The Same Distant Places: Bob Dylan's Poetics of Place and Displacement

published in Popular Music and Society, 32/2 (2009), 249-70

This article explores the emphasis in Bob Dylan's work on memory, place, and displacement. It rehearses some key issues raised by recent theorists who have been interested in the connections between these themes before proceeding to discuss tropes of displacement in Dylan's work. Topics covered include the importance of the city and its projection of the rural, the theme of moving on and its association with accumulated experience, and the ability of Dylan continually to reinvent himself. The article closes with a reflection on the album Time Out of Mind as a distillation of themes of place and displacement that can be found throughout Dylan's work and argues that the work presents a poetics of displacement that cannot shed the pull of place and the desire for homely permanence.

Popular Music and/as Event: Subjectivity, Love and Fidelity in the Aftermath of Rock ’n’ Roll

This article concerns the usefulness of attaching a philosophy of the event to popular music studies. I am attempting to think about the ways that rock ’n’ roll functions as a musical revolution that becomes subjected to a narrative of loss accompanying the belief that the revolution has floundered, or even disappeared completely. In order to think about what this narrative of loss might entail I have found myself going back to the emergence of rock ’n’ roll, to what we might term its ‘event’, and then working towards the present to take stock of the current situation. The article is divided into three parts. Part One attempts to think of the emergence of rock ’n’ roll and its attendant discourse alongside Alain Badiou’s notion of event, looking at ways in which listening subjects are formed. Part Two continues the discussion of listening subjectivity while shifting the focus to objects associated with phonography. Part Three attends to a number of difficulties encountered in the Badiouian project and asks to what extent rock music might be thought of as a lost cause. All three parts deal with notions of subjectivity, love and fidelity.

Reconstructing the Event: Spectres of Terror in Chilean Performance

Examines a concert staged in Chile by the Cuban cantautor Silvio Rodríguez in light of Jacques Derridas notion of "event" elaborated in Specters of Marx. It suggests that, while it is entirely possible to see the concert as an event whose "event-ness" is created post facto, it is also useful to posit the concert as part of a construction of a larger process, that of opposition to the "event" of authoritarianism. Discusses two songs, Víctor Jara's "Te recuerdo Amanda" and Rodríguez's "Unicornio", reflecting on their evocations of death and disappearance. Death, as evoked in the Jara song, at least bears the comfort of a tangible end image; disappearance, as "Unicornio" bears witness, denies closure. These recorded performances are further considered in the light of their afterlife as concert performances and the subjects of cover versions and tributes that all contribute to the counter-event suggested by the Rodríguez concert.

Loss, memory and nostalgia in popular song :thematic aspects and theoretical approaches [PhD Thesis]

The aim of this thesis is to study the ways loss is reflected in popular music and in the discourse surrounding popular music. The project attempts to create a dialogue between theorists of loss and memory working in various disciplines and those working in and around popular music (musicians, critics, academics). It also recognises the vital role of loss in revolution (and vice versa) and attends to revolutionary moments, or events, not least the `event' of rock 'n' roll. It proceeds from the idea that, while creativity is a crucial aspect of the production and reception (or receptive production) of popular music, creativity often takes the form of a response, or set of responses, to loss. While rooted in popular music studies, the project reflects a desire to look outside the Anglophone tradition and includes case studies of a few music genres - Portuguese fado, Cuban nueva trova, Chilean nueva canciön - that exist in a place between popular music studies and ethnomusicology. It also studies three areas more familiar to Anglophone popular music studies: rock 'n' roll, black protest music in America and punk/post-punk in Britain. Methodologically, the thesis draws on popular music studies, philosophy and cultural theory in an attempt to suggest ways that these disciplines can inform each other.

The Testimonial Imperative: Reflections on Saer’s The Witness

2003

This essay was written as an exercise in bringing together ideas arising from postcolonial theory and psychoanalysis as preparatory work for my doctoral thesis on loss, memory and nostalgia. It consists of reflections on the English language translation of Juan José Saer's novel The Witness. It does not lay a claim to any sort of definitive reading of the novel any more than it would try to exhaust the theories of postcolonialism, poststructuralism or anthropology on which the reflections are based. Rather, it aims toward a theorisation of loss that attempts to wrest the latter from connotations of nostalgic apathy towards a brighter role as instructive agency. It asks, after Roland Barthes: Are we only destined to ‘deaths without relays’?

Where I Come From: Place, Race, Memory and Experience in Rap and Country Music – A Comparative Study

Master of Arts dissertation, Open University, 2002

This work examines certain lyrical elements in rap and country music and the ways they are voiced. As different as these genres are from each other they share certain important characteristics. The main themes I focus on are place, race, memory and experience. I also look at how these themes are used in the creation of authenticity and how authenticity is seen as crucial within these genres.

Artists discussed include Ice-T, Boogie Down Productions, Dr Dre, Eminem, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Hank Williams, Steve Earle, Merle Haggard, Iris Dement, Alan Jackson, Terry Allen.

Contents
Introduction (pp. 1-5)
Chapter One: Place and Race (pp. 6-25)
Chapter Two: Memory and Experience (pp. 26-43)
Chapter Three: Establishing Authenticity (pp. 44-66)
Conclusion (pp. 67-68)
Appendices/Discography/Bibliography (pp. 69-78)