Invited and hosted by Associate Professor Zack Moir, Dr Tom Attah gave a seminar talk to staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students at Edinburgh Napier University about identifying and engaging with different narrative structures used in the telling of popular music histories.
The talk was based on the work of Professor David Sanjek, and worked through how we define musical genres; how we describe their development; how we construct a musical tradition and defend its parameters; how we incorporate evidence of change into a linear narrative without abandoning coherence; how we reconcile ourselves to the fact that something about our subject and its transformation over time perennially escapes our powers of intellect and emotion.
The struggle is over possession of rock & roll history, and the legitimacy that it confers. More precisely, the struggle is over the act of definition that is presumed to lie at the history’s core; for it is an article of faith that some central essence named rock, or jazz or blues remains constant throughout all the dramatic transformations that have resulted in the modern iterations of the music.
Feedback from attendees included:
“Absolutely brilliant seminar on Popular Music Culture, with reference to Deleuze, Small, Fabbri, and more, touching on the concept of the rhizomatic model theory and breaking down how power and politics affects the anatomy of an inherently generative network. The emphasis on narrative patterns was also particularly interesting especially when interpreted from a historical standpoint to outline the ways society, culture, and latterly agents within the network, can mould the system as a whole by means of, for example, creative process.”
“This seminar has ultimately aided my examination of dialogical music systems by facilitating the analysis of an individual’s perception of agency, and to what extent one can enact said agency, over the creative process themselves, specifically in conjunction with the aforementioned models, structures, and patterns.”
“I thought Tom’s Seminar was very nice and engaging -he seemed genuinely interested in the people asking the question’s work besides answering questions on his own, and usually he’d give something notable in return when learning about what other people were doing.”
“One thing that has stuck with me since that was probably “Watch for the gaps, watch for the absolutes”. I like the non-linear focus which allowed an understanding of minority groups, not just dominant/trendy ones.”
