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What is Popular Music Studies? Some observations

Martin Cloonan

British Journal of Music Education / Volume 22 / Issue 01 / March 2005, pp 77 - 93DOI: 10.1017/S026505170400600X, Published online: 30 March 2005

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S026505170400600X

How to cite this article:Martin Cloonan (2005). What is Popular Music Studies? Some observations. British Journal ofMusic Education, 22, pp 77-93 doi:10.1017/S026505170400600X

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B. J. Music Ed. 2005 22:1, 7793 Copyright C 2005 Cambridge University Pressdoi:10.1017/S026505170400600X

What is Popular Music Studies? Some observations

Ma r t i n C l o o n an

Department of Adult and Continuing Education, University of Glasgow, St Andrews Building,11 Eldon Street, Glasgow, G3 6NE

[email protected]

Popular Music Studies (PMS) is now taught in over 20 higher education institutions (HEIs)in the UK and numerous others across the world. This article outlines the constituent partsof PMS in the UK and questions its status as a discipline in its own right. It concludes byarguing that, having established itself, PMS will need to deal with two key pressures inmodern academic life those of conducting research and widening participation. In theformer instance, PMS might have to be pragmatic, in the latter lies potential for radicalism.

I n t r o d u c t i o n

There is an inherent problem with rock music education. While classical music mightbe suited to the structured format of universities, can you really learn how to rock likeThe Strokes by sitting in a lecture theatre? (Johnstone, 2003)

The above quote, from the popular music magazine New Musical Express NME, is just oneexample of media scepticism about the value of Popular Music Studies (PMS). Anothercame on 23 January 2004, when UK higher educations in-house journal, the TimesHigher Education Supplement (THES), took the opportunity provided by an upcomingparliamentary debate on undergraduate tuition fees to raise the question of fees for courseswhich appeared to be examples of dumbing down (Tysome, 2004). Amongst those calledupon to defend their subject area was Professor Sheila Whiteley, Chair of Popular Music atthe University of Salford.

While such attacks have a longer lineage linked to the dismissal of popular musicitself (cf. Johnson, 1964), they came at a time when its academic study was becomingincreasingly popular. As the THES attacked, the Universities Central Admission Services(UCAS) Student Guide 2004 listed 18 institutions across the UK (from a list of over 300providers) as having degree programmes in PMS. Closer inspection revealed that the samesubject area is listed in other places under headings such as Commercial Music (Universitiesof Paisley and Westminster and Bath Spa University College), Popular and ContemporaryMusic (University of Newcastle), Music Culture (University of East London) and Jazz Studies(University of Exeter). In addition, PMS modules can be found in many parts of the arts andsocial sciences, including places such as the Department of Adult and Continuing Educationat the University of Glasgow, the Department of Continuing Education at Liverpool, Filmand Media Studies at Stirling, Politics at the University of East Anglia, American Studies atLancaster (Arnot, 2000) and the Department of Communication and Information Studies atQueen Margaret University College, Edinburgh.

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All this activity raises several points of interest, including: What is studied in suchcourses, and how? What should be studied and how? In whose interest are current studiestaking place? What is the relationship between such courses, the music industries andbroader academic trends? The rest of this article will address these questions and illustratesome of the challenges facing PMS in the UK during the era of lifelong learning. I begin,however, with some historical perspective.

PMS i n t h e UK : a s h o r t h i s t o r y

This section concentrates on the development of PMS in the UK. This is not meant to implythat studies from elsewhere are unimportant. On the contrary, the history of modern popularmusic, and its subsequent study, derives from the United States and the arrival of rock androll into the national consciousness in the mid-1950s. In addition, a number of pioneeringacademic studies of popular music and musicians emerged from the US (cf. Hirsch, 1970;Peterson & Berger, 1975; Chapple & Garofalo, 1977; Hamm, 1983). Moreover, some ofthe most exciting contemporary developments in PMS come from the non-Anglophoneworld.

However, my analysis here is concentrated on the UK where, in retrospect, it can beseen that PMS had something of a head start due to the pioneering work of the Centrefor Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, which fromits inception in 1963 legitimised the study of popular culture within UK academe. As thestudy of the culture of everyday life was furthered by the CCCS, so a medium which was akey part of that life popular music also increasingly came to be studied.

The development of PMS has been traced in other places (cf. Green, 2002; Griffiths,1999; Hesmondhalgh & Negus, 2002) and its results are still highly contested (seeGrossberg, 2002 and Frith, 2004). Early academic interjections often centred on theproblems of teaching popular music in schools (cf. Swanwick, 1968; Vulliamy & Lee,1976). However, by the mid-1990s the place of PMS in higher education was being keenlydebated.1 I deal with the nature of PMS in more detail below but wish to note here that theterm Popular Music Studies is not unproblematic. However, it now has a wide currency(cf. Grossberg, 2002; Hesmondhalgh & Negus, 2002; Frith, 2004), and my intention hereis to highlight the breadth of such courses in UK higher education and to outline some ofthe developments that brought them about.

Unsurprisingly, the development of PMS is inextricably linked to the rise of popularmusic itself. Thus the origins of PMS in the UK can be traced back to the 1960s and the riseof The Beatles. What is important in this context is that the band attracted the attention ofintellectuals in ways previously unseen in the history of UK popular music. In this case oneinitial reaction to The Beatles was horror at their appeal and impact on an audience,famously characterised as having Huge faces bloated with cheap confectionery andsmeared with chainstore makeup . . . sagging mouths and glazed eyes (Johnson, 1964: 326).However, other intellectuals have embraced popular culture in general and, increasingly,popular music in particular. In the case of The Beatles there are three important examplesof this. First, the music editor of The Times, William Mann, reviewed the band (albeitanonymously) in terms associated with the critical language of classical musicology (Mann,1963); second, they were reviewed for The Listener by Deryck Cooke (1968); and third,

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Wha t i s Popu l a r Mus i c S tud i e s? Some obse r va t i ons

another eminent musicologist, Wilfrid Mellers,2 wrote about them memorably in his bookTwilight of the Gods (Mellers, 1973).

Via such attempts classical musicology staked a claim to be an integral part of theacademic study of popular music and what was to become PMS. However, the relationshipbetween classical musicology and popular music was fraught with difficulty and has beenmuch commented upon (cf. McClary & Walser, 1990; Middleton, 1990, 2002; Moore,2001). At its core was the problem that a methodology based on notation and assessmentof music on the printed page is ill equipped to deal with a medium in which notation playslittle or no part, where the sounds of musicians (such as James Browns whoops) are moreimportant than the notes played and where improvisation (rather than strict adherence tothe text) is highly prized. In the case of Mann and Mellers, The Beatles were discussedin comparison with the great classical composers, and popular music was thus initiallyjudged by how far it fitted into a Western canon, the aesthetics of which were ill suited foranalysis of pop.

While much of this work now seems dated and Eurocentric, it did at least put theserious study of popular music on the academic agenda. It can, in retrospect, be seen aspart of a broader attempt to locate popular music in the academic realm, as shown by theattempts to problematise popular music in schools noted above. They had their parallelin Sweden, where someone who was to become perhaps the most important musicologistworking on popular music was already thinking of ways forward for the academic studyof popular music at secondary school level (Tagg, 1966). Once again this was part of abroader attempt to lay down the basics of the academic study of popular music (see Tagg,1998).

Another key factor which shaped the development of PMS was the reaction withinacademic and other intellectual circles to the work of Bob Dylan. His particularly literaryform of folk music found its way into English departments, where it was discussed as poetry.While this led to a rather sterile debate about the merits of Dylans poetry compared to thatof Keats, it did again mean that the world of academe was treating a popular musician asworthy of serious study (cf. Bowden, 1982).3

In this strand of PMS, analysis of lyrics had primacy over discussion about music anapproach that has come to be seen as inherently limited. First, it separates out the wordsfrom the musical sounds and thus overemphasises one part of the text at the expense ofanother. Second, lyrics are rarely written to have their impact on the printed page, ratherthey are written to be integrated within the musical whole. Thus lyric-based analysis canover-privilege the words at the expense of the music in ways which are anathema tomany composers (such as those working in contemporary electronic dance music). Third,lyrical analysis can miss the fact that there is a great deal of evidence that many audiencemembers mishear the lyrics in ways which can mean that they interpret the songs in waysnot anticipated by composers or analysts. Furthermore, the way in which lyrics are sung sarcastically, plaintively, etc. may belie the words on the page.

All this is not to deny that analysis of lyrics can be useful, or that many songwriters placegreat emphasis on their lyrics it is merely to note that one early attempt to study popularmusic soon had its limitations exposed. What is important here is that both musicologicaland lyrical analyses of popular music are textual in approach. However, as PMSdeveloped, it was the extra-textual elements that came to the fore, to such an extent

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that analysts such as Shuker (2001: 9) now argue that it is these elements that form thedefining characteristics of popular music itself.

These two approaches the textual and the extra-textual can be seen as formingthe two paths down which PMS has subsequently walked. The limitations of purely textualapproaches left the field of PMS open to the sociologists and others from the social scienceswho sought to locate popular music within broader socio-political and cultural trends(Griffiths, 1999).

An early exponent of the broader approach was Dave Laing (1969), whose work hassubsequently explored Buddy Holly (1971), Marxist accounts of culture (1978), semiotics(1985) and policy analysis (1996). Importantly, as Griffiths (1999: 402) notes, Laing pavedthe way for a study of pop music, politicized at its inception. At the same time, workinglargely outside academe, Paul Oliver pioneered the serious analysis of popular music viasuch works as The Story of the Blues (Oliver, 1970). The era from 1967 and the releaseof the Beatles landmark Sergeant Pepper album saw the development of pop or morespecifically rock being increasingly characterised as an art form. The main articulationsof such arguments came from the new cohorts of professional rock critics whose workcentred on attempts to legitimise rock as culturally significant, primarily because it couldbe characterised as being art and thus demarcated from the commercial world of pop.The work of journalists such as Nick Kent (1994) and Charles Shaar Murray (1991) wasnotable in establishing the importance of some forms of popular music as culture, as well asarticulating audience as community. However, this development had only a limited impacton academe as there has been a longstanding mutual suspicion between the academic andthe journalistic worlds, to such an extent that it is only recently that the work of pop musicjournalists has been subjected to detailed academic analysis (Forde, 2001). The comingof the rock critic did, however, serve to further legitimise popular music as an area ofintellectual enquiry. It also served as a part-time career for a key figure in the developmentof PMS.

Simon Frith has had a distinguished career as both a rock critic and an academic. Heis thus, as Griffiths (1999: 399) notes, doubly important in linking two fields which bothsought to establish pop as worthy of intellectual enquiry. Indeed, it is almost impossible tooverestimate his importance to the development of PMS in the UK and beyond. Beginningwith the pioneering Sociology of Rock (1978) and its updated version, Sound Effects (1983),Frith ploughed a rich field in which others were keen to follow. His work captured the moveaway from purely textual analysis to the study of the industry, audiences and politics ofthe music and its performers. This was to produce several landmark works along the way(cf. Street, 1986; Negus, 1996; Shuker, 2001). Meanwhile, Friths status within PMS can belikened to that of Marx within the social sciences in that he is a key reference point foradherents (cf. Street, 1986; Shuker, 2001) and detractors (cf. Moore, 2001; Grossberg, 2002)alike. While his work seldom referred to issues in the teaching of popular music, it wasclear that his vision of PMS was inclusive rather than exclusive. Importantly, he continuesto see PMS as vibrant (Frith, 2004) when others are becoming disillusioned (Grossberg,2002).

Another key development in the history of PMS was the establishment in 1981 of theInternational Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), which has developed froma small organisation to one which finds that it struggles to contain its biennial conferences

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in a weeks schedule. A glance at the organisations website (www.iaspm.net/) shows thediversity of ways in which popular music is studied and researched, while a similar glanceat its conference programme gives great insight into PMSs diverse nature.4 In addition,the newsletters of its UK (and, from 2000, Ireland) branch are invaluable records of thechanging nature of PMS.

Historically, another key development was the establishment of an academic journal,Popular Music, in 1981. This was to become the de facto in-house magazine of PMS(especially in the UK). It has American counterparts in Popular Music and Society (foundedin 1971) and the Journal of Popular Music Studies (1988), and international comparatorssuch as the Australasian Perfect Beat (1992) (Caw, 2004: 50) and the German Beitrage zurPopular Musikforschung. Popular Musicology Online was founded in 2000 as a successorto Popular Musicology Quarterly and has since become an important web-based outlet.A new journal, Popular Music History, was launched in April 2004. These journals againillustrate the rich diversity that the term PMS encompasses and the approaches that itspractitioners adopt.

Institutionally, the academic study of popular music in the UK can be seen asdeveloping hesitantly and in a haphazard way. In England the University of Salford launchedits BA in Popular Music and Recording in 1990. It now attracts 500 applicants per annumfor its 50 places (Chrisafis, 2001). Other important pioneers include the BA in PopularMusic set up at Bretton Hall School of Music (University of Leeds) in 1992 and theUniversity of Westminsters BA in Commercial Music, which was the first to be designedspecifically to meet the needs of the music industries. In Scotland early pioneers includedindustry courses at West Lothian College, which were then followed by a raft of similarcourses in further education. But degree courses in HE had to wait until 2001 when theUniversity of Paisley launched its Commercial Music BA5 and Napier its BA in PopularMusic.

However, the most important development thus far was the founding of the Instituteof Popular Music (IPM) at the University of Liverpool in 1988. Interestingly, this started outteaching postgraduate courses (an MA in Popular Music and PhD work),6 developed jointhonours in the early 1990s, and only began its own undergraduate degree in 2001. It isalso a key contributor to the universitys Communication, Media and Popular Music BA.While the IPM has become the most important centre for PMS in the UK it has, like theCCCS at Birmingham (which can be seen as its precursor), enjoyed a somewhat perilousexistence. Its staff contingent has expanded and now includes several leading names in thefield, but it has recently been subsumed within a larger School of Music and lost some ofits autonomy.

Another example of the marginal nature of PMS is the fact that those working in thefield rarely see their work recognised when they become professors. The title of Professor ofPopular Music has only been bestowed upon two UK academics, Sheila Whiteley at Salfordand Allan Moore at the University of Surrey. Simon Frith has been Professor of English atthe University of Strathclyde and is currently Professor of Film and Media at the Universityof Stirling, while other leading exponents of PMS have found themselves as Professor ofMusicology (Keith Negus at Goldsmiths College, University of London) and Professor ofPolitics (John Street, University of East Anglia). While institutional politics will doubtlesshave played a role in all this, it is hard to escape the feeling that there may be a reluctance

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to use the title Professor of Popular Music, with the net effect that PMS itself continues tobe undervalued.

Meanwhile, PMS has broadened from the study of texts to the study of the politicaleconomy of popular music and various other extra-musical elements. It has also movedfrom the study of major selling artists to look at the lives of ordinary musicians andfans. Through such pioneering work as Sara Cohens anthropological study of musicians inLiverpool (Cohen, 1991) the emphasis has shifted from the superstar to the local musician.In this sense PMS has become more democratic. It is also moving away from the celebratorytone adopted in some early studies to examine the downside of popular music, such asits ubiquity (De Nora, 2000) and its contribution to social violence (Cloonan & Johnson,2002). In sum, in institutional terms PMS has become an established area of study that hasbroadened its research base. However, as this has taken place it has raised an importantquestion about its status.

D i s c i p l i n e d ?

As noted above, the term PMS now has a wide currency, and my main focus here is on thedevelopment and parameters of PMS within UK HE courses. Within that locus it is clear thatpopular music is taught in a variety of contexts and in a number of ways. As noted above,PMS is taught not only in its own right but also across a number of subject disciplines. Thisdiversity raises broader questions about the extent to which PMS can be seen as a subjectdiscipline in its own right. Its leading academic organisation has its own view on thismatter: popular music studies is not an academic discipline (International Association forthe Study of Popular Music website, www.iaspm.net/iaspm/unis.html, accessed 2 August2004).

Certainly, many proponents of PMS are convinced that it is not an academic discipline.Thus Caw (2004: 49) notes that Both scholars and observers agree that the field of popularmusic studies is far too interdisciplinary to be considered a discipline, and Jarviloumaargues that popular music studies is not really a discipline rather a research field (Johnson& Jarvilouma, 2002: 13). Mike Jones (2000: 10) argues that PMS remains a co-disciplinerather than a multi-disciplinary area. In addition, the editors of an academic collectionentitled Popular Music Studies confidently state that:

The study of popular music is, at its best, a uniquely interdisciplinary area ofresearch, drawing significant contributions from writers within a number of academicfields including musicology, media and cultural studies, sociology, anthropology,ethnomusicology, folkloristics, psychology, social history and cultural geography.(Hesmondhalgh & Negus, 2002: 2)

They go on to argue that one way of understanding PMS is as a reaction by proponents todevelopments in their own disciplinary histories (ibid: 4). In musicology, the reaction wasagainst certain types of formalist analysis and a concentration on Western classical music,while PMS scholars from a sociological background were reacting against the structuralist-functionalist approaches and behaviourism that had been the dominant paradigms in muchsocial science (especially in the USA) in the 1950s and 1960s (ibid: 5). Once again there are

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parallels here with Cultural Studies, which, according to Johnson (1996), itself developedas a reaction in this case to developments within Marxism.

So there is some consensus amongst PMS scholars that it is not a discipline in its ownright, rather it is a field of study which appears to have only one unifying factor its study ofpopular music. While this is something of a tautology, it also raises as many questions as itanswers. In particular it begs the question of what popular music itself consists of. This hasbeen the subject of some academic debate (cf. Longhurst, 1995; Middleton, 1990; Shuker,2001), with something of a consensus emerging that popular music is defined primarily interms of its aspiration to find a mass audience i.e. to be genuinely popular rather thanby any musical properties (although the two are, of course, related).

The importance of such debates here is that PMS has emerged as a subject area in whichdefinitions of the subject are contested. This has important implications, not the least ofwhich is its effect upon what is taught. Partly because it has developed across a rangeof disciplines and subject areas, curricula for PMS courses have evolved in a haphazardway. Only with the launch of dedicated PMS degrees have questions of what should be atits core been raised and addressed, prompting a range of responses. These responses canbe seen as attempts to deal not only with uncertainty about whether the subject shouldbe taught at all, but also with how it should be taught, what should be taught, and howthe competing pressures of institutional politics, student demand, developments in thebody of academic knowledge and the demands of the popular music industries7 should bedealt with.

As we have already noted, the degree of uncertainty about PMS is reflected in thenomenclature of its degree courses, and there are also numerous joint and sub-degrees.But if PMS is a field of study, then what should students embarking on it expect to findwithin that field?

Most arts and social sciences departments in the UK have traditionally made pragmaticchoices on curriculum content dependent on such competing demands as institutionalconstraints, the requirements of professional bodies, employer demands, student demandand, perhaps most of all, staff interests. A typical model might involve the teaching of coremodules and then varying amounts of student choice. This raises the issue of what shouldbe considered core in this instance. What should PMS students be expected to know?What should a PMS graduate be able to do?

Clearly, a number of responses are possible. What emerges, however, is that curriculafor undergraduate degree programmes in popular music within HE can be divided into threeparts: musical, vocational (including business studies) and theoretical.8 The demarcationsbetween these areas are of necessity somewhat blurry: the playing of an instrument can beseen as putting theory into practice, while the refinement of musical skills can also be seenas being vocational in that it may aid employment prospects. But each is a component partof PMS and merits consideration in its own right.

Mus i c i a n s h i p

One immediate issue is what PMS students should be able to do in order to gain entry intoundergraduate courses. Ultimately, such decisions are likely to be pragmatic responsesto conflicting demands and shaped by factors such as the likely impact on the potential

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cohort and staff expertise. However, one of the most noticeable facets of PMS is how manynon-musicians are active within it (including this author).9 Moreover, it is notable that itis entirely possible for non-musicians to gain popular music degrees. This, if nothing else,is enough to differentiate PMS degrees from traditional Music degrees, and there are atleast two reasons why it occurs one concerning theory, the other vocation. The first isthat lineage of PMS which comes out of sociological and cultural theory. The second isthat within the industry itself the majority of jobs are for non-musicians (Dumbreck et al.,2003). Thus in purely vocational terms being a non-musician with a PMS degree shouldnot be a bar to employment within the popular music industries.

Unsurprisingly, different HEIs have responded in different ways to the question ofwhether musical ability is a prerequisite for studying popular music at undergraduate level.Thus in 2001 Napier University launched a Popular Music degree which requires applicantsto present a recording or composition portfolio, while 50 miles away it is possible for non-musicians to undertake the University of Paisleys BA in Commercial Music. The Universityof Liverpool does not require entrants to its Popular Music BA to have reached any levelof competence as a musician, a practice replicated within the city on Liverpool JohnMoores Universitys BA in Popular Music Studies. In order to undertake a BA in PMS atBarking College entrants need musical proficiency, something that is not required on thepostgraduate MSc at the University of Liverpool. In fact, it may be the case that the higherup one wants to study PMS, the less one needs to be a practising musician.

Once entry has been gained, those students on courses which require musical prowessare likely to find that study in this area concentrates on performance and composition. Insome cases this will be supplemented by practical courses on such things as the Musical In-strumental Digital Interface (MIDI) system, sound engineering, and so on. Thus post-schoolqualifications such as certificates, diplomas and higher diplomas on subjects such as MusicManagement, Sound Engineering and Popular Music can be found in further educationacross the UK. In fact there is an almost unquantifiable amount of popular music coursesacross the UK, ranging from one-off events provided by organisations such as the PerformingRights Society Foundation, the International Managers Forum and the Musicians Union,through short courses to Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas.

Vo ca t i o n a l i sm

The vocational thrust within PMS can be found beyond further and higher education insuch places as the New Deal for Musicians, a UK government initiative started in 1998(Cloonan, 2002, 2003, 2004). It is also present within PMS degree courses where thegrowth of an emphasis on employability has been reflected, such as the BA in MusicIndustry Management and Popular Music at Buckingham Chilterns University College.While PMS has hardly been alone in having to react to the new employability agenda andthe rise of vocationalism, it is likely to be towards the forefront of these developments inthat it is probable that many PMS students undertake their studies in the (often mistaken)belief that this will be a route into the music industries.

The rise of PMS degree courses also coincided with a growing concern withingovernment to meet the needs of the creative industries. Unsurprisingly, this concern hasbeen reflected in PMS courses and has led to some creativity in course descriptions. At

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times it is apparent that the sort of hype which the music industries themselves thrive onhas found its way into HE. Courses which promise students free laptops (NME, 7 May2002) or ask Do you want to be a professional musician? (NME, 7 September 2002) areperhaps overselling. The Academy of Contemporary Music, which has its degrees validatedby the University of Middlesex, describes itself as Europes leading school for rock and popmusicians and maintains that its staff are the best. The University of Derby claims thatits BA in Popular Music and Music Technology is one of the few opportunities in highereducation to study popular music, which, as this article shows, is simply inaccurate. Suchclaims are doubtless made in attempts to impress potential students, and there are manydangers for PMS in trying to be too populist. As Tagg (1998: 232) notes:

One problem with working in an area of potential expansion is that it is attractiveto adventurers of educational management who see students as a source of revenuerather than as a source for a better future.

Indeed, it might be argued that whatever the reality is, it is not in institutions interests todeter would-be students by disabusing them of the notions that such courses are automaticpaths into the industries. However, there is a thin line between hype and misrepresentation.More charitably, such publicity also shows an awareness that PMS must take some accountof the needs of the popular music industries. This may have led to a popular perceptionthat the only thing PMS is about is turning students into pop stars, as most press coverageconcentrates solely on students prospects of commercial success (cf. Abrams, 2002; Crace,2001; Chrisafis, 2001; Harris, 2001; ODonnell, 2001). Thus press articles in Scotland sawthe development of Napier Universitys BA in Popular Music purely in terms of what itmight lead to commercially (ODonnell, 2001; Williams, 2003). The latter event saw TheScotsman editorialise (22 March 2001) that there was the suspicion that populist coursessuch as the Napier pop degree are more a way of drumming up student numbers in thefiercely competitive world of higher education than they are serious attempts to extendvocational skills or academic learning. A similar response greeted news that an Institute ofModern Music was to be set up in Brighton when an article in The Observer was headed:We dont need no education: lessons in rock stardom are doomed to fail as another fameschool opens (Mugan, 2002).

While numerous other examples could be cited, what is important here for PMS isnot to bemoan the approach of journalists but to recognise that such accounts influencepublic perceptions of PMS. More importantly, they show that whatever else it is, PMScannot simply be about vocationalism. Particular scorn is reserved in the media for fameschools and courses which appear to promise careers in industries with notoriouslyinsecure conditions of employment. At the very least, therefore, it is incumbent uponPMS practitioners to impart transferable skills (such as critical thinking) to their students.But it is also vital that PMS always rises above the simply vocational. PMS should challengeexisting industry practices and organisations rather than simply place students within them a point to which I will return later.

Once again, HEIs have varied in their emphasis on vocationalism. Publicity for theUniversity of Paisleys Commercial Music degree says that it aims to enable those withtalent and ability to forge a life long [sic] career, while the Academy of ContemporaryMusic says that it has designed its curriculum to develop a rounded set of skills. However,

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such an approach is downplayed by Liverpool John Moores, whose publicity states that ThePopular Music Studies degree is not narrowly vocational. Our experience has shown thatthe communication and research skills built up across our degree, as well as opportunitiesfor work-based learning, provide graduates with a range of skills that are highly sought afterby media and non-media employers.

While there is a great deal of concern that PMS courses should meet the demands ofmusic industries employers, matters are complicated here by the fact that the music indus-tries personnel have long been suspicious of academic courses and tend to value hands-on experience above qualifications. In addition, their own investment in education has beensomewhat limited. The UK recording industrys umbrella organisation, the British Phonogra-phic Industry (BPI), funds the Brit School in Croydon, which provides a range of vocationallyorientated courses at school and post-school level. But this amounts to a comparativelysmall investment. This is primarily because the music industries have been able to besomewhat complacent in their educational investment, knowing that they have always beena magnet for labour. Moreover, as Tagg (1998: 231) has noted, the UK has tended to producetoo many musicians from the tertiary sector in comparison to available employment. Thusthe music industries overall response to PMS can be seen as being, at best, lukewarm.10

The designers of PMS courses are on the horns of a dilemma here. As has already beennoted, most employment in the popular music industries is as non-musicians. Moreover,these industries thrive on self-employment, and perhaps the key skill practitioners needto develop is that of networking (Cloonan, 2003, 2004). Notably there is no annual milkround of potential applicants to the music industries. Perhaps the best PMS courses cando in such cases is to instil transferable skills and to ensure that students who aspire tocareers in the music industries have as much interaction as possible with their local musicindustries. (It may be that the old adage Its not what you know, its who you know isparticularly applicable to the music industries.) In these instances those PMS courses thatare likely to be most successful are those located within a thriving or historic local musicscene. It is therefore no coincidence that the UKs most successful PMS unit is located inLiverpool, the home of the most successful UK band ever. A combination of the Beatlesname and the perception of a thriving local scene are obvious selling points.

Pop i n t h e o r y

In common with Cultural Studies, PMS has developed within what might broadly bedescribed as a liberal/left framework. Indeed, Dai Griffiths argument that popular musicwriting is best understood as a certain literature of the left during the late twentieth century(Griffiths, 1999: 395) is highly persuasive. This is partly because this strand of PMS hasdrawn upon the Marxist underpinning of British cultural studies, but it is also becauseit has in part been a reaction against the dominance of the Western classical traditionwithin musicology. Thus a key part of PMS has been social critique and the challengingof accepted hierarchies. This approach may itself have helped to distance PMS from themusic industries, in which historically the main challenges have been to existing modes ofentrepreneurship rather than to existing modes of production. However, as Griffiths (1999:400) notes, parading leftist political conviction is almost de rigueur within PMS in wayswhich would not be accepted elsewhere in academe. For example, Griffiths locates Richard

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Middletons Studying Popular Music as both the most important musicological work on popmusic to have appeared (ibid: 404) and as an engaged literature of the left (ibid: 407).

More broadly, Hesmondhalgh and Negus (2002: 78) argue that during the 1980s and1990s a set of key themes and concepts crystallised in PMS which were those of musicalmeaning, studies of audiences, studies in the music industries and questions of place,to which I would add an increasing interest in questions of identity (cf. Bennett, 2001;Hawkins, 2002). Thus a field has been identified and has been theorised in various ways,although as Mike Jones (2000: 4) notes, the biggest fault line in PMS is the fissure that liesbetween analysis of popular music texts and analysis of popular music contexts. When thevocational aspects alluded to above are added into this mix, the result is that the theoreticalparts of PMS courses often have a tokenistic feel to them. Moreover, anecdotal and personalexperience suggests that many students struggle to see what insights sociological theorycan lend to the subject. However, it appears that at least some theory finds its way into mostPMS courses. Thus the Academy of Contemporary Music, which has probably the mostpractitioner-based degree course, includes a module on Cultural and Critical Perspectives,and the University of East Londons BA in Music Culture, which is also heavily practitioner-based, includes modules such as Definitions of Popular Music and Music in Popular Culture.

Bearing in mind the reluctance of music departments to appoint senior researchers toprofessorships in popular music, it is no surprise that it is in other academic departmentsthat most of the theoretical approaches to PMS have been developed. Certainly, thedevelopment of PMS has been heavily influenced (and, arguably, constrained) by the factthat few of its practitioners have been able to devote themselves fully to the subject. Rather,popular music activities have been an add-on to existing workloads. One salutary reminderof this is that the UKs leading PMS theoretician, Simon Frith, has never been employedas a full-time popular music academic. While the expansion of PMS degrees with corestaff superficially offers some hope that things might change, the fact that most of thesecourses are in institutions with high teaching loads is a reason for declaring only cautiousoptimism. Meanwhile, in the older institutions PMS retains the status of something of ahobby for what BBC Radio 4 once termed wacademics.

PMS i n t h e mode r n wo r l d

In many ways the position of PMS today is analogous to that of Cultural and Media Studiessome years ago in that it is part of the curriculum in many HEIs but still treated with a certainamount of condescension. If Cultural Studies was derided in its early days as Hoggartsline in cheap hats,11 then PMS currently finds itself subject to the sorts of derision andsuspicion noted above. Its major achievements thus far might have been to survive and toestablish itself. The issues PMS currently faces are those which confront an area of studywhich has moved from being an academic niche into being part of the mainstream. In thecontemporary era particular problems are present in two key policy areas: research, andthe adaptation to the lifelong learning agenda.

In the case of research, the UK is dominated by its periodic assessment cycle known asthe Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The review process is complicated, but in essencecomprises a system of peer review by panels which rank units of assessment (commonlydepartments) on a seven-point scale between 1 and 5 with two grades at 3 (a and b) and 5

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(5 and 5*).12 The system then allocates resources according to scores attained. In the lastreview, in 2001, there were 69 separate subject areas, some of which had sub-areas (forexample within Education there was a Continuing Education sub-area). However, withinMusic there is no Popular Music sub-area, and only one of the 11 members of the panelcame from a PMS background. While such factors disadvantage PMS researchers, they havenot been without their successes, such as the contribution to the University of LiverpoolsMusic Department achieving a 5* ranking in 1996.

Matters are further complicated by the fact that some PMS works will be returned forthe RAE under other subject areas in which academics might be working. Thus leadingPMS theoreticians may not feature in the Music part of the UKs main method of assessingresearch activity. Nevertheless it is clear that a rich field of PMS research is taking placewith participants from a range of subject backgrounds and using a range of methodologiesto investigate a range of issues.

One example of this is that in an era of increased consultancy and recognition ofthe economic importance of the cultural industries, academics have become involvedin the development of popular music policy. Kruse (1998) and Negus (1996) have bothraised the question of the desirability or otherwise of this. The latter is sceptical, whilethe former sees it as inevitable. This inevitability may be particularly so in the UK, wherePMS has risen alongside two other key developments. First, universities have becomeincreasingly concerned with raising research income; second, popular music policies havebeen developed by local and national government. These two factors, combined withacademic expertise, have meant that academics have written reports at local and nationallevel (cf. Williamson et al., 2003; Wilson et al., 2001). The relationship between funderand recipient is not without its problems (see Cloonan et al., 2004), but the fact that PMSacademics are writing such reports at least gives the lie to the notion that PMS is part of anivory tower isolationism. This is further evidenced by the fact that the fate of popular musicon the Internet is currently at the forefront of debates about control of cultural products, andthat academics have been deeply involved in such debates (cf. Jones, S., 2000; Marshall,2002; Garofalo, 2003; Frith & Marshall, 2004).

In terms of the lifelong learning agenda, it is important to note that the notion oflifelong learning is itself a highly problematic one, and one which has been contested(cf. Coffield, 1999). In the UK, official lifelong learning policy has become entwined indebates around vocationalism and has been castigated for becoming an instrument of socialcontrol (ibid.). Thus while the New Deal for Musicians can be seen as a benefit to somemusicians (Cloonan, 2003, 2004), it is important to note that behind the broader New Dealprogramme is the threat of compulsion, as those young unemployed workers who refuseto cooperate risk having their benefits withdrawn. But New Deal is seen as part of lifelonglearning (Scottish Office, 1998: 5), thus associating it with compulsory learning.

However, it is also important to recognise that lifelong learning is also concerned (ifonly rhetorically) with social justice. The UK government believes that the way to combatsocial exclusion is to get as many people as possible into work and that the way to dothis is to get as many people as possible involved in post-compulsory education so thatthey occupy better positions in the labour market. Putting aside the obvious criticism thatthis implies that unemployment is the fault of the individual rather than of any structuralproblem (such as racism or sexism), the implication is that participation in post-compulsory

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education must be widened; thus the UK government has declared a target of 50 per centparticipation in higher education in England.

In this case it is interesting to note that at least one Further Education (FE) college,Newcastle, uses PMS as an Access route for adult returners. The college has good links withthe University of Newcastle where the Professor of Music, Richard Middleton, hassupported moves to widen access (Middleton, 2000). Moreover, universities such as City(London), Glasgow and Liverpool have open access to adult education classes featuringvarious PMS courses. In addition, the links between PMS and non-traditional studentsare further enhanced by the fact that many PMS practitioners, including one of the UKstwo professors of Popular Music, are former mature students. More broadly, it is the newuniversities that have been at the forefront of the widening participation agenda, and thishas undoubtedly fed into PMS. It is noticeable from looking at the list of UK institutionswhich teach PMS that the vast majority of them (16 out of 19) are drawn from the post-92sector of newer HEIs which are a mixture of former polytechnics, HE colleges and collegeswhich have HE as part of a wider remit.13 Thus PMS is simultaneously at the forefront ofwidening participation while also being at the margins of traditional academe.

If widening participation is a social justice initiative, it is important to note that PMS canbe seen as being inherently democratic in that it builds on a body of knowledge which mostpeople have. There is a great deal of literature which shows the importance of (popular)music to peoples lives, and PMS practitioners can use this interest to their advantage. Ofcourse, an interest in a subject is not the same as an academic study of it, and my ownexperience suggests that a certain amount of academic initiation might be necessary inorder to turn raw PMS recruits into students (it is one thing to read NME or Kerrang!, quiteanother to read Popular Music or Cultural Studies). Nevertheless, it is possible to assumea common currency (and possibly cultural capital see Cloonan, 2004) amongst PMSstudents which may not be there amongst other students. Matters are complicated here bythe extent to which being a practising musician is a prerequisite to studying PMS, but evenhere a common culture may be found between musicians and non-musicians as both mayshare equally strong views about what constitutes good or bad music and, importantly,why. Moreover, as PMS research has become increasingly interested in the ways in whichmusic is used in everyday life (De Nora, 2000), it has thus assumed the role of dealing withthe ordinary and the mundane.

It is also important to note that the widening participation agenda has been resistedamongst those who believe that only a small percentage of the population will ever besuitable for the academic rigour necessary for degree-level work. The official manifestationof such suspicion can be seen in the various quality assurance regimes that have been setup at national level in order to assuage such criticisms by showing that academic standardsare being maintained. However, accusations of dumbing down still appear, and it is thenewer subjects such as PMS that feature amongst the straw men to attack.

There is not space here to go into the merits of the dumbing down debate, except forits (ir)relevance to PMS, where it is important to refute any accusations. Certainly PMS in theUK has produced distinguished scholars such as Frith, Laing, Middleton, Street, Tagg, andothers whose work maintains the highest academic standards. In addition, PMS scholarsare influencing policy, thus suggesting that this is by no means an ivory tower exercise.Nevertheless, a certain defensiveness has been evident amongst PMS scholars and has led

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to the accusation that in order to counteract being seen as low brow, PMS theorists haveover-quoted great thinkers (de Kloet, 2003: 189).

So PMS seems to be simultaneously on the defensive and the offensive. Onecommentator has written of PMS storming the fortress of music departments from theencampments of media studies, cultural studies, English, sociology and communication(Caw, 2004: 53), yet this has not been without some self-awareness. Hesmondhalgh andNegus (2002: 1) describe PMS as established, though relatively marginal, and this istrue. Yet it retains enormous potential partly, as Tagg (1998: 230) notes, because of theimportance of popular music as an economic force, partly because of new social formationsand partly because of the allure of the industries to young people. In terms of the subject,Hesmondhalgh and Negus (2002: 2) argue that what ultimately connects people acrossthe field is a concern with questions about the relationship between music meaning, socialpower and cultural value. In this sense PMS is implicated in the power struggles withinthe increasingly important cultural industries.

Perhaps one way forward is to acknowledge the fact that PMS has changed the face oftraditional studies of music forever. Moreover, there is a need to recognise the importanceof PMS beyond music departments. It may be that Popular Music should not have its owndegrees, but it should certainly be a core part of Music, Cultural Studies and associateddegrees. This would go some way to ending the marginalisation that PMS currentlyencounters. Certainly there are persuasive arguments for saying that in a society in whichmusic is almost omnipresent, the informed citizen must be aware of its power. In addition,as the major recording industries are parts of extremely powerful media groups, this meansthat the truly informed citizen will need some knowledge of the political economy ofpopular music in order to understand the modern world. Furthermore, the increasinglyclose links between politicians and musicians (Cloonan & Street, 1998; Street, 1997) meanthat policies are being designed as the result of such interactions the New Deal for Musicbeing one example of this. Such policies are impacting not in the ivory towers, but in thelived experience of musicians. Again, PMS can enlighten such experiences.

It is perhaps on this optimistic note that I should end. At its best, PMS offers all citizensthe chance to understand their world better and, more importantly, to try to change it.Here PMS scholars offer resources of hope. Examples of this include Toynbees work onthe nature of social authorship in popular music (Toynbee, 2000) and Middletons notionof the critical potential of musical practice (Middleton, 2000: 17). Such work shows thatPMS must move beyond what has been described as useful knowledge such as that whichallows one to make ones way in the world into really useful knowledge which imparts agenuine understanding and a desire to change the world. Should PMS strive for this thenit might well be accused not of dumbing down, but of aiming too high. But while PMSresearch is rightly moving towards the ordinary and mundane, PMS teaching should neverbe afraid to reach for the stars.

No t e s

1 See, for example, the IAPSM UK newsletter 1994, volume 2.2 Griffiths description of Mellers as an earnest onlooker (Griffiths, 1999) is apt. His article also outlines

other approaches to the academic study of popular music, which he characterises as Street FightingMen and Managers. See ibid.

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3 Dylan is still studied from a literary standpoint, as exemplified by the work of Christopher Ricks (2004).Meanwhile, the media reaction to the award to Dylan of an honorary doctorate by the University ofSt Andrews in June 2004 again showed that academic regard of popular music is still treated withsuspicion in some circles. This was paralleled in Ricks own career in 2004 when his appointmentas Professor of Poetry at Oxford attracted some consternation and headlines such as Expert on BobDylans lyrics voted Oxfords new professor of poetry (The Observer, 16 May 2004, 4) and Bob Dylanfan wins Oxford poetry post (Ezard, 2004).

4 For an interesting overview of IASPMs first 20 years by one of its founders, see www.theblackbook.net/acad/tagg/articles/turku2001.html.

5 While Paisley and Westminster both use the title, the idea that popular music is commercial isinherently problematic. Most popular musicians struggle to make money, and one account estimatesthat nearly 98% of acts fail in this regard (Jones, 1999: 256).

6 The field of postgraduate studies in PMS is an important topic in its own right, but here I wish toconcentrate on undergraduate provision.

7 The plural popular music industries, rather then music industry (singular), is used here since what iscommonly called the music industry is actually made up of a series of intertwined industries such aslive music, recording, retail, etc. For an overview, see Williamson et al. (2003).

8 I will not discuss issues of pedagogy here. However, this is obviously a rich field of enquiry in its ownright and was the subject of panels at the IASPM UK and Ireland conference in 2002. One importantdevelopment in this area has been a move away from how to teach towards how musicians learn (seeGreen, 2002). See also Isherwood (2000).

9 The term non-musician is contestable. It is used here in the sense of not having attained the level ofmusical competence necessary to enter some PMS (and other music) courses.

10 Some evidence of what employers within the industries want can be found in Dumbreck et al. (2003).11 Richard Hoggart founded the CCCS.12 In England an additional level of 6* was introduced after the initial results of the 2001 review were

announced.13 Of the pre-1992s, Liverpool offers degrees in Popular Music and Communication and Media and

Popular Music, Newcastle in Popular and Contemporary Music and Salford in Popular Music andRecording.

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