This article aims to explore the concept of patched/versioned musical works as creative ecologies. It identifies how the internet’s involvement in music creation and dissemination influences choices related to the release of such works. Throughout this writing, the author looks at the increasingly volatile structures surrounding recorded music in the early twenty-first century as a result of streaming platforms such as Spotify and video-based social media sites such as TikTok becoming the primary means for music consumption. It explores this volatility as a method for approaching the release of new music within dynamic musical ecosystems and looks at the growing art scene focusing on this way of working, drawing parallels between artistry and subscription-based services where content continually evolves over time.

Este artigo analisa a internacionalização de música moçambicana no âmbito da categoria de mercado “World Music”, durante o período de transição de um sistema de partido único e socialista, para um sistema multipartidário e liberal (1987-1994), enquadrado no processo de “construção da nação”. A análise comparativa de três casos – Orquestra Marrabenta Star de Moçambique, a canção “Baila Maria” do Grupo RM (Amoya), e os discos de Eyuphuro e Ghorwane (Real World Records) – confirma o recurso à World Music enquanto alternativa à letargia da indústria fonográfica do país e como veículo para promover internacionalmente a política musical de Moçambique durante a guerra civil.

The dancer Mademoiselle Mercédès performed in the most important music halls of the Parisian Belle Époque, such as the Folies-Bergère and the Olympia. Her exotic pseudonym reflects the Hispanophilia of this period in France, but she was neither a Spanish dancer nor a native imitator. On the contrary, she displayed great versatility as a dancer and actively participated in the transition to modernity with the dancer Loïe Fuller and the choreographer Madame Mariquita. However, who is behind this artist's name? This research reveals that at least three women used this nickname and only one of them has been previously identified: Julienne Mathieu (1874–1943), who, after her stage career, became one of the most prolific actresses in early cinema. This case study explores the implications of using a pseudonym by a secondary figure in the dance world in fin-de-siècle Paris.

Uncovering the motivations towards a profession may contribute to a better understanding of how the profession is chosen and will be pursued. However, the research on the attractiveness of the music teaching profession is rather limited and predominantly focused on identity development, thereby overlooking other aspects that may play a role. In pursuing a case study, my aim is to contribute to this field of research by investigating the views of pre-service music teachers enrolled at the University of Karlstad in Sweden. The results depict a unique motivational profile compared to their counterparts in other subjects. These differential aspects are threefold, indicating a high prevalence of ‘extrinsic motivations’ driving their choice of profession, that ‘altruistic reasons’ have lower significance as a motivating factor, and that there is a poor perceived relevance of these individuals’ future profession. In addition, this study provides evidence of the prevalence of ‘musician identities’ over ‘teaching identities’ and foresees the dependence between the participants’ motivation and their future students’ progression. Moreover, I hypothesise that career changes and Pygmalion effects are to be expected if intrinsic motivation towards the profession is not fostered or if this population’s motivation is linked to the progress of their students rather than the challenge of motivating them in the first place.

Examining the role of arts and culture in regional Australia often focuses on economic aspects within the creative industries. However, this perspective tends to disregard the value of unconventional practices and fails to recognise the influence of regional ecological settings and the well-being advantages experienced by amateur and hobbyist musicians who explore ubiquitous methods of music creation. This article presents the results of a survey conducted among practitioners in regional Australia, exploring their utilisation of creative technology ecosystems. This project marks the first independent, evidence-based study of experimental electronic music practices in regional Australia and how local and digital resource ecosystems support those activities. Spanning the years 2021 and 2022, the study involved interviewing 11 participants from many Australian states. In this article, we share the study’s findings, outlining the diverse range of experimental electronic music practices taking place across regional Australia and how practitioners navigate the opportunities and challenges presented by their local context.

One of the more annoying aspects of the life of a popular music academic is that we study music that is primarily made and used by people who seem to have no interest at all in what we have to say. Popular musicians and fans are engaged with what we're talking about but not with how we talk about it. When the first volume of our history of live music came out, covering 1950–67 (Frith et al. 2013), I did some non-academic promotional work for it – presenting our book at a literary festival, library events and pensioners’ clubs (these were the people who had lived through what we were describing). Audiences were, like my non-academic friends, sufficiently interested in live music history to discuss our findings with enthusiasm but, at the same time, found the book unreadable. They couldn't be doing with academic research conventions, with the references constantly interrupting the narrative flow, with the painstaking collection and assessment of evidence, the stolid back and forth between the particular (the facts) and the general (the concepts).

During winter 2020–2021, Los Angeles County suffered a brutal third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Latinxs, who account for 49 percent of the local population, were disproportionately devastated by high numbers of COVID-19-positive cases and alarming increases in mortality rates. Despite the popular perception that all musicians were silenced during the pandemic, I draw from my personal experience as a mariachi and those of my musical colleagues to document the impact of systemic marginalisation on the lives of mariachi musicians and how we responded to the pandemic by supporting each other and our community through performances.

This article explores the emergence of musical performance practices whereby electronic music styles, along with the musical and sonic characteristics inherent in their electronic production, are emulated through live musical performance using acoustic instrumentation. The article draws on Brummett's (1999) concept of ‘machine aesthetics’ to explore the emergence of these practices, whereby musicians emulate sonic and musical attributes of music usually produced by machines, without the use of machines. Utilising semi-structured interviews and musical analysis of records by Abstract Orchestra and GoGo Penguin, the article attempts to contextualise these practices within their broader function in popular music production and performance.

This article explores strategies that allow electronic music performers to engage their audiences and environments in live acts of co-creation. We outline our existing musical practice relying on site-specific sampling and digital mobile technologies that have been tested across a range of participatory music performances. Salient challenges within this performance context are identified and several tools and techniques are proposed as solutions. We then consider how setting-based and sample-based participatory performances can be expanded through gamification strategies. After exploring how notions of playful experience can offer new insights into the nature of audience engagement, we propose several approaches for introducing gamified elements into performative music practices that can expand the scope of audience participation while preserving key aspects of using concert location recordings and musical improvisation. We conclude by discussing the implications of these approaches for the performer–audience relationship and the prospect of musical engagement with the environment before suggesting directions for future research.

This article examines the musical techniques used to create humour in the contemporary Broadway musical The Book of Mormon. Drawing on existing theories of parody, I argue that most songs initially rely on ‘straight’ and accurate imitations of other Broadway composers and pop-rock artists to set up an incongruity with the characters’ words or actions. There is a tendency then for these intertextual references to be layered or exaggerated, giving the joke in question an overblown quality. I adopt the novel label of a ‘musical caricature’ to describe such instances. This analysis thus presents a new methodological tool for studying musical humour; it also offers insights into The Book of Mormon's critical success as well as the writers’ ability to evade censure for the crude and potentially offensive thematic content.