Author Archives: hallw

Why techno?

Reading Garcia’s article, I couldn’t help but think about why it is techno that is at the heart of Berlin’s ‘alternative’ tourist circuit. What is it about Berlin that accommodates techno, and why is it techno that has developed such … Continue reading

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Le Mystere

Vasiliki’s post on the reading is really interesting and more or less covers what I wanted to say, albeit in a more eloquent manner. To contribute further, I’d like to consider how the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir fits into … Continue reading

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“The individualized practise of listening and doing it in a foreign language”

Yurchak discusses that broadcasts in languages other than those spoken in the USSR were jammed (178) and as such the BBC World Service, amongst others, was readily available to Soviet music fans. How do we read this decision? To block … Continue reading

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Glam’s “sexual abnormality” and the memory of Mod

Whether or not audiences were tolerant of “glam rock’s play with gender,” glam was still seen as “provocative” (48) in the US and Britain – and deliberately so. This provocation was unequivocally political: Auslander notes that in the former, the … Continue reading

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Apolitical stiliagi

Mark Edele makes the remark that stiliagi were “decidedly apolitical” (58), echoing the KGB report he quotes earlier in the text that states the stiliagi held an “unpoliticalness” (40). I was taken by the idea that a subversive youth culture … Continue reading

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“Those who want to win sing in English”

I remember watching the Eurovision Song Contest as a child. I would wonder why Russia and Ukraine or Serbia and Montenegro would always give each other the most votes, and I would ask why ‘no one likes Britain’. In Bohlman’s … Continue reading

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When The War Ended

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 (1943) was denounced as part of the 1948 decree for, I assume, its morose and tragic tone. It is the antithesis of the desired socialist realism of the period. Yet, while it evokes war strongly enough to have … Continue reading

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“The essence of music does not lie in experimentation”.

Reflecting upon the previous weeks of this course, I found interesting in this week’s readings the importance of tonality and the “idea of major” (Potter, 216), as well as the constant dismissal of experimentation and atonality. The latter point was referred … Continue reading

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“What is a theatre without an audience?”

Set somewhat curiously in Victorian London*, the film sets two Dickensian (I couldn’t help but think of Oliver Twist) gangs against one another: Peachum and his beggars, and Mack and his thieves. Peachum profits off the poor while Mack imitates and … Continue reading

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