The promotional state ‘after neo-liberalism’: ideologies of governance and New Zealand's pop renaissance

Scott, Michael; Craig, David

doi:10.1017/s026114301100050x

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…In a situation analogous to what Cloonan (2007) has called ‘the promotional state’, the subsidy policy implemented by the government since 2007 has led to the government becoming Taiwan’s largest record company and investor. As Scott and Craig (2012) have pointed out, in the case of New Zealand, state coordination has led musicians to a more competitive market, which is an inevitable extension of the logic of neoliberal ideology. For example, many bands became only concerned about how to write a proposal in order to obtain a grant.…”

Section: Touming Magazine (透明雜誌) and Hom Shenhaomentioning

confidence: 99%

The Survival Struggle and Resistant Politics of a DIY Music Career in East Asia: Case Studies of China and Taiwan

Jian

2018

Cultural Sociology

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Indie music in East Asia has experienced tremendous growth in popularity since the mid-2000s, especially in China and Taiwan. This trend has encouraged a number of indie bands to pursue more radical and alternative ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) careers within their local underground music scenes. Taking two bands from Beijing and Taipei as case studies, this article argues that their DIY music careers help them both to survive through their aesthetic freedom and to confront the paradoxical government involvement in the local music market. P.K. 14, a band from China, practice a pragmatic DIY music career with an oblique resistance to political authorities. Touming Magazine, a band from Taiwan, pursue a DIY career through punk ethics to fight against an overwhelming neoliberal discourse and a promotional state policy of developing a cultural and creative industry. While DIY career practitioners have opened up alternative possibilities to preserve the autonomy of making music, such a career path is still challenged by an unsustainable market, a shortage of financing, and the continued dominance of major music companies’ own platforms. The situations these musicians face illustrate a more ambivalent type of politics, beyond mere emancipation, in their pursuit of a DIY career.

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Section: Touming Magazine (透明雜誌) and Hom Shenhaomentioning

confidence: 99%

The Survival Struggle and Resistant Politics of a DIY Music Career in East Asia: Case Studies of China and Taiwan

Jian

2018

Cultural Sociology

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“…54 Scott, in conjunction with David Craig (2012), then took the active involvement of the New Zealand government further by interrogating the 'promotional state'. Scott and Craig, in response to Simon Frith and Neil Cloonan's call to "analyse more closely the ideologies of governance that undergird music policy", 55 question the legacy of neo-liberalism and attempts by New Zealand's fifth Labour government to distance itself from the upheaval and turmoil of the neo-liberal 80s and 90s in New Zealand by becoming more interventionist in the cultural sector.…”

Section: Attempting To Contextualise New Zealand Music: Views From the Academymentioning

confidence: 99%

New Zealand Music in the Popular Imagination 1988-2010: Revisiting a Moment for ‘Our Music’.

Mollgaard¹

2018

BackStory

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From the late 1980s until around 2010 a new type of national conversation arose around music created in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. This conversation was played out in popular literature, public forums, academic research and ultimately in government policy outputs. This period of energy and enthusiasm for claiming a unique musical heritage and in developing the cultural, social and economic potential of this music was brief, but notable. Looking back, we can clean interesting insights into a period of real enthusiasm for New Zealand music as an important signifier of what it meant to be ‘from New Zealand’ through books about New Zealand music aimed at mainstream audiences. This interest in discussing New Zealand music in new ways was also reflected in the academy, with attempts to deconstruct the popularity of New Zealand music and government involvement in it being published around the same time. This article is by no means an exhaustive history of this period in New Zealand music literature, but a review of key books and the common themes that strung them together in what represents not a canon, but a moment in New Zealand music that captured the popular imagination and was celebrated in print as well as discussed in broader academic forums too. This moment can be critiqued as gendered – dominated by male writers and therefore male perspectives, but that is not the purpose of this article. This flurry of publishing is cast here as a reaction to popular culture that was very much of its time and the wider contexts of New Zealand’s socio-political culture during that period. It is argued that ultimately, this rash of books about New Zealand music reflected an energy around trying to connect New Zealand music to the wider work of identifying and celebrating a maturing and definitive understanding of what it meant to be from New Zealand. This fed a wider interest in New Zealand music as significant inside the academy andalso within government agencies charged with supporting cultural work.

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“…Keam (2006a) and(2006b), Lilburn (2011) and also examine New Zealand identity in relation to classical music (Keam and Lilburn) and the Cuba Street Carnival in Wellington (Brunt). 26 Shuker (2007Shuker ( ), (2008; Zuberi (2007); Scott (2008), ( 2012), (2013); Scott and David (2012); Stahl (2011) of the members of the local jazz community spent their formative years at the city's only jazz school, and it provides employment and performance opportunities for local professional musicians. Locating the NZSM's curricular and pedagogical approach within various critiques of jazz education, 27 I suggest ways in which the school's approach is reflected in the values and activity of the community.…”

Section: Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As outlined above, New Zealand popular music, although passionately pursued by its proponents, languished unsupported until the 1980s, when the left-wing Labour government "oversaw the state constitution of an 'institutional ecology' -an assemblage of subsidies, informal broadcast quotas, state-sponsored and co-ordinated social networks, formal and informal education programmes, and promotional activities that, in conjunction with shifting cultural norms around the value of domestic culture, founded the pop renaissance" (Scott 2013). Zuberi (2007), Scott (2008), ( 2012), ( 2013), Scott and Craig (2012), Shuker (2007Shuker ( ), (2008 and Shuker and Pickering (1994) Commission links the economic and cultural importance of music, asserting that "we can 71 Geoff Stahl (2011) surveyed a number of Wellington "indie" musicians, none of whom had received government funding, and found that in their experience the funding environment (consisting of central and local government bodies, policy and initiatives) was hegemonic and prescriptive, existing mainly to support mainstream acts and to perpetuate Wellington's (then) image as the "Creative Capital"; their comments echoed criticism of NZ On Air's funding strategy from other sources. 72 Often also "Kiwi music", a term criticised by Tony Mitchell (2010) as a "jingoistic" and "exclusionary" appeal to national pride.…”

Section: Popular Music Funding: Supporting 'Our' Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Outside In: Wellington jazz among the discourses

Tipping¹

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<p>The jazz community in Wellington, New Zealand, is vibrant and energetic: this small, geographically isolated city hosts between 90 and 100 jazz performances each month. Yet in terms of both New Zealand music and the international profile of jazz, Wellington (and New Zealand) jazz occupies a curious blind spot, absent from the scholarly and mainstream discourses of both. This absence is reflected in Wellingtonians’ own practice, in which perspectives from overseas (usually the U.S.) are privileged. Combining ethnography, practice-led research, and a variety of theoretical lenses, I examine the Wellington scene and its dynamics. Initially describing the local scene in geographical, economic, and social terms, I examine notions of “scene” and “community”, illustrating the ways in which they privilege dominant perspectives at the expense of a broader, collective identity. Through detailed case studies of central government music funding and the New Zealand School of Music jazz programme, I illustrate the dual hegemonies with which Wellington jazz musicians must contend: underlying discursive assumptions about the nature of both New Zealand music and the jazz tradition combine to leave local jazz in a liminal space, in which it arguably fits both categories, but is present within the discourse of neither. In the second part of the thesis, engaging with the discourses on authenticity in jazz, the tradition, and identity, I consider the nature of jazz expression. On one hand, ‘true’ jazz expression requires the performer to perform their identity; on the other, it is bound by a set of practices and/or aesthetics, deriving from a Black (or Blues) aesthetic. The combination of imperatives is problematic for musicians of other cultures, as E. Taylor Atkins (2001) has pointed out, and it is for this reason that jazz discourse remains largely rooted in the U.S. By turning the concept of authenticity in jazz back on itself, I propose that the creativity mandated by jazz aesthetics allows for new, culturally specific forms of jazz that draw on the individual identity of the performer, and which therefore sit firmly within the jazz tradition, at least in relation to particular definitions. Presenting a number of case studies, I illustrate the concepts of authenticity and identity in relation to performance in the Wellington scene: local musicians imbue the jazz they perform with new, locally specific meanings that derive from their own identity and context, despite overtly drawing on overseas influences. As a result, the jazz performed in local scenes like Wellington may fruitfully add to the discourses of both New Zealand music and jazz, by presenting additional perspectives that challenge preconceptions of both.</p>

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The promotional state ‘after neo-liberalism’: ideologies of governance and New Zealand's pop renaissance

Cited by 8 publications

References 69 publications

The Survival Struggle and Resistant Politics of a DIY Music Career in East Asia: Case Studies of China and Taiwan

The Survival Struggle and Resistant Politics of a DIY Music Career in East Asia: Case Studies of China and Taiwan

New Zealand Music in the Popular Imagination 1988-2010: Revisiting a Moment for ‘Our Music’.

Outside In: Wellington jazz among the discourses

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