Newcastle University

Faculty Member, Music

About

I am a writer, university teacher, and journal editor based in Newcastle upon Tyne.

My research interests are in the roles played by loss, memory, nostalgia and revolution in popular music. My work in these areas is heavily influenced by theories of place and spatiality and I am particularly interested in the ways in which music creates or evokes 'memory places' that take on significance for individuals and communities. In addition to Anglophone popular musics I work on Portuguese fado and Latin American nueva canción, reflecting interests developed during extensive periods based in Portugal and Chile.

My other areas of specialisation include post-1950s popular music; North American country music and Americana; music and cultural theory; and the poetics of popular song. I have a background in a broad variety of disciplines. Having gained a BA in Comparative American Studies from the University of Warwick, I completed a MA in Popular Culture with the Open University. I then moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, where I completed a PhD investigating aspects of loss in popular music under the supervision of Prof. Richard Middleton and Dr. Ian Biddle at the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University (ICMuS).

I am the author of the book "Fado and the Place of Longing: Loss, Memory and the City" (Ashgate, 2010). I have published, or have forthcoming, articles on a number of topics: the role of the city in fado music; place and displacement in the work of Bob Dylan; public consciousness and conscience in Latin American New Song; and popular music as 'event'. I am currently working on a project entitled "Ritual, Remembrance and Recorded Sound" in collaboration with two ICMuS colleagues, Ian Biddle and Nanette de Jong.

Future scheduled projects include:
- an extended work on music, memory and place
- a study of the 'late voice' in popular music, using the examples of Ralph Stanley, Nina Simone, Amália Rodrigues, Bob Dylan and Robert Wyatt
- an analysis of representations of leisure, travel, exoticism and otherness by record labels associated with 'world musics' of various kinds

I am Associate Editor for the journal Radical Musicology and a member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM).

In addition to my academic work, I write for the popular culture website PopMatters. A selection of my music reviews can be found in the link provided on the left.

http://theplaceoflonging.wordpress.com
http://vinylvacations.blogspot.com

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