AMS / RRHOFM Lecture Series
Past lectures
Andrew Flory, 5 December 2012
Andrew Flory (Carleton College) presented the lecture "Reissuing Marvin: Musicology and the Modern Expanded Edition."
Timeline: The video is 1 hour, 40 minutes, 8 seconds long. Contents are as follows:
0:00: Opening remarks: Jason Hanley, Director of Education
4:38: Introduction to the lecture: Lauren Onkey, Vice President of Education and Public Programs
8:52: Andrew Flory's lecture
56:43: Q&A that followed the lecture
1:40:08: end
Andrew Flory describes his talk as follows: "I will consider the role of the musicologist as reissue producer. Several years ago I was approached by Universal Music to provide musicological assistance with a reissue of Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man, an album closely related to a 1972 Blaxploitation film soundtrack composed by Gaye. The process of completing this work gave me a fascinating glimpse into the world of the modern reissue producer, a rarely-discussed agent responsible for creating historical documents of past releases for the modern marketplace. On the one hand, access to multi-track master tapes and corporate documentation during the production process for the Gaye album gave me an unparalleled sense of the process used to construct this historic album. Yet, continuing issues of access, proprietary interests, and concerns related to the modern marketplace all mediated the process. Using my experience with this project as a launching point, I will consider the role of the musicologist within the business of popular music within larger discussion of the public humanities. In the spirit of this historic series of collaborative lectures sponsored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the AMS, I will argue that archival materials pertaining to popular music can provide an especially compelling link between academics and the music business. In the end, I will offer reflections on what academics might offer an industry that is increasingly focused on the past, while also considering how the musicological community may benefit from deeper connections with corporate entities that control often-proprietary resources."
David Brackett, 25 April 2012
David Brackett (McGill University) presented the lecture "Fox-Trots, Hillbillies, and the Classic Blues: Categorizing Popular Music in the 1920s."
Timeline: The video is 1 hour, 30 minutes, 54 seconds long. Contents are as follows:
0:00: Opening remarks: Jason Hanley, Director of Education
3:20: Welcome by Terry Stewart, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
7:43: Introduction to the lecture: Jason Hanley
12:23: David Brackett's lecture
1:14:45: Q&A that followed the lecture
1:30:54: end
Brackett describes his lecture as follows: "From radio formats and record store bins to the graphic interface for iTunes and the way musicians and fans talk about music, categories play a central role in the production and consumption of popular music. Many of these categories—for example, R&B and country—connote a demographic group usually assumed to be the primary audience for that type of music. My talk will explore the relationship between categories of music and people in popular music by focusing on the 1920s, the period that saw the establishment of the three main categories for popular music that have subsequently dominated the U.S. popular music industry in one form or another. These categories, known as 'popular,' 'race,' and 'old time tunes' at the time, implied a connection between an audience and a type of music: middle-class, bourgeois, urban, northern, and white for popular; African American for race; and southern, rural, working-class, white for hillbilly. Yet the use of these categories, then and now, highlights numerous contradictions, foremost of which is their inconsistency in musical terms, as many recordings/songs that are similar musically are classified differently. Furthermore, the audiences for a given category often do not match its demographic connotations, and members of a given demographic group often have divergent musical tastes. In other words, categories of music (and people, for that matter) are neither true nor false, but rather 'ideological' in that they speak to a shared, tacit understanding of which, and how, these differences are meaningful.
“My discussion of this period will compare recordings at the boundaries of categories, such as those by Marion Harris—a singer singled out by W. C. Handy as the only white musician who understood the blues—with those by African American artists, such as Mamie Smith, who helped establish the then new category of race music. This analysis has implications for our current understanding of the fluid nature of popular music categories, and emphasizes how the etching of their boundaries is related to musical sound and technological developments as well as to the circulation of discourses about music and identity."
Albin Zak, 5 October 2011
Albin J. Zak III, Professor of Music at the State University of New York, Albany, gave the inaugural lecture, "'A Thoroughly Bad Record': Elvis Presley’s 'Hound Dog' as Rock and Roll Manifesto."
Zak describes his lecture as follows: "The pop music upheavals of the 1950s were fraught with crosscurrents and paradoxes. As fundamental changes in musical sound and language accrued rapidly, their significance was masked by a veneer of trivia. It was impossible for anyone at the time to imagine the long-range implications of what was happening. In retrospect, however, we can recognize defining moments of crystallization. This talk examines the implications of the market success of Elvis Presley’s 'Hound Dog,' which claimed the number-one spot on the Pop, Country, and R&B charts in the summer of 1956. The record was widely scorned by music industry veterans and high-pop aficionados, yet in its rude enthusiasm it represents an emphatic assertion of aesthetic principle at the dawn of rock and roll."
Timeline: The video is 1 hour, 25 minutes, 40 seconds long. Contents are as follows:
0:00: Opening remarks: Terry Stewart, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
2:39: Introduction to the RRHOFM Education Department: Jason Hanley, Director of Education
7:43: Introduction to the lecture: Rob Walser, Professor of musicology, Case Western Reserve University
12:37: Albin Zak's lecture
1:01:03: Q&A that followed the lecture
1:25:40: end
