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What do we do when we listen? The act of engagement with music in everyday life may seem simple on the surface but participation, interpretation, circulation and cultural production in the digital age are more complex and entangled than ever before. It is especially so in Japan, with its vast multimedia idol and vocaloid industries. This unique ethnographic work at the intersection of cultural, media and music studies covers a wide spectrum of music-related activities embedded in the daily lives of two Japanese cohorts. The varied case studies, including teen idol groups and virtual idols, aid the detailed examination of the relation between music, generation, and society.

Crossley argues that music is a form of social interaction, interwoven in the fabric of society and in constant interplay with its other threads. Musical interactions are often also economic interactions, for example, and sometimes political interactions. They can be forms of identity work, for both individuals and collectives, contributing to the reproduction or bridging of social divisions. Successive chapters of the book track and explore these interplays, in each case combining a critical consideration of existing literature with the development of an original, ‘relational’ approach to music sociology. The result is a grand sociological vision of music which captures not only music’s context but ‘the music itself’. The book will appeal to social scientists, musicologists and cultural scholars more widely.

Previous research conducted on the cross-cultural perception of music and its emotional content has established that emotions can be communicated across cultures at least on a rudimentary level. Here, we report a cross-cultural study with participants originating from two tribes in northwest Pakistan (Khow and Kalash) and the United Kingdom, with both groups being naïve to the music of the other respective culture. We explored how participants assessed emotional connotations of various Western and non-Western harmonisation styles, and whether cultural familiarity with a harmonic idiom such as major and minor mode would consistently relate to emotion communication. The results indicate that Western concepts of harmony are not relevant for participants unexposed to Western music when other emotional cues (tempo, pitch height, articulation, timbre) are kept relatively constant. At the same time, harmonic style alone has the ability to colour the emotional expression in music if it taps the appropriate cultural connotations. The preference for one harmonisation style over another, including the major-happy/minor-sad distinction, is influenced by culture. Finally, our findings suggest that although differences emerge across different harmonisation styles, acoustic roughness influences the expression of emotion in similar ways across cultures; preference for consonance however seems to be dependent on cultural familiarity.

This ten-chapter book explores how music and society are, and have been, intertwined and mutually influential. It examines the agents behind these connections: who determines musical cultures in society? Which social groups are represented in particular musical contexts? Which social groups are silenced or less well represented in music's histories, and why?.

Singers generating cultural identity from K-Pop to Beverly Sills Around the world and across time, singers and their songs stand at the crossroads of differing politics and perspectives. Levi S. Gibbs edits a collection built around the idea of listening as a political act that produces meaning. Contributors explore a wide range of issues by examining artists like Romani icon Esma Redžepova, Indian legend Lata Mangeshkar, and pop superstar Teresa Teng. Topics include gendered performances and the negotiation of race and class identities; the class-related contradictions exposed by the divide between highbrow and pop culture; links between narratives of overcoming struggle and the distinction between privileged and marginalized identities; singers' ability to adapt to shifting notions of history, borders, gender, and memory in order to connect with listeners; how the meanings we read into a singer's life and art build on one another; and technology's ability to challenge our ideas about what constitutes music. Cutting-edge and original, Social Voices reveals how singers and their songs equip us to process social change and divergent opinions. Contributors: Christina D. Abreu, Michael K. Bourdaghs, Kwame Dawes, Nancy Guy, Ruth Hellier, John Lie, Treva B. Lindsey, Eric Lott, Katherine Meizel, Carol A. Muller, Natalie Sarrazin, Anthony Seeger, Carol Silverman, Andrew Simon, Jeff Todd Titon, and Elijah Wald

Music and arts initiatives are often praised for their capacity to aid in the rehabilitation of refugees. However, it is crucial to recognize that this celebratory view can also mask the unequal power dynamics involved in regulating forced migration.   In Composing Aid, Oliver Shao turns a critical ear towards the United Nations-run Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, one of the largest and oldest encampments in the world. This politically engaged ethnography delves into various cultural practices, including hip hop shows, traditional dances, religious ceremonies, and NGO events, in an urbanized borderland area beset with precarity and inequality. How do songs intersect with the politics of belonging in a space controlled by state and humanitarian forces? Why do camp authorities support certain musical activities over others? What can performing artists teach us about the inequities of the international refugee regime? Offering a provocative contribution to ethnomusicological methods through its focus on activist research, Composing Aid elucidates the powerful role of music and the arts in reproducing, contesting, and reimagining the existing migratory order.