Conference: Pop History of Deindustrialization: Narratives, Economies, Identities. “The West” in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 14-16 November 24)

Dimoni Industrial/Industrial Devil. (Idranx from Badalona, SPAIN, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons).

Since the 1970s, deindustrialization – or the massive reduction in industrial production, facilities, and jobs – has fundamentally changed Western societies. This history has tended to be narrated in terms of decline and loss, usually within a local or national locus. Recently, scholars have challenged the isolated directionality of these narratives by bringing global and cross-industrial perspectives to the fore. Deindustrialization instigated an uneven set of experiences in different spaces, and forms of rupture and continuity. Those experiences have been reflected in various forms of pop culture. As examples from Germany and Great Britain demonstrate, Western deindustrialization unfolded in the midst of global, and particularly Asian, industrialization, reinforcing each other, as the example of South Korea illustrates.

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Neuerscheinung: “Ja, Herr, ich kann Boogie! R&B, Funk, Soul und Disco in Deutschland 1945-1980” (open access)

Ja, Herr, ich kann Boogie! fragt  danach, wie sogenannte Schwarze Musik ihren Weg nach dem II. Weltkrieg nach Deutschland, in die BRD und DDR, fand, wer sie veröffentlichte, wer sie sendete, über sie schrieb, natürlich auch wer sie hörte und schließlich wer versuchte, Ähnliches zu produzieren.
 
Ich beschäftige mich darin mit der Frage der Konstruktion von Musik als Schwarz oder weiß, der damit verbundenen und für den Erfolg als notwendig erachteten rassistischen und exotistischen Inszenierung von (nicht nur) Schwarzen Körpern und analysiere Musikstücke und Auftritte, um das wie der musikalischen Aneignungsprozesse ansatzweise verstehen zu lernen. Dafür ist es notwendig nicht nur den im Rampenlicht stehenden Personen, sonder auch den im Hintergrund arbeitenden Netzwerken von Studiomusiker*innen und Produzenten (erstmals) große Aufmerksamkeit zu schenken.

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New publication: Made in Germany – Studies in Popular Music

Made in Germany - Cover

Seibt, Oliver, Martin Ringsmut, and David-Emil Wickström, eds. 2020. Made in Germany – Studies in Popular Music. Routledge Global Popular Music Series. New York, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN: 9780815391784.

Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary German popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of German music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of popular music in Germany and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in Germany, followed by essays organized into the following thematic sections:

  • Historical Spotlights
  • Globally German
  • Also “Made in Germany”
  • Explicitly German and
  • Reluctantly German.

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Research Project: ENDZEITOPIA. Forever Celebrating The End. Post Punk, Goth and Avant Garde in East Germany (1982 – 1992)

The  punk scene was in a deep existential crisis when post punk, new wave and goth music and fashion trends finally reached East Germany in the Orwellian year 1984. For the punk community in particular, the prevailing mood was indeed a dystopian one (Pehlemann, Papenfuβ, Mieβner, 2015). Punk was not dead (yet), but East German punk (no) future views increasingly contained a sense of pessimist fatalism, while goths escaped any kind of future scenario by playing already being dead. In any case, change was happening within the cultural underground which corresponded with a broader societal change and a spreading Endzeitstimmung (Wirsching, 2006) during the final phase of the Cold War. This ‘global’ existential fear, caused by political, societal and environmental crises, like nuclear threat, AIDS and environmental pollution (for example the ‘Waldsterben‘: dying forests) inspired both avant garde artists and participants in protest movements on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

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