Dr Samuel Horlor s.p.horlor@durham.ac.uk
Lecturer
Popular Song Afterlives: Oral Transmission and Mundane Creativity in Street Performances of Chinese Pop Classics
Horlor, Samuel
Authors
Abstract
Amateur live performances on the city streets of Wuhan give afterlives to songs of Chinese pop’s canon; they are sites for this repertory to be adapted and assimilated into musical worlds beyond those of the artists and industries responsible for its original production and dissemination. Singers here learn the songs by following commercial recordings, a process I understand with reference to oral transmission as it enables and constrains creativity in ways reflective of the social and technological circumstances of performers’ lives. Recordings feed into the spread of change among Wuhan’s amateur singers, with certain limitations and new possibilities also resulting from the technologies and skills available on the streets. Looking at popular song afterlives exposes mundane layers of creativity, and it comments more broadly on prosaic drivers of new meaning in current popular music practices.
Citation
Horlor, S. (2019). Popular Song Afterlives: Oral Transmission and Mundane Creativity in Street Performances of Chinese Pop Classics. Journal of World Popular Music, 6(1), 10-31. https://doi.org/10.1558/jwpm.34195
| Journal Article Type | Article |
|---|---|
| Acceptance Date | Mar 17, 2019 |
| Online Publication Date | Jun 18, 2019 |
| Publication Date | Jun 18, 2019 |
| Deposit Date | Jun 18, 2019 |
| Publicly Available Date | Jun 18, 2021 |
| Journal | Journal of World Popular Music |
| Print ISSN | 2052-4900 |
| Electronic ISSN | 2052-4919 |
| Publisher | Equinox Publishing |
| Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 10-31 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1558/jwpm.34195 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(408 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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