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  • 1. Hussain, Zamirah Drag Queens and Cowboys: Cultivating Queer Country Music through Postmodern Camp

    Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Popular Culture

    This thesis explores the potential of a queer country music space; specifically how it exists, who exists within it, and how it may expand further. Country music has historically been associated with concepts of authenticity while also being known for its use and celebration of excessively gaudy and glamorized aesthetics. I explain how, within country music, the use of a performance persona combines these seemingly contradictory characteristics, rendering them simultaneously true. This is relevant as I argue that these personas can be interpreted as postmodern expressions of camp, and can be considered as a method of existing within country music in a way that respects an explicitly queer origin and existence. Chapter one provides necessary background information on queerness in country music's history, also clarifying how exactly I define camp as a concept. Chapter two is a case study of Dolly Parton's persona, how she's constructed it and what implications it holds for a queer country music space as a gender-based performance that can be read as an example of postmodern camp. This chapter also elaborates on Parton's similarities with drag queens, referencing popular social media celebrity Trixie Mattel to elaborate on their shared queer perspective of gender. Chapter three is a case study of a more recent addition to country music, Orville Peck, and his practice of disidentification of Old West and cowboy aesthetics as an act of postmodern camp. My final conclusion considers potential of the Internet to facilitate growth of an explicitly queer country space, one which does not have to be accepted by the mainstream but can exist on it's own as a subgenre.

    Committee: Becca Cragin Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jeremy Wallach Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kristen Rudisill Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Gender Studies; Glbt Studies
  • 2. Lee, Wonseok K-Pop Resounding: Korean Popular Music beyond Koreanness

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Music

    This dissertation examines K-pop as a genre, not as a fixed concept bound to national identity (“Korean Pop”), but as a floating signifier that operates in a global sphere, in which the “K” in K-pop takes on multiple meanings. Though K-pop has been studied and understood in the conventional sense, as an ethnic national musical genre and cultural community (Korean popular music performed by dance idol Korean musicians), the live and mediated reality of contemporary K-pop reveals that this convention is not enough to explain K-pop today. K-pop resounds beyond Koreanness. For example, it is now quite normal to have non-Korean musicians in K-pop groups. Indeed, K-pop groups consisting entirely of non-Korean musicians have been present on the scene since the 2010s. K-pop groups also often sing in non-Korean languages. In addition, the K-pop style, which has been musically diverse from the beginning, continues to incorporate other musical forms, including popular and folk (“traditional”) musics from around the world. As such, K-pop continues to be defined by an ever-shifting social diversity and stylistic complexity. This research aims to explore how K-pop has become a transnational phenomenon, how the meaning of K is (re)interpreted differently by individuals and social groups in a new context, and what social, cultural, political, and musical elements constitute K-pop today. Through close textual analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and archival study, this project sheds new light on the neglected diversity and apparent transnational impact of contemporary K-pop, among artists and fans, in government policy, and through the music itself.

    Committee: Ryan Skinner (Advisor); Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Committee Member); Pil Ho Kim (Committee Member); Morgan Liu (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Music
  • 3. McPeck, Aaron Identity in Music Videos: Techniques of Representation

    Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, Music History

    Music videos are rife with audiovisual representations of race, sexuality, gender, and other identities. From stereotypes to referential associations, images contribute an additional layer of signification to a song. The resulting combination of music and images creates a multimedia format whose popularity rose with the emergence of MTV in 1981 and regained momentum with the foundation of YouTube and other internet platforms in the early twenty-first century. As society changed over the course of forty years, so too did representations and the way they formed. Rather than tracing a historical trajectory or identifying a “right” or “wrong” interpretation, I instead break down how such an interpretation might arise. In this dissertation, I build on the foundational research of Carol Vernallis by rooting my work in analysis, using Stan Hawkins's approach to understanding identities in both popular music and multimedia as a guide. Diane Railton and Paul Watson's foray into representation in music videos serves as a starting point for discerning the ways—what I call techniques—that music videos create representations; where Railton and Watson focus on images and lyrics, I bring music into the fold, adding another layer of analysis to complicate the interpretations of identities on screen. The techniques I identify range from visual narratives that parallel musical struggles to ones based on the relationship between men and women. While representations span the visible identities of race, sexuality, and gender, all techniques maintain a connection to the music.

    Committee: Daniel Goldmark (Committee Chair); Joy Bostic (Committee Member); Francesca Brittan (Committee Member); Susan McClary (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Music
  • 4. Humphrey, Ashley Where's the Roda?: Understanding Capoeira Culture in an American Context

    Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Music Ethnomusicology

    The Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira has become an increasingly popular sport in the United States. Capoeira performances consist of a back-and-forth exchange of movements between two players in conjunction with a musical ensemble to accompany the physical display. Since the introduction of capoeira in the United States in the 1970s, capoeira has become the focus of various social institutions. The objective of this thesis is to acknowledge and problematize the impact American culture has made on capoeira aesthetics. The methods for this thesis included research in the fields of ethnomusicology, anthropology, post-colonial theory, and transatlantic studies. Fieldwork was conducted to acquire first hand accounts of capoeira practitioners from the Michigan Center for Capoeira. Lastly, an analysis of the portrayal of capoeira in the media examines how capoeira is showcased to audiences in the United States. Historical accounts, academic discourse, capoeira practitioners, and popular culture reveal how American culture has received capoeira. My research has shown that capoeira culture is represented and interpreted by various groups, such as scholars, American capoeira academies, and the media. These different interpretations have resulted in the displacement, fragmentation, or misrepresentation of capoeira history in the context of American culture. I conclude that dominant social structures have inherently changed how capoeira is discussed in academia, practiced in American academies, and portrayed in the media. Dominant social structures in the United States favor product over process. For capoeira, valuing product over process means highlighting performance and devaluing various Afro-diasporic rituals and practices. My solution to avoid fragmentation and misinterpretation of capoeira culture is to reiterate the importance of the African diaspora to practicing capoeira students in the United States. Acknowled (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Kara Attrep (Advisor); Megan Rancier (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Dance; Ethnic Studies; History; Latin American History; Latin American Studies; Music; Music Education
  • 5. Kirkendoll, Elizabeth “Slightly Overlooked Professionally”: Popular Music in Postmillennial Romantic Comedies

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Music

    In recent years film scholars has turned their attention to the cinematic conventions of romantic comedies. Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Deborah Jermyn, and Stacey Abbott have advocated for the scholarly merits of the genre; these scholars posit that through romantic comedies, we can trace developments in women's rights and feminist critiques of hegemonic masculinity. Scholars have recently focused attention on popular music in film, as well, and argued for its inclusion in serious musical study in works such as The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music (Jeff Smith, 1998), Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music (ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Arthur Knight, 2001), and Pop Fiction: The Song in Cinema (ed. Steve Lannin and Matthew Caley, 2005), among others. Nonetheless, romantic comedies are largely missing from the discourse about popular music, possibly because of the common assumption that the genre's conventions hold no merit as a subject for academic investigation. Based on information gathered from romantic comedy audiences this dissertation makes the case that postmillennial romantic comedies deploy popular song conventions to underscore character development, create irony, and question the validity of the happy ending. Thus, rather than conveying superficial messages of romance, songs in postmillennial romantic comedies destabilize a postfeminist ideology that asserts the achievement of gender equality. As they are deployed in the films, these songs are not a simple marketing ploy or entertainment intended for a mindless audience; rather they convey an argument for female autonomy and the continued need for feminist discourse. Films discussed in this dissertation include Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), Love Actually (2003), Trainwreck (2015), and Bridget Jones's Baby (2016), among others.

    Committee: Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Advisor); Arved Ashby (Committee Co-Chair); Sean O'Sullivan (Committee Member); Daniel Goldmark (Committee Member) Subjects: Music
  • 6. Lee, Wonseok Diversity of K-Pop: A Focus on Race, Language, and Musical Genre

    Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Popular Culture

    Since the end of the 1990s, Korean popular culture, known as Hallyu, has spread to the world. As the most significant part of Hallyu, Korean popular music, K-pop, captivates global audiences. From a typical K-pop artist, Psy, to a recent sensation of global popular music, BTS, K-pop enthusiasts all around the world prove that K-pop is an ongoing global cultural flow. Despite the fact that the term K-pop explicitly indicates a certain ethnicity and language, as Kpop expanded and became influential to the world, it developed distinct features that did not exist in it before. This thesis examines these distinct features of K-pop focusing on race, language, and musical genre: it reveals how K-pop groups today consist of non-Korean musicians, what makes K-pop groups consisting of all Korean musicians sing in non-Korean languages, what kind of diverse musical genres exists in the K-pop field with two case studies, and what these features mean in terms of the discourse of K-pop today. By looking at the diversity of K-pop, I emphasize that K-pop is not merely a dance-oriented musical genre sung by Koreans in the Korean language. I argue that K-pop is not confined to a certain region, ethnicity, or language. In the globalization era, it exists as a global cultural flow amalgamating diverse races, languages, and musical genres. My thesis thus demonstrates how diverse races, languages, and musical genres are interwoven in the K-pop field.

    Committee: Jeremy Wallach (Advisor); Esther Clinton (Committee Member); Kristen Rudisill (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Music
  • 7. Brown, Garrett Songs in U.S. Presidential Campaigns: Function, Signification, and Spin

    Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Music

    In this document, I examine the history of the campaign song in presidential elections in the United States, finding its changes in function as a result of the changing American electorate and advancing technology. As voting rights get extended to a greater percentage of the total American population and as popular mediums for dissemination of information change, the format of an effective campaign song changes from contrafacta of a well-known song to unaltered popular songs. I also identify the various signifying elements of popular songs that allow them to complement campaign rhetoric. Finally, I provide an exegesis of several popular songs whose original political meaning has changed as a result of their being used in the context of American presidential campaigns. In providing this analysis, I show how popular songs come to represent shared American ideals in the absence of any broad agreement as to what form those ideals should take.

    Committee: Arved Ashby (Advisor); Robert Kraut (Committee Member); Graeme Boone (Committee Member) Subjects: Music
  • 8. Yuan, Xiaorong Chinese Minority Popular Music: A Case Study of Shanren, a Contemporary Popular Band

    MA, Kent State University, 2016, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

    This study reviews the history and present state of ethnic minority popular music in Mainland China. A primary focus is on the influence of government policy with regards to authenticity in association with ethnic minorities and mainstream popular music artists. The indie popular group, Shanren, which has strong ties to minority music and culture in China, is used as a case study to examine how authenticity is achieved through visual, aural, and linguistic connections to the social reality of the rural ethnic minority community, as well as migrant workers who are drawn to major urban centers in China, such as Beijing. Perceptions of authenticity are important considerations for their major audience, the Wenyi qingnian (“literary youth”), which refers to urban youth born primarily in the 1980s and 1990s. This demographic generally appreciates indie rock music and is a fundamental audience for indie minority bands, categorizing popular musicians as either Tu (raw, folk, native and authentic) or Chao (fashion, artificial and modernized). This study offers a model for examining how authenticity with regards to these categories is determined and its implications for future public perception.

    Committee: Andrew Shahriari Ph.D (Advisor); Jennifer Johnstone Ph.D (Committee Member); Priwan Nanongkham Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Music
  • 9. Liu, Menghan Rephrasing Mainstream And Alternatives: An Ideological Analysis Of The Birth Of Chinese Indie Music

    Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2012, Popular Culture

    This thesis project focuses on the birth and dissemination of Chinese indie music. Who produces indie? What is the ideology behind it? How can they realize their idealistic goals? Who participates in the indie community? What are the relationships among mainstream popular music, rock music and indie music? In this thesis, I study the production, circulation, and reception of Chinese indie music, with special attention paid to class, aesthetics, and the influence of the internet and globalization. Borrowing Stuart Hall's theory of encoding/decoding, I propose that Chinese indie music production encodes ideologies into music. Pierre Bourdieu has noted that an individual's preference, namely, tastes, corresponds to the individual's profession, his/her highest educational degree, and his/her father's profession. Whether indie audiences are able to decode the ideology correctly and how they decode it can be analyzed through Bourdieu's taste and distinction theory, especially because Chinese indie music fans tend to come from a community of very distinctive, 20-to-30-year-old petite-bourgeois city dwellers. Overall, the thesis aims to illustrate how indie exists in between the incompatible poles of mainstream Chinese popular music and Chinese rock music, rephrasing mainstream and alternatives by mixing them in itself.

    Committee: Jeremy Wallach PhD (Advisor); Kristen Rudisill PhD (Committee Member); Esther Clinton PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Music
  • 10. Helb, Colin Use and Influence of Amateur Musician Narratives In Film, 1981-2001

    Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2009, American Culture Studies/Popular Culture

    This dissertation is an analytical survey of four amateur musician narrativescreated between 1981 and 2001. Unlike purportedly true, marketing-driven uses of amateur narratives, the four narratives chosen for this project are unabashed total fictions. Despite this, the films achieve levels of perceived “authenticity” by way of cultural value and influence. None of the narratives deal with amateur musicianship as a stage or step in an inherent progression towards professionalism, as seems a prerequisite for the recollections of the now professional. But all include narratives of amateur musicians struggling to make it against “insurmountable commercial odds” resulting from an artist's gender, talent, ability, or identity. Despite this, none treat hegemonically dictated concepts of commercial success, wealth, fame, and stardom as the ultimate and/or desired goal of amateurism or semiprofessionalism. The films all present concepts of accomplishment in challenge of hegemonic notions of professional dominance and commercial success as markers of success. The four films, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1981), Ishtar (1987), Half-Cocked (1995), and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), are culturally representative of their respective eras, but have experienced lasting cultural influence in both filmmaking and music making. The films exist as prototypical examples of amateur musicians narratives, performance, and media common to the 20th Century “rise of the amateur” as found on the Internet, in realty programming, and marketing tragedies.

    Committee: Jeremy Wallach PhD (Committee Chair); Irina Stakhanova PhD (Committee Member); Vivian Patraka PhD (Committee Member); Awad Imbrahim PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music
  • 11. Ratcliff, David Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in (cultural) space : the evolution of rock and roll and folk in Serbia /

    Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

    Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:
  • 12. Lawler, Alexander "How to Keep a Popular Song Popular”: Advertising, Media, and Nostalgia in Charles K. Harris's Tin Pan Alley (1890–1930)

    Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, Musicology

    The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a time of tremendous change in American musical life. It was the early days of the American popular music industry, represented by the moniker “Tin Pan Alley.” One of its leading lights was Charles K. Harris, an American songwriter who wrote “After the Ball” (1892), a song that became synonymous with the industry and Harris himself. However, like the music industry, Harris's story may have begun with a hit song, but it did not stop there; motivating him over the next few decades was a quest—how to keep a popular song popular—that put him on the edge of several transformative moments and technologies in American music. This dissertation explores and interprets Harris's attempts at keeping his music, notably “After the Ball,” popular as representative of the ways in which the music industry transformed in response to shifts in technology along with the new relationships audiences formed with popular music. Building upon the existing literature on Charles K. Harris, in particular that of Charles Hamm, Esther Morgan-Ellis, David Suisman, and Daniel Goldmark, as well as secondary literature on marketing theory, film, cartoon, media, nostalgia, and American cultural history, I shed light not just on a fascinating and influential figure in the early popular music industry, but on the ways in which popular music, media, and advertising interrelated during the era in which mass media and many of the most salient features of modern life were born.

    Committee: Daniel Goldmark (Advisor) Subjects: American Studies; Marketing; Motion Pictures; Music
  • 13. Cruz-Lopez, Elena Remembering the Supremes: Crossover Politics, Public Memory, and Fandom

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Music

    This dissertation explores how Motown Records' marketing strategies have shaped fans' recollections of 1960s music, and how fan engagement has shaped the legacy of the Supremes and Motown Records' place in popular music history. The Supremes were Motown Records' most successful girl group, and the trio was marketed to mainstream audiences as a model of "young America." Across the Supremes' career, their look, sound, and presentation changed to appeal to consumers across racial and class divides. Motown pushed the Supremes into every corner of public life through television appearances, concerts in high-end nightclubs, and placement in advertisements for popular consumer goods. The group's visibility and respectability attracted the attention of white fans and, by their accounts, started conversations about race, gender, and representation in fans' homes. The Supremes' fandom continues to present day, long after the group's breakup, and that engagement is still marked by Motown's colorblind presentation of the Supremes. The most intensely engaged fans show deep attachment to the music and to the Supremes themselves, and these fans have taken responsibility for the cultivation and curation of the group's legacy in tangible ways. These fans' histories of their relationship to the group offer a retrospective view of how Motown's marketing affected thinking about race, gender, class, and representation.

    Committee: Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Advisor); Barry Shank (Committee Member); Ryan Skinner (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; American History; Black History; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Modern History; Music
  • 14. Seguin, Abigail Genre Experience Maps and Their Role in the Analysis of Post-2000s Popular Music

    PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, College-Conservatory of Music: Theory

    Genres in popular music, particularly post-2000s popular music, are constellations of components that may or may not be active on any given track. In addition to this, recording techniques and technology also significantly impact the concept of genre because as they grow and evolve, so do the genres they are employed in. This creates a musical repertoire that is constantly changing and that is dependent on the technology and trends around it for its definition. Because of the evolutionary history of genres in popular music and because of their fluidity, there will always be some degree of component overlap between genres. This overlap of components between genres is of particular importance when the music is examined from the listener's perspective because each individual listener brings their own background knowledge to hearing a song. As a result, different musical connections may arise for different listeners based on what music they typically listen to. The presence of these two characteristics suggests that analysts may want to examine this repertoire from the listener's perspective. To carry out this type of examination, I have created a two-pronged analytical tool comprised of Meta-Categorical Frameworks and Genre Experience Maps that approaches the music from the listener's perspective. The tool allows the listener to track not only what components they hear as propagating the genre of the song, but also allows them to visually depict musical associations they uncover. The first step, Meta-Categorical Frameworks, are charts that help the analyst break a track down into its genre components and gather their thoughts. The second step, Genre Experience Maps, are visual webs that place the components from the Meta-Categorical Framework into nodes so associational lines can be added to connect related components, emphasizing relationships the listener hears in the music. To demonstrate the wide range of analytical applications for Meta-Categorical F (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Christopher Segall Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Stephen Meyer Ph.D. (Committee Member); Cristina Losada Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music
  • 15. Whitman, Kevin Analytic Frameworks for Music Livestreaming: Liveness, Joint Attention, and the Dynamics of Participation

    Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, Music History

    This dissertation examines the social contexts for music livestreams, in order to lay the groundwork for future studies of both livestreaming as a whole and individual case studies. No frameworks currently exist for analyzing music livestreams. Although the technologies of livestreaming have been evolving over the past few decades, there have been no organized or successful attempts to standardize the ways we understand and study this fast-growing medium for music performance. Chapter 1 provides basic definitions of livestreaming, and then emphasizes the framework of liveness, arguing that although livestreaming technologies developed relatively recently, the practice of transmitting and receiving live music has been developing since the late-nineteenth century. I examine livestreaming as a continuation of broadcast media wrapped up with conceptions of liveness that have been constantly transforming over the long twentieth century. Chapter 2 connects livestreaming with the social media platforms that have emerged in the past two decades. I also position livestreaming within discussions and anxieties surrounding attention and distraction in the context of digital media. In Chapter 3 the discussion of attention extends into the realm of joint attention, and the ways livestreaming engages our attentive capacities in groups to facilitate specific modalities of participation—observational, reactive, and generative. Finally, the conclusion pulls these frameworks together to demonstrate their use in an analysis of music livestreaming during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the patterns of behavior and audience engagement, conceptions of liveness during the pandemic, and the effects of these factors on the social aspects of live music.

    Committee: Daniel Goldmark (Advisor); Francesca Brittan (Committee Member); Georgia Cowart (Committee Member); Vera Tobin (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Music; Performing Arts; Psychology; Recreation; Sociology
  • 16. Kinne, Jesse Tresillo Rhythms as Groove Schemata

    PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, College-Conservatory of Music: Theory

    This dissertation presents an analytical theory of musical groove as layered rhythmic schemata, and proposes archetypes based on a new taxonomy of tresillo rhythms. The scholarly origins of both groove and tresillos are traced back to ethnomusicology. Embracing the dual nature of groove established across disciplines as simultaneously musical structure and experience, the dissertation defines groove as the rhythmic gestalt which impels our body to motion. The analytical apparatus is generalized with respect to repertoire and rhythmic schemata, but the dissertation emphasizes rock music and the tresillo family of rhythms. A perceptually-bounded taxonomy is proposed for tresillos, which unfold a 3:2 temporal conflict constrained by pure duple metrical cycles. The fundamental theoretical contributions are to contextualize musical rhythm by discerning an irreducible counterpoint between the prevailing musical meter and the temporal structures implied by the rhythms themselves, and to put forward methods for discerning said structures from musical surfaces. The two cornerstones of the analytical framework are the Grooveline and the NonGroove Accent (NGA). Groovelines are middleground rhythmic schemata which emerge from cyclical layers of the musical texture, and enter into structural counterpoint with the prevailing meter, producing a total groove which contextualizes rhythmic activity. A rhythmic event's relative consonance and dissonance is thus framed according to alignment with both the meter and grooveline(s). Groovelines are identified via contextual associations and gestalt well-formedness principles. Loosely inspired by tonal NonChord Tones (NCTs), NonGroove Accents (NGAs) are those which participate in constituting the structure of a given grooveline, yet are subordinated by the process of multiple groovelines competing for perceptual efficacy. Guided by perceptual constraints on metrical entrainment, tresillo rhythms are taxonomized accor (open full item for complete abstract)

    Committee: Cristina Losada Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Christopher Segall Ph.D. (Committee Member); Samuel Ng Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music
  • 17. Tinajero Perez, Andrea Modal and Pentatonic Motives in the Music of HIM

    Master of Music (MM), Ohio University, 2022, Music Theory (Fine Arts)

    This study is focused on the music of HIM, a Finnish band formed in the early 1990's. Harmonic, melodic, and contrapuntal features in some of HIM's songs has been studied with two different analytical lenses. First, functional harmony in HIM's riffs has been examined based on the work of Nicole Biamonte, Guy Capuzzo, and Christopher Doll. Analysis of harmonic function obscures melodic and contrapuntal features that shape and create structure in the music of HIM. Alternate analytical approaches by Ciro Scotto, Drew Nobile, Aaron Van Valkenburg, and John Clough have been studied to observe these linear characteristics in the music of HIM.

    Committee: Anne Scotto (Committee Member); Ciro Scotto (Advisor) Subjects: Music
  • 18. Hughes, Phoebe Limitations of Genre: Women in Country Music from the 1960s to the Present

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Music

    This dissertation examines the careers of female country artists who have moved between popular music genres as crossover artists. In the 2010s female voices all but disappeared from country radio, and women's professional opportunities were limited: it is therefore not surprising that women would leave country to participate in other genres. Yet they do not all leave unequivocally: some have strategically blended country with other styles, shifting the boundaries between American popular music genres. Although sellers and buyers of music often treat musical genres as fixed and separate categories, the practice of music-making may draw on multiple categories, and artists make their own purposeful use of the categories. Beyond consideration of musical marketing categories, this dissertation is an intersectional project that considers gender and race together with critical attention to the ways in which whiteness should be rendered audible and visible within the scope of popular music. This dissertation examines five different case studies of female country artists over a seventy-year period who have all worked at the edges of country music, whether it be through stylistic choices within the format, by bringing new audiences to the genre, or by creating a space for themselves outside of the genre.

    Committee: Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Advisor); Ryan Skinner (Committee Member); Rachel Skaggs (Committee Member); Jada Watson (Other) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Music
  • 19. Young, Daniel The Ties That Bind: Gospel Music, Popular Music, and Race in America, 1875-1940

    MA, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

    White and black gospel music developed mostly independently, but they used very similar images and terminology. Images of heaven and theological terms like grace, duty, and love were employed in both forms of gospel. The experiences and preconceptions of the composers and listeners, however, meant that black and white gospel had different meanings and emphases within their messages. White gospel emphasized an assurance of salvation and an outward focus on helping others, while black gospel focused on the trouble Christians faced on Earth and the need for believers to focus on their own lives. This was a reflection of the situation of blacks in America. These same themes also run through popular music throughout the early twentieth century, and show the subtle functioning of race consciousness and the way that gospel articulated it was not confined only to gospel or religious venues.

    Committee: Kenneth Bindas (Advisor) Subjects: African Americans; American History; History; Modern History; Music; Religious History
  • 20. Shea, Nicholas Ecological Models of Musical Structure in Pop-rock, 1950–2019

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Music

    This dissertation explores the relationship between guitar performance and the functional components of musical organization in popular-music songs from 1954 to 2019. Under an ecological theory of affordances, three distinct interdisciplinary approaches are employed: empirical analyses of two stylistically contrasting databases of popular-music song transcriptions, a motion-capture study of performances by practicing musicians local to Columbus, Ohio, and close readings of works performed and/or composed by popular-music guitarists. Each offers gestural analyses that provide an alternative to the object-oriented approach of standard popular-music analysis, as well as clarification on issues related to style, such as the socially determined differences between “pop” and “rock” music.

    Committee: Anna Gawboy Dr. (Committee Chair); Nicole Biamonte Dr. (Advisor); Daniel Shanahan Dr. (Advisor); David Clampitt Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Psychology; Music