Chris Thompson (Uppsala): Embracing the Extreme: Norwegian Black Metal and the Use of History (scroll way down). Tressie McMillan Cottom (Emory): Reading Hick-Hop: The Shotgun Marriage of Hip Hop and Country Music. Bill D. Fordice (Luther): Exploring Wholeness in Music Teachers’ Lives. From the Journal of Pan African Studies, a special issue on trends in contemporary African hip hop. Philip Kennicott on how an effort to popularize classical music undermines what makes orchestras great. Leah Sottile on finding happiness in angry music: There’s something cleansing about engaging with emotions we might not usually let ourselves feel. Mark Oppenheimer on why you should stop forcing your kids to learn a musical instrument (and a response and a reply). Just how much of musical history has been lost to history? Valuable original recordings and rare tapes have vanished over the years — a process that Jack White and the National Recording Preservation Foundation are looking to stop. The introduction to Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music by S. Alexander Reed. Max Blau on how Spotify engineered the new music economy. Rosemary Golding on music and the “Mickey Mouse” degree debate. We are all Eurotrash now: From Miley Cyrus to Arcade Fire, how the disco beats of Berlin conquered the world. Joe Coscarelli on the tragic history of the Yellow Dogs, Iran’s indie-rock hope in Brooklyn. Did JFK’s death make Beatlemania possible? Jack Hamilton wonders. Daniel D’Addation on how white artists profit from mocking hip-hop. Felix Salmon on GoldieBlox, the Beastie Boys, fair use, and the cult of disruption.
