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Communicative contract analysis: an approach to popular music analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 February 2008

Thomas Shave
Affiliation:
19 Park Avenue, Wolstanton, Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Staffordshire ST5 8AX, UK email: tomcat@catsinthealley.com

Abstract

Communicative contract analysis constructs an analytic methodology, taking musical semiotics as a theoretical basis, to look at the ways in which pieces of popular music define themselves generically, and how they make reference to other genres. By taking the different components of a sound as referential to parent genres or foreign genres, one can tease out these references in hybrid musical forms. The method is then applied to three contemporary works, The Kaiser Chiefs' Ruby, Hadouken!'s That Boy, That Girl and Bjork's Joga, and the pertinent issues raised in these works are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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