Between a Rock and a Popular Music Survey Course: Technological Frames and Historical Narratives in Rock Music

  • David K. Blake SUNY–Stony Brook
Keywords: undergraduate, rock, hip-hop, critical pedagogy

Abstract

This essay contends that drastic changes to the production and circulation of popular music over the past decade necessitate a reevaluation of undergraduate popular music pedagogy. It argues that frames and narratives derived from rock music originally used for popular music courses beginning in the 1980s no longer reflect contemporary practices, risking anachronistic course designs that fail to account for student experience. Through a discussion of pedagogical strategy in my introductory undergraduate popular music course, I detail how a materialist perspective based on technological change can both account for student experience and teach rock (and other genres) as historically delimited popular music forms.

Author Biography

David K. Blake, SUNY–Stony Brook
David K. Blake has taught popular music courses since 2009 at Stony Brook University, where he graduated with his PhD in Music History/Theory in 2014. His research focuses on the critical, ideological, and geographic intersections between popular music and the American university. His articles have been published and are forthcoming in Music Theory Online and Journal of Musicology.
Published
2014-07-12
Issue
Vol 5 No 1: (Fall 2014)
Section
Roundtable

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