Module Code - Title:
MD4114
-
CRITICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH GLOBAL POP
Year Last Offered:
2025/6
Hours Per Week:
Grading Type:
Prerequisite Modules:
Rationale and Purpose of the Module:
This module is a further engagement with the study of popular music, emphasising its internationality as a domain for the circulation of many varied genres with origins around the world. "Irish trad," as it is commonly called, is a significant idiom within this field and here is placed in its international context as but one example of local-global-local, sometimes called glocal (or occasionally Lobal), interaction. Global Pop is a field of musical production with which our students are likely to interact as musicians and dancers; this module prepares them to act as critical thinkers about its practices and their engagement with these.
Syllabus:
The module content focuses on understanding the volatile dynamics of this field of cultural production through the study of particular examples. Some of the most important, and well documented, in this regard have been musics from Black America, South America, the Caribbean, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Native North America, and the Northern Circumpolar regions. Particular issues and concepts key for an understanding of this phenomenon will be addressed in the context of these examples. Using an arts practice research perspective students will be asked to reflect on their own experience, most often in Irish music, in this domain.
Learning Outcomes:
Cognitive (Knowledge, Understanding, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis)
Discriminate between global stylistic practices of pop music
Contrast the processes that inform global pop practices
Illustrate aesthetic structures that create global pop art.
Extrapolate process that could engage the student's own arts practice.
Affective (Attitudes and Values)
Acknowledge the global variety of Popular music practice
Question the role of global and local social and cultural forces in the creation of these artistic practices
Display a knowledge of ethics and moral issues in global pop practice.
Psychomotor (Physical Skills)
Engage global popular music practices in an embodied, artistic fashion relevant to he students own practices.
How the Module will be Taught and what will be the Learning Experiences of the Students:
This module will be taught through a mixture of lectures, tutorials and performance based laboratories. It will have traditional academic outcomes supplemented by an arts practice approach, giving the subject area an embodied relevance and when ever possible engaging performers from the field. As such this module has UL graduate attributes at its core, focusing on knowledge based outputs supplemented with a embodied experience rooted in collaborative creative practice. Students will be able to articulate their understanding of pop music in a variety of global contexts in a culturally engaged and responsible manner.
Research Findings Incorporated in to the Syllabus (If Relevant):
Prime Texts:
Bennett, Andy, Barry Shank, and Jason Toynbee. 2006. (2006)
The Popular Music Studies Reader
, Abingdon: Routledge
Langlois, Tony. 2012. (2012)
Non-Western popular music, The library of essays on popular music.
, Farnham: Ashgate.
Scott, Derek B. (2009)
The Ashgate research companion to popular musicology.
, Farnham: Ashgate.
Stokes, Martin. (2003)
Celtic modern: Music at the global fringe
, Lanham: Scarecrow Press.
Other Relevant Texts:
Langlois, Tony. (2006)
"The local and global in North African popular music." In Collected Work: The popular music studies reader.
, Published by: Abingdon, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2006. Pages: 194-200. Abingdon: Routledge.
Mitsui, T¿ru. (2014)
Made in Japan: Studies in popular music
, Routledge global popular music series. New York: Routledge.
Rivera-Rideau, Petra R. (2015)
Remixing reggaetón: The cultural politics of race in Puerto Rico.
, Durham: Duke University Press.
Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt. (2013)
"Sufism and the globalization of sacred music."
, in The Cambridge history of world music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pages: 584-605.
Programme(s) in which this Module is Offered:
Semester(s) Module is Offered:
Spring
Module Leader:
matthew.noone@ul.ie