Protest music, populism, politics and authenticity: the limits and potential of popular music's articulation of subversive politics

Way, Lyndon (2016) Protest music, populism, politics and authenticity: the limits and potential of popular music's articulation of subversive politics. Journal of Language and Politics, 15 (4). pp. 422-446. ISSN 1569–2159

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Abstract

Political discourses are found not only in speeches and newspapers, but also in
cultural artefacts such as architecture, art and music. Turkey's June 2013 protests saw an explosion of music videos distributed on the internet. This paper uses these videos as a case study to examine the limits and potential of popular music's articulation of popular and populist politics. Though both terms encompass what is "widely favoured", populism includes discourses which construct "the people" pitted against "an elite". Past research has shown how popular music can articulate subversive politics, though these do not detail what that subversion means and how it is articulated. This paper uses specific examples to demonstrate how musical sounds, lyrics and images articulate populist and popular politics. From a corpus of over 100 videos, a typical example is analysed employing social semiotics. It is found that popular music has the potential to contribute to the public sphere, though its limits are also exposed.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	This article has been accepted for publication by John Benjamins in Journal of Language and Politics, 2016 vol 15 (4). http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jlp.15.4.03way. John Benjamins does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Keywords:	Popular politics, populist politics, popular music, protest, Turkey and authenticity
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Creative Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities
Depositing User:	Lyndon Way
Date Deposited:	29 Sep 2017 09:06
Last Modified:	13 Nov 2024 10:43
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2166

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