Stir it up: interdisciplinary popular musicology and creative industries

This PhD by Published Works represents “a coherent portfolio of published work, with appropriate currency”, that is within the regulatory submission eligibility timeline of the University of Wolverhampton. The contextual, introductory writing identifies and addresses the unifying theme across the published works submitted as part of this thesis. Firstly: that the published works represent critical engagements with post-1968 British and American cultural artefacts and scenes in which Popular Music predominantly figures. Secondly: that these critical engagements seek to identify the political import and functions of these artefacts and scenes in the light of the failure of the grand revolutionary project of 1968, which had prompted a rethinking of the role of culture in anglophone society. The critical analyses of these cultural artefacts and scenes in the wake of the failure of 1968, in the published works – artefact and scenes which are here read as recalibrated to a “stirring up” of a post-1968 conscience – represents the contribution to knowledge of this thesis. The interdisciplinary nature of the critical engagements of these published works is identified as representing an enhanced methodology that is appropriate for such material. This interdisciplinarity and enhanced methodology has allowed for a consideration of media (both recorded and live) and related artefacts as intrinsic to an understanding of, and the reach of, popular music; liveness and performance as intrinsic to modern pop, and the need to theorise this connection; a consideration of the importance of “peripheral” figures such as the disc jockey and impresario in popular music cultures and scenes; ontologies of liveness in terms of virtuality and electronic dance music (EDM); and the notion of a wider, zeitgeist-calibrated music scene, and its ideological assumptions. This interdisciplinarity is considered in respect to historic directions in interdisciplinary Popular Musicology, and to interdisciplinarity itself, via a series of definitions and conceptions found in academic writing, personal experiences, and the ways in which interdisciplinarity is understood and assessed as part of the periodic Research Excellence Framework exercise. The thesis argues, with respect to the published work submitted, for a breaking with the general tendency of relaying innovative interdisciplinary methodologies back into the one discipline of Popular Musicology, in favour of placing the originality of the findings of the published works in the context of the relatively new discipline of Creative Industries. The thesis then proactively repositions the submitted work in terms of new horizons of academic engagement. And, to this end, definitions of the Creative Industries are scoped, both academic and governmental. Individual summaries and commentaries on the published works are included, which seek to draw out and critique their interdisciplinarity, contribution to knowledge, and orientations to Creative Industries. The latter element has determined the organisation of the portfolio of published works, which is grouped into four sections: 1) Scenes, and new markets… and their discontents; 2) Buying (into) cultural cachet; 3) The problem of tainted, but paradigm-shifting, artefacts; and, 4) Intimations of multiplatform world-making.

Citation

Halligan, B. (2026) Stir it up: interdisciplinary popular musicology and creative industries. University of Wolverhampton. https://wlv.openrepository.com/handle/2436/626295

Publisher

University of Wolverhampton

URI

https://wlv.openrepository.com/handle/2436/626295

Type

Thesis or dissertation

Language

en

Description

Portfolio of published writing, and contextual writing, presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of PhD by Published Works.

Collections

Theses and Dissertations