Popular Music

A number of staff at Sheffield, in ethnomusicology and other areas, have research expertise in popular music, a subject that remains under-researched in relation to its enormous cultural importance. Issues in the study of popular music extend across essentially the whole range of issues in the study of music and of human culture in general, including aspects of aesthetics, identity, race, gender, sexuality, class, history, technology, and musical style. Research projects in popular music might investigate such areas as:

• The role of popular music in defining and sustaining particular communities and subcultures
• Musical conventions and codes of popular music and their meanings for listeners
• The use of popular music in film, television, and other visual media
• The musical on stage and screen
• Historical studies of popular music genres and “scenes”
• Genre theory as a means of understanding popular music culture
• Popular musics of non-Western countries and “world beat”
• Audience behavior and uses of popular music, from Walkman to arena concert
• The culture of mobile phone ring tones