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Urban and Popular Music

Code: 100632 ECTS Credits: 6
2024/2025
Degree Type Year
2500240 Musicology OB 2

Contact

Name:
Publio Pablo Delgado Fernandez De Heredia
Email:
publiopablo.delgado@uab.cat

Teaching groups languages

You can view this information at the end of this document.


Prerequisites

 It is recommended to have basic knowledge of technical musical vocabulary (harmony, analysis, music theory, etc.)


Objectives and Contextualisation

- Identify the main processes that make up the dynamics of popular and urban music
- Obtain a critical overview of the history and historiography of popular music
- Relate urban popular music with its social, historical and cultural contexts
- Apply to research the main theoretical and analytical tools developed recently in the interdisciplinary field of Popular Music Studies (Popular Music Studies)
- Prepare small critical research on genres, groups, performers, composers and / or practices of urban popular music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
- Develop critical thinking about Musicology and Popular Music Studies that contribute, in the long term, to improving the field of studies


Competences

  • Act with ethical responsibility and respect for fundamental rights and duties, diversity and democratic values.
  • Identify and compare the different channels of reception and consumption of music in society and in culture in each period.
  • Recognise and appreciate musical manifestations in non-western, traditional, popular and urban cultures.
  • Relate musical creations with their different contexts, differentiating between the social functions of music, its roles and that of the musician in society and in relation to other artistic manifestations.
  • Students must be capable of applying their knowledge to their work or vocation in a professional way and they should have building arguments and problem resolution skills within their area of study.
  • Students must be capable of communicating information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialised and non-specialised audiences.
  • Take sex- or gender-based inequalities into consideration when operating within one's own area of knowledge.
  • Use digital tools and interpret specific documentary sources critically.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Analyse the sex-/gender-based inequalities and gender bias in one's own area of knowledge.
  2. Apply and transmit knowledge acquired to social demands related to popular music.
  3. Assess the impact of the difficulties, prejudices and discriminations that actions or projects may involve, in the short or long term, in relation to certain persons or groups.
  4. Carrying out oral presentations using an appropriate academic vocabulary and style.
  5. Communicate using language that is not sexist or discriminatory.
  6. Consider how gender stereotypes and roles impinge on the exercise of the profession.
  7. Determine the main technical and historical concepts related to popular and urban music.
  8. Distinguish between the main styles and basic techniques of popular and urban music and be able to relate them to musical praxis.
  9. Evaluate the consumption of music in contemporary society.
  10. Identify and critically assemble the basic bibliography that has shaped the field of study.
  11. Identify the connections between current musical creation and the sociopolitical and cultural circumstancesticas in which it takes place.
  12. Identify the main inequalities and discriminations in terms of sex/gender present in society.
  13. Identifying the transcultural variability of economic, kinship, political, symbolic and cognitive, educational and gender systems as well as their corresponding anthropological theory.
  14. Make ethical use of information, especially when it is of a personal nature.

Content

Studies of popular music are a relatively new field in the field of Musicology and in the Social sciences. Researching into popular music started at the end of the sixties in the UK and USA academic spaces and have lead in the last decades to a multiplicity of enriching theoretical approaches.

This course starts from an interdisciplinary perspective that is not limited to the chronological observation of the great "milestones" of the history of music. The study of popular music cover analysis of sound structures, aesthetics, and its study as a fundamental part of the social and cultural world in which we live.

In this course, we open our ears and move between various genres and musical situations to explore their (and our) relationship with cultural industries, media, and social practices.

1- Introduction: Premises for a history of popular music
										
											
										
											2- Blues, Jazz, New Orleans
										
											
										
											2- Tin Pan Alley, Broadway
										
											
										
											3- The song in Europe in the first years of the recording era (France, Spain, Germany, England...)
										
											
										
											4- Sound cinema: Songs and music in films
										
											
										
											5- Crooners
										
											
										
											6- Post-war in the USA: from Rhythm & Blues to Rock & roll
										
											
										
											7- Singer-songwriters in the world: art and political commitment (or not)
										
											
										
											8- Brazil: Villa-Lobos, Samba, Bossa-Nova
										
											
										
											9- Burt Bacharach and Motown: black music in the 60s. Stevie Wonder
										
											
										
											9- The era of the groups: 60's and 70's. The Beatles. 
										
											
										
											10- 80s and 90s: the era of the CD, the Video clip, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson 
										
											
										
											10- Contemporary Urban Music
										
											
										
											11- How to write a song: Structure and form in the modern song
										
											
										
											12- Musical Production: What it is and what a producer was. Recording history.

Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Practical sessions 41 1.64 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13
Type: Supervised      
Activities 0 0 2, 4, 7, 11
Tutorials 5 0.2 2, 11
Type: Autonomous      
Study and reading 98 3.92 4, 7, 9, 11

Reading seminar

This seminar involves active student participation. The contents of the course will be acquired mainly by reading and discussing the selected texts, as well as analyzing and discussing the proposed audiovisual materials. The active follow-up of the contents implies a personal commitment to prepare the readings and actively participate in their debate in the classroom, and in the online classrooms and forums.

As a complement to the texts, we will also work from concrete and practical case studies, from which the theoretical aspects and the key concepts of the syllabus will be derived.

 

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.


Assessment

Continous Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Final Exam 50% 2 0.08 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14
Music Critical Work 25% 2 0.08 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13
Written work of music analysis 25% 2 0.08 2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13 

The subject is designed with participatory sessions in which continued attendance in class is recommended. However, attendance is not mandatory and, therefore, absences will not be penalized in the evaluation. 
Yet, active and continued participation in the class sessions of the course will be valued very positively. 
										
											
										
											The individual evaluation will be carried out mainly based on three items: 1) a written test at the end of the semester, in which the student must demonstrate the knowledge acquired. The test will have a weight of 50% of the overall evaluation 
2) a written work of a critical nature about an author, an album, a concert or a text (25%) and a written analysis work on a musical recording with questions or issues related to course material (25%). 
Completion (both assignments) is an essential requirement to pass the course.
										
											
										
											The subject offers the possibility of reevaluation, but it is considered an exceptional measure, given that the objective is a continuous evaluation of the activity throughout the entire semester. 
To take the reevaluation you must have taken the written test and submitted at least one of the two works that are part of the evaluation activities.  
Because it is considered a "non-evaluable" grade (previously "not present"), the student must have abandoned the course without having taken the written evaluation test or not having submitted either of the two written assignments.
										
											
										
											The review of final grades will be carried out on dates announced in advance and always within a maximum period of two weeks, counting from the delivery of the grades to the students.
										
											
										
											SINGLE ASSESMENT
										
											
										
											A single, written and theoretical final exam that covers all the material of the subject, plus the delivery of the two written works.
										
											The delivery of the assignments and the completion ofthe exam and oral presentations will take place on a single date indicated in the subject program, accessible from the virtual campus.

Bibliography

  • Garcia Peinazo, Diego. 2017. Rock andaluz: significación musical, identidades e ideología en la España del tardofranquismo y la transición. Madrid: SEDEM
  • Gillet, Charlie. 2008. Historia del rock and roll: El sonido de la ciudad (2 vol.). Barcelona: Ma Non Troppo
  • Iglesias, Iván. 2017. La modernidad elusiva: jazz, baile y política en la Guerra Civil española y el franquismo (1936-1968). Madrid: CSIC
  • Longhurst, Brian. 1996. Popular Music and Society. Cambridge: Polity Press
  • Martínez, Sílvia and Fouce, Hector. 2013. Made in Spain. Studies in Popular Music. New York: Routledge
  • Middleton, Richard. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Buckingham: Open University Press
  • Mora, Kiko y Viñuela, Eduardo. 2013. Rock around Spain. Historia, industria, escenas y medios de comunicación. Lleida: Universitat de Lleida
  • Shuker, Roy. 2005. Diccionario del rock y la música popular. Barcelona: Ma Non Troppo [trad. de Understanding Popular Music, 1994]
  • Southern, Eileen. 2001. Historia de la música negra norteamericana. Madrid: Akal
  • Tirro, Frank. 2001 [1993]. Historia del Jazz clásico / Historia del jazz moderno. Barcelona: Ma NonTropp
  • Fabri, Franco 2008. Around The Clock. UTET LIBRERIA. Torino

AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS 

  • Friedgen, Bud (director). 2004. Historia del rock and roll: El sonido de la ciudad (5 DVD). Warner Bros. Entertainment
  • Burns, Ken (director). 2000. Jazz: A Film (10 DVD). PBS Home Video. [Versió en castellà: Jazz. La Historia. Divisa Home Video, 2004]. Fragments on line a: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/jazz/home/
  • Walk on By: The Story of Popular Song (2001) BBC Series

Software

No specific software used


Language list

Name Group Language Semester Turn
(PAUL) Classroom practices 1 Catalan/Spanish second semester morning-mixed
(TE) Theory 1 Catalan/Spanish second semester morning-mixed