Mixing Pop and Politics

The political has always been part of popular music, but how does that play out in today's musical and political landscape? Mixing Pop and Politics: Political Dimensions of Popular Music in the 21st Century provides an innovative exploration of the complex politics of popular music in its contemporary formations. Amid the shifting paradigms of power in the 2020s, the chapters in this book go beyond the idea of popular music as protest to explore how resistance, subversion, containment, and reconciliation all interact in the popular music realm. Covering a wide range of international artists and genres, from South African hip-hop to Polish punk, and addressing topics such as climate change and environmentalism, feminism, diasporic identity, political parties, music-making as labour, the far right, conservatism and nostalgia, and civic engagement, the contributors expand our understanding of how popular music is political. For students and scholars of music, popular culture, and politics, the volume offers a broad, exciting snapshot of the latest scholarship on contemporary popular music and politics.

Catherine Hoad is Senior Lecturer in the School of Music and Creative Media Production at Te Kunenga Ki Purehuroa/Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Geoff Stahl is Senior Lecturer and Programme Director of Media & Communication, Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Oli Wilson is Associate Professor in the College of Creative Arts at Te Kunenga Ki Purehuroa/ Massey University, Wellington New Zealand., Massey University, Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

1. Navigating a neoliberal city: Experimental music making in Aotearoa/New Zealand's 'cultural capital' 2. Sharing languages through contemporary song in the third space: A case study of intercultural collaboration between Indigenous Australian, Polynesian and Melanesian women 3. The Personal and the Political: African Popular Music and Diasporic Heritage in Australia 4. Resisting through music under the neoliberal authoritarian regime: Political themes in Turkish rap songs 5. Rapping about our history, imagining our future! The Great Legacy project in the Korean variety show Infinite Challenge 6. Yes, indeed: Trap and politics 7. Looping alone, together: Music, community, and environmental self-sustainability in Aotearoa/New Zealand 8. 'Half-Moghul, half-Mowgli': The representation of South Asian diasporas in hip hop music 9. Locating labour subjectivities in contemporary popular music texts 10. Beyond hegemony: Siksa and the politics of affect 11. 'A message etched on broken ships': Radical environmentalism and extreme ecometal 12. Good citizenship, telethon and benefit concert: The politics of the achievable 13. Solidarity as strategy. Anti-racism and feminism in the work of Titiyo 14. Nostalgia, anti-victim discourse, and neoliberalism in early 1990s pop: The postfeminist approach of Wilson Phillips 15. White skin, black masks: Die Antwoord, post-apartheid South Africa, and global hip hop studies 16. 'I am the cause to all your problems': Brand New, tattoo coverups, and (im)permanence 17. Neon-nazis: A fascist foray into vaporwave's synaesthetic world Afterword