Music conference abstracts

[Ian Townsend]

....of interest to VG+ers?

Returning from an excellent, but specifically punk-oriented music conference in Porto, got me combing through abstracts from the most recent IASPM conference, held in Brazil at the end of July to seek out material of more interest to me. I'll post a few up and if they lead to any conversation at all I'll sporadically post others up here in the future as and when I find them.

Runaway to Where? Del Shannon and the Top 40 Space-Time Continuum
Eric Weisbard (University of Alabama)

Maria Rosetto writes from Australia: “I want to meet Bobby Rydell because his parents are Italians and I never met an Italian singer before.” Shirley Westover writes to Michigan: “Tomorrow is the last day in Sweden. Chuck is glad as they are a very weird people.” One is a fan, looking to meet Rydell, Chubby Checker, and Del Shannon. One is the wife of Shannon, born Charles Westover and thrown by the 1961 hit “Runaway” into a global Top 40 youth culture so new that a London program touted: “Real American Hamburgers and specially imported Hot Dogs.” Shannon killed himself in 1990, never reconciled to the path from hometown minstrel programs to Israeli cabarets and 30,000 in the Phillipines, then revival by Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Crime Story. How much clearer is popular music studies about processes abstracted as globalization and (post)modernization? Drawing on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Archives, which include Shirley Westover’s scrapbook, fan letters, and an interview Shannon gave over a Sanka-drenched breakfast in 1981, I’ll consider how pop’s “Runaway” circulated across borders and eras and the interpretive challenges presented when pop sends young icons worldwide, then preserves them in temporal display cases.

[Ian Townsend]

Blue-Eyed Soul Sauce: Cal Tjader, Bossa Nova, and the Tropical Sublime

Kevin Fellezs (Columbia University)

Bossa nova has been described as “samba plus jazz,” registering its inherent hybridity. Cal Tjader was a Swedish American multi-instrumentalist whose recordings of bossa nova, among other Latin music styles, helped create a sonic imaginarium of tropical escapism for American audiences in the early 1960s. Tjader would become one of Latin jazz’s biggest stars yet he was not only “Anglo” but also never lived south of San Mateo, California. In spite of this, his collaborations with Latin music stars such as Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Armando Peraza, and his mentorship of a young Poncho Sanchez attest to his acceptance into the highest strata of Latin music. But Tjader was no purist. Due to his early development as a jazz musician, his bossa nova was inflected by parallel currents in the San Francisco Bay Area jazz scene and the so-called West Coast cool jazz of the period, leaning more to the jazz than the samba side of bossa nova’s formative equation. Additionally, because his projects were instrumental rather than vocal recordings, Tjader’s bossa nova folded the foreign into the familiar, creating a space I am calling the Tropical Sublime – an imaginary space of non-threatening exotica for mainstream American audiences.

[SirSlim]

Kevin Fellezs (Columbia University)

Bossa nova has been described as “samba plus jazz,” registering its inherent hybridity. Cal Tjader was a Swedish American multi-instrumentalist whose recordings of bossa nova, among other Latin music styles, helped create a sonic imaginarium of tropical escapism for American audiences in the early 1960s. Tjader would become one of Latin jazz’s biggest stars yet he was not only “Anglo” but also never lived south of San Mateo, California. In spite of this, his collaborations with Latin music stars such as Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Armando Peraza, and his mentorship of a young Poncho Sanchez attest to his acceptance into the highest strata of Latin music. But Tjader was no purist. Due to his early development as a jazz musician, his bossa nova was inflected by parallel currents in the San Francisco Bay Area jazz scene and the so-called West Coast cool jazz of the period, leaning more to the jazz than the samba side of bossa nova’s formative equation. Additionally, because his projects were instrumental rather than vocal recordings, Tjader’s bossa nova folded the foreign into the familiar, creating a space I am calling the Tropical Sublime – an imaginary space of non-threatening exotica for mainstream American audiences.

Add Mongo Santamaria to that list - on fabulous form here with Cal on "tu crees que":

[babycart]

Kevin Fellezs (Columbia University)

Bossa nova has been described as “samba plus jazz,” registering its inherent hybridity. Cal Tjader was a Swedish American multi-instrumentalist whose recordings of bossa nova, among other Latin music styles, helped create a sonic imaginarium of tropical escapism for American audiences in the early 1960s. Tjader would become one of Latin jazz’s biggest stars yet he was not only “Anglo” but also never lived south of San Mateo, California. In spite of this, his collaborations with Latin music stars such as Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Armando Peraza, and his mentorship of a young Poncho Sanchez attest to his acceptance into the highest strata of Latin music. But Tjader was no purist. Due to his early development as a jazz musician, his bossa nova was inflected by parallel currents in the San Francisco Bay Area jazz scene and the so-called West Coast cool jazz of the period, leaning more to the jazz than the samba side of bossa nova’s formative equation. Additionally, because his projects were instrumental rather than vocal recordings, Tjader’s bossa nova folded the foreign into the familiar, creating a space I am calling the Tropical Sublime – an imaginary space of non-threatening exotica for mainstream American audiences.

I´ve never really associated Tjader with bossa. He did a bit, just like he flirted with oriental easy-listening and pop, but he was always far more devoted to Cuban styles and surrounded himself with Afro-Cuban musicians - the only brazilian musician I can think of him working with is Laurindo Almeida.

Here´s Cal and Willie Bobo performing the BEST TIMBALE SOLO of 1960

[babycart]

Runaway to Where? Del Shannon and the Top 40 Space-Time Continuum
Eric Weisbard (University of Alabama)

Maria Rosetto writes from Australia: “I want to meet Bobby Rydell because his parents are Italians and I never met an Italian singer before.” Shirley Westover writes to Michigan: “Tomorrow is the last day in Sweden. Chuck is glad as they are a very weird people.” One is a fan, looking to meet Rydell, Chubby Checker, and Del Shannon. One is the wife of Shannon, born Charles Westover and thrown by the 1961 hit “Runaway” into a global Top 40 youth culture so new that a London program touted: “Real American Hamburgers and specially imported Hot Dogs.” Shannon killed himself in 1990, never reconciled to the path from hometown minstrel programs to Israeli cabarets and 30,000 in the Phillipines, then revival by Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Crime Story. How much clearer is popular music studies about processes abstracted as globalization and (post)modernization? Drawing on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Archives, which include Shirley Westover’s scrapbook, fan letters, and an interview Shannon gave over a Sanka-drenched breakfast in 1981, I’ll consider how pop’s “Runaway” circulated across borders and eras and the interpretive challenges presented when pop sends young icons worldwide, then preserves them in temporal display cases.

[SirSlim]

I´ve never really associated Tjader with bossa. He did a bit, just like he flirted with oriental easy-listening and pop, but he was always far more devoted to Cuban styles and surrounded himself with Afro-Cuban musicians - the only brazilian musician I can think of him working with is Laurindo Almeida.

Here´s Cal and Willie Bobo performing the BEST TIMBALE SOLO of 1960

And for the best timbale solo by Willie Bobo for 1959 - see my post above

[Plainstone]

....of interest to VG+ers?

Very much so. I see they have a Japanese branch with a conference in Kyoto in December. Might try to get to that.

[Ian Townsend]

Cold facts? Searching for the truth behind the Rodriguez story

Michael Drewett (Rhodes University Grahamstown South Africa)

In the narrative and post-release aftermath of the film ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ various claims have been made about relationship between Rodriguez’ album ‘Cold Fact’ (in particular) and the development of an anti-apartheid rebelliousness amongst white South African youth in the 1970s and 1980s. These claims have ranged from the unlikely to the incredulous. For example, that the lyrics gave “the white youth permission to question. And question they did” and that Rodriguez’ music “jumped the Atlantic Ocean and found an eager audience in the then apartheid South Africa, especially amongst privileged white youth. Also restricted by the tightly controlled, highly censored, fascist apartheid state, these youth were so inspired by the working-class lyrics and soulful melodies that some joined the Black-led fight to bring down that racist system.” In the film itself it was claimed that the anti-establishment Afrikaans Voelvry music movement was most strongly influenced by the music of Rodriguez. This paper incorporates archival research at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, apartheid-era Directorate of Publications and the South African Music Royalties Organisation and interviews with musicians involved in the Voelvry Movement to dig deeper into the truth behind and influence of Rodriguez in South Africa.

[Grim Lounge Cowboy]

This abstract apparently inspired by certain late-sixties saxophone solos. Nice to see that participants aren't tied to one genre.