Embodied Expression in Popular Music: A Theory of Musical Gesture and Agency

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Timothy Koozin (Professor and Music Theory Area Chair, Professor and Music Theory Area Chair, University of Houston)

Embodied Expression in Popular Music

A Theory of Musical Gesture and Agency

Timothy Koozin (Professor and Music Theory Area Chair, Professor and Music Theory Area Chair, University of Houston)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
04 September 2024

Theory of music & musicology

Series: Oxford Studies in Music Theory

Theory in popular music has historically tended to approach musical processes of rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and form as abstractions, without very directly engaging the intimate connection between the performer and instrument in popular music performance. Embodied Expression in Popular Music

illuminates under-researched aspects of music theory in popular music studies by situating musical analysis in a context of embodied movement in vocal and instrumental performance. Author Timothy Koozin offers a performance-based analytical methodology that progresses from basic idiomatic gestures, to gestural combinations and interactions with large-scale design, to broader interpretive strategies that engage with theories of embodiment, the musical topic, and narrative.

The book examines artistic practices in popular song that draw from a vast range of stylistic sources, including rock, blues, folk, soul, funk, fusion, and hip-hop, as well as European classical and African American gospel musical traditions. Exploring the interrelationships in how we create, hear, and understand music through the body, Koozin demonstrates how a focus on body-instrument interaction can illuminate musical structures while leveling implied hierarchies of cultural value. He provides detailed analysis of artists' creative strategies in singing and playing their instruments, probing how musicians represent subjectivities of gender, race, and social class in shaping songs and whole albums. Tracing connections from foundational blues, gospel, and rock musicians to current rap artists, he clarifies how inferences of musical topic and narrative are part of a larger creative process in strategically positioning musical gestures. By engaging with songs by female artists and artists of color, Koozin also challenges the methodological framing of traditional theory scholarship.

As a contribution to work on embodiment and meaning in music, this study of popular song explores how the situated and engaged body is active in listening, performing, and the formation of musical cultures, as it provides a means by which we understand our own bodies in relation to the world.

By: Timothy Koozin (Professor and Music Theory Area Chair Professor and Music Theory Area Chair University of Houston)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 224mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 590g
ISBN: 9780197692981
ISBN 10: 0197692982
Series: Oxford Studies in Music Theory
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 04 September 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1. Guitar Voicing and Embodied Gesture in Rock 1. Guitar Voicing I: Barre chords, Gesture, and Agency 2. Guitar Voicing II: Open-String Chords, Fretboard Strategies, and Virtual Spaces Part 2. Gospel and Groove: Gestural Strategies in Soul and Funk 3. Funk at the Keyboard 4. Pentatonic Space to Outer Space: Funk Bands and the Rise of Afrofuturism Part 3. Gestural Variation in Songs with Acoustic Instruments 5. Temporality and Gesture in the Songs of Bob Dylan 6. Counterpoint and Embodied Expression in the Music of Joni Mitchell Part 4. Situating Gesture 7. Keyboard Playing in the Beatles' Abbey Road: Topic, Persona, and Social Discourse 8. Musical Topic and Ironic Gesture in the Songs of Steely Dan 9. Voice in Hip Hop Glossary Bibliography Index

Timothy Koozin is Professor and area chair of Music Theory at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston. His research interests include music and meaning, theories of embodiment and musical gesture, popular music, and the music of Toru Takemitsu. His essays on musical gesture in popular music appear in numerous published journal articles and edited collections. Koozin is co-author of the music textbooks Music for Sight Singing and Music for Analysis, ninth edition (both volumes with Thomas Benjamin, Michael Horvit and Robert Nelson). He is the former editor of the electronic journal of the Society for Music Theory, Music Theory Online.

Reviews for Embodied Expression in Popular Music: A Theory of Musical Gesture and Agency

Timothy Koozin widens our horizons as he demonstrates how composers-as-performers have endowed popular song with personalized gestures and agencies, embodying a range of topics, tropes, and narratives to fashion complex subjectivities as conditioned by race, gender, and class. His mastery of all these intersecting approaches is breathtaking! * Robert S. Hatten *