Pop (as in “popular”) music is a concept, not a category. Pop music is always fluid, transitory, and often starts local before “all of a sudden” saturating the ether. America’s vastness, wildly divergent geography and exceptional mixture of people birthed dozens of pop music genres in the 20th century. Geography (place), origins/ethnicity (race), and even the space where music is performed—remember “disco,” as in discotheque?—all influence a genre’s spread. So does pressure from fans and promotion by music industry execs. As musicians grow, evolve, change (Bob Dylan goes electric!), their popularity soars or craters. Karen Cook dives into this flow, to tell us how place and race yielded minstrelsy and jazz; how 1950s Latinx immigration popularized the mambo (and “I Love Lucy”); how southeastern bluegrass and “Okie” country music became mainstream, which is to say, popular; and how an individual voice can start something big. Grab your place in this pop parade!
Karen M. Cook is associate professor and chair of Music History at the Hartt School, University of Hartford. She specializes in music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and also in medievalism in contemporary music & media, especially video games. Her book Music Theory in Late Medieval Avignon: Magister Johannes Pipardi was published in 2021 as part of Routledge’s RMA Monographs Series. She is currently co-editing two volumes: Gender, Sexuality, and Video Game Sound, with Michael Austin and Dana Plank for Routledge, and Global Histories of Video Game Music Technology, with William Gibbons and Fanny Rebillard for Brepols. She teaches and lectures on popular music topics at Hartt and at various conferences and symposia.
Thursdays, April 3, 10, 17 | 3 p.m.–4:30 p.m. | KF Room/Harrison Libraries | $60
This course is made possible in part by the generosity of the Richard P. Garmany Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
Brought to you by the Presidents' College, where we connect the curious through lifelong learning.
For more stimulating Presidents' College offerings, see our printable Courses & Lectures listing.
Faculty and staff are eligible to take one Presidents' College lecture for free every semester, or to receive a one-session discount ($20) for a longer course. Contact Laurie Fasciano at fasciano@hartford.edu or 860.768.4495.