Vanessa Knights

How are national identities constructed and articulated through music? Popular music has long been associated with political dissent, and the nation state has consistently demonstrated a determination to seek out and procure for itself a stake in the management of 'its' popular musics. Similarly, popular musics have been used 'from the ground up' as sites for both populist and popular critiques of nationalist sentiment, from the position of both a globalizing and a 'local' vernacular culture. The contributions in this book arrive at a critical moment in the development of the study of national cultures and musicology. The book ranges from considerations of the ideological focus of cultural nationalism through to analyses of musical hybridity and musical articulations of other kinds of identities at odds with national identity. The processes of global homogenization are thereby shown to have brought about a transitional crisis for national cultural identities: the evolution of these identities, particularly with reference to the concept of 'authenticity' in music, is situated within broader debates on power, political economy and constructions of the self. Theorizations of practice are employed after the manner of Bourdieu, Gramsci, Goffman, Gadamer, Habermas, Bhabha, Lacan and Zizek. Each contribution acts as a case study to characterize the strategies through which differing modes of musical discourse engage, critique or obscure discourses on national identity. The studies include discussions of: musical representations of Irishness; the relationship between Afropop and World Music; Norwegian club music; the revival of traditional music in Serbia; resistance to cultural homogeneity in Brazil; contemporary Uyghur song in Northwest China; rap and race in French society; technobanda from the barrios of Los Angeles, and Spanish/Moroccan raï. In this way, the book seeks to characterize the ideological configurations that help to activate and sustain hegemonic, amb

Between the Global and the Local

Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location

Rosa Montero is one of a group of women writers who came to prominence during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period often referred to as the boom of women's writing in Spain. This study traces the socio- historical conditions which led to the boom, addresses the Spanish ambivalence towards the mother figure within the Spanish feminist movement, and discusses the use of metafiction on the creation of life narrative for women. Deals with the alternative figure of the spinster, examines the fantastic as a mode of discourse, and discusses the increasing focus on discourse with Montero's narrative. The author teaches contemporary Hispanic literary and cultural studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Search for Identity in the Narrative of Rosa Montero

Michael Thompson

Chris Perriam

Professor of Hispanic Studies Chris Perriam

Susan Frenk

Both Lecturers in Spanish Susan Frenk

A New History of Spanish Writing, 1939 to the 1990s explores the diversity of some sixty years of imaginative writing by Spaniards, its interactions with Spain's peculiarly dramatic history since the end of its Civil War, and its wider thematic significance. It covers the famous and canonical texts of the most recent in Modern Spanish literature but also explores areas less well-known outside Spain (essays and editorials, queer narrative, new poetry, comics, and texts of the militant and reactionary Right). More space than is usual in literary histories is allowed for commentary on famous texts, but the book also makes room for the marginalized and for socially contextualized explorations of the interconnectedness of various forms of writing. The overall structure is not chronological but thematic, dealing with abstract and topical issues such as silence, the family, or realism.

A New History of Spanish Writing, 1939 to the 1990s

Paul Gregory Attinello

Janet K. Halfyard

The intense and continuing popularity of the long-running television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) has long been matched by the range and depth of the academic critical response. This volume, the first devoted to the show's imaginative and widely varied use of music, sound and silence, helps to develop an increasingly important and inadequately covered area of research - the many roles of music in contemporary television. Chapters focus on scoring and source music, the title theme, the music production process, the critically acclaimed musical episode (voted number 13 in Channel Four's One Hundred Greatest Musicals), the symbolic and dramatic use of silence, and the popular reception of the show by its international fan base. In keeping with contemporary trends in the study of popular musics, a variety of critical approaches are taken from musicology, cultural studies, and media and communication studies, specifically employing critique, musical analysis, industry studies and hermeneutics.

Vanessa Knights

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