Topics vary semester by semester. No prior musical experience required.
Punk and Metal in America
This course is a survey of history and styles of Punk and Metal music, with a particular focus on American bands and how they have intersected with the history of American demographic, economic, and political issues. These two genres both began as rebellious youth-oriented subcultures opposed to the social mainstream of American society, but have expressed this rebellion in radically different ways. Punk has always been overtly political, and metal has always avoided direct engagement with the real world in favor of otherworldly fantasies of power and horror. Despite these differences in philosophies and sound, the genres emerged from similar blues-rock roots, and have had a surprising amount of cross-influences and other connections throughout their histories. We will especially focus on issues of: the often-forgotten racial politics behind these genres’ emergence; their controversial and confrontational attitudes about musical pleasure and extremity; the ways in which they have challenged, critiqued, and also upheld conventional gender stereotypes; and paradoxical tensions between authenticity and commercial success that artists have to navigate in both genres. This course will sharpen your critical listening skills through weekly listening sessions and analytical discussions, but no prior music coursework is required. The culmination of the course will be an argumentative research paper about a punk or metal artist of your choice.
American Popular Song
In this course, we will investigate North American popular music from the early twentieth century onward, with particular emphasis on songwriting and song tradition. Through this we seek to understand the ways in which the nature of song in genres such as blues, jazz, rock, hip hop, and electronic dance music both reflects and shapes cultural subjectivities in American society. Some central course components include: musical style and sound, performance rights under American copyright law, the influence of technology and mass media, and the role of gender, race, and class.
The History & Music of R&B
This course will be a survey of the history and music of R&B, originally known as “rhythm and blues”—exploring the origins of this category, the evolution of different musical styles that have been associated with this label and category, and the contributions it has made to American popular music and culture. R&B has, at various points in time, referred to both specific musical styles, and also a marketing category of any music made by or for Black Americans. Because of these conflicting definitions, R&B has always been an especially rich and diverse category, ranging from classic jazz and blues singers, to cutting-edge futuristic neo-soul. We will study how R&B has reflected and helped shape broader cultural and commercial ideas in American society, including social revolutions like the civil rights movement or Black Lives Matter, as well as commercial and technological upheavals like the popularization of drum machines and sampling. We will be reading classic and cutting-edge scholarly perspectives, but also encountering primary sources written by artists and other people who were there when it all happened. This course will also sharpen your critical listening skills through weekly listening sessions and analytical discussions, but no prior music coursework is required. The culmination of the course will be an argumentative research paper about an R&B artist of your choice.