MUSC 112 Topics in Popular Music

Pop music blogs online social networks home recording studios and mashup/remix communities are emerging musical spaces in the digital era. In this course we will study music-cultures that are enabled and generated by digital media and technology. We ask how digital media shape the mode of production transmission and reception of contemporary popular music. Using principles of ethnomusicology we will examine how music as a "digital vernacular" creates a sense of place and self in the increasingly globalized world; how social media and technological institutions organize 21-century music participation at the grassroots independent level. A laptop computer is required.