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In this paper, I examine some ways in which Indian artists explore tradition and modernity by fusing devotional music and spiritual themes with popular music. This is illustrated through examples such as ‘Krishna’ (1996) by the indipop group, Colonial Cousins, as well as works such as ‘Aathma Raama’ (2012), ‘Vaishnava Jana To’ (2019), and ‘All Divine’ (2022) by hip-hop artist Brodha V. My analysis draws upon established theoretical frameworks including cultural hybridity, globalisation theory, transculturation, and modernity. While spiritual motifs appear to be inextricably linked with traditional Indian musics, this is rarely viewed through the lens of modernity. Through a series of case studies, I explore key instances indicative of sonic conversations negotiating the global and local, emphasising the role of language and global cultural flow in facilitating both resistance and transculturation. Beyond uncovering contemporary engagements with spirituality, case studies reveal how Indian modernity is increasingly characterised by a manner of hybridity. Ultimately, the analysis contributes to our understanding of hybrid modernities and postcolonial identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractFirst-episode psychosis is a significant mental health condition that can have a profound and lasting effect on an individual’s functional abilities and overall quality of life. While music therapy has shown promise in improving these areas, there is a lack of research exploring the impact of music groups led by mental health professionals without formal music therapy training in the context of early intervention in psychosis. This study aimed to conduct a qualitative evaluation of a once-weekly, 12-week, nurse-led music group, offered as an adjunct to early intervention in young people with first-episode psychosis. The specific objectives were to explore social interaction and experiences of participants and instructors in relation to the music group and provide focus points for implementation in clinical practice. The study utilized Interpretive Description, collecting data through participant observation (6 sessions × 1.5 hrs; 9 hrs in total), key informant interviews (n = 1), and group (n = 4) and email-based (n = 2) interviews. The data was transcribed, thematized, and analyzed using NVivo12 and Interpretive Description inductive analysis resulting in three main themes: Practicalities of the music group, Restored identity, and Music as medicine reflecting the potential of the music group to contribute to a sense of non-patient identity, decreasing symptoms related to mental illness, foster social relationships and a feeling of belonging to a musical community. This study highligts how participation in music groups can be a possible promoter of recovery. However, sustainability appears contingent on the skills and resources of the facilitator (i.e., nurse). Suggestions for a program theory and clinical implications are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Music festivals are categorized as event management in the hospitality and tourism (H&T) industry. Additionally, music festivals or events are a continuous phenomenon in the context of the hospitality and tourism industry. In this study, a bibliometric approach was proposed to examine research that addresses both the H&T industry and music festivals. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 462 studies covering the years 1981–2024 were retrieved from the Scopus database. The study analyzed keywords, institutions, sources, countries, and titles. During the analysis phase, descriptive analysis, clustering, thematic mapping, and relationship networks were employed using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer analysis programs. Findings: As a result of the analysis, the most frequently used keywords were "tourism" and "festival," with the most prolific author being Kruger M., the most productive country being the United States of America, and the leading journal being Event Management. Seven different clusters emerged from the networking of keywords. In the thematic map, the motor themes were music festivals, experience, social media, and co-creation. The basic themes were festival, music, tourism, event management, market segmentation, and music tourism. The emerging or declining themes were culture, music events, and COVID-19. Finally, the niche theme was entrepreneurship. Research limitations/implications: It's noted that this research solely utilized the Scopus database and publications such as chemistry and mathematics, were excluded. The findings were limited to bibliometric analysis, and future studies could include content and thematic evaluations. Social implications: The research is useful in understanding how music festivals socially direct tourists and their future perspectives. On the other hand, determining the global status of scientific publications regarding music festivals with high social and economic impact is important for proper planning and sustainability of such events. Originality/value: Music festivals are an important type of event in terms of mobility in the H&T industry. In this respect, it is in a state of change and development over the years. This research examined publications about music festivals in the H&T industry from the past to the present with a bibliometric approach. In this way, the development of publications produced on the relevant subject was revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Serbian musical culture was put late into connection with the European one. The fact that the first piano was introduced in Serbia in 1824 indicates that cultivating Serbian music was not possible under the Turkish domination. The spread of Serbian music in Europe made it possible to publish compositions by foreign authors and Serbian composers, which drew attention to the themes of Serbian music. The compositions were printed and published in Leipzig, Vienna, Prague, Paris, Budapest, London. The tours abroad performed by Serbian choirs and soloists popularized Serbian songs all over Europe. In the first half of the 20th century, almost 80 European composers wrote works with Serbian influences. Most of the foreign composers, especially those who lived and created among Serbians, embraced the mentality and cultural and musical needs of a people whose melodic essence they tapped into, using Serbian musical themes in their compositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Radio programming pivots on music. The time dedicated to music--whether as a jingle, background tune, theme music, signature tune, or on its own--attests to this. On the other hand, music is a vital aspect of the Nigerian society and one of the ways music can be experienced in Nigeria is by listening to the radio. With constant airplay, the radio determines what songs become generally accepted to the Nigerian consumer. As a result of this determinant factor, musicians and producers of urban music in Nigeria tend to create recordings that will suit the needs of the radio industry. Incessant replications of a musical style with sometimes incoherent and ambiguous lyrical content seem inevitable. Investigating the relationship between radio popularization of urban music and some evolving trends, this study relied on interview and observation for gathering of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illness narratives convey a person's feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and descriptions of suffering and healing as a result of physical or mental breakdown. Recognized genres include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, and films. Like poets and playwrights, musicians also use their life experiences as fodder for their art. However, illness narratives as expressed through popular music are an understudied and underutilized source of insights into the experience of suffering, healing, and coping with illness, disease, and death. Greater attention to the value of music within medical education is needed to improve students' perspective-taking and communication. Like reading a good book, songs that resonate with listeners speak to shared experiences or invite them into a universe of possibilities that they had not yet imagined. In this article, we show how uncovering these themes in popular music might be integrated into medical education, thus creating a space for reflection on the nature and meaning of illness and the fragility of the human condition. We describe three kinds of illness narratives that may be found in popular music (autobiographical, biographical, and metaphorical) and show how developing skills of close listening through exposure to these narrative forms can improve patient-physician communication and expand students' moral imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the blending of the science fiction and western genres, the HBO series Westworld explores issues of humanity and agency. These themes are not only played out through the series' sprawling storylines; they are also encoded in the series' title sequence. In this essay, I expand Leslie A. Hahner's concept of affective prolepsis in visuals to audiovisual prolepsis in order to illustrate how the paratextual title sequence visually and musically prepares the audience by encoding the series' central philosophical questions of what it means to be alive and the role of agency in the conception of humanity. I argue the title sequence attunes the audience to these questions through a visual assembly of a body and a musical foreshadowing of a dance of agency and power struggles. Through considering audiovisual prolepsis, scholars are better able to understand how the intentions of media creators translate—successfully or unsuccessfully—to viewer experience and interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a sociomusicological exploration of Moroccan music, specifically highlighting how musical taste can be a strong tool for analysing social change. Using a qualitative design, the study focuses on two main variables: identity and social values. Moreover, it examines two key sociomusiocological dimensions: music diffusion and consumption. Eighteen artists, including music composers, lyricists, and singers participated in the study through semi structured interviews. The content analysis of transcriptions revealed seven main themes: music's function as entertainment, the hybrid / ambiguous musical taste, the hidden agenda, music broadcast reconsideration, (social) media and musical socialization, Moroccan values and the need for censorship, and the "danger" to the Moroccan musical identity. The findings demonstrate a noticeable shift in consumers' general musical taste, attributed to significant changes in music diffusion and consumption patterns. Consequently, this shift has a profound impact on consumers' identity and social values. Therefore, the study suggests that Moroccan society is currently experiencing significant social changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns have been raised that prolonged exposure to heavy metal music with aggressive themes can increase the risk of aggression, anger, antisocial behaviour, substance use, suicidal ideation, anxiety and depression in community and psychiatric populations. Although research often relies on correlational evidence for which causal inferences are not possible, it is often claimed that music with aggressive themes can cause psychological and behavioural problems. This narrative review of theory and evidence suggests the issues are more complicated, and that fans typically derive a range of emotional and social benefits from listening to heavy metal music, including improved mood, identity formation, and peer affiliation. In contrast, non-fans of heavy metal music — who are often used as participants in experimental research on this topic — invariably report negative psychological experiences. Our review considers a comprehensive set of empirical findings that inform clinical strategies designed to identify fans for whom heavy metal music may confer psychological and behavioural risks, and those for whom this music may confer psychosocial benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will explore some of the ways I conceptualize music as it pertains to the concept of "home," and specifically here, about leaving home. Using composer Sergei Prokofiev's music in his well-known beloved composition, Peter and the Wolf, I will illustrate the gradual integration and consolidation of identity in the eponymous character, Peter, as he left his childhood garden home. Thus, the analysis of music itself as a primary source of psychoanalytic data is the distinctive method of analysis that I bring to my interdisciplinary explorations. Prokofiev's masterpiece Peter and the Wolf pertains to the following overdetermined themes: Music and psychoanalytic concepts hold enduring value as each informs and enriches the other. Music serves as an important entry into affect and unconscious processes. Music and psychoanalytic principles are relevant both inside and beyond the concert hall and consulting room and contribute to a nuanced understanding of our inner lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the absence of references to the supernatural in blues musician Skip James's 1931 recordings, despite his personal belief in magic and the prevalence of supernatural themes in blues music of that era. It also mentions James's unique lyrical choices and suggests that his upbringing, self-perception, and values may have influenced this omission.

This paper examines the significance of the Indonesian all-female teenage metal band Voice of Baceprot (VoB) in spreading messages of empowerment and social change through music. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis and textual analysis, this study analysed four VoB song lyrics. The analysis reveals three central themes in VoB music: resisting systemic oppression of women, advocating for freedom of self-expression and identity, and voicing sociopolitical criticism. This paper argues that VoB's lyrics portray empowerment as exposing and dismantling the prejudicial roots of injustice, making space for marginalised voices, and demanding human rights and equity as lived realities. The VoB suggests that empowerment requires transgressing societal constraints to integrate identity into one's own terms. As hijabi women perform metal music, the VoB signifies the radical possibilities of claiming space through art and courage. Their songs convey that empowerment starts by refusing control and determining one's path. Despite receiving some criticism regarding the inappropriateness of Muslim women playing in a metal band, the VoB's success illuminates the possibility of change through grassroots efforts. The paper concludes that VoB's lyrics envision alternative futures by advocating justice, equality, and empowerment. Their messages make empowerment possible by calling for oppression and creating space for marginalised voices. VoB represents hope for change, driven by creativity and perseverance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies showed that love has become an eternal theme in pop music. But since the early 2000s, new themes with negative sentiments such as pain, despair, fear, and sadness have emerged in pop music. Along with this phenomenon, recent pop music offers poetic lyrics instead of cliché lyrics. What makes them more interesting is, some of the lyrics are autobiographical. This study aims to analyze the authenticity of autobiographical lyrics and their relation to young listeners’ reception. The researchers use three songs as the research object: Takut by Idgitaf, Bertaut by Nadin Amizah, and Runtuh by Feby Putri and Fiersa Besari. This qualitative research uses the lyrics of those songs and questionnaire results as its data. The questionnaire respondents are young listeners between 18 and 30 years old who live in different villages and cities in Indonesia with various social economic and educational backgrounds. The collected data are approached using Frith’s thoughts on lyrics and pop music in Taking Pop Music Seriously (2016) and Performing Rites: on the Value of Popular Music (1996) and also Hoggarts’ thoughts on mass culture (2017) in The Uses of Literacy. Analysis of the works of Idgitaf, Nadin Amizah, Feby Putri, and Fiersa Besari shows that all of them have distinct and unique songwriting skills. They also show consistency in choosing the theme song, including the three songs used as research objects. Out of 64 respondents, 56.3% claim that knowing a song is an autobiographical work does not change their opinion and feelings toward the song. However, the result of the questionnaire shows that young listeners feel connected to song lyrics that represent their feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article argues that music criticism from the early 1990s was central to media backlash against feminism in this period. As Daphne A. Brooks has noted, music criticism remains widely untheorized, despite being so entangled with the sustainability of popular music. In this article, I give focused attention to a small body of critical writing, exploring the relationship between recordings and the reviews that describe and evaluate the music. I present a reading of backlash against the riot grrrl band Bratmobile from 1993 to 1994, including reviews from the zines Cake, Snipe Hunt, trust kill and Genetic Disorder as well as from Artforum, SPIN and Option. I apply Janice A. Radway's concept of 'rhetorical containment' to this set of criticism, highlighting shared critical manoeuvres evident in the reviews. This builds on Peter Szendy's idea of 'punctuation' as that which shapes phrasing in a dialogue; on one level, criticism of Bratmobile punctuated the musical releases by legitimizing them and by reinforcing key themes in the music. But the critics also undermined the band in ways both subtle and explicit. I conclude by suggesting that critical backlash against riot grrrl can be understood as a matter of power and solidarity, with every critical utterance containing elements of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on Orchestra being a regular visitor to the Royal Albert Hall where it has premiered many films ‘Live In Concert.' Topics include Baahubali is not a Bollywood film, it is a South Indian film, and the fact of the existence of different cinemas within Indian cinema being something the wider audience in the Western world seems to have become more aware of after the worldwide success of RRR; and caused the film/music to lose some of its cultural specificity.

Paintings of St. Cecilia as a musician proliferated in Rome after 1600 and seem to participate in two apparently divergent themes: music as part of a sacred story of access to the divine, and music as part of a secular story of the refinements of education and social class. The implied devotional effects of Cecilia’s music making and connections to secular music practices are not mutually exclusive and can best be understood and reconciled when investigated in light of contemporary practices of female musicians, namely nun musicians. The musical instruments Cecilia plays are examined in context of the controversial use of stringed instruments in sacred music performances during the early decades of the seventeenth century. Depictions of violins, lutes, and theorboes in the hands of a female saint seem to parallel the increasing presence of these instruments within female convents despite official decrees forbidding their use. Just as Cecilia’s music making served as a conduit between heaven and earth, contemporary accounts of nuns’ music describe the rapturous effects on individual musicians as well as on audiences as a whole. Cecilia serves as an appropriate proxy for nuns and their musical activities not only because of her connections to music but also because of her piety and virginity. By exemplifying these qualities, nuns and their musical activities were considered earthly manifestations of heavenly choirs. Implications of rendering St. Cecilia and her music as secular and aristocratic are explained in relation to representations of Lady Music and the social status of nuns. What emerges are arresting conjunctions of heavenly and earthly, sacred and mundane in painting and music. While St. Cecilia and her music-making are brought to an earthly realm through associations with female musicians, the angelic quality of nuns’ music-making enhances the saint’s spirituality and amplifies the devotional and musical elements of the paintings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: Different intervention strategies, such as reminiscence and music-based therapies, effectively mitigate the cognitive decline of individuals with dementia (IwD). An important challenge when implementing these approaches lies in the need for content customization. We designed Musiquence platform, a framework that allows the customization of music and reminiscence content in cognitive stimulation activities. (2) Methods: Here, we present a participatory design methodology for designing a seven-week customized cognitive stimulation program (CCSP) for IwD using Musiquence. We ran focus groups with 19 formal caregivers, who provided information regarding themes and music to be used in activities for IwD, and gathered preferences from 20 IwD. (3) Results: The CCSP consists of seven cycles of tasks combining the activities available in Musiquence, the seven preferential themes of IwD, and the seven songs most frequently referenced by formal caregivers. (4) Conclusions: Finally, we provide a set of guidelines to implement a participatory design approach for content development together with IwD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of music platforms have appeared on the Internet recently. The deep learning framework for music recommendation is still very limited when it comes to accurately identifying the emotional type of music and recommending it to users. Languages, musical styles, thematic scenes, and the ages to which they belong are all common classifications. And this is far from sufficient, posing difficulties in music classification and identification. As a result, this paper uses the methods of music emotion multi-feature extraction, BiGRU model design, and music theme scene classification model design to improve the accuracy of music emotion recognition. It develops the BiGRU emotion recognition model and compares it to other models. BiGRU can correctly identify happy and sad emotion music up to 79 percent and 81.01 percent of the time, respectively. It goes far beyond Rnet-LSTM, and the greater the difference in emotion categories, the easier it is to analyze the feature sequence containing emotional features and the higher the recognition accuracy. This is especially evident in the accuracy with which happiness and sadness are recognized. It can meet users' needs for music recognition in a variety of settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the chamber and vocal legacy of the prominent Ukrainian composer Bohdana Filtz (1932-2021), whose musical thinking was influenced by the traditional Ukrainian romance songs, in particular, the old Galician ones. Her orientation towards the genre of romanсe manifests itself in the poetic intonation of the textual basis and in the manner of her musical writing. In Filtz's chamber vocal works, she expands the boundaries of themes and genres of solo singing. Her solo pieces for voice are characterized by an attentive and careful attitude to the performance and skillful use of the entire range of the most "capricious and fragile" musical instrument--the human voice. In addition, she effectively builds the very part of the piano accompaniment, which always plays an important figurative and semantic role. Two significant components in the figurative and thematic content of Filtz's vocal music were defined--civil and lyrical. In her chamber vocal compositions, Filtz combines a purely personal idea with a universal, humanistic principle at the figurative and meaningful level, closely intertwining epic characteristics with lyrics and drama. Her tendency for the psychological acuity of the musical images of her vocal works was traced through their philosophic nature, enriched with drama, and sometimes with tragedy. Ukrainian classical and modern poets prevail in the poetic stanzas of her romances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

But I find this semiotic aspect gets lost among the other ambitious tasks Howland has set for himself. At the micro-level, Howland's interpretations are premised on musical topic theory, whereby 'the stylistic markers of luxe pop can trigger a dense fabric of associations' (21). (28) Howland is skilled at mining the critical literature for telling value-laden passages of essentially "anti-middlebrow discourse" while refuting 'its original presumed authority as to the cultural worth of the luxe music it aimed to defame' (78). [Extracted from the article]

Olde Throne is a solo black metal project created by Harrison McKenzie, a young musician from Christchurch. The main theme of his music production is Scottish and Irish history and mythology, more generally themes related to Celtic culture. After spending time in 2019 in Scotland, Harrison McKenzie became increasingly interested in the history and mythology of this land far from his native home. He felt a strong emotional connection to the past of Scottish people, in fact his surname is influenced by this ancestry. His passion for Norwegian black metal, developed in his teenage years, was linked to the search for his past, giving rise to Olde Throne's musical proposal. This 'Riffs' article, developed from a textual and musical analysis and corroborated by an interview with the musician of Olde Throne, attempts to highlight how nostalgia for a past, more imagined than lived, conceals a sense of displacement that finds its way out through the aggressive and extremely emotive sounds of black metal, a musical category little practised in Christchurch. Europe, as the cradle of Scottish and Irish cultures and as an ideal place to play and experience black metal, takes shape imaginatively in the sonic and lyrical coordinates of Olde Throne's music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music is one of the characteristics of literariness and a factor for literary work which influences the audience. Music can also be considered as a factor in distinguishing the various literary genres. The quality of applying the music-making techniques in poetry varies according to the skill, taste, and creativity of the poet, the content of the literary work, the textual-linguistic context, etc. In the present study, by comparing the two lyrical stories of Bijan and Manijeh, and the epic of Rostam and Sohrab from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, we show that the music of poetry in these two narratives are significantly different. In other words, Ferdowsi uses different methods to create music in these two stories. This difference does not occur by chance or without reason and logic. To show the quantitative and qualitative differences in applying music-making techniques, we categorized them in three main categories of external, internal, and lateral. In this study, we have extracted and introduced some of Ferdowsi's methods for creating poetic music, which have been less or not considered in previous research. The results show that the music of poetry in the epic story of Rostam and Sohrab in comparison with the lyrical story of Bijan and Manijeh has more diversity, creativity, and consistency because of different reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Revista Perseitas is the property of Revista Perseitas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)