

2013

Journal for Cultural Research, 2011

This thesis is about understanding the birth, development and maintenance of a subcultural alternative music scene located in the unique urban socio-historic milieu of the postcolonial developing country of Bangladesh. Locally dubbed the underground, this cultural phenomenon is a youth based male dominated, non-commercial and non-professional music scene, based on international genres of metal as well as other foreign alternative music genres. This alternative music scene revolves around the activities of largely middle-class, part-time, male musicians who share particular economic, cultural and social resources that afford their participation in it. The main focus of this research is to understand these social, cultural and economic conditions of possibility of the scene that explain why it exists in its current form. Questions about the usefulness and limitations of theoretical frameworks based on alternative rock related youth cultures will be assessed by the empirical study of this local alternative music scene. These theoretical models, largely developed in Western Anglophone countries, explain distinctive configurations of symbolic, social and economic elements through which a particular scene is mobilized. Are these Western theoretical models enough to explain this local alternative music scene, or are local contextual factors of paramount importance? This is one of the notions that are explored in detail in this thesis. In the locale of post-colonial Bangladesh, the actors involved express their sentiments towards local situations with the resources available to them through the motivations of ‘local factors’ which accentuate a rather unique discourse of an alternative music scene. Studies of appropriation, impact and function of metal genres in other Asian countries like China, Japan, Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have been done before, but never in Bangladesh, where there is an overall lacking of music related scholarly work in English. Based upon interviews with key figures of the scene, ethnographic observation and textual analysis, this research suggests that the urban youth’s frustration towards the poor situation of the country is channeled into desires to develop an alternative liberal space of artistic autonomy through the exploration of foreign music styles and the fantasy worlds of metal. While participants assert aesthetic distinction of their music from mainstream rock, one of the main findings shows that they are not concerned about ideas of selling out to the corporate music industry if they become popular without sacrificing aesthetic integrity. Emphasis is placed on translocal connections with other alternative music scenes elsewhere. The empirical findings from this thesis raises questions about the extent to which this local scene represents Western discourses of alternative rock and whether its transnationalism is properly explained through hybridization of international cultural forms.

Reflections in the Metal Void. Ed. Niall W. R. Scott. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2012. A shorter, earlier version of the paper is also included in The Metal Void: First Gatherings. Eds. Niall. Scott and Imke Von Helden. Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2010.

Doctoral Dissertation , 2017

This dissertation engages an unresolved debate on the ‘rock aesthetic’ in New Left Review, between Perry Anderson and David Fernbach while pointing toward a new dialectical social theory with which to analyze cultural form in general and music in particular. The debate was in the first instance methodological, formal/technical vs. lyrical contextual analysis. Within this methodological debate we see inscribed the misunderstanding the sixties New Left had of the sixties counterculture, and thus the conditions of possibility for a missed encounter. Rock music was neither a direct instantiation of the times, as Anderson implies, nor was it an entirely new form that must be schematized sui generis with a new set of axioms, as suggested by Fernbach. Indeed, it was both and then some. In engaging this debate, I use canonical figures of the era as my primary case studies as well as what I call my excursions – miniature analyses that capture the broader point I am making in my cognitive mapping of the cultural production of the long sixties. From this project’s standpoint, it was the Left that missed an encounter with the counterculture, not the counterculture that missed an encounter with the Left. To continue this engagement, I have deployed what I have called a theory of the missed encounter. I engage what could have taken place, that is to say, if the implicit metaphysical and practical connection between rock music culture and the Left had been consummated, by examining why this could not have taken place, why there was a missed encounter. As against the more commonly theorized Popular Front and Punk eras which I stipulate as consummated encounters, the sixties, aesthetically and politically – did not coalesce in the same sense. The Missed Encounter, for me, is a heuristic, a point-of-departure. I presume, thus, with my own analysis that once one goes beyond mythology, a missed encounter is readily apparent. The purpose of my rethinking of the rock music canon is not positivist proof of a missed encounter, rather it is to formulate the ‘sixties question’ through the premises of its existence.

2012

Throughout rock music’s history, its stars have explored the boundaries of dress and sexuality, but none have done it quite as fascinatingly as those of glam metal, a particular subgenre of heavy metal which took hold in the United States in the mid-1980s. The stars of glam metal often appropriate modes of dressing culturally associated with the idea of the feminine, such as extensive and highly styled hair and makeup, yet they still successfully communicate overtly masculine, even hyper-masculine, personae designed to snare women through their clothing, lifestyle, and the presentation of both in popular media. The resultant balancing of sartorial signifiers demonstrates glam metal’s emphasis on projecting a carefully calibrated sense of masculinity to its audience. As musicologist Robert Walser writes, metal is a cultural entity that offers lots of opportunities for doing identity work, and accomplishing gender is one form of identity work that merits particular focus. Using the visual material contained within the metal imagery, “pin-up” or centerfold, and the music video, this project takes upon itself the task of understanding how glam metal musicians accomplish gender, with particular emphasis on the way ideas about masculinity are packaged and presented to the consumer of such imagery. This project engages with the musical genre’s efforts to construct ideologies using the process of bricolage and also to subvert popularly received notions of gender, sexuality, and authenticity. (keywords: gender, sexuality, authenticity, artifice, masculinity, performance)

2008

Chuangzuo has emerged as a music trend through a music movement, and as a popular culture for youth in Malaysia, but the music of chuangzuo have not been described to the general public that is probably not aware of the identity in chuangzuo, the social aspects of chuangzuo as in a gongzuofang, and also how the music has sustained so far. The primary objective of this study is to determine the identity and the sustainability of chuangzuo activities in Malaysia. The specific objectives are to produce a description on the settings of gongzuofang in Penang, an analysis of musical materials of chuangzuo, and a clarification of the identity and sustainability of chuangzuo based on the former two specific objectives. Observation through fieldwork is rendered for this ethnographic research. The primary setting is gongzuofang in Penang, namely the Wanderers and CZMusic which have been actively involved in chuangzuo activities. Observation, interviews and video recordings of important rehearsals and actual performance were rendered. The secondary setting of the fieldwork is based on related song-writing competitions, concerts and music camp, which were held in Penang and Kuala Lumpur. The general phenomenon of chuangzuo depicts a scene where youth perform their own music compositions with guitars or light instruments. Chuangzuo is a music activity for the youth in Malaysia, as the music, mainly performed in Chinese, often depicts the youth’s life-cycle events. The music is commonly composed in the sentimental style or of a ballad that usually adopts a major key and the common simple quadruple time. Instrumentation is usually simple, and Chinese texts with rhymes are used. Though mixed language and vocables are included sometimes, the texts are commonly written in the discursive style. A gongzuofang is the basic unit of chuangzuo that accommodates youth’s music activities. It exists as an important space for music practice, music learning, idea sharing, planning, music presentation, socialisation, and also life-cycle events. The studied gongzuofang represents a typical organisation that provides its members with abundant opportunities in music compositions, as members learn to compose, perform, compete in music contests and produce music concerts or music recording. Chuangzuo is an opportunity for youth to engage with music. They usually adopt elements of cultural fusion in their compositions, and they show amateurish characteristics in their music. This has formed the musical identity of chuangzuo. The social identity of chuangzuo is built through identity construction, individuality, communion formation and aspiration. Nevertheless, the need to survive changes for the long term has triggered the implementation of sustainability in the handling of chuangzuo. The sustainable ways, as observed, are organisation, commercialisation, hegemony and exclusion of certain music genres.

Practising Popular Music