Caras Extrañas Courtoisie

Music as Multimodal Discourse
Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics
Semiotics has complemented linguistics by expanding its scope beyond

the phoneme and the sentence to include texts and discourse, and their
rhetorical, performative, and ideological functions. It has brought into focus
the multimodality of human communication. Advances in Semiotics publishes
original works in the field demonstrating robust scholarship, intellectual
creativity, and clarity of exposition. These works apply semiotic approaches
to linguistics and non-verbal productions, social institutions and discourses,
embodied cognition and communication, and the new virtual realities that
have been ushered in by the Internet. It also is inclusive of publications in
relevant domains such as socio-semiotics, evolutionary semiotics, game
theory, cultural and literary studies, human-computer interactions, and the
challenging new dimensions of human networking afforded by social websites.
Series Editor: Paul Bouissac is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto
(Victoria College), Canada. He is a world renowned figure in semiotics and
a pioneer of circus studies. He runs the SemiotiX Bulletin [www.semioticon.
com/semiotix] which has a global readership.
Titles in the Series:
A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, Fabio Rambelli

Computable Bodies, Josh Berson
Critical Semiotics, Gary Genosko
Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics, Tony Jappy
Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation, Domenico Pietropaolo
Semiotics of Drink and Drinking, Paul Manning
Semiotics of Happiness, Ashley Frawley
Semiotics of Religion, Robert Yelle
The Language of War Monuments, David Machin and Gill Abousnnouga
The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning, Paul Bouissac
The Semiotics of Che Guevara, Maria-Carolina Cambre
The Visual Language of Comics, Neil Cohn
Music as Multimodal Discourse
Semiotics, Power and Protest
Edited by Lyndon C. S. Way and Simon McKerrell

Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics
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Copyright © Lyndon C. S. Way, Simon McKerrell and Contributors, 2017
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Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editors of this work.
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xxii constitute

an extension of this copyright page.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Way, Lyndon C. S. | McKerrell, Simon.
Title: Music as multimodal discourse: semiotics, power and protest /
edited by Lyndon C. S. Way and Simon McKerrell.
Description: New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. |
Series: Bloomsbury advances in semiotics; 10 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038832| ISBN 9781474264426 (hb) |
ISBN 9781474264440 (epdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Music–Political aspects. |
Music–Social aspects. | Music–Semiotics.
Classification: LCC ML3916.M8738 2016 | DDC 781.1–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038832
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-6442-6

PB: 978-1-3500-7986-1
ePDF: 978-1-4742-6444-0
ePub: 978-1-4742-6443-3
Series: Bloomsbury Advances is Semiotics
Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
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This book is dedicated to all those everyday composers, musicians, lyricists,
fans and listeners who instinctively know how powerful music can be in
communicating social change.
Contents
List of Figures viii

List of Tables x
List of Contributors xi
Preface xiv
Acknowledgements xxii
1 Understanding Music as Multimodal Discourse Simon McKerrell

and Lyndon C. S. Way 1
2 The Role of Music in Ridiculing the Working Classes in Reality

Television Göran Eriksson and David Machin 21
3 ‘Shame Makes the World Go Around’: Performed and Embodied

(Gendered) Class Disgust in Morrissey’s ‘The Slum Mums’ Aileen
Dillane, Martin J. Power and Eoin Devereux 47
4 Recontextualization and Fascist Music John E. Richardson 71
5 Authenticity and Subversion: Articulations in Protest Music Videos’

Struggle with Countercultural Politics and Authenticity Lyndon C. S. Way 95
6 Sonic Logos Theo van Leeuwen 119
7 ‘If You Have Nothing To Say – Sing It!’: On the Interplay of Music,
Voice and Lyrics in the Advertising Jingle Johnny Wingstedt 135
8 When the Fairy Tale Is Over: An Analysis of Songs and Institutional

Discourse against Domestic Violence in Spain Laura Filardo-Llamas 159
9 Indigenous Hip Hop as Anti-colonial Discourse in

Guatemala Rusty Barrett 179
10 Song, Sonic Metaphor, and Countercultural Discourse in British

Folk-Rock Recordings Matthew Ord 201
Index 223
List of Figures
2.1 Böda Camping opening sequence 28

2.2 Veteran-Lasse and the march-music 34
2.3 Sequence to show how music help to construct internal states of
mind include VO=Voice-over, Mi=Micke (male),
Ml=Milla (female), L= Veteran-Lasse, IR=Interviewer 39
3.1 ‘The Slum Mums’ 59
4.1 ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ (Kander and Ebb), Cabaret, 1974 83
4.2 Recontextualization of song lyrics, 2 88
5.1 Dancing protester 105
5.2 Iconic protester 106
5.3 Band and fan’s anti-establishment authenticity 108
5.4 Police as unthinking robots 109
5.5 Instrumental melody 111
5.6 Voice melody 112
6.1 The Internationale 121
6.2 Sung brand names 121
6.3 ‘Majestic Fanfare’ (ABC news signature tune) 127
6.4 Call and response section of the new ABC tune 128
6.5 Brian Eno’s 1995 Microsoft startup sound 129
6.6 AT&T sonic logo 129
6.7 Intel logo 130
7.1 ‘Mr Clean’, bars 17–32, examples of musical resources
and functions 143
7.2 ‘Tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau’, bars 1–9, examples of
musical resources and functions 143
8.1 Multimodal blend in Bebe’s ‘Malo’ 168
10.1 Cross-domain mapping for the metaphor ‘argument is war’ 205
10.2 Conceptual integration network showing the blend
of production and musical-textual elements in ‘Boys
of Bedlam’ 210
List of Figures ix
10.3 Conceptual integration network showing the blend of

musical-textual elements and production techniques
in ‘Pentangling’ 214
10.4 Conceptual integration network showing the blend of
musical-textual and production elements in ‘The Murder
of Maria Marten’ 218
List of Tables
2.1 Meaning potentials for rhythms 30

2.2 Meaning potentials of pitch 31
2.3 Meaning potential of pitch range 32
2.4 Meaning potentials of note articulation 36
4.1 Approaches and transformations in fascist musical
recontextualization 78
4.2 Contents of the National Front songbook (n.d.) 81
4.3 Recontextualization of song lyrics, 1 87
8.1 Activity, visual and musical schemas for Bebe’s ‘Malo’ 166
8.2 Visual and musical schemas for El Chojin’s ‘El final del
cuento de hadas’ 171
List of Contributors
Rusty Barrett is Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the

University of Kentucky. His research focuses on highland Mayan languages,
language revitalization, and language, gender, and sexuality. His book From
Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures is
forthcoming.
Eoin Devereux is Assistant Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities
and Social Sciences at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and is Adjunct
Professor of Contemporary Culture at the University of Jyvasklya, Finland.
Eoin’s books include Understanding the Media (3rd edition, 2014) and Media
Studies: Key Issues and Debates (2007).
Aileen Dillane is an ethnomusicologist and Lecturer in Music in the Irish
World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick with
particular interests in the folk, vernacular and popular musics of Ireland, the
United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. She is co-editor of David
Bowie: Critical Perspectives (2015) and Morrissey: Fandom, Representations,
Identities (2011).
Göran Eriksson is Professor of Media and Communication Studies, Örebro
University, Sweden. He writes in the areas of politics and media, and is also
involved in projects concerned with television history and reality TV. His
research is published in journals such as Text & Talk, Journalism, Critical
Discourse Studies, International Journal of Press/Politics and Media and Culture
and Society.
Laura Filardo-Llamas lectures in English at the University of Valladolid, Spain.
Her main research areas is discourse analysis and conflict resolution, applied
particularly to ethno-nationalist conflicts and domestic violence. She has also
done research on the relation that can be established between music and society.
Some of her publications can be found in Ethnopolitics, Peace and Conflict
Studies, Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD)
Journal and Critical Discourse Studies. She has recently co-edited the volume
Space, Time and Evaluation in Ideological Discourse, which is based on a special
issue of Critical Discourse Studies.
Theo van Leeuwen is Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney,
and Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Southern
xii List of Contributors
Denmark. He has published widely on critical discourse analysis, multimodality,

social semiotics and visual semiotics. His books include Reading Images:The
Grammar of Visual Design (with Gunther Kress); Introducing Social Semiotics;
Speech, Music, Sound; The Language of Colour and Discourse and Practice. He is
a founding editor of the journal Visual Communication.
David Machin works in the department of Media and Communication, Örebro
University, Sweden. His interests lie in Multimodality, Critical Discourse Studies
and Visual Design. His books include The Language of War Monuments (2013)
and Visual Journalism (2015). He has also published extensively on music and
discourse, for example, in the book Analysing Popular Music (2010). His current
research is in the multimodal communication of administration in institutions.
He is also co-editor of the journals Social Semiotics and Journal of Language and
Politics.
Simon McKerrell is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Music at The International
Centre for Music Studies, Newcastle University, United Kingdom. He is interested
in how music communicates meaning in everyday life, particularly how this is
constructed as discourse. He is the author of Focus: Scottish Traditional Music
(2015) and co-editor of The International Journal of Traditional Arts. He is also
an expert performer of Highland-, Border- and Uilleann-pipes having toured,
taught and performed throughout the world.
Matthew Ord is a folk musician and doctoral student at Newcastle University.
His research combines a historical approach with techniques from multimodal
discourse analysis and conceptual metaphor theory to consider the impact of
recording technologies on the social semiotics of recorded folk song. His other
research interests include the history of film and radio documentary, and the
place of music in contemporary political discourse.
Martin J. Power is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of
Limerick, Ireland. He has previously co-edited books on Morrissey (2011) and
David Bowie (2015).
John E. Richardson is Reader in Critical Discourse Studies in the Department
of Social Sciences at Loughborough University. His research interests include
structured Social Inequalities, British Fascism, Critical Discourse Studies and
Argumentation. His recent books include Analysing Fascist Discourse (co-edited
with Wodak, 2013), Advances in Critical Discourse Studies (co-edited with
Krzyżanowski, Machin, Wodak, 2014) and Cultures of Post-War British Fascism
(co-edited with Copsey, 2015). He is currently writing a book analysing the
multimedia discourses of British fascism. He is the editor of the international
journal Critical Discourse Studies.
List of Contributors xiii
Lyndon C. S. Way is an associate professor at Izmir University of Economics

in Izmir, Turkey. His main field of interest is Multimodal Critical Discourse
Studies where he analyses and publishes regularly on both subversive discourses
in music and political manipulation in news.
Johnny Wingstedt is Assistant Professor and Head of Sound and Music
Production at Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden. His main field of study is
multimodality and social semiotics. Publications include Narrative Music,
Visuals and Meaning in Film (2010) and he is co-editor of Swedish anthology På
tal om musikproduktion (Talking about music production) (2012, with Gunnar
Ternhag).
Preface
This book arose out of a panel entitled ‘Music and Discourse’ at the Critical
Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD) 2014 confer-
ence in Budapest. Lyndon Way organized the panel, while most of the other
contributors in this book presented at the conference. The papers and panel as
a whole were well received by a large, curious audience. It was this response
combined with our own enthusiasm for examining the communicative power
of music, which has led to this edited volume. At the conference, we were part
of a diverse group of scholars with backgrounds in ethnomusicology, linguis-
tics, media studies, and discourse analysis studying music and presenting on
music as multimodal discourse. This resulting edited collection presents both
those people who presented at the CADAAD conference, but also one or two
others who also study music as multimodal discourse. We concluded that the
momentum from this meeting of like-minded scholars could contribute to tak-
ing forward the understanding of music as multimodal discourse, which is the
principal focus of this book.
To achieve this we wish to reflect two key aspects of our discussions in this
volume. First, the study of music has been conducted from many, plural, often
contested disciplinary perspectives. The scholarship examining music as but
one mode of communication alongside other modes such as text, still images,
moving images, colour, gesture and so on is however relatively recent. We
believe this approach to music has great potential for both the rehabilitation
of music studies into the more vital strands of socio-political analysis, and also
offers a well-defined method, drawing on Critical Discourse Studies and Social
Semiotics, which can help us answer questions about how music meaning is
part of broader socio-cultural and political discourses exposing how it has real
power and agency in the social world. This volume is therefore multidiscipli-
nary, and at times, an interdisciplinary project, and this reflects the various
approaches to analysis we witnessed of each other at the conference. Principally,
analytical and conceptual territory from Social Semiotics, Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA), Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies (MCDS), ethnomu-
sicology, popular music studies and linguistics, inform multimodal analy-
sis and we hope will reach back into music-based disciplines. Consequently,
Preface xv
it is therefore our firm belief that this interdisciplinarity is lacking in much

musically focused analysis where ‘music’ has been the object of study and that
approaching music as multimodal discourse with an interdisciplinary predis-
position is one of the key means by which our analyses can allow us to move
beyond the subject-object stumbling blocks of much music-focused analysis.
This is, of course, rooted in a belief that the object of study is people’s discourses
of power and agency in everyday life, and that music is vitally important in
constructing them. By analysing music as multimodal discourse, we are able
to expose in great detail exactly how it is that music can articulate discourses
not only of power, exploitation, abuse and hate, but also resistance, subversion,
belonging, community and hope. We hope that this book provides a step for-
ward in understanding people and society with an ear to the sonic.
Second, we also believe our book is a significant contribution to the study of
discourse. Though discourse analysis has its roots in the study of written lan-
guage and most published work examines news reports and political and public
textual discourses, we take the view that discourse is almost always multimodal.
This is not unique, as discourse analysis has taken a multimodal turn of late.
What is more rare is the integrated analysis of musical communication, whether
through music videos, performances or sound recordings, being seen as articu-
lating discourses through the modes and the relations between the modes of
musical sounds, text and images.
We hope that our book achieves its aim of contributing to the momentum
we have experienced since the CADAAD conference and hope that it offers the
reader some novel insights into this new and exciting interdisciplinary field of
enquiry.
Chapter summaries
In this volume, Simon McKerrell and Lyndon C. S. Way examine the scholarly
positioning of a project that considers music as multimodal discourse. They offer
an epistemological framework for the multimodal analysis of music that engages
with ideas from CDA, ethnomusicology and popular music studies, multimo-
dality, MCDS and linguistics. This first chapter engages with the question of why
multimodal discourses are so powerful in our lives, and how we might better
understand them as communicative events.
Theo van Leeuwen critically analyses how sound and music are used to con-
vey corporate identities and values through audiovisual logos. Investigating the
xvi Preface
audiovisual logos of a range of IT corporations, the chapter argues that they

use ‘heroic’ motifs with a long history, first in classical music, then in advertis-
ing and news theme music, but refurbish them with new, chime-like timbres
and electronic whooshes. Thus ascending melodies position the corporations as
expansive and dynamic; electronic drones, evoking outer space, position them as
global; and metallic, tinkling timbres suggest technological perfection, yet also
imbue the themes with new age cool, with a human touch added by traditional
instrumentation. This creates continuity with the brass and drums fanfares of
nationalistic power, and change through the mix of technical perfection, pristine
nature and individual lifestyle freedom that can also be seen, for instance, in
advertisements where sleek cars drive through empty landscapes, or satellite-
like windows float in an ethereal world of blue hazes and white butterflies.
The musical analysis is benchmarked against the normative discourses that
inform this form of communication, as expressed, especially, in the websites and
statements of the designers and companies who produce this form of commu-
nication, and in the rebranding rationales that inform the creation of specific
audiovisual logos. Finally, the chapter shows how ringtones provide very similar
melodic motifs and timbres (with titles like ‘iphone’, ‘google’, ‘apple’ and so on)
for personal use, thus bringing connections between corporate and personal
identities and values into our everyday sonic experience.
Johnny Wingstedt considers van Leeuwen’s (2005: 106) position that ‘discourses
consist of a version of social practice plus ideas about it and attitudes to it’ and
discusses and exemplifies how such ideas and attitudes are expressed by combin-
ing the modes of music, voice and speech in the advertising jingle. In examining
discursive aspects of the jingle, different semiotic resources and choices must be
taken into consideration compared with looking at speech alone. To illustrate this,
three jingles are analysed taking Halliday’s (1978) metafunctions of communica-
tion, the textual, ideational and interpersonal functions, as a starting point.
On a textual/structural level, musical resources such as metre, period, melody
and harmony provide structural frameworks for targeted language components
to achieve salience. One example is how cyclical patterns make repetition of key
words (overlexicalization) possible to an extent not available in speech alone.
On the ideational/content level, resources such as instrumentation, tempo and
rhythm contribute metaphorically descriptive qualities of participants and actions,
akin to what van Leeuwen (2008) calls eligibility conditions. Instrumentation, voice
character, genre and style inform aspects of gender, location, cultural setting and
so on. An important feature for building brand identity is ‘recognizability’, which
in music is often achieved through melody. The jingle can thus be seen as an
Preface xvii
entity, signifying/denoting a product. This can be described as a kind of nominali-

zation. As Machin and Mayr (2012) point out, ‘nominalisations can themselves
become stable entities that will enter common usage’.
Interpersonally, melodic pitch and direction (musical ‘prosody’) regu-
late aspects of attitude and energy. Metrical and tonal regularities or irregu-
larities engage and activate the listener by creating or breaking expectations.
In this, music performs what van Leeuwen (1999) describes as sound acts.
Instrumentation, how music ‘dress up’ (or down), and musical genres carry cul-
tural or subcultural associations to attitudes, values and ideologies. Advantage is
also taken of music’s aptness for expressing emotions and narratives (Wingstedt,
2008, 2010). A complex interplay of semiotic resources, including expression
styles and production techniques, combine to establish a sense of personal
address and modality (aspects of ‘truth’), including how music can convey dis-
courses on social status and authenticity (Machin, 2010).
John E. Richardson’s chapter is founded on an interest in the ways that music
represents and constructs antagonistic political identities. However, the vast
majority of work examining identity and politics in musicology, and in popu-
lar music studies in particular, presumes and sometimes explicitly argues that
music is personally and socially therapeutic – that since music enacts social
identities it is a force for good, particularly in relation to marginalized groups.
This chapter will bring together two areas of critical examination: the sociologi-
cal analysis of fascist music; and the concept of recontextualization developed in
discourse analytic literature. Recontextualization is a specific intertextual rela-
tionship, wherein the contents of one text reappear in another text. Following
Reisigl and Wodak (2001, 2009), if a textual element is taken from a specific con-
text we argue it is decontextualized; when this same element is inserted into a
new context, we argue it is recontextualized. Meanings are formed in use; and so,
through this process of ‘textual borrowing’, (partly) new meanings are produced.
Whilst this idea has been discussed in classical musicology (e.g. the appropria-
tion of Hellenism in German romantic music) and popular music studies (e.g.
sampling, remixing, mash-up), the examination tends towards the descriptive
rather than close analytic detail. This chapter will examine three ways in which
recontextualization occurs in fascist song and music – through appropriation;
through interpolation; and through ideological realignment – and will explore
the functions that this, and the performance of song and music more generally,
serves to fascist cultural projects.
Lyndon Way critically examines subversive articulations in popular music
commodities. Protest songs not only enable musicians to express social concerns
xviii Preface
in the public domain, they also shape musicians’ personal narratives of authen-
ticity about themselves, their fans and others. This chapter analyses how authen-
ticity and subversion are articulated in protest music videos. After Turkey’s
2013 June protests, a number of Turkish and international musicians have used
semiotic resources from the protests in official videos. One of these is analysed
here to reveal how musicians use protest to express authenticity, opposition to
authority and subversion. Visuals, lyrics and musical sounds are analysed using
MCDS to lyrics (van Leeuwen, 1995, 1996), visuals (Kress and van Leeuwen,
1996; Machin, 2007) and sounds (van Leeuwen, 1999; Machin, 2010). The chap-
ter demonstrates how a full range of semiotic resources are used to articulate
popular politics, despite being presented as serious and authentic. This case
study extends the theorization of authenticity and subversion in music and con-
siders music’s likely place in political debates about politics and democracy.
Laura Filardo-Llamas’s chapter follows new trends in Critical Discourse
Studies which focus on understanding how meaning can be made in multi-
modal communication, and how this can be related to given social practices (van
Leeuwen, 2012; Machin, 2013). In this chapter, Laura analyses a set of Spanish
songs produced in Spain between 2004 and 2008 with the aim of fighting against
domestic violence. She hypothesizes that institutional discourse opposing
domestic violence is recontextualized in these songs. The fact that songs (and the
videos used with them) are made up of different semiotic resources – including
text, music, and image – help in spreading the message in a way that cannot be
done by institutional language (cf. Machin, 2013).
To prove this, a cognitive approach to discourse studies is followed. Two lin-
guistic approaches are considered in the analysis: (1) the textual construction
of a discourse world, following Werth’s (1999) Text-World-Theory, and (2) the
association of those discourse worlds to ideological beliefs, which are identified
by placing those mental representations on three axes: time, space and modality.
The virtual and cognitive space determined by those axes is the discourse space
(Chilton, 2004, 2005), and the location of entities within that discourse space
explains how those are (ideologically) related to the speaker.
The meaning potential of this text-determined discourse space is widened
because it is integrated with two other modes of communication: music and
images. The analysis also incorporates tools aimed at uncovering the meaning
potential of the images used in the videos (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) and the
one of music (Machin, 2010; van Leeuwen, 2012). It is argued that the combina-
tion of meanings stemming from these three semiotic resources results in a new
blended mental space (Mark and Turner, 2002) where institutional discourse
Preface xix
about domestic violence is recontextualized. It is also argued that this combina-

tion of semiotic resources becomes more communicatively effective, thus mak-
ing it easier for people to understand – and believe – the message. In this way,
these anti-domestic-violence songs become an important element in the wider
context of the socio-political practice in which they are embedded.
David Machin and Göran Eriksson observe that a number of scholars have
begun to show how working-class people’s behaviours and lifestyles are increasingly
being devalued in the media (Lyle, 2008; Lockyer, 2010; Bennett, 2013; Eriksson,
2015). Represented as part of a flawed and problematic culture, the working classes
often appear as repulsive, silly or excessive and as a consequence are ridiculed or
humiliated. Programme participants are often presented as insular and as lacking
cultural and social resources necessary for a more proper (middle-class) life. This
has been linked to wider political and ideological shifts which represent the poor
and unemployed as a moral underclass (Levitas, 2005). Rather than these people
being viewed as part of wider structural inequalities where government policy and
economic systems have responsibility, it is their negative characteristics and flawed
characters that are foregrounded as part of legitimizing a neoliberal ideological cli-
mate where the individual is increasingly responsible for their own welfare.
This chapter is interested in the way that reality TV plays a role in this delig-
itimization of the working class. Specifically it seeks to contribute to the litera-
ture in the subject by showing the important role of music and sound in the way
that characters, settings and narratives are set up and evaluated, often playing a
central role in the kinds of evaluations that are taking place.
The chapter carries out a multimodal CDA of a docu-soap titled Böda
Camping, aired on Swedish television since 2010. The programme follows the
activities at a busy campsite in Sweden during the summer. It focuses on the
campers’ daily life at the campground, demonstrating the routines, (implicit)
rules and norms guiding this life. This particular programme is part of a trend
of reality TV appearing in the late 2000s in Sweden (cf. Eriksson, 2015) that
are characterized by the use of representational strategies that ridicule working-
class participants’ behaviours, ideas and lifestyles (Eriksson, 2015).
In fact this discourse is something much more recent in Sweden which has
for many decades celebrated a culture of ‘Folkhemmet’ which emphasis the
absolute centrality of social equality, social welfare and social interdependence.
This discourse is part of a process of the legitimization of shift away from welfare
and equality, and it is no coincidence that this is taking place now in Sweden
(Östbergand Andersson, 2013: 16) as neoliberal policies and ideas begin to
take hold in a county which in only a few years as shifted from one of the most
xx Preface
centrally controlled to one of the most deregulated in sectors such as education

and health care. Such reality TV shows play an important role in the naturaliza-
tion and legitimation of these discourses.
The chapter looks at three sequences from one episode of Böda Camping.
In this particular episode the topic is rules of the campsite. They show the way
that characters are set up as overly obsessive, petty and small minded, especially
given the fairly modest and often cluttered setting of the campsite. Unrelated
sequences are edited together, or resequenced, to create ‘drama’ and comedy
and to make the participants appear silly. Music and sound editing here play an
important role in providing character definitions and continuity. And this forms
the key part of the analytic focus. We draw on the wider literature on film music,
on music and meaning in psychology, and from social semiotics and bring this
together to carry out a multimodal CDA of these sequences.
Rusty Barrett’s contribution examines the ways in which Mayan hip hop
music challenges colonial and racist discourse. The emergence of Mayan hip hop
is part of the Maya Movement, a linguistic and cultural revitalization movement
that emphasizes indigenous rights and the preservation of Mayan languages and
culture in Guatemala. This chapter focuses on the music of Tz’utu Baktun Kan,
who raps in Tz’utujil Maya and performs in a musical style that draws heavily
on global forms of hip hop. Hegemonic colonial discourse in Guatemala repre-
sents the contemporary Maya as disconnected both from their pre-Columbian
ancestors and from modern society. Maya music that is viewed as authentic
or traditional reproduces this discourse. This music is played on colonial era
instruments, rarely involves singing, and involves dances with highly restricted
movement. Tz’utu’s music challenges this discourse by combining the conven-
tions of modern hip hop with pre-Columbian musical and linguistic forms. For
example, the linguistic structure of this music uses traditional forms of Mayan
poetry similar to those found in pre-Conquest hieroglyphic texts. Similarly, the
music incorporates pre-Columbian instruments, such as conch shells and deer-
skin drums. The structure of Tz’utu’s music is viewed as authentically ‘Maya’
because the songs are composed in collaboration with traditional Mayan sha-
mans, or daykeepers. The daykeeper performs a burning ritual asking the Mayan
ancestors and natural spirits to send him hip hop lyrics, which Tz’utu then puts
to music. The belief that the lyrics are written by pre-Columbian ancestors is
reinforced by the highly traditional poetic structure found in the lyrics. The lyr-
ics of Tz’utu’s music reflect the discourse of the Maya movement in promoting
awareness and respect for cultural traditions, such as understanding the Mayan
calendar or being familiar with works of Mayan literature. The songs are taught
Preface xxi
to children in a hip hop school that Tz’utu helped found. The school aims to
teach traditional Mayan cultural values and promote the use of Mayan languages
while also teaching art, rapping and break dancing. The various art forms taught
in the school produce a multimodal discourse that challenges the racist and colo-
nial discourses that dominate understandings of Maya identity in Guatemala.
Matthew Ord’s chapter uses the notion of sonic metaphor to consider the
contribution of recording techniques such as echo, reverb and panning to the
construction of countercultural meanings in the folk-rock recordings of the
1960s and 1970s. The performance of folksong in the United Kingdom was inti-
mately associated with leftist cultural-political movements in the early 1960s,
figuring prominently in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the trade
union movement. In the folk-club, revivalists developed a performance aesthetic
which emphasized directness and personal authenticity and tacitly critiqued the
conventions of mainstream pop.
With the emergence of folk labels such as Topic, the revival produced recorded
texts which sonically translated revivalist values, using the semiotic resources
of recording to express counterhegemonic subject-positions. The starkly realist
sound of these recordings contrasted significantly with the increasingly complex
sonic texts produced in pop, which frequently used the latest studio techniques
to explore affect and inner experience. As pop’s status as a popular art form rose,
this experimental approach to sound became strongly associated with the pro-
gressive aims of the global counterculture.
In the folk-rock records of the late 1960s, traditional texts were interpolated
into multimodal texts which combined textual, musical and sonic discourses
to create rich imaginative spaces. This chapter applies the concept of modal-
ity as outlined by van Leeuwen to explore how the management of sonic detail
afforded by mic placement and processing techniques affects the interpre-
tive affordances generated by recorded song. This approach is then developed
using Zbikowski’s work on conceptual blending to explore the construction of
meaning in the blended conceptual ‘spaces’ – musical, textual and sonic – that
combine in song texts, and how folk-rock records used mixing and processing
techniques to reinterpret traditional song in ways which reflected countercul-
tural values and identities.
Lyndon C. S. Way and Simon McKerrell
March 2016
Acknowledgements
There are many people to thank for contributing in one way or another to this
book. We would both like to thank the good people at CADAAD, such as Chris
Hart, who organize great conferences and were receptive to a panel on ‘Music
as Discourse’. Without that opportunity, the idea of this book would never have
taken root. We would also like to thank all the individual contributors to the
book who have contributed interesting, insightful, challenging chapters, and
those other scholars whose interest in music as an essential part of social dis-
course have contributed to the ideas and intellectual foundations of this volume.
We would also like to thank Theo van Leeuwen whose ideas have inspired
much of what is written in this book. He is one of few scholars, who have
taken discourse analysis beyond the confines of studying written language and
explored other modes of communication. We would also like to thank David
Machin not only for his ideas about music as discourse but also for his advice
through most stages in this book. Many thanks also to all those at Bloomsbury
including Gurdeep, Paul and Andrew who happily committed to publishing this
edited collection in the Advances in Semiotics Series.
And on a personal level, we would like to thank our families, the Ways – Ayla,
Erim and Kerem – and the McKerrells – Stephanie, Niamh and Kinnon – for
their patience and (mostly good) humour in the gestation, consultation, produc-
tion and dissemination of this volume. As ever, any errors, factual or critical that
remain, are ours (collectively).
1
Understanding Music as Multimodal

Discourse
Simon McKerrell and Lyndon C. S. Way
Introduction
Music has been studied from a wide variety of perspectives across fields as
diverse as anthropology, ethnomusicology, musicology, semiotics, sociology,
philosophy, popular music studies and psychology, amongst others. Each field
has its own approaches, advantages and interests, sometimes taking music as
the object of study, and sometimes using music to examine other, often social,
topics such as class, race or gender. This book, however, provides what is a rela-
tively unique approach to music stemming from the perspective of the broader
principles and concerns of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and social semi-
otics. Essentially, CDA examines linguistic choices to reveal broader ideologi-
cal discourses articulated in texts to reveal what kinds of social relations of
power, inequalities and interests are perpetuated, generated or legitimated both
explicitly and implicitly in text (van Dijk, 1993; Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001).
Some scholars of CDA have pointed to the need to look more at how ideolo-
gies are communicated not only in political speeches and news reports, but also
through more cultural media like video, posters, computer games and toys (van
Leeuwen, 1999; Machin and Richardson, 2012). These same scholars have also
drawn on certain tools, approaches and assumptions in multimodality to show
how discourse and ideology can be revealed by closer analysis of communi-
cation in images, visual design, television, newspapers, monuments, toys and
also in and through music. Approaching music as multimodal discourse is a
relatively recent innovation which is not only informed by various disciplinary
perspectives, but is also embedded within CDA which views music as a part of
communication often inextricably set within a variety of other modes used to
2 Simon McKerrell and Lyndon C. S. Way
articulate ideology. In this book therefore, we seek to contribute to this body of

work through a set of chapters which considers music as a communicative ele-
ment embedded within multimodal discourse alongside modes such as text, still
images, moving images, colour, gesture and other sounds, all of which contrib-
ute to articulating ideological discourses in society.
Music, discourse and meanings
The literature on the study of music and social ideas is contested, plural and messy,
drawing on many different theoretical and ideological frameworks. However, the
study of musical sounds in the social sciences has a long yet thin strand of schol-
arship. There has of course been much more research focused upon the social
positioning, uses and interpretation of music in society, but the strand of work
that engages with musical sound itself in the social science tradition has been
a rather narrow one. A number of scholars have noted this trend (Frith, 1993),
with Goodwin for instance remarking that musical sound is ‘. . . usually relegated
to the status of sound track’ (1993: 4). Indeed since the development of the ‘New
Musicology’ and the increasing prevalence of various types of cultural musicol-
ogies in the 1990s and throughout the 2000s, musical sound itself has been in
retreat in the published outputs across most musicological disciplines. Often for
very good reasons, mostly tied to the shift towards relativism from modernism,
and with the spreading conviction across genres, that musical meaning is made
in the mind of the listener(s). This was undoubtedly necessary to rebalance music
studies away from its restrictive focus upon classical music and the musical work
as an object (often simply analysed as a visual object via the musical score), and
can be witnessed in the massive growth of culturally sensitive analyses of musical
communities, nations, scenes, genres, politics, commodification, and globaliza-
tion across music studies.
We think there is now the beginnings of a slow pivot back towards musi-
cal sound and its role in understanding music in society, but with a relativist’s
understanding and attention to the importance of analysis that places musi-
cal sounds and structures within the complexity of social life (see for instance
Berger, 1999; Tenzer and Roeder, 2011; Tagg, 2012; Moore, 2013). Although a
broad essentialization, much of musicology’s focus as a discipline has been on
the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of music as a cultural object, whereas considering music
as multimodal communication shifts the emphasis firmly onto the ‘how’ and
the ‘when’ of music as communication. That is to say that this collection takes
Understanding Music as Multimodal Discourse 3
a position that approaches musical sound as just one part of human commu-
nication, and as such opens up musical discourse within a broader framework
focused upon how different modes relate and communicate discourses of power,
agency and social positioning.
Allan Moore in his (2013) Song Means and elsewhere in his publications (see
e.g. Moore, 1993; Moore and Dockwray, 2008; Dockwray and Moore, 2010)
offers a robust consideration of music as a form of discourse. Moore’s position
is not that of a social semiotician, but that of a musicologist of popular music
whose work engages very broadly with analytical traditions across and beyond
musicology, narrative, metaphor, embodiment and discourse. Moore’s approach
is perhaps closest to our own in terms of understanding how the mechanism for
musical meaning works; he recognizes that the body is foundational for meaning
and that cross-domain mapping shows us that we have the ability to make sense
of the world by understanding unfamiliar ideas or sounds in terms of familiar
ideas. Moore shows that this therefore destabilizes any notion of formalism in
musical analysis because he undermines the idea that music is best understood
in and of itself (Moore, 2013: 14). As he suggests, musical sound is more seman-
tically ambiguous than other modes like still images or written text. It affords
certain meanings in society, and it affords some meanings over others, and not
all meanings are possible. Some songs afford a narrow range of possible mean-
ings through their interrelationship of music and language, while others are
‘under-coded’ and afford many more possible meanings. Moore’s own system
of analysis, is a very strong model for understanding music as a communicative
act. This volume takes a stance that is different from that of Moore’s because
we approach music as a communicative affordance from a discourse analytical
tradition, valuing musical sound primarily for its communicative power and as
an attempt to better understand its collocation and relations with other modes
as part of wider multimodal discourse.
On the subject of the relationship between popular music (hereinafter pop)
and politics specifically, there is considerable debate which has produced no real
consensus among scholars (Hesmondhalgh and Negus, 2002: 7). Some schol-
ars have been highly optimistic as regard the ability of music to represent and
promote socio-political interests or particular cultural values (Shoup, 1997;
Lorraine, 2006; Korczynski, 2014). However, other scholars have rather pointed
to its limitations. Frith (1981, 1988) and Street (1986) highlight how produc-
tion and promotion, by large corporations, along with social and consumption
contexts constrain potential meanings in pop. Though constrained by its insti-
tutional context, the music industry does not necessarily control music ‘unless
the stock market is offended’ (Street, 1986: 107), resulting in subversive politics
being a part of some pop. Though countercultural pop is incompatible with con-
ventional politics (Street, 1986; Frith, 1988: 472), it can articulate some politics
better than others such as nationalist struggles (some Black music), the poli-
tics of leisure (youth cults and gay disco) and has been powerful in particular
ways such as in shifting the social discourse on gender (Frith, 1988: 472). Even
when pop is political, it tends to be highly populist rather than about specific
issues (Street, 1986; Way, 2016). These studies suggest lyrics are highly ambigu-
ous and the way they are performed, and marketed, plays a big role in how they
are received. Pop musicians often allow a sense of being anti-mainstream and
anti-authority within an ambiguous counterculturalism, where this is indirectly
connoted rather than specified, knowing that their fans will value this coun-
terculturalism whilst simultaneously holding down mainstream jobs and with
broader personal investments in ‘mainstream’ capitalist society.
Researchers from various disciplines note that much of pop’s political power
lies with listeners, meanings being ambiguous and open to individual interpre-
tation. Hebdige (1979) demonstrates how music is used by some as part of a
self-imposed exile from mainstream culture. Street (1986: 7) claims that pop’s
politics are related to ‘the way private feelings are tapped by the song [and] are
linked to the public world’. Grossberg (1987) argues that pop’s politics are played
out in the activities associated with different tastes of music. Similarly, Huq
(2002: 96) argues that rave music is less about conventional politics and more
about the politics of pleasure.
There is also much debate concerning pop and authenticity. To understand
the discourses of authenticity, which are particular to each genre of music, is to
understand the deeply emotional shared connections we have to music. Today,
authenticity across many musical genres has shifted from being understood as
located in musical objects, to being constructed in and through music as a social
discourse. Much has been written on the subject including its usefulness (see for
instance Redhead and Street, 1989; Taylor, 1991; Peterson, 1997; Moore, 2002;
Burns, 2007). Recent studies have found it useful to view authenticity as the qual-
ity of ‘sincerity’ or ‘playing from the heart’ that listeners ascribe to performers
(Moore, 2002: 210). How this is assigned is socially, historically and genre con-
tingent. Historically, the scholarship of authenticity had its roots in the Romantic
tradition where artistic creativity was seen as coming from the soul, as opposed
to something which emerges from society (see Machin, 2010). These beliefs con-
tributed to the dichotomy of authentic versus ‘establishment’, allowing some pop
to link authenticity with anti-establishment discourses. Rock’s authenticity, for
example, is still very often located in countercultural ideologies (Frith, 1981;

Machin, 2010). Gilbert and Pearson (1999: 164–165) note that 1980s’ authentic
rock entailed singers speaking the truth of their (and others’) situations repre-
senting the culture from which s/he comes and the presence of a specific type of
instrumentation. Indie rock differs, where authenticity is about purity not found
in ‘high-tech manipulations of large scale production’ and ‘defined in opposi-
tion to the commercially influenced (Hibbett, 2005: 64). Alternatively, hip hop
authenticity is articulated through lyrics which reveal personal truths, repre-
senting a geographical background linked to lived experiences in predominantly
Black urban neighbourhoods (Fraley, 2009: 43). Artists, record companies and
their managers use semiotic resources such as music, looks and styles to articu-
late these discourses. Musical authenticity, then, is today properly conceived of
as a social process of continual renegotiation of the shared ‘truths’ and canoni-
cal values of a particular musical community. In this collection, we position
authenticity as a still essential concept for understanding music as multimodal
communication and Way (this volume) examines various types of authenticity
articulated in a protest music video. We believe well-informed CDA can add to
the study of music through the systematic analysis of music inherent in CDA’s
approach to textual analysis. So it is this approach we turn to next.
Critical Discourse Analysis
CDA and Halliday’s functional grammar starts with the idea that liguistic
choices made by text producers reveal obvious and not so obvious discourses in
texts. By discourses, we mean ‘complex bundle[s] of simultaneous and sequen-
tial interrelated linguistic acts’, which are thematically interrelated (Wodak,
2001: 66). These discourses can be thought of as models of the world and project
certain social values and ideas which contribute to the (re)production of social
life. Compositional choices in texts have political repercussions (Kress, 1985: 3).
For example, naming a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization a
‘freedom fighter’ or a ‘terrorist’ carries with it political significance. Texts recon-
textualize social practice (representations) which are transformed dependent ‘on
the interests, goals and values of the context into which the practice is recontex-
tualised’ (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999: 96). CDA also emphasizes an exami-
nation of context. This is because CDA perceives discourse as a form of social
practice or action, something people do to, or for, each other (van Leeuwen,
1993). It is closely interconnected with other elements of social life (Fairclough,
2003: 3) where ‘… discourse constitutes social practice and is at the same time
constituted by it’ (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999: 92). Due to this close dialecti-
cal relationship, both text and context are important in any conception of CDA
(Fairclough, 1995: 62; Fairclough and Wodak, 1997).
CDA also has a political stance: one which is critical to those who abuse power.
It has been argued that all scholarly discourse and textual analysis are socio-
politically situated, selective, limited, partial and thereby biased (Fairclough,
2003; Richardson, 2007). Choosing a critical approach provides a scientific basis
for a critical questioning of social life in moral and political terms, e.g. in terms
of social justice and power’ (Fairclough, 2003: 15). So, research should question
and not support unjust aspects of social life. According to Wodak,
CDA may be defined as fundamentally concerned with analysing opaque as well

as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and
control as manifested in language. In other words, CDA aims to investigate criti-
cally social inequalities as it is expressed, signalled, constituted, legitimised and
so on by language use (or in discourse). (2001: 2)
Here we see CDA’s concern with relations between language and power, a sen-
timent echoed by many CDA scholars (van Leeuwen, 1993; Fairclough and
Wodak, 1997; Bishop and Jaworski, 2003; Richardson, 2007). In fact, CDA
prioritizes a political commitment. Van Dijk (1993) highlights that scholars
who apply CDA start by identifying a social problem with a linguistic aspect,
choose the perspective of those who suffer the most, and then critically ana-
lyse those in power, those who are responsible and those who have the means
and opportunity to solve such problems (cited in Richardson, 2007: 1; Wodak,
2001: 1).
Most CDA studies concentrate on news and political speeches. It has been
argued that political discourses should be investigated not just in these but
in entertainment media (Machin and Richardson, 2012) where they are also
disseminated and legitimized. This is because the press, broadcast news and
internet news websites are only some of the outlets through which political ide-
ology is circulated. Research using CDA has demonstrated how cultural texts
(broadly defined) such as war monuments (Abousnnouga and Machin, 2010),
video games (Machin and van Leeuwen, 2005), sound (Roderick, 2013), colour
(Zhang and O’Halloran, 2013), clothing (Bouvier, forthcoming) and television
reality programmes (Eriksson, 2015) can construct ideology. In fact, in 1920s
Europe, ‘art and architecture, as well as music, were used as central parts of com-
municating fascist ideology’ (Machin and Richardson, 2012: 331). These studies
and others use CDA for examining not just written language, but other modes
of communication as well.
As far back as 1996, Kress and van Leeuwen in Reading Images (1996) and
Multimodal Discourse (2001) demonstrated how meanings in texts are created
from not just written language but through other semiotic resources such as
visual features, material objects and architecture. According to Machin (2013),
these two works were groundbreaking because they introduced the idea to lin-
guists that visual features, material objects and architecture create meaning, not
just written and spoken language. These books also emphasize that communi-
cation was moving from monomodal to multimodal, partly due to technology.
Overall, their work is attributed with pointing ‘to the possibility of a social semi-
otic approach to different forms of communication that allowed not only deeper
analysis, but as in linguistics, a more systematic level of description. And this is
where its strength lies’ (Machin, 2013: 348).
Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies (MCDS), with its origins in CDA and
Halliday’s (1985) functional grammar, assumes linguistic and visual choices
reveal broader discourses articulated in texts (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001). In
this collection, we define a mode not to be corollarous with a channel of human
perception (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) but as a socially agreed channel of
communication. Analysing texts multimodally can reveal how various semiotic
resources, or modes, play a role in articulating ideological discourses (Kress,
2010; Machin, 2013). In practical terms, MCDS gives us a chance to take advan-
tage of CDA’s systematic analysis, that is, by ‘taking the power of description so
useful for drawing out buried ideologies in linguistic-based CDS to be applied to
other communicative modes’ (Machin, 2013: 348). MCDS has the advantage of
revealing the way each mode works to articulate discourses ‘on a particular occa-
sion, in a particular text’ (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001: 29). Machin and Mayr
argue that the task of MCDS is to draw out the details of how broader discourses
or the ‘scripts’, the ‘doings’ of discourse are communicated and how the different
modes play different roles (2012). According to Machin, ‘What is of foremost
importance in MCDS is the way that different kinds of semiotic resources can
be used to communicate the scripts of discourses in this process of deletion,
addition, substitution, and evaluation, that is recontextualisations (2013: 353). It
is our belief that musical sounds also play a role in recontextualizations’. In this
book, the various chapter authors use the MCDS approach in various ways and
to varying degrees, though each have one factor in common: analysing music
critically and in great detail. This allows the study of music to harness the critical
analytical potential of CDA.
Music and multimodal analysis
Until very recently, there has been very little attention paid to the social semiot-
ics of sound within multimodal texts. Multimodal analysis and indeed social
semiotic treatments of music have been theorized primarily upon the static and
interrelated modes of written text and image. Much of this work in multimodal-
ity has relied on homologous relationships frozen in time, although embedded
in complex social life. While we acknowledge that our own role as interpreters of
signs changes in different contexts and times, much of the literature of multimo-
dality considers fairly static texts such as posters, paintings or road signs. This is
one reason why sound, and more specifically music, has not been fully theorized
in multimodality and its significant social semiotic power is largely absent from
many analyses of important social discourses such as those about power, ethnic-
ity, race, gender and nationalism. Musical experience is very often multimodal,
has a powerfully affective role in contemporary society, and has inspired a wide
range of semiotic, aesthetic and mystical theories of how it makes meaning in
people’s lives. Moreover, much of the discourse of multimodal semiotics has
until recently, relied upon linguistic models of musical meaning.
Much of music’s power lies in its use as multimodal communication. It is not
just lyrics which lend songs their meaning, but images and musical sound as
well. The music industry, governments and artists have always relied on posters,
films and album covers to enhance and make specific, music’s semiotic mean-
ings. This book considers musical sounds as one element of larger multimodal
texts, examining the interacting meaning potential of semiotic resources such
as rhythm, instrumentation, pitch, tonality, melody and their interrelationships
with lyrics, written text, image, colour and other modes of communication,
drawing upon, and extending the conceptual territory of social semiotics. And it
is social semiotics which reminds us of the importance of context in the making
of meanings. It is context and our personal auditory experience which shape the
sonic affordances in multimodal communicative acts. We believe that music and
sound are not trivial concerns for scholars of communication and media, but
that they play an important role both as a discrete mode(s) in itself, but perhaps
even more crucially, in dialogue with other modes of communication such as
image and written text. In some ways, music and sound as a mode of communi-
cation allows multimodal texts to account for the limitations of linguistic affor-
dances, often bringing the most affective aspects to multimodal texts. Music can
produce broad ‘unnuanced’ emotions in us such as joy and fear, as well as simul-
taneously signal more nuanced memories and emotions attached to individual
people and relationships in our lives (see Cook, 2001). Therefore, music within
multimodal communication often brings with it particular affordances that are
either difficult to express via more propositional linguistic texts or images, or in
some cases, impossible to express in other modes.
The literature that examines music as, and within, multimodal discourse is
still a relatively novel area of research. However there have been some signifi-
cant texts in this direction that in our view begins with van Leeuwen’s examina-
tion of Speech, Music, Sound (1999). Van Leeuwen (1999) identifies six major
domains of sound which contribute to meanings. These domains do not dictate
what listeners hear but identify experiential meaning potential of the sounds
listeners experience (van Leeuwen, 1999: 94). This points to the importance of
context in being able to make sense of semiotic affordances (meaning poten-
tials), something critics of video analysis also note (Goodwin, 1993; Shuker,
2001; Railton and Watson, 2011). Musicians manipulate such domains as per-
spective, connoting social distance, music’s adherence (or not) to regularity,
how sounds interact with each other, melody, voice quality, timbre and the
modality of sounds. Machin (2010) focuses on these ideas and on some of his
own and examines how music operates within multimodal texts. Elsewhere,
Machin and Richardson (2012) analyse two pieces of music associated with two
pre-1945 European fascist movements – the German NSDAP and the British
Union of Fascists. Through an analysis of melody, arrangements, sound quali-
ties, rhythms and lyrics, they demonstrate how semiotic resources communi-
cate discourses of a machine-like certainty about a vision for a new society
based on discipline, conformity and the might of the nation including unity,
common identity and purpose. Their article identifies how sounds communi-
cate specific ideas, values and attitudes. McKerrell (2012) analyses the role of
the lyrical content, context, performance and subsequent reception and media-
tization of a football song in the press to demonstrate how cultural performance
can construct sectarian difference in the Scottish public imagination. McKerrell
(2015) then goes on to examine the construction of social semiotic space and
social distance in sectarian YouTube videos. He offers a theoretical model for
the metaphorical understanding of melodic and harmonic musical sounds in
relation to social distance where proximity to the root chord, or most diatoni-
cally stable chords, construct notions of Self and the Other. This shows how
the musical sound using the harmonic or melodic distance from the tonic or
root of the music as a reading of social distance can be multimodally collocated
with the text and images to produce a multimodal text whose combined social
semiotic meaning is geater than the sum of its parts. Similarly, musical motifs
can be so strongly correlated with textual or visual signs that they can become
a ‘multimodal synecdoche’; where a discreet sign in one mode can signify a
specific semantic meaning in another. For example, the Nokia message alert
is now widely heard as a multimodal synecdoche that signifies the owner has
a new message on their mobile phone, recognizable to many, simply through a
unique combination of musical notes.
Van Leeuwen (2012b) argues that music can, and should, be analysed as
discourse. He examines a range of sonatas, advertising jingles and news sig-
nature tunes. Power, Dillane and Devereux (2012) explore how the singer
Morrissey has represented the struggles of the proletariat in a deep textual
reading that reveals a complex counterhegemonic stance on the issue of social
class. This is illustrated through a detailed semiotic, musical and contextual
reading of a Morrissey song, examining the harmonic and melodic struc-
ture, tempo and instrumentation in the recorded song and the visuals in the
video, as well as a socio-historical and political contextualization of the era
and the performer himself. Way (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016) applies van
Leeuwen’s (1999) categorization of sounds to a wide range of political popu-
lar music videos. These studies demonstrate how music commodities work
multimodally to articulate not only political discourses, but also discourses of
authenticity. This short list of key articles and books in the arena of music as
multimodal discourse studies shows that there is much work to be done both
in bringing the best conceptual territory of the various disciplines to bear in
considering music as part of a larger multimodal communicative discourse,
but also that musically, the analysis has been thus far limited to popular, hip
hop, protest, folk, vernacular and advertising or incidental musics, and that
the social semiotics of sound within multimodal discourse of many musical
genres have not yet been considered. It is timely therefore to begin to think
about what music does uniquely as a mode and relate this more overtly to
CDA. This will have the dual benefit of both rehabilitating music into wider
scholarly debates about social power and communication and simultaneously
open up social semiotics and MCDS to powerful new ways of understanding
human communication.
Talk and text in musicology
Musicology itself has a long and highly complex historiography that places
text and talk alongside, or sometimes entirely distinct from music. There have
been various attempts to understand the relationships between music and other
modes in musicology (see e.g. Tagg, 1979; Middleton, 1990; Feld and Fox, 1994;
Leppert, 1995). But crucially, because of its focus on music as an object, the
formalism inherent in the musicological inheritance from analytic aesthetics
and musicological analysis is fundamentally at odds with much CDA and social
semiotic approches to analysis. Much has been made of the semiotic connec-
tions between music and language (e.g. Feld and Fox, 1994), and they share
some systemic attributes. However, fundamentally, our position is that music is
not a language and as such we must pay careful attention to the particular modal
attributes in music that mark it out from other modes and give it such emotional
and affective power in multimodal texts.
Much semiotic theory of music has started from the position that music can
either be treated as a form of linguistic communication or is analogous to the
extent that it should be treated with linguistic models (Powers, 1980; Feld, 1984;
Feld and Fox, 1994). Good examples of this lie in much of the work on deep and
surface structures in musical grammars, Schenkerian analysis, Bakhtinian appli-
cations of narrative to musical scores, and almost all structuralist approaches to
formal analysis that derive from Saussurian ideas. Musicology has had a very
long history of treating music as an object, which has largely been enabled by
visual analysis of musical scores. This focus on the visual has encouraged the
belief that ‘…what is in the score wholly specifies music’s identity and con-
tent’ (Leech-Wilkinson, 2013: 219). In fact, the evidence from discourse about
music, as well as the affective experience of musical discourse itself, supports the
idea that music is not ‘a language’ in the linguist’s sense. That is, the commonly
accepted sense of a language as a form of communication of propositional con-
cepts and ideas (Cross, 2011), but that music and language share foundational
sensorimotor and somatic processes that produce understanding, meaning and
emotions.1
If one therefore regards musical sound as a distinct mode from sung lan-
guage (i.e. in a song or a music video) another problem arises which is whether
sounds we hear are always part of the same musical mode: Do two separate, con-
trary tunes heard simultaneously suggest two different modes, or are they part
of the same complex mode? Can non-pitched, non-lexical vocal sound count as
‘music’ or part of the linguistic ‘text’? One critical and certain aspect of musical
sound however is that, when audible, it is always heard through time, making it
entirely subject to our notions of temporality, and also forcing us to recognize
that musical sound, unlike an image or a written word, cannot be perceived
statically through time, but is always heard in time. Long climaxes in music or
the build up of dynamic tension in a film soundtrack really do matter in a way

that means that understanding what has come before, and what may come in the
immediate future, all figure in the multimodal understanding of the present. It is
always disappearing from our semiotic perception and is constantly in a chang-
ing dialogue with other modes. Music’s very immateriality makes it both pow-
erful and deeply temporal, meaning that no multimodal analysis that includes
music can really ignore the narrative semiotics of how time, and our semiotic
perception of it, changes our perception of a multimodal text. This supports a
definition of musical sound as a single mode of communication, because it can
always be analysed in relation to other modes in a multimodal text and despite
the complexities of the aural perception, we always perceive it as one aspect of a
multimodal text, constantly moving through time.
However, it is important to note that in certain contexts there may be
two modes operating in the audible semiotic space of a multimodal text. For
instance, diegetic music in films and television is that music which refers explic-
itly to something visible on screen such as a door slamming or a bell ringing.
But music can also construct the affective aspects of multimodal texts as non-
diegetic music such as an orchestral soundtrack, and thus the audible aspects
of a film, television programme or online video can include both diegetic and
non-diegetic sounds as different modes in the same communicative moment.
The auditory channel of perception can also be inherently multimodal in and of
itself, when someone is singing (or shouting) over diegetic background music.
In these contexts, we must accept that the sounds, although heard simultane-
ously in time, are part of two distinct socially accepted channels of communica-
tion and that the audible elements of the multimodal text can be multimodal in
addition to whatever might be going on visually or linguistically. When some-
one sings a song, however, we have essentially the conjoining of language with
melody. This makes song an inherently multimodal form of communication.
Therefore, in this book, we recognize that even the audible aspects of a multi-
modal text, such as a film or an online video, may be multimodal even before
considering how these relate to the spoken language or moving images else-
where in the text. The analyst must use their common sense to decide which
audible aspects of the text are within the musical mode, and which are part of
another mode, and more importantly, how do they respond to each other in the
total semiotic space of the text?
It follows therefore that we must also be careful not to simply ascribe the same
semiotic or discourse analytical methods and concepts transplanted wholesale
from linguistic CDA. For instance, we cannot forget that music has many more
affordances than language for semiotic meaning, because of its lack of proposi-
tional or referential meaning. In other words, we cannot simply make straight-
forward metaphorical analyses of multimodal metaphors between language and
music: rising pitches do not always signify increasing tension; thickly textured
musical sound does not always connote semiotic complexity; loud sounds often
imply something very public, but not always; and people understand vocal tim-
bre and meaning in many different and contradictory ways across the globe. As
in most text-based CDA, context and collocation are crucially important in any
consideration of music in multimodal communication.
Like language, music is not always an aural phenomenon. It can form part of a
multimodal text without sound, via musical notation or other visual representa-
tions of musical sound. Indeed, there are interesting junctures between language
and music particularly focused around linguistic onomatopoeia such as ‘boom’,
‘cough’ and ‘click’, where phonetic meaning is foregrounded. Music and sound
can also be heard in different ways depending on the multimodal context. That
is to say that unlike language, to a certain extent what some might recognize
as ‘music’ is not universally shared, whereas in general, most human beings can
recognize a foreign language even if they cannot speak it. But importantly, if we
regard language as a complex mode of communication that includes signs, signi-
fiers, referents and important characteristics such as double articulation, then in
general, music cannot be considered a language, because of its semiotic ambigu-
ity. It is therefore important to understand that music’s meaning is not straight-
forwardly causal within a multimodal text, but is often more constitutive; just
in the same way that verbal discourse constructs emergent socio-cultural iden-
tities and meanings, so too does music within complex multimodal texts. This
assumption is fundamental to CDA and social semiotics; yet the emergent and
social nature of discourse is not incompatible with more structural analyses of
how meaning is made. Just as Cameron (1997) has pointed out that the key shift
in understanding ‘women’s talk’ and gender relations as social discourse was to
move from gender as a causal function of ‘women’s talk’ towards the now widely
accepted position of gender as constructed performatively within social discourse
(Cameron, 1997: 28), so might we move to a more processual understanding of
musical meaning in multimodal discourse, whereby music’s meanings are emer-
gent and performative, depending largely upon the social and cultural bodies that
hear them. Our bodies are cultured; we feel music in different ways according to
class, gender, ethnicity, race, place and personal experience.
There is today a growing consensus in musicology, popular music studies,
music psychology and cognitive musicology that is placing embodiment at the
centre of musical meaning. Johnson supports this view when he says that: ‘Music
is meaningful in specific ways that some language cannot be, but it shares in the
general embodiment of meaning that underlies all forms of symbolic expres-
sions, including gesture, body language, ritual, spoken words, visual communi-
cation, etc.’ (Johnson, 2007: 260). Furthermore, Zbikowski recognizes this too
when he reflects that ‘musical meaning is on the whole much less precise than
linguistic meaning’ (Zbikowski, 2009: 395). Music does not have a finite number
of signs with propositional meaning that can be combined in a particular syn-
tax for more complex systematized meaning. Therefore, music is not a language
in the conventional sense, but it is very definitely a mode of human commu-
nication that ‘does’ emotion and affective meaning particularly powerfully. On
this point we find various points of view that conflict. Philip Tagg (2012) for
instance suggests that there has been too much logocentric analysis of music,
and that for him, music should be understood musically, because it is a different
sort of sign system to verbal language: ‘Music is an alogogenic [essentially the
“opposite of logogenic”2] sign system whose semantic precision relies largely on
connotation and on indexical signs’ (Tagg, 2012: 160–161). But what this view
of communication suggests is that somehow music is a special mode, different
from any other type of mode of communication such as verbal language, written
text, colour, image, gesture etc. Tagg’s own view of music is useful across much
social semiotics but we disagree with the notion of music as a special form of
communication. As Moore so aptly points out in response to Tagg’s ambitious
methodological research, the problems lie not so much in a logocentric view of
music, or in the difference between shared and individual meanings for musical
listeners, but
the problem, I believe, lies not in Tagg’s aim, nor in Kennett’s critique, but in the
assumption of the initial arbitrariness in semiotic meaning, an arbitrariness that
then becomes (sometimes) fixed through practice. It is only the least interesting
meanings that bear an arbitrary relationship with the sounds of music, and the
fixity of meanings that is taken to ensue is illusory. (Moore, 2013: 221)
Moore is correct in pointing out the importance of intertextuality and in the male-
ability of musical meaning in society. Indeed, this book can in part be read as an
attempt to rehabilitate music into a more holistic analytical system that regards
music as just one other mode of communication in a multimodal world. We also
suggest that if the cognitive theories of embodiment and conceptual metaphor
theory are correct, then all semiosis itself is done in and through our embodied
minds via embodied conceptual metaphor and cross-domain mapping, which
would undermine any kind of special argument for music as a distinct and entirely
separate semiotic mode of understanding than other modes. Our point here how-
ever is to emphasize that music is not a language in the linguistically normative
sense, but that it is a communicative mode, and that its very semantic ambiguity
and sonic presence lends it a particularly powerful affective role in communica-
tion, where it has very fluid affordances, which are highly adaptable in multimodal
texts. In essence, then, this is the same position as outlined by Moore; however
where we differ from his rich conceptual treatment of music as semiotic commu-
nication is essentially in what is considered ‘music’. Moore considers the sung text
of songs as part of the musical mode; we consider songs as essentially multimodal
texts because they combine sung or spoken text with musical sound; music with
words. In this way then, it is possible to consider the text of a song as part of a
larger multimodal whole, especially for instance when watching a music video or
a film where other modes such as moving images and still images, and gesture and
colour are also often present. And this is why we take issue with Tagg’s position,
because we consider musical experience to be almost always a multimodal experi-
ence anyway, and that, as analysts, it is worth understanding the ways in which
musical sound interacts with other modes and because a multimodal approach
can bear rich insights into the socio-cultural understanding and significance of
human communication. All this is important therefore because it affects not only
the methodological approach to analysing how music does ideological and cultural
work in multimodal texts, but also because it is crucial to understand that musical
sound, because of its very malleable affordances, offers a particularly emotion-
ally powerful aspect of many texts: The film soundtrack can reinforce or destroy a
sense of intimacy in a scene between two lovers depending on how we understand
the sonic aspects of the text; music has been shown to make us buy more (or less)
in supermarkets and is now increasingly used in online retailing; the music associ-
ated with political campaigns is often a shorthand way for politicians to acquire
cultural capital from artists for their own political gain. Music is important in our
lives because we often share values embodied in sound, however tacit these may
be, and multimodal critical discourse analysis is emerging as a novel, interdisci-
plinary and multifaceted method for deconstructing these power relations in text.
Notes
1 We take meaning (after Johnson, 2007: 268) to indicate embodied semiotic

experience that includes qualities, emotions, concepts, propositions, abstract
reasoning, feelings, metaphors, image schemata, etc., which acts across modal
domains.
2 See Philip Tagg’s own definition on his website: http://tagg.org/articles/ptgloss.html
[accessed 7 December 2015].
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2
The Role of Music in Ridiculing the Working

Classes in Reality Television
Göran Eriksson and David Machin
Introduction
In this chapter we are interested in the ideological use of music in a Swedish tel-
evision reality show called Böda Camping – how it is deployed to communicate
a very specific discourse linked to wider socio-political shifts in Sweden. Critical
scholars have revealed how such programmes tend to morally evaluate and ridi-
cule working-class people (Skeggs and Wood, 2012). It has been argued that
this has been one part of a legitimation of the discourse of a moral underclass,
who are undeserving in a neoliberal society where there is a shift away from an
emphasis on welfare, investment in education and healthcare and abandonment
of collective responsibility for disenfranchised sections of society (Eriksson,
2015). Critical work so far has shown clearly how such discourses are communi-
cated through spoken language and how visually, for example, the participants
are placed in situations which point to their lack of education, restricted cultural
experience or their lack of taste (Lyle, 2008). Here we show how music plays an
important role in realizing these discourses.
There is a rich tradition of music analysis in film studies, although not in tel-
evision studies, upon which we draw in our analysis. But this has tended to point
to the broader uses and role of music rather than taking a critical stance. Film
music scholars themselves have argued the need for greater detail in analysis
to reveal the more precise meanings carried by sounds and music. We explore
how we can address this issue by drawing on work from the social semiotics of
sound (van Leeuwen, 1999; Tagg and Clarida 2009; Machin, 2010). This com-
bined approach allows us to show how, as with the detailed analysis of language
and visual analysis, critically engaged scholars can analyse sound and music to
22 Göran Eriksson and David Machin
draw out more detailed meanings that are communicated. It has been observed
that we must be aware, in analysis, how different semiotic resources can work in
very different ways due to their specific affordances (Ledin and Machin, 2015).
Much of the delegitimization of the working classes in Böda Camping, we show,
is accomplished by the clever and precise deployment of music, which can oper-
ate in a way that language and images cannot, providing ideas about, and evalua-
tion of, characters, actions, setting and activities. In this chapter we analyse three
typical sequences from Böda Camping and carry out a detailed analysis of the
music that forms part of each.
Critical studies of reality television
Reality TV has attracted attention from a broad mix of scholars, although not
with regard to the role of music. Researchers have explored how audiences eval-
uate the programmes’ truth claims and what they think they learn from them
(Hill, 2007) or, like Andrejevic (2004) notes, have discussed the exploitative
dimension of reality TV and how value can be extracted from the commodifica-
tion of surveillance. Reality TV has been analysed from a gender perspective
(e.g. Negra, Pike and Radley, 2013) or with respect to the issue of race (e.g. Orbe,
2008). There has been an immense scholarly interest in the makeover genre,
often starting from Foucault’s ideas on governmentality and treating television
as cultural technology aimed at fostering people to be good citizens (e.g. Heller,
2007; Murray and Ouellette, 2009; Ouellette and Hay, 2009). During the past
decade researchers have also begun to more explicitly address questions related
to reality TV and social class (see e.g. Lyle, 2008; Tyler, 2008; Wood and Skeggs,
2011; Skeggs and Wood, 2012; Eriksson, 2015) looking at how people are set up
in situations and represented in ways which make them appear as crude and
morally problematic. What has yet to be studied, both specifically for reality tel-
evision and more broadly for television, however, is the way that music can play
a major part in the process of representation. Here we explore how this kind of
analysis can be carried out in order to show music is one semiotic resource that
can be used to define setting, characters, emotional states and to create continu-
ity. If these reality shows are one way by which viewers can be tutored in under-
standing society, in fostering particular views of citizenship, we show that in this
case music plays a crucial role in helping to load this with particular ideologies
about the nature of working-class people and the kinds of ideas, values and iden-
tities that society should esteem.
Music in Ridiculing the Working Classes in Reality TV 23
The programme we examine is a Swedish docu-soap titled Böda Camping,

aired by Swedish Channel 5 since 2010. This programme follows the activities at
a busy campsite in Sweden during the summer and focuses on the campers’ daily
life at the site. Böda Camping is part of a trend of reality TV appearing in the late
2000s in Sweden characterized by the use of representational strategies that ridi-
cule working-class participants’ behaviours, ideas and lifestyles (Eriksson, 2015).
This trend can be linked to wider political and ideological shifts which repre-
sent the poor and unemployed as a moral underclass (Levitas, 2005). Rather than
these people being viewed as part of wider structural inequalities where govern-
ment policy and economic systems have responsibility, it is their negative char-
acteristics and flawed characters that are foregrounded as part of legitimizing a
neoliberal ideological climate where the individual is increasingly responsible for
his or her own welfare. This regular representation of working-class people can
be contrasted, for example, with instances where the authorities have deliberately
fostered positive media representations in times where social unity is required
and where there have been fears of workers’ movements, as in the case in films by
John Grierson and Humphrey Jennings in 1930s Britain where all working-class
people were represented as honest and hard-working who enjoy simple pleasures.
In fact this discourse is something rather recent in Sweden which has for
many decades celebrated a culture of ‘Folkhemmet’ which emphasizes the
absolute centrality of social equality, social welfare and social interdepend-
ence. This newer discourse is part of a process of the legitimization of a shift
away from welfare and equality. It is then no coincidence that this is taking
place now in Sweden as neoliberal policies and ideas begin to take a hold in a
country which in a matter of few years has shifted from being a centrally con-
trolled to a deregulated economy, especially in sectors such as education and
health care (Östberg and Andersson, 2013: 16). These reality TV shows play
an important role in the naturalization and legitimation of these discourses.
Swedish people cease to see themselves as part of a society defined by social
interdependence and equality, supported by strong welfare, but one rapidly
shifting to sweeping privatization in public services, increasing unemploy-
ment and individualization.
Methodology: studying music in film and television
In this chapter we draw on a set of analytical tools from what has become
known as Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (Machin and Mayr, 2012;
Machin, 2013). This is a form of critical analysis that has its origins in Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) but which has extended its principles and concerns
to include the analysis of visual representations, design, material objects and
also sound. Central to this kind of analysis is the notion of discourse. Here the
broader ideas communicated by a text are referred to as discourses (Fairclough,
2003; van Dijk, 1993). These discourses can be thought of as models of the
world (Foucault, 1977) and can include kinds of participants, ideas, values,
goals and settings (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999). In CDA, texts are analysed
for the details of their linguistic and grammatical choices in order to reveal
what these broader discourses are. Since the groundbreaking work of Hodge
and Kress (1988) and Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), scholars have also begun
to analyse how discourses along with their values, participants, actions and set-
tings can be communicated both in language and visually through images and
design. A number of scholars have also begun to extend this to the study of
sound and music (Machin, 2010; Machin and Richardson, 2012; Way, 2013;
McKerrell, 2015).
Van Leeuwen and Wodak(1999) argue that it is through discourse that social
actors constitute knowledge, roles and identities. These discourses represent a
kind of knowledge or ‘script’ about what goes on in a particular social practice,
ideas about why it is the way it is, who is involved and what kinds of values they
hold. Discourses tell us why these scripts are reasonable ways of acting in the
world. And as we show in the analysis that follows, music can be seen to be one
important way that the parts of scripts are communicated. ‘Scripts’ in this case
can refer to the smaller scale social practices and meanings of a camping holi-
day or the wider discourses as to how we organize our societies, such as around
mutual responsibility and support, or through individualization and the prior-
itization of a neoliberal idea of the economy.
We also draw on the notion of the ‘re-contextualization of social practice’
(van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999). This is useful for thinking about the way
that reality shows represent the actions and identities of their participants. Van
Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) argue that social practices can be recontextualized,
in the interests of individuals or institutions, in language through substitutions,
additions, deletions and in reordering the sequences that comprise that social
practice. A social practice can be thought of as including the following kinds
of elements: participants, ideas, values and attitudes; activities; social relations;
objects and instruments; time and setting; and causality. In this chapter we are
interested in the way that the social practice of a camping holiday can be recon-
textualized, for ideological purposes.
There has been little scholarly attention to the use of music in television.
There is, however, a strong body of work on film music from within film stud-
ies, which while not critical, provides a basis for thinking about how music is
used alongside film (Manvell and Huntley, 1957; Gorbman, 1987; Kassabian,
2001; Chion, 2009). These studies point to a number of communicative uses
of music in film which we will use to organize our observations in this chapter.
Music can contribute to action, for example, by indicating tension or danger. It
can follow action closely such as by following footsteps, or it can be used more
broadly to suggest adventure or speed. It can also contribute by suggestion that
action is about to commence or to be resolved. Music can be used to indicate
the state of mind of a character, to suggest love, or, fear, for example. It can, in
the tradition of vaudeville theatre, be used to indicate kinds of stock characters,
such as evil or comedic. It can also be used to represent kinds of settings such
as geographic places or moments in history, mainly using a limited range of
cliches. Music can also be used for continuity and creating links between scenes.
A handful of authors (Chion, 2009; Donnelly, 2005) have focused in slightly
more detail on sound qualities and signification, and they have called for more
work in this area.
Analyses of the meaning of sound and music are often made through
vague adjectives (Barthes, 1977; van Leeuwen, 1999) such as ‘scary’, ‘romantic’,
‘lively’, etc. But adjectives point more to the effect of the music rather than
telling us what, exactly, is in the music that communicates these meanings.
Due to the vagueness of such terms, we may miss out on meanings that can be
drawn out by more systematic analysis. Just as linguistic texts can be critically
analysed, in order to pinpoint the kinds of semiotic choices in language that
realize particular discourses, so too can a more systematic analysis of music
and sound reveal forms and structures that may have been missed by the more
casual listener.
Tagg (2009) has argued that there has simply been a lack of emphasis on stud-
ying the semantics of music (the relationship between sounds and what they
stand for), or its pragmatics (the cultural and social aspects of production and
reception). Tagg has himself produced pioneering work in this area, taking an
interest in film and television music, looking, for example, at sound patterns that
are used to represent particular kinds of settings and characters in movies.
In order to draw out the way that music can be used to communicate quite
specific ideas, attitudes and identities, Tagg (1984) discusses the emergence of
sounds and music as communicative acts in hunting and gathering type socie-
ties in terms of the way they could be used to communicate about the nature of
activities such as initiation rites, marriage ceremonies, harvests and the hunt.
Tagg suggests:
Obviously, the pace required in conjunction with a hunt – intensity of heart-

beat, speed of eye, of hands, arms, feet and breathing – will be far greater than
that needed for singing a child to sleep… In the case of the hunt, quick, sudden
movements enacted with the precision of split seconds are vital ingredients of
the activity, but they would be detrimental when trying to send a child to sleep.
(1984: 8)
What Tagg makes clear here is that there are much more precise and predict-
able aspects of sound as communication than we tend to assume and that these
can convey quite clear ideas, attitudes, sequences of events and identities. So we
cannot use sharp sounds to mean relaxed, nor soft lingering sounds to convey
urgency. These are useful observations to take on board if we wish to understand
the kinds of movements, activities and attitudes that music can attribute to per-
sons and events in television. It is not just that music is ‘scary’ or ‘fun’, but that it
can communicate specific things about what goes on in a social practice, about
how it should be evaluated and what kinds of identities are involved.
The musicologist Cooke (1959) showed that it was possible to document
how the shapes of melodies and rhythms are used in a predictable way to com-
municate different kinds of ideas attitudes and identities in classical music and
opera – a kind of musical vocabulary that has been built up and established over
time. He demonstrates how qualities like higher pitch ranges in melodies relate
to emotional expansiveness whereas restricted pitch ranges relate to emotion
containment. He establishes how specific rhythmic qualities can be tied to dif-
ferent kinds of bodily movement which connote quite specific ideas, attitudes
and identities.
In the field of social semiotics, a handful of scholars have taken up the ideas
of Tagg and Cooke with a view to providing more predictive models of the use
of sound to create meaning. Van Leeuwen (1999), drawing on Hallidayan (1978)
linguistics, showed how it is possible to identify basic underlying building blocks
of sound quality in the sung voice, for example. Machin (2010) followed this
work to look at meaning-making in popular music compositions and also how
the details of melody types, such as those that are more expanded or restricted,
more sharply or gently articulated, tend to be found used in quite predictable
ways. Machin and Richardson (2011), Griffiths and Machin (2014), Way (2013)
and McKerrell (2015) have applied these models to think about the way, there-
fore, that music and sound can be used for ideological purposes.
In this chapter we take the basic uses of music identified in film studies – set-
ting, character motifs, emotional states, and action/ continuity – but draw on the
tools for analysis proposed by van Leeuwen (1999) and Machin (2010), which
themselves owe much to Tagg (2009) and Cooke (1959). Through this approach
we want to identify how music and sound are used as part of the process of
ridicule in Böda Camping and in the process of recontextualizing the everyday
life of a set of campers to suit particular ideological purposes. In the fashion of
Tagg, we look at the way rhythms, melodies, articulation and sound arrange-
ments realize discourse.
Analysis of Böda Camping
Each episode of Böda Camping deals with one particular theme. In the episode
we analyse, the topic is the ‘rules of the campsite’. We begin with the introduc-
tory sequence that is shown at the start of each episode and then move on to two
sequences from the contents of the programme.
Music and setting
When each episode of Böda Camping starts there is the same opening sequence.
This shows a montage of people at the campsite. This is shot with a high qual-
ity camera as seen in Example 1 (see Figure 2.1). Production values are high.
People are shown in a flattering way, all laughing heartily as they put up tents,
make food, cycle past, and so on. There are uses of fast edits, close-ups, playful
angles, and slowed-motion, with a slight effect of over-exposure suggesting
a glorious summer day. People engage with each other in their laughter and
also look confidently and warmly at the camera, and therefore with the viewer
(Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006). They appear to regard the view of the camera
confidently and with trust, which is something we do not find in the later
sequences. Here summer must be understood as having a highly significant
and almost mythical role in Swedish culture, given the long and dark win-
ters. Importantly, the film and editing style in this opening sequence contrasts
greatly with the realism and lingering, unflattering, more Cinema Direct,
shooting style of the of the sequences that comprise the content each week.
On the one hand, while this opening sequence represents people in a flattering
way visually it appears to have an ironic aspect. The voice-over comments: ‘Every
Figure 2.1. Böda Camping opening sequence

year two million Swedes take their pack and go to their own paradise. And the
biggest paradise of them all is Böda Sands Camping’.
For many, particularly middle-class viewers, to call the campsite a paradise is
indeed ironic, and, as we find in many of the sequences in the programme, this
points to the tastelessness and crudeness of the campers. However, the sequences
do have a positive feel. Different kinds of people enjoy simple things and there
is a sense of the older values of the Swedish Folkhemmet, of co-independence as
we see an array of people enjoying the same thing. We show that both of these
sets of associations are partly communicated by the music.
The music in these opening sequences gives meaning to the setting and pro-
vides continuity by linking the fast sequences of edits. But importantly it also
provides important meanings about the social relations between the persons
depicted.
The opening piece of music is a kind of 1950s style rock’n’roll piece. On the
one hand this points to the campsite being something from the past, something
slightly out of fashion. And this is one important part of what Lyle (2008) calls
the ‘middle-class’ gaze that is imposed upon working-class people in such reality
shows – that they have no sense of style. But on the other hand the music com-
municates a number of less obvious meanings. We begin by looking at rhythm,
then move onto other aspects of the way the music communicates.
Rhythm
To begin with, the rhythm of the opening sequence, in terms of adjectives, is

‘light’ and ‘flowing’ and has a ‘side-to-side’ carefree feel. This is, as we shall see,
very different from the rhythms used to represent persons within the content
of the programme. We can draw out the meaning of these choices in rhythm
through the observations on rhythm and meaning made by Cooke (1959). We
spend a little time to explain these, returning to them in later analyses.
Cooke (1959) has discussed the way that different rhythms are associated with
different kinds of bodily movement. So rhythms can be even (in pop music) or
uneven (as may be the case in jazz). Uneven rhythms can communicate a sense
of difficulty, or if the unevenness is repeated a sense of being prevented from
moving forwards or remaining in one particular place. Unevenness can also
suggest creativity as it can imply something changing, reacting and refusing to
conform. Rhythms can be fast or slow which can suggest energy or relaxation or
Table 2.1 Meaning potentials for rhythms
Rhythmic quality Meaning potential

Even/uneven conformity versus creativity; ease versus difficulty
Fast/slow hurry versus leisurely; energy versus its lack of; rush versus
patience
Lightness/heaviness mobility or clumsiness; important versus unimportant;
strength versus weakness
Stasis/motion restriction versus freedom; marking ground versus progress,
hesitation versus certainty
sluggishness. Rhythms can suggest lightness or weight due to light or heavy bass
drum beats respectively; they can suggest stasis through constant beat tones (such
as a single bass drum pulse) or forwards motion through alternating tones (such
as between a snare and bass drum), hesitation (as in Reggae) or progress. They can
also suggest a side-to-side swaying motion (as in Swing) as opposed to a forward
action like that found in some pop ballads or more relentless and forceful forward
motion in military marches. We summarize these meaning potentials in Table 2.1.
Such a list should not be considered a set of rules, and rhythm is just one
part of how meaning is created. But, in the fashion of Tagg, as regards his hunt
and lullaby, we can begin to think about what attitudes, ideas and identities are
communicated.
We can think about the rhythms in the introductory rock’n’roll through these
terms. In the first place there is a sense of lightness. We find no heavy bass drum
or heavily accented notes. This is certainly not a laboured slow movement. The
kind of movement suggested is side-to-side and carefree movement, rather than
one which suggests driving forwards motion. It is certainly not a restricted, hesi-
tant or uneven movement. This effect is created by the guitar and drums playing
a choppy rhythm on alternate beats. These observations are important when
we start to link this with other meanings in the song. But for present purposes
we begin to see how this edited sequences of smiling people are not ‘hurried’,
‘clumsy’ or ‘restricted’, but move easily and lightly.
Melodies
There are two aspects of melody, or tune, that we analyse here. The first is
the way that the melody changes or moves around in pitch, and the second is
Table 2.2 Meaning potentials of pitch
Pitch Positive meaning Negative meaning

High Bright/energetic/happy Lightweight/trivial/flighty
Low Important/solid/relaxed/closer Clumsy/depressed/danger
how the melody is articulated. In both studies of music and of inguistics, both
aspects have been shown to have important and specific communicative mean-
ing potentials. Again we can relate this to the difference between Tagg’s hunt and
lullaby: One might allow much more variation in pitch and require more abrupt
articulation, whereas the other might require a more moderate shift in pitch and
more measured, or gentle articulation. Pitch relates to how high or low a sound
is: a scream would be a high note, thunder a low note. What is of importance to
us here is the meaning both of pitch itself and in shifts in pitch.
In the first place, higher pitches can mean higher energy, excitement or even
agitation, whereas lower pitches can mean lower levels of energy, danger or even
despair. Cooke shows that classical composers have used high pitch to suggest
‘up and away’ due to its energy and low pitch to suggest ‘closer, down and relaxa-
tion (1959: 103) (Table 2.2).
In our rock’n’roll song we find the very deep voice of the lead singer sug-
gesting something solid, relaxed and intimate. Behind this we find much higher
pitched bright and energetic backing singers. The female singers bring bright
energy and optimism. We can begin to see here that the music, through rhythm
and pitch, helps to indicate that the visuals, showing the happy, flatteringly rep-
resented, people and the lovely sunshine, are bright and carefree and that there
is both bright energy, but also relaxation and intimacy. This signifies a wonderful
Swedish summer.
In addition to whether pitch rises or falls there is important meaning poten-
tial in the range of these changes – a large pitch range communicates a sense of
letting more energy out whereas a small pitch range can mean holding more
energy in. Newsreaders always speak using a restricted pitch range to suggest a
neutral stance. Once can imagine the difference were they to use a large pitch
range. Soul singers use a large pitch range to communicate the expression of
emotions. Brazil, Coulthard and Johns (1980) note that pitch range in speech
is akin to excitement, surprise or anger. In contrast, smaller pitch ranges can be
associated with emotional constraint or even modesty. The meaning potential of
pitch range is summarized Table 2.3.
Table 2.3 Meaning potential of pitch range
Pitch range Meaning potential Effect

High Emotionally expansive Emotionally open/subjective
Low Emotionally contained Repressed/contained/objective
In fact all of the three levels of singers in this arrangement sing over a rela-
tively narrow pitch range. So while it has bright, high pitches, each is measured
and constant as regards outpouring of emotion. This is about having simple,
measured fun with the light, side-to-side, beat and the closeness of the deep-
voiced singer. It is not about the expression of intense feelings. In the final scene,
one of the campers is edited in slow motion to appear to say the closing words of
the song ‘My love’ sung in the deep voice of the lead singer (see Figure 2.1). This
in itself is playful through editing, but also plays an important part in connecting
the participants to the music.
Social relations and composition
One important meaning potential of sound is to do with how the different voices
or components in the music interrelate. A number of scholars have shown that
arrangement in music can indicate different kinds of social organization or
social relations (Schafer, 1977). This is highly significant for this particular song
in the context of Böda Camping.
Van Leeuwen (1999) points to the way that unison in musical arrangements
can have important meaning potential. The different voices in an arrangement
can sing together in unison which can suggest conformity or shared purpose. Or
voices can sing at different levels suggesting a hierarchy. They can also compete
suggesting conflict. In national anthems voices are heard almost as one. A sim-
ple way to subvert a national anthem would be to break rhythm and sing out of
unison with other voices. Contrastingly however, in beer commercials, we might
hear the melody being sung to suggest cohesion but still hear individual voices.
In some polyrhythmic music different voices weave around each other (Ibid.,
1999). This suggests an accommodation of difference, yet the need to operate
around one another (Machin, 2010). The different members of the society here
are different yet not hierarchically. Tagg (1994) suggests that we analyse this as
regards the way, for example, the singer in rock music must shout to be heard
out of the noise, something he relates to social organization in industrial society.

Chanan (1994) notes that in later Gregorian chants voices would sing the same
flat melody in a call and response fashion. In this case a monotonous subjection
of all people to the word of God, mutually communicating these values back to
each other.
We can relate such observations to our rock’n’roll music, and later to other
pieces in the episode. In the rock’n’roll song we have three layers of voices: the
lead singer, male backing and female backing. These are allowed to do their own
thing and are not required to be absorbed by the unity of the melody as in a
national anthem. Yet they happily work together to contribute to the whole, each
taking their place. Each has their place in the overall fun and energy. While the
voice-over appears to point to the irony of the campsite being a paradise and
visually it may be seen as inappropriate to be quite so overjoyed at being there,
the music nevertheless points to a kind of act of unison, perhaps of mutual inter-
dependence – along with the meanings of brightness, carefree and relaxed. We
might argue that while the following sequences are entirely about ridicule the
opening sequence combines irony with an older sense of Folkhemmet, which
here is indeed rather old fashioned in the contemporary world of style and
individualism.
Music, character motif and narrative
Moving on to the sequences within this particular episode we begin with one
of the male campers, Lasse, who has visited the site for many years. He is asked
about the rules of the campsite. He is given a musical motif which is then heard
throughout the programme each time he appears (his ‘leitmotif ’). This plays a
narrative role in telling a story about obsessive and petty behaviour. Verbally
Lasse tells the interviewer that he has told other campers about obeying bounda-
ries of the pitches, pointing to his pettiness. Visually there is an emphasis on
editing and shots that suggest that he patrols the campsite looking for rule trans-
gressions, although closer inspection of the footage reveals he in fact remains in
the same place, close to his own trailer.
When we first see Lasse we see him as if he is patrolling the campsite look-
ing for transgressions of rules (Example 2; see Figure 2.2). This is done by
shooting him from behind as if the camera follows and Lasse takes the lead.
Other sequences, where apparent rule breaking is shown, are then inter-
spersed with sequences of Lasse. The music begins (indicated by these signs
1 /*
2 VO ↓ yes someone who
3 willingly can inform us
4 about the rules is Lasse
5 who’s been a steady guest
6 at Böda */ for twenty-
7 three years
8 VL here on the top of this

9 map there’s a small image
10 /* up there yeah: where it
11 says two meters from each
12 side so you got four
13 meters to the next
14 caravan yeah:
16 and we also got the

17 neighbor to understand
18 that it should be that
19 yeah: and the one who is
20 behind them I also talked
21 to
22 IR then you need to tell

them before they
install themselves or
23 VL yeah: exactly
24 IR do you have to stop

25 yourself from not keep on
26 controlling too much */
27 VL yes especially when it is
28 /* when it concerns this
29 thing with the distances
30 you know you cannot go
31 around and play the police
32 you know how funny will you
33 appear then no no */
Figure 2.2. Veteran-Lasse and the march-music

VO=Voice-over L=Veteran-Lasse IR=Interviewer
/*) as we see Lasse (Line 1) but is slightly tuned down (indicated by ↓) when
the voice-over starts (Line 2). It is a drum roll on a snare drum in the fashion
of parade ground drums. There is no forward motion, it is as if preparing
to march. The snare drums are high pitched and tense. Brass instruments
begin to play and the drums change to suggest a forwards march. Clearly this
is about military precision. The brass instruments play deep notes suggest-
ing gravity and menace. These play in complete unison. Unlike the rock’n’roll
song with its space for different voices, there is singularity and certainty in
this music. The melody rises in pitch a step at a time, in the fashion of mili-
tary music or national anthems suggesting the rising of spirits and energy,
possibly Lasse’s anger. This is played in a minor key which brings a sense of
foreboding.
But there is also a lightness in this music. As the march develops we hear fifes
that first play whimsically at a high pitch and then with rapid trills going up and
down in pitch. In the first place there may be a sense of the sadness or thought-
fulness of heading off to battle which then shifts where such rapid tempos and
rises and falls in pitch represent emotional flux. Here it would be the nerves, and
butterflies in the tummy, either representing the feelings of the enemy or purely
the emotional highs of marching to battle. However, the fifes themselves, which
have their origins in march-music in the American civil war, here suggest not
a modern twentieth- or twenty-first-century type war but something, historical
and perhaps therefore a little quaint.
Phrasing and articulation in melodies
An important part of melody is the phrasing. Bell and van Leeuwen (1993) have
noted in speech that shorter phrases are associated with sincerity, certainty,
weight and therefore with authority. In contrast longer, lingering articulation
suggests the opposite, so emotion, subjectivity. Newsreaders use such short
phrases for this reason. Folk singers use short bursts in their lyrics to communi-
cate sincerity. The opposite case, where singers produce longer lingering state-
ments, suggests rather slow burning internal emotion as in the case of many
jazz or soul singers. The melody played in our march-music is clearly composed
of bursts rather than lingering notes. There is a sense of certainty and author-
ity here. In fact the speaker himself speaks quite smoothly and certainly not
in short bursts. He does, however, use a restricted pitch range in his sentence
Table 2.4 Meaning potentials of note articulation
Articulation of notes Meaning potential

Shorter dotted notes Abrupt, lively, hurried, certain, objective/clumsy if played
in deep pitched brass or woodwind
Longer lingering notes Emotionally lingering, subjective
articulation. But viewers also hear the stepped, ascending and shorter phrased
melody of the march-music.
Importantly, there are different kinds of shorter abrupt articulations to be
found in music. McClary (1991) observed that traditionally in opera masculine
characters have been represented through harsher staccato notes as might be
associated with military music which conveys liveliness and certainty, whereas
women are represented through longer legato articulation which is more emo-
tionally lingering and less assertive. The masculine staccato notes would be
played on brass instruments and with percussion while the feminine, more lin-
gering, legato notes are played on strings. Again, as regards the march-music
here, the motif given to the man is brisk, assertive and unemotional, although
the softer and whimsical fife helps to bring something less serious and lighter.
We summarize the meaning potentials for articulation in Table 2.4 since we
return to these later in the chapter.
Important for meaning-making in the use of the march-music as a character
motif here is the way it is edited into the sequence. We hear the music just before
we first see Lasse and before any voice-over begins. We hear the preparation
to march on the snare drum. This sets the scene for something taut, tense and
regimented. However, just before the voice-over ends the presentation of Lasse
the music stops (indicated by */, Line 6) completely as Lasse begins to answer.
He speaks one sentence: ‘here on the top of this map there’s a small image’ (Lines
8–9), and then the music starts again, this time building up as he is seen pointing
things out around the site.
The technique of the music stopping, that is allowing the man to begin an
answer and then the music starting again, is an interesting feature. First, it is
often the case that a lack of music in films is used to indicate realism, or a serious
moment. It is where the viewer attends to the actual diegetic sounds produced
in the moment represented. So, at this level we can think about the way that
while music is used, as part of the programme as ‘entertainment’ and ‘fun’, these
moments without music connote realism and the ‘reality’ of the show. In Derick
Wiseman’s own accounts of documentary film he expressed that it was longer
sequences of silence that gave the impression of ‘being there’, of unmediated

reality (Nichols, 1991).
We can draw on Halliday’s (1978) account of clause relations to think about
the way music is added at this specific point. Put simply, clauses in sentences
can expand on preceding ones in three different ways. The first is ‘extension’
where the expanding clause adds something new or offers an alternative. The
second is ‘enhancement’ which provides circumstantial features such as time,
place, reasons, and so on. The third is ‘elaboration’ which exemplifies, or speci-
fies in greater detail. We can apply these to help us think about the way that Lasse
speaks first without and then with the musical accompaniment. When Lasse
speaks he first provides an enhancement by providing circumstantial details to
say what he means by the tents being pitched together pointing to the site leaf-
let: ‘it says two meters from each side so you got four meters to the next caravan
yeah’. He then moves on to elaboration giving an example involving the neigh-
bour. ‘And we also got the neighbor to understand that it should be that.’
The reinsertion (Line 10) of the music appears to work at the same time as a
kind of enhancement, providing information and evaluation for his reasons and
motifs. Lasse, at this point, is not really allowed to explain his reasons, although
later he does mention the issue with fire risk. Yet the music here provides an
evaluation. The reason is his controlling, petty nature. These are not added by
the voice-over, or the interviewer, or by Lasse himself. The effect of the pause
in the music means that he is allowed to speak; we listen to him briefly, but we
quickly return to the enhanced level of meaning of his military precision and the
forward march around the campsite.
Music and internal states of mind
We now move on to our third use of music, which is linked to the sequence
with Lasse. The next sequence involves a man named Micke, with his family,
who is presented as being overly obsessed with finding the best position for his
tent (Example 3; see Figure 2.3). From the shot of Lasse we cut to a generic
scene of the campsite as if we, or Lasse, is searching. Just before we cut to the
scene of Micke we hear a pasodoble (bullfighting music) begin, which acts as
a kind of conjunction (Line 1) between the scenes. We then see a family, in a
medium shot sitting at their campsite. At the end of this sequence we again
return to Lasse who appears to be looking out across the site (Lines 52–58). In
fact from what Micke says this is not really related to Lasse’s concerns regarding
the distance between pitches. It is clear that he wants to move his tent as it is too
close to the road: ‘if we have the table and the chairs here then the cars can run
over the table.’
It is the editing and the music which play an important role in making this
appear to be of the same order. Music again appears to play a role in enhance-
ment here. We are given evaluation about circumstance and reason, before we
see Micke.
The pasodoble music points to a man’s battle with his tent, so here it is ironi-
cally intended. Again, looking a little more carefully at the semiotics of the piece
we can draw out more meanings to show why it indicates a battle, and specifi-
cally what kind of battle. This too helps to give a sense of irony to the scene.
The pasodoble has military origins. It is written in 2/4 time which deliberately
imitates the steps of a march and was timed for troops to take 120 steps each
minute. It was later introduced into bullfighting where it was used when the
bullfighter enters the arena or just before the kill. Unlike the militaristic march
discussed above, however, this is more flamboyant. The backing instrumentation
plays a lively, bouncy repetitive rhythm, almost suitable for a party. The melody
is played by a single trumpet that glides over this backing thus suggesting the
lone bullfighter. This plays a melody that combines more dotted notes with more
legato notes and rises and falls in melody, with the characteristic regular rolls
or turns which produce a flamboyant and showy effect. The pitch range is quite
expansive suggesting excitement and emotional turns.
Compared to the regulated minor melody of the former military pieces, this
has not only a regulated rhythm but also a playful and exotic emotional duel as
the bullfighter circles, performs and struts. The backing music here suggests the
context of the celebration, that is the bullfight, while the melody is used to depict
the calculated yet showy performance. It is at the semiotic level here that we can
draw out these more detailed meanings.
The pasodoble music stops when the voice stops (Line 12). This is coordi-
nated with the moment Micke gets up from the chair, and it stops in the exact
moment when he is on his feet. He then starts explaining (Line 13) and a new
piece of music starts (Line 14). We shift away from the flamboyant battle of the
pasodoble to a tune played on a banjo and acoustic guitar. The banjo shifts from
irony to communicating something silly. In Anglo-American culture the banjo
tends to have associations of simple, or inward looking, country folk. But again
looking at it a little deeper points to more specific meanings.
With regard to the rhythm, the banjo music moves along very quickly. It is
rapid and slightly chaotic. The rhythm is created by the circling of the melody,
1 /Bullfighting music starts/

2 VO Some other people having a
3 problem with the distances
4 is Micke and Milla
5 on spot twohundred and

6 sixty-seven
7 Ml move a tent that sounds

8 tough
9 VO just after breakfast

10 they’re not quiet pleased
11 with the tent’s position
12 (Micke gets up) *

13 Mi look here we sit here
14 /banjo music/ when the
15 evening comes and a little
16 cozy then we sit here
17 a bit sheltered
18 if we have the table and
19 the chairs here then the
20 the cars can run over
21 the table
22 Ml yes and we don’t wont that

23 to happen no
Figure 2.3. Sequence to show how music help to construct internal states of mind
include VO=Voice-over, Mi=Micke (male), Ml=Milla (female), L=Veteran-Lasse,
IR=Interviewer
24 Mi no so so this is how we
25 we do it
26 Ml can’t we finish our coffee
27 first
28 Mi yes yes we can

29 (Micke sits down)*
30 Mi it will be great super

31 then we do it this way
32 (Micke gets up) /banjo
33 music/ we start to pull up
34 Mi let’s see so there’s not

35 a lot of heavy stuff
36 inside
37 IR Micke you seem to have a

38 a lot of energy
39 Mi yeah-heh-heh heh-heh-heh
Figure 2.3. (cont.)

40 Mi so we loosen the sticks

41 on that side and I undo
42 a bit here then we can
43 pull the tent in that
44 direction
45 Ml now it’s warm here
46 Mi so now we move the whole
47 tent
48 *
59 VL a fire in our trailer

60 then that one will also
61 be damaged but it will not
62 be totally demolished
63 VL now these fires are not

64 very common but you never
65 know (hawking sound) yeah:
66 ↑ *
Figure 2.3. (cont.)
which creates a slightly frivolous, directionless, unplanned feel. The pitch as it

rises and falls, and skips around rapidly suggests emotional unevenness. All of
this takes place at a fairly high pitch, thus suggesting something unsubstantial
or lightweight. The banjo itself creates a hollow, insubstantial sound. We could
say this is the opposite of the slower, highly regular and ascending notes of
the march-music. Importantly the banjo sits here in an arrangement as a lone
instrument, joined only by a single guitar chord which is placed abruptly at the
conclusion when Micke sits down (Line 29), to only start again as he again gets
up to fuss around the tent (Line 32). This also suggests his isolation, and slight
madness, which is supported by shots of his wife looking awkward and making
ironic comments edited in with shots where he adjusts the tent (Line 22–23,
49–51).
At the end of this sequence we cut immediately back to Lasse. The march-
music starts when Milla is still talking (Line 50) indicating that Lasse will appear,
thereby creating the connection between the two sets of events. The camera
resumes following him when he appears (Line 52). The sequences with Lasse
frame the tent moving sequence as if they are temporally linked, as if Lasse
patrols the site seeking out such transgressions.
Returning briefly to Halliday’s (1978) categories of clause relations, music is
not really used to provide extension, in other words to create something new or
alternative. In the case of the pasodoble and banjo, the music is used for elabora-
tion, in other words to exemplify. So the instance of Micke is set up by Lasse’s
comments and through visual continuity as an example of what he is talking
about. Here too the music allows the link to be created. But it is mainly used as
enhancement as the circumstances and the reasons are indicated. In this sense
these people become trapped by the music. With the banjo playing how can
Micke explain his concerns about the proximity to cars and having a child play-
ing so close by? The music has established the setting and form of social rela-
tions – his battle with the tent as his wife with embarrassment. And it has set up
his reasons, his state of mind, which is silly and obsessive. These sequences of
music are punctuated by the silences and the bearing witness, the unmediated
reality.
Conclusion
In this chapter we suggest an approach based on Multimodal Critical Discourse

Analysis for analysing the way that music can play a crucial part in the processes
of representation. Here we have worked with examples from the Swedish real-
ity programme Böda Camping, which is a part of a wider trend of reality shows
ridiculing working-class people and their pastime activities. In the analysis, we
show how participants are associated with musical motifs which help represent
them with particular characteristics; how music plays the role of constructing
internal states of mind and can help to create narrative; how music is indicat-
ing certain actions and creates continuity where there is none. Using Halliday’s
(1978) clause relations we were able to think about the way music helps to trap
participants within the definition of the narrative and discourse set up visually
and linguistically. Overall, these examples demonstrate that it is necessary to

take the previously often overlooked role of television music seriously in order to
reveal otherwise hidden discourses. In Böda Camping as well as in other Swedish
reality shows (see Eriksson, 2015), music plays a key role in communicating par-
ticular discourses that tend to delegitimize the working classes. Such discourses
are part of a wider political trend in which the Swedish working classes are being
devalued.
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3
‘Shame Makes the World Go

Around’: Performed and Embodied
(Gendered) Class Disgust in Morrissey’s
‘The Slum Mums’
Aileen Dillane, Martin J. Power and Eoin Devereux
Being a member of society is an essential condition for becoming a conscious

being and creating music.
(John Blacking, 1995: 51)
Introduction
This chapter explores how a pop song can become (and remain) a critical site
for counterhegemonic expression, through the creative manipulation of discur-
sive, structural, sonic and somatic elements. ‘The Slum Mums’, by popular music
artist Morrissey, deals with the contempt felt for lone female mothers on wel-
fare in the United Kingdom under the New Labour governments of the 1990s
and 2000s. Rather than providing a straightforward critique of this ‘contempt’,
Morrissey deftly creates a song whose meaning relies on the ambiguous inter-
relationship between the socio-political context, the lyrical content, and musical
structure and sound as they relate to issues of gendered embodiment in particu-
lar. To this end, we locate our work within what might be understood as a social
constructivist approach, leaning into scholars who argue for embodied perspec-
tives. We argue that it is through the careful subversion of expectations that the
song provides a powerful critique of gendered, class disgust.
We begin by exploring gendered class discourse in the United Kingdom at
the time of the song’s release in 2004, rather than going straight to the song,
48 Aileen Dillane, Martin J. Power and Eoin Devereux
as we believe it needs to be fully contextualized in order to be ‘read’ critically.

This is followed by an introduction to Morrissey, an artist who demonstrates a
strong track record in championing the marginalized and in offering counter-
hegemonic stances on a variety of contemporary social, political and economic
issues. We begin our analysis of the song with a close reading of the lyrics.
Because of the possible ambiguity in interpreting Morrissey’s lyrics (which on
face value may seem to support as opposed to counter, prevalent, negative dis-
courses on female welfare recipients), we then examine the song’s structure to
illustrate (on the macro structural and discursive level and the micro textual
and somatic level), how this is not actually the case. We conclude that as ‘The
Slum Mums’ pre-empted the intensification of gendered and classed disgust dis-
courses (cf. Benefits Street, Channel 4 Television, 2014) and the ever increasing
demonization of welfare recipients, the song is potentially even more important
and efficacious now.
Interpreting ‘Slum Mums’
‘The Slum Mums’1 was released as a ‘B Side’ to Morrissey’s single ‘I Have Forgiven
Jesus’ (Sanctuary Records, 2004). Its lyrics were written by Morrissey and its
music co-composed by Boz Boorer2 and then bassist Gary Day. The placement
of the song on the B Side of the single perhaps indicates Morrissey’s understand-
ing that this song would never be a hit in its own right; yet he was nonetheless
ensuring its further circulation. The song received little more than a lukewarm
reception (Goddard, 2009: 397) largely failing to impress fans or music critics.
Whether it was the song structure itself, or the challenging message it carried
that proved unpopular, is difficult to establish. From our perspective, however,
it is these very elements that make this song a prime example of social critique
that resonates beyond its date of creation.
In Music for Pleasure, Frith (1998: 103) argues that it is ‘possible to read back
from lyrics to the social forces that produced them’ (see also Frith and Goodwin,
1990). While we engage in a close lyrical reading of ‘The Slum Mums’, we adhere
to Brackett’s cautionary note (2000: 192) to ‘consciously avoid considering the
lyrics in isolation which often forms ‘the basis for the interpretation of popular
songs’ and which can end up producing a reductive and incomplete analysis.
At the same time, we accept that signification can, depending on the lyricist,
most directly occur through words, at least initially, and that it is through lan-
guage that subjects are most obviously discursively produced and reproduced.
Class Disgust in Morrissey’s ‘The Slum Mums’ 49
To this end, we focus first on the lyrics for ‘meaning’ but then later explicate the
role of music, instrumentation and, crucially, the grain of Morrissey’s voice, to
underscore how these discrete elements operate as part of an efficacious com-
plex. Such an interpretation also involves, as Brackett (2000: 171–172) explains,
‘explicating both a “primary” level of signification such as “positional values”
and the interconnection of this level with “secondary” levels such as “positional
implications,” “emotive connotations” and “rhetorical connotations” ’. Layers of
meaning and feeling are created through the interconnectedness of text, context,
sound and embodied performance.
In other words, a song, even one as replete with social commentary as ‘The
Slum Mums’, does not simply comprise or represent a particular verbalized dis-
course. A song is, first and foremost, a musical event with sonic and lyrical-
melodic components. Obviously, different listeners focus to varying degrees on
different aspects of a given song. For some, the lyrics take precedent, while for
others, the words may not even register with the focus instead, perhaps, on the
bass line or the harmonic movement of the rhythm guitar, or simply on the sen-
suousness of the lead vocals.3 A song is also meant to be performed. A pop song,
as form and genre, has a melodic contour and harmonic topography, and like all
music has a complex signification system of its own (Cooke, 1959; Middleton,
1990; Moore, 2003, 2012). This point cannot be overstated. Any musical analysis
and criticism of a song has to consider both the lyrical and musical content in
multimodal relation to each other, as their affective dimensions and their mean-
ing are intertwined at numerous levels. Further, in the context of this specific
analysis, both the music and lyrics of ‘The Slum Mums’ engage with gender and
class discourses reflexively and reflectively in mutually constitutive ways. As
Blacking argues, ‘music cannot express anything extramusical unless the experi-
ence to which it refers already exists in the mind of the listener’ (1995: 35).
Part of the larger argument we are making is that Morrissey is someone with
considerable cultural and symbolic capital who has a keen sense not just of dis-
courses around class disgust, but also of the manner in which songs can both under-
pin and rehearse or construct and subvert societal beliefs and behaviours. The
structure and performance of ‘The Slum Mums’ may be interpreted as indicating
Morrissey’s appreciation of how music, on one hand, operates on a profoundly
visceral and somatic level in bypassing cognition and interpretation (Ortony,
Norman and Revelle, 1998, 2004), while on the other, is at its most potent when
the emotions of a particular discursive stance become resonate and amplified
through music systems that are also themselves culturally constructed. Adorno’s
(2001) argument that all popular music produced under capitalism is derivative
and incapable of critique has, of course, been systematically challenged, though

such a belief continues to persist with many aficionados of ‘high art’ forms. The
message of ‘The Slum Mums’, wrapped up in a short, ostensibly musically unre-
markable pop song of the early noughties suggests the opposite. The song dem-
onstrates a keen awareness of its neoliberal, socio-historical moment and, by
extension, the limits and potential paradoxes of its form (and its performance).
In the following section, we first examine the discourse of welfare and pov-
erty at the time of the song’s composition and release in the United Kingdom.
Morrissey is then inserted into this socio-political context as a ‘raconteur’ of the
marginalized, which leads us to an analysis of the lyrics in order to understand
how two gendered, classed subjects, in the form of a male welfare officer and a
female welfare recipient, are constructed lyrically/discursively.
The broader historical discourse on class

and social welfare
It is impossible to understand ‘The Slum Mums’, a song in which a welfare officer

castigates a single mother for being on welfare, without an understanding of the
wider political and societal discourses that underpin it. Skeggs (2005: 45) argues
that class disappeared from the academic radar at the exact moment that economic
division reached unprecedented heights in the United Kingdom. Simultaneously
there was an emergence of a political rhetoric of inclusion, classlessness, and
social mobility (Skeggs, 2005: 47 cited in Tyler, 2008: 20). The problematic con-
cept of the ‘Underclass’,4 popularized by Charles Murray, ultimately created a
‘moral panic’ (Cohen, 1972) in an increasingly polarized society, and ‘the sub-
sequent neoliberal reordering of public policy under the aegis of Thatcherism,
Reaganism and the ascendance of the New Right’ (Hayward and Yar, 2006: 10).
As such, in political debate the Moral Underclass Discourse stresses ‘moral’
and ‘cultural’ sources of poverty and exclusion, and is primarily obsessed
with the ‘moral hazard’ of welfare dependency (Levitas, 2000: 360), with the
majority of the political establishment pontificating about how excessive
resources are exhausted through such things as welfare payments (see, e.g.
Allen, 2009). Such discourses reaffirm long established beliefs about the ‘dan-
gerous’ working class who are professed to be a major hazard to the moral
and social order (see Golding and Middleton, 1982; Skeggs, 1997; Lens, 2002;
Wilson and Huntington, 2005; Tyler, 2008; Wood and Skeggs, 2008; Tyler,
2011; Devereux, Dillane and Power, 2011), non-contributors to affluence and
over contributors to decline (Morris, 1994; Levitas, 2003; Skeggs, 2004, 2005;
Hayward and Yar, 2006; Law, 2006;).
Over time, the New Labour governments of Blair and Brown created ‘an
implicit link between parenting and blame’, stressing that parents needed
to be given the ‘skills’ to enable social mobility and to make ‘empowered’
choices (Gillies, 2005). In recent times, young, single, working-class mothers
have been subjected to stigma and hatred in the UK cultural context (Tyler,
2008: 26). The figurative function of the ‘feral’ ‘chavette’ slum mum is con-
structed through animalistic commentary as uncontrollably and immorally
breeding (Gidley and Rooke, 2010 cited in De Benedictis, 2012: 11–12). As
Tyler (2008: 26) remarks
…the chav mum or pramface, with her hooped earrings, sports clothes, pony
tail (‘Croydon facelift’) and gaggle of mixed race children, is the quintessential
sexually excessive, single mother: an immoral, filthy, ignorant, vulgar, tasteless,
working-class whore….
The widespread dissemination of such negative stereotypes ensures that these

single mothers function as convenient scapegoats (Kelly, 1996 cited in Bullock,
Fraser Whyche and Williams, 2001: 235) to deflect blame from the increasingly
obvious shortfalls (i.e. the growing inequality between the very rich and the poor)
of global capitalism (Jensen, 2012).5 This is even more significant in the context of
a move from ‘redistribution to recognition politics’ whereby those groups or indi-
viduals that are deemed to be ‘disgusting’/not respectable are no longer ‘entitled’
to expect the state to provide for their welfare. In essence, those who do not con-
form to the idealized neoliberal citizen ‘work as the constitutive limit; the limit
to value’ (Skeggs, 2005: 977). In these societies, further reducing access to welfare
entitlements, or the amount of payment these individuals can claim, is seen to
have a positive impact as it will force parents and their children to act responsibly
and reintegrate into “normal” society (Barnes and Power, 2012: 7).
Morrissey as a raconteur of the marginalized
I am a social writer, a witness, and I cannot stand unfairness.

(Morrissey in interview with Araya, 2015)
As leader of The Smiths, solo-artiste, writer (2013) and most recently, novelist
(2015), Morrissey is a figure whose influence and reputation looms large within
the popular music scene and beyond.6 Widely acknowledged as a complex, and
controversial icon, Morrissey has become the focus of a growing body of aca-
demic research which seeks to make sense of his significant contribution to
popular culture, particularly in terms of his often counterhegemonic stances
on pertinent contemporary social and political issues (see Renyolds and Press,
1995; Zuberi, 2001; Martino, 2007; Bracewell, 2009; Hopps, 2009; Campbell and
Coulter, 2010; Devereux, Dillane and Power, 2011; Power, Dillane and Devereux,
2012; Dillane, Devereux and Power, 2014; Power, Dilane and Devereux, 2015).
Emerging from a working-class background in Manchester, Morrissey has
adopted a broadly critical left-wing and republican (in the European sense of the
term) perspective. His often radical and challenging pronouncements have seen
him provoke heated argument and debate among cultural commentators and his
many fans. He has, for example, talked about not recognizing traditional gender
binaries or sexual orientations such as ‘straight’ or ‘gay’ (referring to a ‘Fourth
Gender’ and using the term ‘Humasexual’ to describe himself).7 Although his
more recent recordings have extended their focus by engaging with a wider range
of themes including specific Chicano/a and Latino/a concerns (see Devereux
and Hidalgo, 2015), Northern (White) English working-class life looms large in
the Morrissey imaginary.8 It is this understanding of the texture of working-class
life that informs ‘The Slum Mums’.
In terms of his presentational style, Morrissey’s songs are written most often
from the point of view of an outsider. In addition to writing carefully crafted
poetic songs, which are rich in literary allusion (and irony), Morrissey man-
ages to generate a wide appeal through semantic ambiguity combined with a
semiotics of authentic working-class experience. Much of the authenticity which
fans repeatedly refer to while explaining Morrissey’s overall appeal is based on
his creative use of social realism and his commitment to dealing with themes
which are often rendered invisible or demonized within a popular culture or
mass media setting. This is most in evidence in the myriad of references to
working-class/blue-collar experience. As well as writing about geographically
specific themes (focused on his own Irish Catholic Immigrant upbringing in
Manchester and more recently on the Latino/a and Chicano/a experience in
Los Angeles in particular) his lyrics and soundscapes express feelings of loss,
alienation and anomie. As the perennial outsider, Morrissey is, in Power’s (2011)
words, ‘a raconteur of the marginalized’. In the following section, we evidence
how he embodies this position, initially through semantic ambiguity in his lyr-
ics, and later, through his careful and deliberate use of structure and sound, all
of which evidence his powerful, multimodal compositional and performance
abilities at play.
Creating the classed subject through lyrics
The lyrics9 of ‘The Slum Mums’ clearly rehearse a number of classed and gendered
discourses, evidencing Morrissey’s keen familiarity with such issues. Cleverly,
the song is sung from the subject-position of a UK welfare officer castigating a
welfare-dependent mother and subjecting her to his particular brand of classed
and gendered vitriol. The ‘irresponsible’ poor and underclass are presented from
the outset as overly sexually active – the mother is revealed as having six children
by ‘six absent fathers’. The welfare-dependent children are described as ‘filthy’
and in animalistic, scavenging terms as a ‘rat-pack brood’. The slum is ‘engrained
underneath [her] finger nails’, like something she cannot wash away. The welfare
officer speaks of being ‘paid to despise’ her ‘council house eyes’, in a gesture that
conflates poverty and stigmatized housing estates with her own bodily appear-
ance and even genetic makeup. The lone mother is accused of being ‘a slum mum’,
of breathing like one (her body having its own particular rhythms), of being
unclean, and of ‘breeding’ like one, in terms of over-producing children. She is,
in effect, viewed as physically producing the conditions of her own degeneracy.
The welfare officer questions the lone mother’s audacity in trying to receive
assistance from the state, by castigating that ‘you turn to us for succour because
you think we’re just suckers’. In addition he strongly expresses that he and oth-
ers simply ‘don’t care’, while simultaneously admonishing the lone parent and
thereby, demonstrating the contempt that many people have for the ‘undeserv-
ing underclass’. While a specific ethnicity is not mentioned, there is a passing
reference to skin-bleaching in which the female lone mother is reminded that
even a change of name, skin-colour or accent will not allow her to ever escape
from her fixed class and racialized position. From the jaundiced perspective of
the welfare officer, the poor and underclass regard the social welfare system as
being there to be exploited. The officer goes so far as to imply that the welfare
system deliberately sets out to discourage the legitimate claiming of welfare. The
social services offices are:
Strategically placed in a rowdy, dowdy part of town
To discourage you from signing
We make you feel as if you’re whining
When you claim what’s legally yours
The welfare officer also states that the (New) Labour government has nothing but
disgust for those on welfare. We are twice told that ‘The Labour Government10
can’t stand “The Slum Mums” ’. It is clear that the social and political matrix in
which this mother is operating is a challenging one but one that receives little
sympathy from the agents of the state.
The song reaches a dramatic climax when the welfare officer suggests the
woman take her vermin children, her ‘rat-pack brood’, far away from the slums to
a long-grassed meadow in order to ‘administer seven doses lethal and illegal’. The
welfare officer’s shocking encouragement of ‘The Slum Mums’ infanticide/suicide
appears to suggest that she is better off killing her children, using her own illegally
procured drugs, so as to save them from the indignities of a life spent as a member
of the underclass.11 The suggestion references earlier times in the United Kingdom
where infanticide was used as a means of avoid shame.12 She cannot easily access
what is ‘legally’ hers (benefits) but the procurement of ‘illegal’ drugs to get rid of
the problem seems simple, and she and her children will be quickly and efficiently
rendered ‘elsewhere’. At this point the lyrics end. Is that really the solution?
In spite of Morrissey’s track record of speaking up for the marginalized or
his ‘authentic’ positionality as working class, it might be argued that the lyr-
ics alone do not seem to be delivering a counterhegemonic message.13 In fact,
arguably, this song could be understood as underscoring the neoliberal agenda
with its powerful incitement of persuasive distaste, even hate. But this is not
what we’ve come to expect of Morrissey, so clearly something is happening in
the song’s structure, in its very sonic textures, that leads us to an interpretation
other than this obvious literal-lyrical one. We argue this is found in the song’s
structure, melodic lines, use of Morrissey’s particular voice and instrumenta-
tion, all of which play into gendered discourse and emotional manipulation
to creatively subvert the lyrical message with devastating effect. The result is a
multimodal, nuanced and textured piece of work that manipulates the listener
into potentially hating the slum mum, but in the end, realizing that the real
disdain needs to be redirected towards those in power who would coldly cast
her and her children aside. In order to come to this conclusion, we explore
Morrissey’s subversive processes by first looking at the social discourse of the
working-class female body as deviant and other, examining how it has been
constructed discursively and musically, and sometimes not without contradic-
tion in terms of what female embodiment comes to mean.
Music, class and the gendered, singing body
There is a profound moment of recognition of the power of music in George

Orwell’s seminal novel Nineteen Eight-Four (2003[1949]), when the protagonist
Winston Smith hears a female ‘prole’ (the equivalent of a slum mum) singing
a machine-generated and mass-distributed, government-sanctioned nonsense
song as she hangs out clothes on her tenement washing line. Smith is struck by
how the woman’s voice somehow manages to transform the banal lyrics into
something profoundly affective. The sensual female voice seems unaware of its
potential to subvert the status quo and be the undoing of men. Significantly,
Smith’s only other experience of singing is while performing party propaganda
songs in unison with his comrades, something that also incites his emotions,
though in this case, of barely contained, disciplined and vehement violence and
anger, things which are put to use for the good of the party. Both responses
speak to the degree to which the affective and the ideological may be bedfel-
lows in musical utterances. The example of the prole foreshadows in our musi-
cal analysis of ‘The Slum Mums’, the over-productive yet sensual, working-class
female body, the grain of whose voice (Barthes, 1977),14 though silenced in ‘The
Slum Mums’, breaks beyond the bounds of hegemonic discourse captured in
ideologically driven, commercial pop songs.15 Morrissey, like many pop and
protest singers, seems to recognize the latent power of the pop song as a vehi-
cle of expression, par excellence, that can communicate on multiple levels to
working-class and middle-class audiences, something explored by Bennett et al
(2009). In terms of the UK context specifically, Bennett et al’s Culture, Class,
Distinction systematically assesses the relationships between cultural practices
and the social divisions of gender, class and ethnicity in contemporary Britain.
While much of this work is a reassessment of ideas of class and taste, especially
in the digital age, what is particularly important is the manner in which the
authors assess the relationship between cultural capital and inequality.16
When it comes to thinking about music and the working-class body, Fox’s
(2004: 152) exploration of the lexical trope of ‘feeling’ (a concept very preva-
lent in discussions on consuming popular songs) is particularly important –
something he describes as seeking to connect ‘sensory experience, embodied
attitudes, and rational thought to the domain of social relations. This idea of feel-
ingful qualities is particularly pertinent when one considers the degree to which
social interactions may become ‘generic and institutionalised’ (Fox, 2004: 153),
something which music itself is capable of producing and reproducing.17 Music,
then, is an ideological tool and in the discourse specifically on class disgust, a
song like ‘The Slum Mums’ offers an insight into how and why the song might
(subversively) perform and rehearse such negative feelings, providing a critique
on class relations, from a distinctly gendered perspective, that remains as perti-
nent now as it did when the song was first written. But Fox’s work also highlights
the emotional capacity of working-class songs and the potential for the working
class to construct the self. This tension between self-construction and creation
by others is at the heart of any reading of ‘The Slum Mums’.
In order to appreciate the efficacy of ‘The Slum Mums’ as a song form and per-
formance act, particularly in relation to discourses on gendered, class disgust, it
is necessary to briefly survey the manner in which music itself has been femin-
ized as an art form. This in turn leads to a discussion of how feminist critiques of
music scholarship in relation to popular music play into the ambivalence around
the efficacy of Morrissey’s critique within a populist, ‘lower-class’ genre that is
often more concerned with stardom than seeking real social justice through
sonic intervention (Brackett, 2000: 172). We insist that any critical analysis of
gendered, class disgust in popular song form – a cultural artefact performed by a
working-class singer – benefits from this perspective as it uncovers and lays bare
often unquestioned attitudes around the rights of women, particularly working-
class and unemployed women, while simultaneously revealing the gendered
work that music does in creating women as sexual beings first and foremost.
In terms of the relationship between music and gender, feminist musicologist
Susan McClary’s pioneering work Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality
(2002[1991]) challenged structural and empirical research in musicology at a
time when scholarship declared ‘signification’ to be off-limits, yet where ‘struc-
tures’ as graphed by theorists, and ‘beauty’ (see Hanslick, 1995, for example) as
celebrated by aestheticians evidenced violence, misogyny and racism. As part of
her explorative critique, McClary identified the following ways in which musical
discourses were gendered: gender as musically constructed (utterances based on
gender, and musical codes containing social attitudes); gendered aspects of music
theory (male cadences being ‘strong’, female cadences being ‘weak’, as well as
binary discourses on attraction and repulsion); gender and sexuality in narrative
(virile male protagonist, with lighter, wayward secondary female themes to be
disciplined and contained); and finally, music as gendered discourse (music and
musicians as effeminate, and male responses to music emphasizing objectivity,
rationality and universality versus female responses as overwrought, emotional
and even histrionic). McClary was focusing on the Western Music canon in
Feminine Endings but many of her observations are applicable to popular music
forms too, given that much of the language, conventions and practices come
from that world.18 In this and in her subsequent book Conventional Wisdom
(2000), McClary has argued that because music can organize our perceptions
of our gendered bodies and emotions, and it can tell us things about history
and the contextualized, historical moment that are not always accessible through
other mediums. But music doesn’t just organize our perceptions. It profoundly
shapes how we come to make sense of things, through our body, or senses and
our emotions.
Shusterman (2008) explains, through somaesthetic means, that a person is
configured by the social and cultural as well as the biological, and that the body
and its emotional responses cannot be excluded from any engagement with
‘meaning’. Feelings and emotions are both registered, negotiated and shared
externally but also felt deeply and profoundly internalized, which feeds back
into the society. This aspect of the operations of the feeling being in everyday life
is examined at length in Tia De Nora’s work (2003) which examines the man-
ner in which we are moved, in terms of how aesthetics and performance can be
manipulated. Music is therefore ‘a cultural resource in the social construction of
emotions’ (Juslin and Sloboda, 2003: 17; also see Finnegan, 2003), particularly
where that resource has been gendered. This social construction manifests in
individual and collective bodies. For a song like ‘The Slum Mums’, its meaning
and affective dimensions reside not just in social constructions of mothers on
social welfare, but on how the protoganist (the welfare officer) sings his disgust
which is not just discursive, but is deeply felt and embodied in the song struc-
ture. It manipulates us to feel the same disgust, and for that to inform our beliefs.
Popular music scholar Sheila Whitely has written extensively on the man-
ner in which women are socially constructed through songs. Citing Simone
de Beauvoir that one is not born a woman but rather becomes one, Whitely
(2005: 65) points out that ‘feminist would generally agree that girls, like women,
are socially constructed rather than biologically given…in different ways in dif-
ferent social and historical contexts. Whitely (2005: 65) demonstrates how the
conflation of …girl…babe, baby and mama (which has its origins in the blues)
in Joplin’s late 1960s’ live performance of ‘Tell Mama’ was essentially a ‘sexually
knowledgable exchange’ between the singer and her audience. This point might
be extended to Morrissey’s ‘The Slum Mums’, a figure of a particular moment in
time (and geographic space), configured by that very English of terms ‘mum’,
who was very much in the public eye and therefore highly topical for the politi-
cally aware Morrissey.
Given his sexual ambiguity, Morrissey is an interesting figure as the per-
former of this song, but, of course, it is not he, per se, that is constructing the
slum mum but rather the male civil servant Morrissey is envoicing. By giving
all of the ‘lines’ to this man, Morrissey is actually underscoring the ‘fiercely
patriarchal basis for constructing appropriate codes for behaviour and iden-
tity of women’ as Whitely puts it (2005: 67). The bottom line is that slum mum
is a ‘bad girl’, thereby establishing ‘the ideological terrain for the three as of
abuse, abjection and alienation’ (Whitely, 2005:. 67). There is only one moment
where the slum mum attempts to construct her own identity, through chang-
ing her accent, a moment where she ‘refuses to enact the ascribed identity/the
codes we live by (Whitely, 2005: 69). As a creative artist, Morrissey would also
be patently aware of the working women’s bodies as sites of ‘contradiction,
conflict and tension’ (Whitely, 2005: 69), the very elements that form the basis
of Morrissey’s critical, performance and singing style. Moreover, as someone
who is also ambivalent about gender and sexuality, Morrissey is particularly
well positioned to understand how emotions have been gendered in musical
form too. ‘Reason’ is often constructed as masculine, and ‘emotion’, particu-
larly in terms of musical form, is constructed as female, and where ‘reasoned
emotion’ is about control, discipline and manipulation. The very fact that this
song endeavours to be about control, discipline and manipulation but gradu-
ally reveals itself to be a song of uneven structure and instability is precisely
why is works so well as a critique. Therefore, in the following section, we go
back to the song once again, but this time take into account the manner in
which the music and lyrics work together, along with the very specific ‘grain’
of Morrissey’s voice, to generate potential reactions and meanings which ulti-
mately culminate in a devastating critique.
‘Structures of feelings’19 in ‘The Slum Mums’
A close musical reading of ‘The Slum Mums’ reveals multiple ways in which the
music acts as a gendered matrix, drawing upon binary conventions in terms of
structure and form, but especially in relation to the gendered, emotional aspect
of music, which in this specific song act as an overwrought foil or contradiction to
the neutrally delivered but altogether misogynistic lyrics of the song, underscoring
the gendered, class disgust that is at the centre of the narrative. As Langer has argued
(cited in Blacking, 1995: 36), ‘music can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail
and truth that language cannot approach.’ The following section leans into a basic
harmonic outline of the song (Figure 3.1) and our more complete transcription of
the song (see Appendix 1) which displays the vocal melody line (with occasional
lyrics inserted), the framing and underpinning chords in relation to the melody and
the overall rhythmic and metric structure of the song. Our approach here draws
upon Moore (2012) where the focus is on the interaction of music and everyday
words and, in particular, on the consequences of such theorizations.
The Slum Mums (skeletal structure and chord sequences)
Intro
1+ 2 + 3 + 4 + 1+ 2 + 3 + 4 + 1+ 2 + 3 + 4 + 1+ 2 + 3 + 4 +
Dmin Am7 Emin F7
Amin *Emin F7 C G
Verse 1
…. Six filty…
Emin G** Emin D7 [** or E7 1st
inversion]
think…
Dmin Amin Emin F7
welfare, oh yeah…
Amin Emin F7 C/G
Chorus
change your…
Emin G Emin C
won’t escape…
G Bmin7 C Amin
government…
Emin F7 C Amin
Verse 2
offices…
Dmin Amin7 Emin F7
-courage you…
Amin Emin F7 C/G
Chorus
change your…
Emin G Emin C
won’t escape
G Bmin7 C Amin
government…
Emin F7 C B+
Coda
… take your …
C F7 Amin*** F7 ***or F7 1st
inversion
lethal…
C F7 Amin*** F7 ***or F7 1st
inversion
Figure 3.1. ‘The Slum Mums’
Figure 3.1. (cont.)

Instrumental Coda
Dmin Amin Emin F7
Amin *Emin
[* pre-emptive chords, falling on the 4+ and not the 1 downbeat at the start and end
of the song]
Like all clever ‘emotional designs’ (Norton, 2005), this song crafts and manipu-
lates our emotional responses to devastating ends. From the very outset of the
song, listeners are placed in an uncomfortable sonic world. The song opens with
a distinct guitar riff in the minor, historically ‘weak/female’ key, over which is
heard a shrill sound sample of children screaming and crying. It is a melodra-
matic start, meant to startle and irritate and literally somatically embody the
disgust communicated in the virulent opening line, ‘six filthy children…from
six absent fathers’. These eight chords, moving from D minor to A minor (the
tonic) then quickly to E minor and F7, have a somewhat destabilizing effect,
starting on chord IV (which we don’t necessarily know is chord IV at this point)
but then getting to the tonic by the measure 5, only to be destabilized again with
a sequence of Amin – Emin – F7 and C/G (this G foreshadowing the change of
key in the ‘chorus’). The listener knows and feels (s)he is in a moment of tension
and instability.
In terms of the song’s melody and execution, a ventriloquist-like Morrissey
assumes the position of the welfare officer with what should be a vitriolic and
scathing verbal assault on a female lone mother in terms of the content.20 Yet his
male subject voice, with its smooth, persuasive grain, is in stark contrast with the
insidious message of the song. Staying within the five-note, contained range of
A–E, he intones reasonably and seductively. He croons us on side and in doing
so he seems to help us rehearse our disgust, almost unaware (and so, we become
complicit in a neoliberal positionality, at least for the present). But something is
amiss. The logic of the rhetoric is not clearly supported by a concomitant logic
in the music, which itself is not in a clear and rational/structurally repetitive
verse-chorus form with easily performed and repeatable lines throughout. The
overall song can be broadly cast into a verse, chorus, verse, chorus with coda
schema. The first ‘verse’ starts with ‘six filty children’ (bar 9) and the second with
‘the offices’ (bar 33). But it is important to note that the underpinning harmonic
structures and the manner in which each of these verses starts and are subse-
quently constructed differs. While the first verse begins into the third beat of
the bar and follows the E min, G, E min, D7 riff, the second verse actually starts
with the harmonic material that precedes the opening verse, that is with the
chord sequence found in measure 1–8. In other words, the opening harmonic
sequence of the song is now integrated into the structure of the second verse.
The first verse starts in a rather uncertain fashion but the second verse is more
confident, with a growing sense of the rightness of the protagonist’s voice. But
there is another way to look at it. The first verse is technically a line longer or
starts earlier than the second verse, which really has only two lines. So perhaps
the arguments being made by the welfare officer are not holding up or are prov-
ing unsustainable or are dissipating the longer he goes on. Either way, the verses
differ, eliding and causing confusion; seemingly the same but not the same really.
The ‘chorus’ starts, arguably, at bar 21 though it seems more fully fledged as
a chorus from bar 25 – ‘but you won’t escape’ – which seems to reach a logi-
cal conclusion four bars later, suggesting a closed unit on reaching the section
‘because you live a breathe like one’ (bar 28). But somewhat unexpectedly, it runs
forward for another line wavering on the semi-quavers (‘and the labour govern-
ment’), climaxing on a grating tritone interval (D sharp – A) with an underpin-
ning tonic chord of A min, which then moves back to chord IV for the second
verse. The melodic contour of the (ostensible) chorus intoning slum mum (bars
26 and 46 respectively) with its downward, downbeat gesture, recalls a kind of
derisive football chant, its long drawn out broad vowels inviting uncritical par-
ticipation – ‘slum mums, slum mums, slum mums’.
In its second iteration, from bar 41 (or really bar 45), the ‘chorus’ material,
though for the most part the same, has a distinctly different character where it
uses a B major chord to module up to C major, a half-step and harmonically
illogical move, again underpinning the flawed ‘logic’ of the argument used by
the welfare office. At this point the song moves into new terrain, into a kind of
coda where the words are more slowly and deliberately rendered in a mono-
tone, encouraging infanticide (bars 53–60), the I–IV chords dominating and
the melodic materials moving in downward gestures, falling syllables, signifying
termination.
In sum, there isn’t a clean internal logic to the verse and the chorus, both
of which change in each rendition and whose starting points are unclear.
Undoubtedly, there is repetition of melodic lines present, but the overall song
is actually quite difficult to sing, with is shift in tonal centres and variable word
spacing, sometimes with syllables placed on long held notes, other times on
rapid moving semi-quavers, changing, as Moore (2003: 43) notes, the ‘verbal
space’ in terms of speed and intensity. Herein lies the emotional design where
the song structure sets up a very interesting dialectic between what is being said
(through the lyrics) as appearing to be reasonable, and how it is said (through

the music), as betraying an illogical and emotional argument that is inconsist-
ent, and additive, and rhythmically uneven, though a smooth voice tries to keep
it all in check persuasively. The rhetoric powerfully and persuasively takes us
along to what to all intents and purposes promises to be a logical conclusion –
infanticide. This is boldly and calculatingly set within the texture of a IV–I plagal
or ‘Amen’ chord – its religious connotations being brutally and deftly referenced
here with great irony and ambiguity by Morrissey. The final moment of the coda
hang, unresolved in terms of musical structure, a kind of McClary-esque ‘femi-
nine ending’ that is followed by a guitar solo which mimics the screaming from
the opening of the song as well as reproducing the wail of an ambulance. The
song ends abruptly on the E minor chord, unresolved and terminated before its
time, just like the mother and children. There is a strong structural suggestion of
no escape, of being caught in a loop. Perhaps this gesture is meant to indicate the
trap of the welfare system, but maybe the real trap is the discursive field in which
this mother has limited agency.
And where is the ‘slum mum’ in all of this? Crucially, throughout the song
we never get hear the woman’s response. She has no voice here (unlike her prole
counterpart in Nineteen Eighty-Four). The only place we get a glimpse of her
subject-position is in the welfare officers patronizing comment about the ‘slum
mum’ trying to hide her working-class voice with a higher status one that would
belie her origins. The vocal line becomes a falsetto, leaping up sharply on the
‘don’t’ of ‘camouflage your accent, so that even you don’t recognise it’ (empha-
sis added), the welfare officer derisively imitating a false middle- or upper-class
accent in the upward curve of the melody in measure 24, which reaches up as
high as high G, the seventh note of the A minor scale (though the accidental F
sharp signals a modulation to G, a different oppositional key). Not only is the
slum mum, copper-fastened as deceptive, but also her overwrought emotional-
ity, her histrionic shrillness performs very common gendered musical code for
females.
Such a negotiated reading of the dominant or hegemonic codes or dis-
courses (Hall, 1999, 2000[1997]), has the potential to evoke a more compas-
sionate or understanding view of ‘The Slum Mums’ of this world. To borrow
from Brackett (2000: 172), and interpolating the song under scrutiny here,
‘the conditions of [The Slum Mums] production and reception exemplify
many of the paradoxes between art and commerce, political integrity and
financial practicality. We argue that in assuming the role of the welfare officer
who taunts and blames the lone mother, Morrissey’s envoicing/ventriloquism
actually has the potential to force audiences to deal with their own preju-
dices (Rogan, 1993: 300). Further, as Keith Negus (1996: 220) writes (citing
Lawrence Gossberg, 1992) ‘music works “at the intersection of the body and
emotions”, and in doing so can generate “affective alliances” between people,
which in turn can create the energy for social change that many have a direct
impact on politics and culture’. The potential for song as social commentary
to change our views, or, at the very least, reflect prevalent discourses, remains
compelling.21
‘The Slum Mums’ today
When this song was first written, gendered and classed discourses surrounding
welfare recipients were prevalent but in recent years this process has intensi-
fied. We are in agreement with Jensen (2014) who argues that what has become
known as poverty porn has multiplied across the UK television landscape (as
indeed is the case elsewhere), reinstating classification processes of moral worth
and in the process ‘produced “the welfare ‘scrounger/skiver’ ”, an abject figure
whose existence seems to justify new forms of economic punishment and condi-
tional welfare’. The widespread use of the Moral Underclass Discourse (Levitas,
2000) has seen the demonization of society’s most vulnerable people become an
endemic feature of contemporary political and popular discourse. In essence,
‘the media, popular entertainment and the political establishment have gone out
of their way to convince us that these are moral issues, an indiscipline that needs
to be rectified’ (Jones, 2011: 195). Discourses which talk of the ‘spatialisation of
whole areas of Britain’ abound, implying that the slum mum is spreading ‘her
wayward ways generationally and infectiously through parenting (De Benedictis,
2012: 11–12). Indeed, former British Prime Minister David Cameron (cited in
Jones, 2011: 77) champions an ideology in which mothers (in particular) are
increasingly expected to take responsibility for engineering a way out of poverty
and exclusion for themselves and their children (MacDonald et al, 2001 cited
in Allen and Taylor, 2012: 1). Rather than framing women’s poverty in terms
of structural causes like inadequate child care and low wages, these discourses,
which present the poor as undeserving of sympathy and public support, do little
to improve public understanding of poverty and ultimately fuel anti-welfare sen-
timent (Gans, 1995). It is in this context that the work a song like ‘The Slum Mums’
does, in the current age of austerity, is therefore doubly important. It operates as
a protest song in that it reminds us that we are making the same mistakes and
falling back into the same poisonous rhetoric, while simultaneously showing us
how easy it is to do just that and forget.
Blacking (1995: 35) may have asserted that ‘music cannot instill a sense of fel-
lowship’ and that ‘the best it can do is confirm the situation that already exists’
but more recent work on somatic embodiment and music might argue other-
wise. ‘The Slum Mums’ undoubtedly confirms, in stark terms, the prevalence of
gendered and class discourses in relation to welfare mothers, but it also has the
potential to dismantle commonly held prejudices. The song’s surface simplicity
belies a complex multimodal piece at work, enticing us to perform gendered, class
disgust while simultaneously revealing to us, in shocking terms, just how easy it
is to become complicit in an ideology and emotional narrative that can have dire
consequences for real people. The shame resides not with the slum mum but with
those in power and by exposing this, Morrissey reveals how manipulative this
power is, effortlessly recreating this ugly discourse of gendered class disgust and
creatively and musically harnessing it to fold back on itself to devastating effect.
Notes
1 Please see full transcription in Appendix 1.

2 As his band’s musical director, Boorer, in particular, has been central to the
establishment of the Morrissey sound.
3 This will depend, of course, on the manner in which a song has been recorded and
how the various textures are foregrounded or submersed. For an extended discussion
of this in relation to recorded popular music forms specifically, see Moore (2012).
For a more extended discussion of the grain of the voice and the voice as sensuous/
gendered, see Frith (1988) on ‘playing with a different sex’ and the voices of women.
4 A significant body of literature challenges these assertions (see, e.g. Nayak and
Kehily, 2014, for an excellent overview).
5 See for example O’Flynn, Monaghan and Power for a discussion of the use of
scapegoating as a deflective strategy in explaining the causes and impact of the
financial crisis in Ireland.
6 See Devereux, Dillane and Power (2011) for a discussion of Morrissey fandom.
7 For further discussion see Dillane, Devereux and Power (2014) analysis on the song
‘I Can Have Both’ by Morrissey. Also see (1996) for an exploration of the ‘fourth
gender’ and ‘melodic contours’.
8 So too do an array of queer icons, most notably Oscar Wilde and James Dean. See
Hawkins, 2009.
9 Copyright issues prevent us from printing the full lyric here, but they can be
accessed at www.passionsjustlikemine.com, and a performance of the song (the
performance that forms the basis for the music transcription we provide later), can
be found at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LVYZ_m5_Ig>.
10 In the United Kingdom at that time New Labour was far more enthusiastic about
the neoliberal agenda than even Thatcher dared to be (Byrne, 2005: 56 cited
in Power, 2011: 110) In this regard, Morrissey further signaled his hostility to
neoliberal policies with the lines ‘I’ve been dreaming of a time when the English are
sick to death of Labour and Tories’ in ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’, which he released
in May 2004.
11 An earlier Morrissey/Stephen Street song ‘Interesting Drug’ celebrated (or at the
very least refused to condemn) the use of drugs by the underclass to escape the
misery of their existence (see Power, Dillane and Devereux, 2012). The ‘Slum Mums’
is ostensibly far bleaker.
12 There is much evidence of this practice documented in British folk song.
Gammon (2008) and Symonds (2004) both explore this particular gendered and
classed topic in oral folk balladry, a form that feeds into British popular music
more widely.
13 We are keenly aware that there is potential to misread the lyrics (particularly
without the necessary cultural capital). Equally, a critique might be leveled that
Morrissey is fetishizing poverty and the working class for his own financial gain,
though this is not the conclusion we come to here.
14 As well as thinking about the voice as identified by its specific ‘grain’, there
is another meaning at play here. A singer is often forced to sing ‘against the
grain’ or contrary to expectation, by adapting and subverting traditions and
expectations in creative and compelling ways. Moreover, the ‘grain’ of voice is
a site of the ‘dual production of language’ (meaning) and ‘of music’ (Barthes,
1977: 181).
15 In terms of these party songs, Orwell (2003[1949]) devastatingly underscores
the manner in which humans can be co-opted into rehearsing emotions that
affect behaviours and practices, especially to towards others, often with serious
consequences. Even Winton, with his ability to critique and understand the
powerful somatic responses songs generate, would still find his body betraying
him, allowing him to be manipulated by the strong physiological responses rhythm
and pitch and sonority generated in him. We argue that ‘The Slum Mums’ has the
capacity to act in the same way and that is the potency of its critique. While we do
not make direct, causal links between the content of Orwell’s book and Morrissey’s
‘The Slum Mums’ (we do not have evidence Morrissey read Orwell, though we
very much suspect he did), both Penguin Classic authors deal with the rhetoric
of politicians in resonant ways. From our perspective, the allusion to Nineteen
Eighty-Four functions on multiple levels which undergirds our analysis and

argument here about ‘The Slum Mums’.
16 Also see Savage (2006) where the author shows that that age and ethnicity in
particular, and gender, educational qualifications and occupational class, strongly
condition taste for both musical genres and works.
17 Though Fox is specifically talking about American country music, his ideas are
equally applicable here, particularly when married to approaches from Middleton
(1990), Cook (1998) and Schuker (2001), with their respective neo-Marxist
approaches to music scholarship.
18 For perspectives on gender in heavy metal music, see Walser’s (1993)
groundbreaking work in this area. Walser’s work is also useful in the manner in
which it shifts the focus squarely on the music, rather than emphasizing the lyrics.
19 A term attributed to Raymond Williams, ‘structures of feelings’ largely refers to
the gap that emerges between official discourse and popular responses to such
discourses (in relation to governance, policy, regulation), and so on. As such,
a popular song can be viewed as, in itself, as a structure of feeling. Williams
coined the phrase in 1954 and developed it in his 1961 publication (see Williams,
2001[1961]). That work has further significance in the context of this paper
as it documents the rise of the popular press in Britain and made a significant
contribution to the development of cultural studies which in turn has shaped
popular music studies.
20 Morrissey’s long-standing strategy of envoicing or acting as a ventriloquist has
allowed him to adopt and explore a range of controversial positions and ultimately
expose problematic discourses more effectively. He has, for example, used this
device to expose racism (‘Bengali in Platforms’) and (Irish) religious institutional
child abuse (‘Children in Pieces’).
21 There are a number of well-known contemporary popular culture treatments of the
underclass, welfare benefit abuse, and stigmatization, such as the TV documentary
series ‘We All Pay Your Benefits’, ‘On Benefits and Proud’, Benefits Britain 1949’ and
‘Benefit Street’.
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4
Recontextualization and Fascist Music

John E. Richardson
Introduction
The vast majority of work examining identity and politics in musicology, and in
popular music studies in particular, presumes and sometimes explicitly argues
that music is personally and socially therapeutic – that since music enacts social
identities it is a force for good, particularly in relation to marginalized groups.
This chapter brings together two areas of critical examination: the sociological
analysis of fascist music; and the concept ‘recontextualization’, developed in dis-
course analytic literature, wherein the contents of one text reappear in another
text. Meanings are formed in use; and so, through this process of ‘textual bor-
rowing’, (partly) new meanings are produced. This chapter examines three ways
in which this occurs in fascist song and music – through appropriation; through
interpolation; and through ideological realignment – and will explore the func-
tions that this, and the performance of song and music more generally, serves to
fascist cultural projects.
Music, politics, identity
This chapter is, in a general sense, interested in exploring the ways that music can
contribute to inegalitarianism and inequality, and to individual and collective
identities that orientate towards these political goals. However, the vast majority
of work examining identity and politics in musicology, and in popular music
studies in particular, presumes and sometimes explicitly argues that music is
‘personally and socially therapeutic’ (Johnson and Cloonan, 2009: 1). In his con-
clusion to the book The Sociology of Rock, for example, Frith (1978: 209) argued
72 John E. Richardson
that rock ‘will remain fun and the source of. . . power and joy’. Cross (as cited in
McKerrell 2015) has argued that music itself may have evolved to enable social
cohesion: ‘Music as a communicative medium, is likely to have a significant role
in minimising within-group conflict or, to put it another way, in collaboratively
establishing a degree of social equilibrium’ (Cross in McKerrell, 2015: 4).
Equally, there is a well-established literature on music and politics, which
examines music’s political power – the ways in which it can inspire individuals
and movements, give voice to minority voices and call for emancipatory change
(Garofalo, 1992; Frith and Street, 1992; Street, 1988, 2012; Billig, 2000; Brown,
2008). Pedelty and Weglarz (2013: xi) summarize this consensus in the litera-
ture as follows: ‘given the right historical circumstances, cultural conditions,
and aesthetic qualities, popular music can help bring people together to form
more effective political communities’. Here too, the predominant narrative is one
of positivity. That even when song and music are instrumental in articulating,
representing or contesting relations of power, music plays a beneficial role in,
inter alia, articulating identities, building groups and communities, in produc-
ing pleasure, and in resisting alienation, conformity and capitalism (Denselow,
1989). Pedelty and Weglarz (2013: xiii) state that their edited collection on polit-
ical rock music ‘is about that rare part of the popular music world where musi-
cians, fans, and critics operate in the belief music can do more than express teen
angst, sell mini vans, or evoke nostalgia’. All 11 chapters in their edited collec-
tion examine left-liberal political artists – or, ‘the musicians who move us’ (xiv,
emphasis added), and this personal deictic is vital in understanding the orienta-
tion of their book. Although they acknowledge this limitation and justify their
editorial choice in two ways – that ‘politicized rock has been much more con-
nected to the Left than the Right’ and that ‘in comparison to mainstream songs
extolling the virtues of parties, sex, romance, and conspicuous consumption’
Right-Wing rock ‘barely registers at all’ (Ibid.) – one is left with a very definite
sense of academics writing about their own record collections.
I should point out that I value the contribution of the publications cited above;
I also agree with many of their claims. I agree that music and song inevitably
invoke, interpolate and index individual and collective identities (Campbell,
2010; Slobin, 1993). Such ideational and interpersonal functions of music and
song are always implicitly political (in the sense that ‘the personal is political’)
and, when the collective identities invoked articulate hierarchies, inequalities
and power struggle, music can be explicitly political too (Garofalo, 1992; Slobin,
1996). Such political/musical interventions do frequently concern struggles
for rights and recognition, and in this area the research literature is sizable and
Recontextualization and Fascist Music 73
sophisticated. Such analysis, again, tends to assume and sometimes to specifi-

cally argue that music is fundamental to human life and that music’s capacity to
build community is an unquestioned good. As Marie Korpe (2004: ix) puts it,
‘when music is banned, the very soul of a culture is being strangled’.
However, there are a number of ways in which power can be contested, and a
number of political projects to which music can be functionalized. When Blecha
(2004: 137) describes political rock music positively, as songs that ‘dare to ques-
tion authority’, I immediately think: which authorities are we talking about?
What questions are being asked? And with what extremity are these questions
posed? What if the musical culture we are examining is orientated towards the
denial of human rights? Should a musical culture that resists egalitarian prin-
ciples, encourages prejudice and, arguably, incites violence against individu-
als and communities be deemed inferior or objectionable? Should this stand
unopposed? As Johnson and Cloonan (2009: 4) point out, ethnomusicology and
popular music studies only infrequently recognize that ‘every time music is used
to demarcate the territory of self or community, it is incipiently being used to
invade, marginalize or obliterate that of other individuals or groups’. The degree
of invasion and marginalization differs between songs, scenes and (sub)cultures;
but the demarcation of Self and Other, and the roles projected onto these col-
lective identities, are entailed whenever music speaks to the social and cultural
(Bohlman, 2003).
Scholars are now starting to consider the roles that music and song play in
articulating exclusivist (or bigoted) collective identities and giving succour to
inegalitarian political projects (McKerrell, 2012). Within conventional musi-
cology there is a well-established literature on nationalism and music and how
music ‘acquired the potential to articulate nationalism by representing place’
(Bohlman, 2003: 50). ‘National peoples’ were taken to ‘give voice’ to the nation
through music and song (cf. Herder, 1778), particularly in folk song, which
‘came to be venerated as the spontaneous expression of the national soul’ (Grout,
1960: 497–498). This process of ‘finding’ (inventing) national music traditions
frequently went hand-in-hand with the ‘exoticization’ and ‘racialization’ of
music associated with national others (cf. Piotrowska, 2013). In ethnomusicol-
ogy, there is also a small but growing literature on music and conflict (Pettan,
1998, 2010; Grant and Stone-Davis, 2013), and particularly how song and music
participate in overt and covert forms of violence (Johnson and Cloonan, 2009;
Gray, 2010; O’Connell and Castelo-Branco, 2010; Fast and Pegley, 2012). In
popular music studies, Grossberg (1983) has argued against the presupposed
idea that rock is inherently resistant, suggesting that in addition to political
opposition, rock can also adopt alternative, independent and co-opted political
viewpoints. Most recently, Shekhovtsov has written extensively on White power
music across Europe (Shekhovtsov, 2009, 2013a; Shekhovtsov and Jackson,
2012), and edited a special issue for Patterns of Prejudice on Music and the
Other, which argued that ‘music has played an increasingly prominent role in
constructing national identities and promoting various types of national pro-
jects’ (Shekhovtsov, 2013b: 330). Together, these works constitute a significant
contribution to understanding the roles that musical transactions can play in
social conflict and power abuse.
Fascist music, fascist movement
Music has formed part of the artistic and cultural projects of virtually every
European extreme-right party and movement (see Lowles and Silver, 1998;
Shekhovtsov and Jackson, 2012; Shekhovtsov, 2013a). The European fascist
movements that grew from the 1920s used the arts to help foster their moral
and cultural order (Kater, 1992, 1997; Steinweis, 1993; Etlin, 2002; Griffin, 2004;
Hirsch, 2010). In their magisterial edited collection on music and Francoism,
Pérez Zalduondo and Gan Quesada (2013) examine ‘the many ways in which,
throughout more than forty years of Francoist rule, music and musicians, musi-
cal thinking and practices, both individual and collective, became linked to the
society and ideology of the dictatorship’ (p. ix). Their resulting book, examin-
ing music, ideology and politics in Franco-era artistic culture, is not merely an
exemplary study of the relationships between music and power; through mak-
ing a case for the central importance of music in social and political life, it also
makes a crucial contribution to historiography of twentieth-century Spain.
In setting out to achieve their political project, British fascists are motivated
by a number of assumptions and commitments that draw directly on Herder’s
concept of ‘nationalbildung’ and an accompanying powerful line of racial
nationalism inherited from the late eighteenth century. Central of these is that
‘the state of the arts was a direct expression of the “greatness” of the nation’
(Griffin, 2004: 45). And, just as great art is assumed to be a manifestation of
‘the national genius’ or ‘the essential spirit of the people’, so social and cultural
pathology is revealed through the production and especially the popularity of
so-called degenerate art (Griffin, 2004: 46). In response, fascists aim ‘to reverse
this deplorable state of cultural collapse’ (Ibid.), using ‘music to underpin party
mobilization strategies, to anchor choreographed set-pieces like meetings and
marches, and to reinforce “collectives of emotion” among participants as well as

unaligned spectators’ (Macklin, 2013: 430). As an author writing in the British
Union of Fascists’ newspaper Blackshirt put it, ‘Fascism will sweep away that cult
of ugliness and distortion in art, music and literature which is the product of
neurotic post-war minds’ (Randall, 1934: 1).
Potter’s (1998) study of Nazi Musicology shows it gradually acquiesced, and
was implicated in, the radicalization of German cultural life. In 1933 Joseph
Goebbels established the Reich Culture Chamber (Reichskulturkammer; RKK)
with sections responsible for the different arts. There was a section especially
for music, because Goebbels viewed music as a primary way to communicate
directly with the people (Potter, 1998; Etlin, 2002). As he put it:
Music affects the heart and emotions more than the intellect. Where then could
the heart of a nation beat stronger than in the huge masses, in which the heart of
a nation has found its true home? (Goebbels cited in Hirsch, 2010: 5)
There was the intention that ‘good German music’ would be promoted through-
out the Reich, in schools, through the Hitler Youth, through social and leisure
Nazi organizations such as Kraft durch Freude (‘Strength through Joy’) and at
Party Rallies. Soldiers too were encouraged to participate in collective singing
and music; many special soldiers’ song books were published and such songs
were participants in ‘the cultural work of persecution and genocide’ (Bohlman,
2003: 53). As Bohlman points out: ‘The very horror of the Holocaust is amplified
by the recognition that music was, in fact, omnipresent. Music mobilized the
fascism and racism of the Nazis’ (Ibid.).
While all fascist music is intended with this goal of a fascist political-cultural
pseudo-revolution in mind (Bertola, 2013), the manner in which such a goal is
encoded in music outputs varies according to time, place and the relation of the
fascist movement to wider subcultural groups. Songs were written and sung by
fascist parties and movements after World War II and through the 1960s, though
the genre and delivery were very similar to the pre-war tradition. The largest far-
right musical movement has for a long time been the Skinhead scene (Lowles
and Silver, 1998; Shaffer, 2013). The Skinhead subculture originally developed in
the 1960s listening to ska, rocksteady and early reggae, and was influenced by
Jamaican rude boys. It was a working-class subculture, some of its biggest stars
were Black, and the scene was racially mixed. The subculture died back, only
to be reborn in the mid- to late-1970s with a radically different constituency
and (political) alignment, having been infiltrated and gradually taken over by
National Front (NF) supporters.
In 1979, the NF launched ‘Rock Against Communism’ to ‘fight back against

left-wingers and anti-British traitors in the music press’ with ‘concerts, road-
shows and tours’ (Bulldog, no. 14, March 1979). Initially short-lived, due to
the collapse of the NF following the 1979 General Election, ‘Rock Against
Communism’ was relaunched in 1983. The key to its revival ‘was having
Skrewdriver, a skinhead band that broke up in 1978, to reunite. . . the National
Front established White Noise Records to release music that mainstream
companies would not, and its first release was Skrewdriver’s White Power EP,
quickly selling out of its first pressing’ (Shaffer, 2015: 143). Defined by racism
and dominated by a new musical genre – Oi – that offered a stripped down,
simplified version of punk, ‘the NF’s message of “whiteness” was spread to
radicals in other countries through music’ (Ibid.). Bands such as Skrewdriver
and Brutal Attack used the visceral energy of punk in combination with
openly White-supremacist and National Socialist lyrics. Their music, and
that of other groups, thrived in the ‘White Noise’ racist subculture, through
‘not simply providing texts for complaints about minorities competing for
employment, but also instigating violence and memorializing it in forms
eerily consistent with the century of unimaginable destruction’ (Schwarz,
1997; Bohlman, 2003: 54).
However, this musical genre, and musical subculture, did not draw universal
approval from fascists in the United Kingdom. For example, Colin Jordan, the
unrepentant father of British National-Socialism, argued that this musical genre
was the opposite of the vision promoted in fascist ideology:
National-Socialism’s pursuit of good order. . . pertains to every aspect of life,

including all the arts . . . National-Socialism seeks a reflective harmony in all the
affairs of man. It seeks this good order in, for example, a just and efficient eco-
nomic structure, and sees it in good music which by definition is harmonious.
In contrast to and in conflict with this good music of National-Socialism is the
discordant din which skinheads delight in. Such cacophony. . . is the authentic
death sound of Democracy. (Jordan, 1995: 11, emphases added)
Accordingly, National-Socialism seeks harmony in music as part of its project

to bring ‘harmony’ to life. In contrast, discord in music is taken to be evidence
of social degeneracy and decay which, in turn, are symptomatic of democracy.
Such multimodal analysis – commenting on the social and ideological signifi-
cance of tonality, harmonics and distortion – demonstrates not only the sig-
nificance of music and musical scenes to fascist political projects, but also that
fascists themselves are aware of its importance.
Recontextualization
My analysis of fascism, in general, focuses on continuities and change in fas-

cist discourse since the 1920s and the dialectical relations to wider social and
political life (Richardson, 2013, 2015). In relation to fascist music and song, that
means relating the music written, recorded and performed at particular points
in time to the preoccupations and cultural affordances of that particular period.
The concept of recontextualization gives us some analytic traction, allowing us
to consider this tension between continuity and change in discourse, and how
they can be traced intertextually.
Intertextuality refers to the linkage of texts to other texts, both in the past and
in the present. Such links can be established in different ways: through a specific
reference to another text by name; by referring to the contents of another text;
through reference to the same events as another text; or through the reappear-
ance of a text’s contents in another text. The latter process is labelled recontex-
tualization. Following Reisigl and Wodak (2001, 2009), if a textual element – a
speech, a quote, a phrase and so on – is taken from a specific context we argue
it is decontextualized; when this same element is inserted into a new context,
we argue it is recontextualized. Meanings are formed in use and so, through
this process of ‘textual borrowing’, (partly) new meanings are produced. As
van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999: 96) have argued, ‘Recontextualization always
involves transformation, and what exactly gets transformed depends on the
interests, goals and values of the context into which the practice is recontex-
tualized.’ There are four principal transformations employed in recontextu-
alization: deletion; addition; rearrangement; and substitution. Taking each in
turn: during de- and recontextualization of texts (and parts of texts), parts of
these texts can be deleted (and the question, of course, is what is taken out and
the rhetorical/discursive implications of this). Second, new elements can be put
in, and van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) argue that the most important addi-
tions during recontextualization are reaction, purposes and legitimations, since
these all shift the significance of textual elements. Third, textual elements may
be rearranged, or scattered throughout the new text. And finally, elements can
be substituted, where a discursive choice is made to replace one element with
an alternative from the range of possible choices (whether making the element
more abstract or more concrete, more general or specific, mitigated or intensi-
fied, and so on).
Recontextualization is not limited to linguistic texts – images, songs and
music can also be de- and recontextualized across successive texts and across
Table 4.1 Approaches and transformations in fascist musical recontextualization
Addition Deletion Substitution Rearrangement Does

recontextual-
ization subvert
connoted
meanings?
Textual no no no no yes
appropriation
‘Cover version’ rarely rarely yes yes not usually

Ideological rarely rarely yes yes yes
realignment
Interpolation sometimes sometimes yes yes not usually
time. Indeed, music and song are particularly interesting to consider in relation
to recontextualization, given the ways that lyrics, themes, motifs, melodies and
complete songs can be reworked, remixed and rerecorded by successive com-
posers (see Geary, 2014; Young, 2011). Fans of a particular song – whether ama-
teur or professional – can signal their admiration through recontextualization;
they can add elements of an old composition to a new one, whether through
sampling, interpolation (‘quotation’ of musical content) or appropriation of the-
matic or structural aspects of a composition. Or else they can record a cover
version of a song where the arrangement of the original recording – as a four-
piece band or a full orchestra – is substituted for the fan simply singing into their
laptop mic accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. YouTube is awash with such
fan tribute recordings. Musical substitutions may involve rearranging a song in
a particular way, changing the genre, changing the harmonics (monophonic to
polyphonic, or vice versa), changing instrumentation or arrangement, changing
the sex of the singer, and so on.
In this chapter, I will examine four ways that recontextualization occurs in
fascist song and music: as textual appropriation; interpolation; cover version;
and in ideologically realigned recording. These four approaches to recontextual-
ization draw variously on the four principal transformations (deletion, addition,
rearrangement and substitution) in different combinations. I have mapped these
out in Table 4.1, above.
The remainder of the chapter will not provide extensive itemization of music
and song that show widespread quantified evidence of appropriation, interpo-
lation, cover version and ideological realignment. The numeric frequency of
cultural phenomena is not the only, or even the most important, measure of
discursive consequence; a single text, a single speech, a single image can (and
do) send out waves of signification, that reverberate in and through (sub)cul-
tural and social space. Accordingly, I will discuss qualitative instances of recon-
textualization of song and music, and explore the functions that they play in
fascist cultural projects.
Recontextualization, 1: textual appropriation
In cases of what I am referring to as textual appropriation, a whole song is

taken and incorporated into the fascist cultural project, either through material
reproduction or through performance. In appropriating – and so recontextual-
izing – a song in this way, the party or movement attempts to reconfigure the
connoted meanings of the song. Textual appropriation of this kind provides a
clear instance of the maxim of discourse analysis that there is ‘no meaning out-
side of context’, and that the meaning of an utterance (or song, or whatever) is
dialectically related to contexts of use. Imagine the fascist NF singing the British
National Anthem, and you gain a sense of how this works in practice – the evo-
cation of nationhood and the frequent use of the possessive ‘Our’ in the anthem
(‘Our Queen’ and so on) gives us sense to pause, given the exclusive (racist) way
that the NF defines who counts as British. And that’s before we consider the
second (or in some versions, third) verse of the National Anthem, which calls
on God to ‘Scatter her enemies, and make them fall’. McKerrell (2015) recently
analysed a very similar discursive phenomenon, wherein the jingoistic-but-not-
sectarian song ‘Rule Britannia’ was appropriated by Rangers football fans for
sectarian political ends. McKerrell (2015: 1) shows that the way the song appears
in a YouTube video – blended with Unionist flags, sectarian slurs and ‘the “tonal
gravity” of Rule Britannia where emphatic rhythm and musical harmonies act
together in creating a very strong sense of Self positioned in opposition to an
essentialised and simplistic Other’ – means it emerges as sectarian.
In the 1970s, the NF produced a songbook that is interesting to consider in
relation to these issues. The songbook itself is actually little more than a lyric
book – there is no musical notation accompanying the lyrics, nor any indica-
tion of key, time signature or melody. This is itself quite interesting, and speaks
to one of two possibilities: either the status of the songs was so well established,
and their music was so well known, that the producers of the booklet felt they
could dispense with any sheet music; or, that the function of the booklet was
less about providing the party with a songbook to be used in collective singing,
and more about implicitly claiming the songs as their own. The 14 songs in the
songbook include traditional patriotic/jingoistic songs (‘Rule Britannia’, ‘Land
of Hope and Glory’), rousing hymns particularly associated with the Methodist
tradition (‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’, ‘Jerusalem’), marching songs associ-
ated with particular regiments (‘Men of Harlech’, ‘Hearts of Oak’), and explicitly
political songs of both paramilitary organizations in the North of Ireland and
the NF. The choice to include ‘Men of Harlech’, in particular, shows the ways that
songs can acquire additional implicit meanings through their incorporation in
popular culture. Apparently written to commemorate the seven-year siege of
Harlech Castle (1461–1468), the song is something of an unofficial anthem in
Wales, associated with the country’s determination to retain its identity vis-a-vis
the English Other. However a version of the song, with rewritten lyrics, was also
included in the film Zulu (1960). In this particular scene, the Zulu warriors are
singing an (un-subtitled) ‘war song’; panning over images of British soldiers,
one retorts ‘they’ve got a very good bass section, but no top tenors’; he then starts
singing ‘Men of Harlech’ in defiant reply, and is gradually joined in chorus by the
other soldiers.1 So starts a call and response between the wild, loincloth wearing,
spear-waving (Black) Zulus with their unintelligible shouting and chanting, and
the uniformed, gun-holding (White) soldiers, singing in unison and perfect har-
mony. It may be this racialized scene – and its radical binary representation of
Black/uncivilized vs White/civilized – that the NF wished to conjure up through
the inclusion of the song in the songbook.
The book contains the lyrics of ‘The National Front Calls’, placed opposite
those of the Ulster Defence Association song ‘We’ll fight in the Bogside’ and, in so
doing, indexes the way they share the same verse-chorus structure and are sung
to the same tune. And this introduces a further way that we can examine some
of the meanings inscribed into this booklet beyond the specific meanings of the
lyrical content of each song: we can consider the co-textual intertextual rela-
tions established between songs, particularly those placed side-by-side. In other
words, we can examine the meanings that are established through the choice to
place two songs opposite each other on two-page spreads. I have recreated the
contents of the songbook, and layout of the particular songs, in Table 4.2.
It is clear that the songs are being grouped together: the Victorian jingoism of
‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory ‘; the two regimental songs ‘Men
of Harlech’ and ‘Hearts of Oak’; the two hymns ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’
and ‘Jerusalem’; and so on. To take two examples: pages 10–11 position the
Unionist/Orangeman marching song ‘The Sash my Father Wore’ (which, among
other things, celebrates the victory of William of Orange over King Charles II)
Table 4.2 Contents of the National Front songbook (n.d.)
Page
1 [Cover piece]
2–3 ‘Rule Britannia’ ‘Land of Hope and Glory’
4–5 ‘Men of Harlech’ ‘Hearts of Oak’
5–7 ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ ‘Jerusalem’
8–9 [centre pages] ‘We’ll fight in the Bogside’ ‘The National Front Calls’
10–11 ‘Here Lies a Soldier’ ‘The Sash my Father Wore’
12–13 ‘England Belongs to Me’ ‘Ye Mariners of England’
14–15 ‘Scarborough Fair’ ‘The National Anthem’
16 [Blank]
opposite the explicitly pro-Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) anthem, ‘Here Lies a
Soldier’. The UVF is a loyalist paramilitary organization; so placing these two
songs opposite each other sets up a relation between the two, and helps pull the
meanings of ‘The Sash’ more towards the violent, hardline form of Unionism
espoused by organizations like the UVF. The songbook included the National
Anthem but included it opposite the traditional ballad ‘Scarborough Fair’. This
unusual choice sets up an interesting co-textual relationship between the two
songs – the ballad projecting a kind of traditional, folksy pastoralism onto the
National Anthem; and, simultaneously, the National Anthem nationalizing the
ballad, not only claiming it as part of an explicitly national musical tradition but
also, in so doing, instilling it with a sense of patriotism obviously absent from
the lyrics of the song itself.
Textual appropriation like this is frequently opposed, given that other indi-
viduals and groups tend to have a stake in ensuring that the connoted meanings
of music and song (and sometimes genre, see Spracklen, 2015) remain compat-
ible with their own political position. In 2009, for example, the British National
Party (BNP) were selling a CD through their online shop. Entitled A Place called
England, this was a compilation CD containing the music of Elgar and Vera
Lynn, as well as contemporary British folk musicians such as John Spiers, Jon
Boden and Steve Knightley. They had recorded songs for an album they were
told would be sold through gift shops, and so were extremely upset to find that
it was also being sold by the BNP to raise money for the party. Steve Knightley’s
song ‘Roots’ was featured on the CD, and it was, he argued, ‘a betrayal of your
invention’ to see the BNP profiting in this way.2 Jon Boden made a point spe-
cifically in relation to recontextualization: ‘The CD was titled “a place called
England” ’, he said. ‘But suddenly when you see it on the BNP’s website, it takes
on a darker significance that you never imagined.’ The BNP went on selling the
CD, but the event led to the establishment of the organization of ‘Folk Against
Fascism’, launched at the Sidmouth Folk Festival in 2009; Jon Boden continues
to play his fiddle with anti-BNP stickers stuck to it, to make his position clear.
Recontextualization, 2: cover versions and ideological

realignments
As is well known, a cover version is a new performance or recording of a previ-

ously recorded song, by someone other than the original artist. A cover version
frequently indicates esteem for either the original song or, especially in the case
of fascist song, the original artist and their political motivation. Cover versions
rework original compositions, principally through substitution and rearrange-
ment. For example, Skrewdriver’s acoustic ballad ‘The Snow Fell’ – which cel-
ebrates (and mourns) the deaths of German Wehrmacht soldiers on the eastern
front during World War II – has been rerecorded by literally hundreds of ama-
teur and (semi-)professional musicians, including the bands Rahowa, Sleipnir,
Kolovrat, Ravensbrook, The Voice, Prussian Blue and the Swedish singer Saga.
Whilst most cover versions reproduce the acoustic, ‘singer-songwriter’, arrange-
ment of the original, others – such as the Noisecore version by ‘DJ Panzerfaust
and DJ Retaliator’ (which, at points, samples Saga’s cover version of the track) –
are more radical reworkings. Cover versions are recorded and performed for
a variety of reasons. For many of the young women who have recorded selfie-
videos of them singing ‘The Snow Fell’, and uploaded these to YouTube (and
young women singing this particular Skrewdriver song vastly outnumber men),
the act appears to accomplish two things: it speaks to their political identity, and
it provides an opportunity, in the words of ‘angrygirl92’, to give people ‘a history
lesson’ about the Nazis and Stalingrad in accordance with their mythological
fascist narrative of events in the 1940s.3
Cover versions exist in which music (or a musical ‘quotation’) is recontextu-
alized in such a way that the meanings of the original are undermined or sub-
verted. I refer to such cover versions as examples of ‘ideological realignment’.
Ideological realignment works in a similar way to a parody, except without the
comedic intent/effect. In one particularly interesting case, Ian Stuart Donaldson,
the lead singer of Skrewdriver, recorded several versions of ‘Tomorrow Belongs
to Me’, which was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb for the musical Cabaret.
The sun on the meadow is summery warm

The stag in the forest runs free
But gather together to greet the storm
Tomorrow belongs to me
The branch of the linden is leafy and green

The Rhine gives its gold to the sea.
But somewhere a glory awaits unseen
The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes

The blossom embraces the bee
But soon says a whisper:
“Arise, arise”
[two men join in the song]
Oh Fatherland, Fatherland, Show us the

sign [people start to stand & join in the
song]
Your children have waited to see
The morning will come
When the world is mine
[upward key change; widespread
enthusiasc parcipaon]
Oh Fatherland, Fatherland, Show us the
sign
Your children have waited to see
The morning will come
When the world is mine
Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs to me [x2]
[two main characters leave the beer
garden, signaling discomfort and/or
disapproval]
Figure 4.1. ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ (Kander and Ebb), Cabaret, 1974
He recorded the song under the name of bands Skrewdriver and The Klansmen,
as well as part of his double act Ian Stuart and Stigger; the Swedish White-
supremacist singer Saga also recorded two versions of the song – and this despite
it being written in criticism of Nazism, by two homosexual Jewish Americans.
In the film version of Cabaret (1974), the song features in a scene set in a beer
garden; a member of Nazi Youth spontaneously starts singing the song and the
crowd gradually joins in, getting more exuberant as the song progresses; at the
crescendo of the song, following an upward key change, the boy and others give
the Nazi salute. I reproduce images of this scene in the sequence In Figure 4.1,
above (the images on each row should be read from left to right).
We should note that there is nothing explicitly prejudicial or extremist in

the lyrics of the song. Certainly, the lyrics evoke nationalist Germanic themes,
of a bucolic pastoral paradise and an imminent future in which the Fatherland
will arise and enjoy glory. But the mood of the song, whilst a little jingoistic,
is nevertheless non-exclusionary. The political meaning of the scene, therefore,
is created in context. First, through multimodal collocation in the scene itself
where, at the start of the second verse (‘The branch of the linden is leafy and
green.’) the camera pans down to reveal the boy’s Swastika armband; second, it
relies upon what we, in the film audience, know took place ‘tomorrow’, when the
world ‘belonged’ to Swastika-wearing Brownshirts, their supporters and people
like them. Even if we in the audience watching the performance on screen are
emotionally or physiologically affected by the musical or lyrical content of the
song – and it is undoubtedly an extremely well-crafted song, beautifully sung
by both the soloist and the accumulating chorus – this affect is held in check by
our understanding of the historic and immoral consequences of the worldview
that the performance encapsulates. In other words, the scene creates a distance
between us and the singers – we are meant to fear them, in their exultation, pre-
cisely because what they declaim acts as a portent for what was to come: war; the
death camps; mass murder on an industrial scale.
These levels of meaning, and the way they interpolate the audience, are all
recontextualized and subverted in the realigned versions of the song, which take
the same lyrics and sing them to a rock arrangement (or, later, as a pop ballad
or in rockabilly style). If, when watching the scene from Cabaret (1974), we are
meant to feel a sense of foreboding – a sense of fear in the terrible convictions of
this group of people, and the way that song can be used to make these convic-
tions more poetic and more palatable – this is embraced in the realigned versions
of the song: yes, you should fear, fascist realigned versions of the song seem to
say. Because while the fictional people in the film (and, at a stretch of the imagi-
nation, the real-life Germans that they metonymically represent) may have been
naïve or short-sighted in foreseeing what exactly was to come, the same cannot
be said of Ian Stuart Donaldson or Saga or any other artist who has recorded an
ideologically subverted version of the song. Fascists and other extremists who,
through their performances, subvert the meanings of the song are aware of what
happened next; they take pleasure in the prospect of control, in what they will
do tomorrow when the world will, again, belong to them. And through reinter-
preting and recording this particular song – a song sung by fictional Nazis at a
particular historic juncture – they imply a very specific imagined future, a very
specific sense of the (fascist) glory that ‘awaits unseen’. One online commentary,
written in praise of Ian Stuart Donaldson and what he aimed to achieve with this
realignment, argues that Donaldson:
. . .radically changed ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ by substituting a driving rock beat

for the ballad format of the original – a surprising decision. He also eliminated the
song’s sinister, repulsive, anti-white overtones. . . Ian Stuart’s and Saga’s interpreta-
tions of ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ might be characterized as reverse engineering,
or even reverse culture distortion: a song by Jews intended to convey an anti-white
message has been transmuted into an explicitly pro-white anthem. (Hamilton, 2011)
As with all recontextualizations, it is the new context into which the prior text
is inserted that is key to understanding the ‘transmutation’ of the song’s mean-
ings: a ‘pro-White’ (read: fascist) ideological agenda is imposed upon the song –
a complete mirror-opposite of the original intentions of the composers – as a
direct consequence of the ideological agenda of the singers and their fans.
Recontextualization, 3: interpolation
Interpolation is a form of musical recontextualization in which an element of a

song or recording – typically a melody or refrain or (musical or lyrical) phrase –
is incorporated into a new song. Interpolated elements are not samples or
recordings, but selective rerecordings involving substitution and rearrangement
of songs and parts of songs. Sometimes called musical ‘quotation’ in musicology,
interpolation is a frequent feature of contemporary hip hop, wherein restrictive
copyright laws which block artists sampling as little as a second of an original
(copyright) recording can be sidestepped by rerecording the desired melody or
refrain. Thus, the song ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ (1995) by Coolio and LV, interpolates
the chorus and melody from ‘Pastime Paradise’ (1976) by Stevie Wonder; simi-
larly ‘Let’s Stay Together’ (2004), by Cee-Lo Green featuring Pharrell, interpo-
lates a refrain from ‘Live Forever’ (1994) by Oasis.
One significant case in fascist music is a three-part recontextualization of the
Nazi anthem ‘Die Fahne Hoch’ (Raise the Flag), later better known as ‘The Horst
Wessel Lied’, after the lyricist. It is impossible to overstate the social and cultural
importance of ‘The Horst Wessel Lied’ to Nazism. After 1933, the significance of
‘The Horst Wessel Lied’ steadily rose in Nazi Germany, to the point that the song
ultimately stood as an unofficial second national anthem of the Reich. At the fall of
France on 22 June 1940, after the French were read the terms of the armistice in the
Forest of Compiègne, Hitler and his aides strode down the avenue whilst a Nazi
band blasted out ‘the two national anthems, Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles
and the Horst Wessel Song’ (Shirer, 1940: 263). Dedication to the cult of Horst
Wessel could bring rewards to even the most out-of-favour party inductee. Take
Josef Müller-Blattau for example, an associate professor of music at the University
of Konigsberg who ‘during the Weimar Republic had actually sympathized with
the modernists’ (Kater, 1997: 140). Müller-Blattau chose to write a ‘pseudoscien-
tific article’ about Wessel in 1934 in which he described ‘The Horst Wessel Lied’ as:
the ‘never to be lost property of the people, a true Volkslied.’ This calculated act
won him advancement to Frankfurt (1935) and then Freiburg (1937). After pub-
lishing a book on ‘Germanic music’ in collaboration with the SS, he was given a
Chair at the new Reichsuniversitat Strassburg in 1942. (Ibid.)
‘The Horst Wessel Lied’ remains such a symbol of Nazism that its sale and broad-
cast in Germany are still banned.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, fascist parties and movements across
Europe adapted versions of the Horst Wessel song. These were not simply trans-
lations of the original German words, but rather were locally specific lyrics sung
to what was essentially the same melody. It’s difficult to make precise statements
on the issues of discursive substitution and rearrangement of the music and
arrangement of the song, given how many recorded versions there are of ‘The
Horst Wessel Lied’. But almost all versions (that I have heard) were recorded
with a marching band and male voice choir; in all recordings, the melody and
song structure remain the same: the rhythm is not fast, but rather is set at a met-
ronomic walking-pace, as one would expect for a military march. There is no
urgency, although there is a sense of relentlessness and forward motion; there is
a little syncopation, which is used to create a slight ‘skip’ in each line, and helps
to create lightness and ease of momentum. In pitch, the melodies bring both a
sense of grounding and sincerity and increasing euphoria through a combina-
tion of frequent descending notes and sweeping escalations. Although the songs
use a wide pitch range, notably, at its base, the pitch is low and deeply masculine
bringing weight and size. The melodies use basic, simple grounding notes with
lots of 4ths for building, 2nds to suggest a journey and something unresolved,
with the use of 7ths to suggest emotional longing. The voice qualities through
which these melodies are articulated include loud volume and taking up of social
and physical space; we find open throats and relaxed, easy articulation. We find
both longer phrasing suggesting emotional lingering but also some that is much
more abrupt to suggest certainty and confidence. In arrangement we find the
voices at the front of the mix above the instruments. The voices sing in unison,
Table 4.3 Recontextualization of song lyrics, 1
‘Die Fahne Hoch’/’Horst Wessel Lied ‘ ‘The Marching Song’ (British Union of
Fascists)
The flag on high! The ranks closed Comrades, the voices of the dead
tightly! battalions.
SA marches with silent, solid steps. Of those who fell, that Britain might
Comrades, shot by Red Front and be great.
reactionaries, Join in our song, for they still march in
March in spirit within our ranks. spirit with us.
Comrades, shot by Red Front and And urge us on to gain the Fascist State!
reactionaries, Join in our song, for they still march in
March in spirit within our ranks. spirit with us.
And urge us on to gain the Fascist State!
The streets free for the brown battalions, We’re of their blood, and spirit of their
The streets free for the stormtrooper! spirit,
Millions look at the swastika full of Sprung from that soil for whose dear sake
hope, they bled;
The day of freedom and of bread is ‘Gainst vested powers, Red Front, and
dawning! massed ranks of Reaction.
Millions look at the swastika full of We lead the fight for freedom and
hope, for bread!
The day of freedom and of bread is ‘Gainst vested powers, Red Front, and
dawning! massed ranks of Reaction.
We lead the fight for freedom and for
bread!
The last sound to charge is blown! The streets are still; the final
We already stand prepared for the fight! struggle’s ended;
Soon Hitler’s flags will flutter above all Flushed with the fight we proudly hail
streets. the dawn!
Our slavery will last only a short time See, over all the streets the fascist banners
longer! waving –
Soon Hitler’s flags will flutter above all Triumphant standard of a race reborn!
streets. See, over all the streets the fascist banners
Our slavery will last only a short time waving –
longer! Triumphant standard of a race reborn!
following the melody of the instruments. The effect is a chorus of indistinct

voices with just a few in the foreground that can be heard individually, but only
just. This suggests social cohesion and unity although not to the point where the
individual completely disappears – thus providing an ideological misrepresenta-
tion of the totalitarian crushing of individualism entailed in and through any
fascist political project (see Machin and Richardson, 2012 for further analysis).
The British Union of Fascists (BUF) had a version of the song, called ‘The
Marching Song’, whose lyrics were written by the Blackshirt E. D. Randall. The
lyrics of both songs are reproduced in Table 4.3 above.
The Marching Song (British Union of Fascists) Skrewdriver: Hail the New Dawn
Comrades, the voices of the dead battalions Comrades, the voices of the dead battalions
Of those who fell, that Britain might be great. Of those who fell, that Europe might be great
Join in our song, for they still march in spirit with us Join in our song, for they still march in spirit with us
And urge us on to gain the Fascist State! And urge us on that we gain the national state
[repeat last 2 lines]
[Chorus]
We're of their blood, and spirit of their spirit, The streets are still, the final battle has ended
Sprung from that soil for whose dear sake they bled; Flushed with the fight, we proudly hail the dawn
‘Gainst vested powers, Red Front, and massed ranks of See over the streets, the White man's emblem is
Reaction waving
We lead the fight for freedom and for bread! Triumphant standards of a race reborn
Blood of our blood, spirit of our spirit
The streets are still; the final struggle's ended; Sprang from that soil, for who's sake they bled
Flushed with the fight we proudly hail the dawn! Against the vested powers, Red front, and massed
See, over all the streets the Fascist banners waving – reaction
Triumphant standard of a race reborn! We lead the fight for freedom and for bread
(Repeat Chorus)
Hail the new dawn!

Hail the new dawn!
Hail the new dawn!
Hail the new dawn!
People who we trusted, again have let us down

Jailing men of this country for fighting for our land
Key We will fight forever, until the end releases us
Italics (left side) — deletion We will never submit to a six point master plan
Italics (right side) — addition
Bold – substitution (Repeat Chorus)
Arrows – rearrangement
Hail the new dawn!
Hail the new dawn!
Hail the new dawn!
Hail the new dawn!
Hail!
Figure 4.2. Recontextualization of song lyrics, 2
The lyrics in the BUF’s ‘Marching Song’ were clearly inspired by those of
‘The Horst Wessel Lied’. We have the same open militarism; the same refer-
ences to the spirits of soldiers, martyred for the greater good of the nation, who
march alongside and strengthen the ranks of fascists; the same enemies of the
fascist political project – ‘vested interests’ (capital), ‘Red Front’ (Communists)
and reactionary conservatives – seemingly united in the traditional conspir-
acy. In both songs there is the same claim to be fighting for food and freedom
as opposed to subjugation and terror; and a rousing declaration of immi-
nent national rebirth. This national rebirth is substituted in the ‘Marching
Song’ with an explicitly racial rebirth, and it was perhaps for this reason that
Skrewdriver recorded a song which interpolated the ‘BUF Marching Song’.
Called ‘Hail the New Dawn’, and included on their 1984 album of the same
name, Skrewdriver recontextualized the ‘BUF Marching Song’, rearranging
and rerecording the song as a four-piece band (singer, drums, bass and gui-
tar) in their preferred genre of Oi/punk. Figure 4.2 shows the extent of their
recontextualization – not only in terms of what is added and taken away, but
also the ways that the original song structure was transposed into the verse-
chorus structure of popular song.
The notion of ‘Finality’ – whether ‘the final battle’ or the ‘final solution’ – is a
particularly resonant watchword in fascist discourse. For a battle to be the final
one, necessarily, the enemy needs to be not only defeated but denied the pos-
sibility of ever returning – that is, not only are their forces dead, but all possibil-
ity of others like them returning, and taking up arms, is also removed. Fascist
discourse, particularly in the National Socialist tradition, ubiquitously identi-
fies Jews (and/or ‘International Jewry’) as the enemy (Copsey, 2008; Richardson,
2013, 2015); victory in the ‘final battle’ is therefore tantamount to genocide; a
second Shoah. It is therefore striking that Skrewdriver’s interpolated song recon-
textualizes ‘the final struggle’ of ‘The Marching Song’ in two ways: first substitut-
ing ‘struggle’ for ‘battle’, and second, rearranging the song in such a way that this
phrase is included in the newly created chorus. This repetition – it is sung three
times in the Skrewdriver song – ensures it is given an emphasis lacking in the
original. And, should listeners be unclear regarding who it is that this ‘battle’ is
against, the additional final verse refers directly to a ‘fight’ against submitting to
a ‘six point master plan’ – the six points implicitly indexing the six pointed Star
of David, thus making it clear that this ‘final battle’ is, eternally, against Der Jude.
Conclusion
With each form of musical recontextualization, it is the changed social, politi-

cal and interpersonal contexts in which a (new) song is performed or repro-
duced that are key to understanding how the meanings we associate with the
song also change. With musical appropriation, a party/movement/individual
attempts to colonize and incorporate a complete song (unchanged, unabridged)
within, and as part of, a fascist political and cultural project. In so doing, the
text remains the same, but its implied meanings partly shift according to this
new context. With this form of recontextualization we see the clearest demon-
stration of both the dialectical links between text and context, and that there is
no meaning outside of use. With interpolation, on the other hand, we see the
greatest amount of discursive transformation – musical and lyrical elements
can be deleted, added, rearranged and substituted, according to a range of tex-
tual, aesthetic and political functions. The political meanings of these transfor-
mations are related to the political identities of those interpolating the song, and
their political motivations.
Ideological realignment is essentially a specific form of cover version – a cover

version for a particular political purpose. In both cover version and ideological
realignment, we tend to see little addition or deletion – the song remains lyrically
and melodically ‘intact’; but what we always see are substitution (one voice for
another; one instrument for another) and rearrangement (the accordion and brass
band of the song in Cabaret for the rock band of Skrewdriver; the simplification of
key in the Skrewdriver realigned version, and so on). Mapping musical transfor-
mations in this way provides us with a starting point for analysing of the meaning
potentials in each of the four transformations, and also the wider functions and
discursive significance of recontextualization in (fascist) music and song.
In any musical culture, or subculture, music and song act to nurture intra-
group solidarity. The sense of group identity that comes from shared pleasure of
music and song, the role that music and song can play in delineating and differ-
entiating group identities, and so the importance of music to individual and col-
lective identity, are features common to any musical culture. But in a prejudiced
musical subculture – like that which venerates a fascist political tradition – these
individual and collective identities, this nurturing of In-group solidarity and rad-
ical rejection of the Outgroup, take on more ominous meanings. The recontex-
tualization of prior texts (musical and other texts) in fascist songs is one way in
which this historic tradition is indexed and celebrated; it signals continuity, con-
nectedness and perpetuation of a political project translated into art and culture.
Notes
1 See <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NuTaQsMNaE> for the scene in question

[accessed 7 December 2015].
2 From the BBC report <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8191094.stm> [accessed 3
December 2015].
3 ‘angrygirl92’ <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJhe-9SIhc> [accessed 3
December 2015].
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5
Authenticity and Subversion: Articulations

in Protest Music Videos’ Struggle with
Countercultural Politics and Authenticity
Lyndon C. S. Way
Introduction
Turkey’s 2013 protests started in Istanbul’s Gezi Park on 28 May as a demonstra-

tion by a few city planners and environmentalists to save a public green space.
By 31 May, approximately three and a half million people were protesting in
over 80 cities. Protests attracted diverse groups who were against aspects of the
ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) such
as perceived infringements on democracy, freedom, repressive police tactics and
government policies (Işik, 2013: 25–27). Police with the clear backing of the
government responded with live ammunition, tear gas, water cannons, plastic
bullets and beatings which resulted in over 3000 arrests, 8000 injuries and six
deaths (Amnesty, 2013). Music played a key role in communicating these events
to fans, protesters and the outside world. It is these which are of interest to us in
this chapter.
During the month of June, over 100 cut and paste music videos which sup-
ported Turkish protesters were uploaded onto YouTube. Despite the violent end
to most protesting by the middle of the summer, musicians have since made
reference to the protests in sounds and images in their official videos to artic-
ulate subversion. Not surprisingly, this is notable in videos by Turkish bands
such as Beyoğlu Kumpanya’s ‘Bu Daha Başlangıç’, The Ringo Jets’s ‘Spring of
War’ and Ozbi’s ‘Asi’, but also international pop group Placebo’s ‘Rob the Bank’.
These were released after the protests as official promotional videos and are the
focus of examination in this chapter. While in one sense these are political songs,
this chapter closely examines what precise ideas and values they communicate
96 Lyndon C. S. Way
about not only political issues, but also the bands themselves. Focusing in on
one popular music video widely seen to communicate countercultural senti-
ment, this analysis draws out the way that discourses of anti-establishment and
authenticity are communicated through different modes in different ways. The
countercultural message in fact appears to rest largely on discourses of being
anti-establishment and authentic with an absence of any clearly identifiable
issues. Analysis of videos is important because although it is common to criti-
cally examine speech and news in CDA, it is less common to apply such analysis
to popular culture, and popular music in particular, despite its ubiquity in soci-
ety. In Turkey, with mainstream media all but silenced, popular music videos
are one of the only remaining public spaces open to countercultural voices of
subversion.
Music, politics and authenticity
Political expression in music is not new. In 1920s Europe, ‘art and architecture,
as well as music, were used as central parts of communicating fascist ideology’
(Machin and Richardson, 2012: 331). Subversive articulations in popular music
are as old as the industry itself, from Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ (1939) to
M.I.A.’s ‘Born Free’ (2010). Careers such as Bob Dylan’s and The Red Skins’ and
whole books, such as 33 Revolutions per Minute are devoted to protest songs
which are described as ‘a song which addresses a political issue in a way which
aligns itself with the underdog’ (Lynskey, 2010: ii). Songs of this nature not only
enable musicians to express social concerns in the public domain, they also
shape musicians’ discourses of authenticity about themselves, their fans and pro-
testers. Many musicians, for example Morissey (see Chapter 3 in this volume)
and Billy Bragg, articulate discourses of authenticity for their countercultural
identity granting them much needed cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1977).
Much has been written on authenticity generating considerable debate. It
is attributed to musicians who are represented as true to themselves and sin-
cere and ‘genuinely express true emotion and feeling’ (Machin, 2010: 14–15).
Notions of authenticity have their roots in the Romantic tradition where artistic
creativity was seen as coming from the soul, as opposed to something which
emerged from society (Machin, 2010: 14). These beliefs contribute to the dichot-
omy of authentic verses ‘establishment’, allowing some pop to link authenticity
with anti-establishment discourses. How this is assigned is socially, historically
and genre dependent. Rock’s authenticity, for example, is determined by live
Authenticity and Subversion 97
performance and being anti-establishment (Machin, 2010; Frith 1981). Gilbert

and Pearson (1999: 164–165) note that 1980s authentic rock entailed singers
speaking the truth of their (and others’) situations representing the culture from
which s/he comes and the presence of a specific type of instrumentation. Indie
rock differs, where authenticity is about purity not found in ‘high-tech manipu-
lations of large scale production’ and ‘defined in opposition to the commercially
influenced’ (Hibbett, 2005: 64). Alternatively, hip hop authenticity is articulated
through lyrics which reveal personal truths, representing a geographical back-
ground linked to lived experiences in predominantly Black urban neighbour-
hoods (Fraley, 2009: 43). Alternatively, folk aesthetics and authenticity favour
the rural outdoors which produce an ‘invented geography. . . of a bygone natural
environment’ (Connell and Gibson, 2003: 39).
Despite varying criteria for authenticity all of which point to musicians
being sincere and singing from the heart, studies highlight the central role of
the listener (Moore, 2002; Hibbett, 2005; Fraley, 2009; Machin, 2010). Cook
(1998: 14) claims authenticity values are ‘not simply there in the music; they
are there because the way we think about music puts them there’. So, authen-
ticity is not inscribed in the music, but ascribed by the listener responding to
choices music producers make in terms of musical sounds, images and styles.
Moore (2002) identifies three types of authenticity. First-person authenticity
‘arises when an originator (composer, performer) succeeds in conveying the
impression that his/her utterance is one of integrity, that it represents an attempt
to communicate in an unmediated form with an audience’ (Moore, 2002: 214).
This can be achieved through a wide range of semiotic choices such as vocal
style, facial expressions and instrumental choices. Second-person authenticity
‘occurs when a performance succeeds in conveying the impression to a listener
that that listener’s experience of life is being validated, that the music is “telling
it like it is” for them’ (Moore, 2002: 220). This authenticates listeners by articu-
lating a place of belonging which distinguishes the music from other cultural
forms. Third-person authenticity, according to Moore (2002: 218), ‘arises when a
performer succeeds in conveying the impression of accurately representing the
ideas of another, embedded within a tradition of performance’. For example, Eric
Clapton is a White Englishman renowned for authentically playing country blues
music associated with Blacks in the Mississippi Delta in America. This chapter
argues that post-protest videos multimodally authenticate not only musicians
(first-person authenticity), but also protesters and their actions and fans’ anti-
establishment indie rock stance (second-person authenticity) through the use of
semiotic resources by musicians, record companies and their managers.
98 Lyndon C. S. Way
Data
There were over 100 amateur and unofficial videos uploaded on to YouTube
about the protests (see Way, 2016), but the focus here is on official videos pro-
duced after the peak of the Gezi protests in June. Common among this sample
are visual and sonic reenactments, dramatizations, actuality and other rep-
resentations of the Gezi Park protests. These strict criteria limit the sample
to a handful of domestic videos and one international act. The small sam-
ple may reflect a lack of incentive on the part of producers to spend money
on a promotional video which is guaranteed to get no domestic airplay. In
fact, due to the sensitive nature of protest in Turkey, none of the videos about
Gezi Park protests, official or otherwise, received any airplay on traditional
media. However, the internet is an integral part of music fans’ pop experi-
ences and played an important role in distributing these music videos (Railton
and Watson, 2011). One video typical of the sample namely Dev’s ‘Dans Et’
which is analysed here in detail and can be found on https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=RFhAzSPIJpE.
Dev is an indie rock duo formed in Istanbul in 2008. The word ‘dev’ has two
meanings in Turkish. It means ‘giant, very large’ and it is also a commonly used
short-form for the word ‘devrem’ which means revolution. In the Gezi Park
protests, it was common to see the words ‘DEV-LİS’ (revolutionary secondary
school students) and ‘DEV-GENÇ’ (revolutionary youth) sprayed on the street.
By choosing to call themselves Dev and singing about protests, the band articu-
lates a discourse with obvious political sympathies towards subversion. ‘Dans Et’
was released on 20 July 2013, just after the peak of the protests. The accompa-
nying video analysed here was not only censored by music channels in Turkey
(Bianet, 2013), but erased twice from YouTube (The Official Twitter Account of
Dev 2013).
Approach to analysis
Van Leeuwen (1999: 8) observes that researchers must ‘ “contextualise” semiotic

systems, to put them in their historical and social setting’. Critics of video analy-
sis also note the importance of context (Goodwin, 1993; Shuker, 2001; Railton
and Watson, 2011). For this reason, background to June’s protests and a theo-
retical exploration of authenticity and Turkey’s mediascape add context to the
video analysis in order to understand the discourses it articulates. The video
undergoes a multimodal analysis examining lyrics, images and musical sounds.

This approach has the advantage of revealing the way each mode works to artic-
ulate discourses ‘on a particular occasion, in a particular text’ (Kress and van
Leeuwen, 2001: 29). It also addresses concerns that much video analysis ignores
musical sounds which ‘if discussed at all – [are] usually relegated to the status
of sound track’ (Goodwin, 1993: 4). Together, this examination of ‘the range of
non-musical factors’ (Frith, 1999: 4) alongside a structured analysis of musical
sounds clarifies the meaning potential of the video.
Videos are analysed as a multimodal site of communication where lyrics,
images and music are viewed as semiotic resources. These modes not only con-
tribute to meanings in music videos, but communicate ‘discourses about their
[musicians’] identities’ (Machin, 2010: 77). For lyrics and images, analysis is
carried out at three levels. At a basic level, the ‘discourse schema’ is examined
to reveal ‘the social values that underlie the song’ (Machin, 2010: 78). Here,
details are stripped to identify the generic role played by characters which ‘tells
us about the cultural values about identities and behaviours that lie deeper in
a song’ (Ibid., 81). At another level, representations of social actors and their
actions are examined following the influential work of van Leeuwen (1995,
1996). Here questions such as who does what to whom and how participants
are represented in more active or passive roles are examined. How social actions
are recontextualized ‘encode different interpretations of, and different attitudes
to, the social actions represented’, a significant factor in articulating discourses
(van Leeuwen, 1995: 81). Social actors are analysed in the visuals based on Kress
and van Leeuwen (1996) and Machin’s (2007) three broad categories of partici-
pant representations. These are how participants are positioned in relation to the
audience, the ‘kinds’ of participants represented and how actions and agency are
represented. Finally, representations of settings are considered. These affect our
understanding of not only places, but also reinforce myths and provide listeners
with a sense of identity (Forman, 2002). Analysing settings is ‘highly revealing
about the world being communicated’ (Machin, 2010: 92), and ‘can be used to
understand broader social relations and trends, including identity, ethnicity. . .
social activism, and politics’ (Johansson and Bell, 2009: 2).
Musical sounds are analysed using a semiotic approach developed by van
Leeuwen (1999) and Tagg (1983, 1984, 1990) and furthered by Machin (2010).
This chapter considers how musical sounds articulate discourses based on van
Leeuwen’s (1999) six major domains of sound which contribute to meanings.
These domains do not dictate what listeners hear but identify experiential
meaning potential of the sounds listeners experience (van Leeuwen, 1999: 94).
100 Lyndon C. S. Way
Domains include perspective connoting social distance, music’s adherence (or

not) to regularity, how sounds interact with each other, melody, voice qual-
ity, timbre and the modality of sounds. These domains are considered, where
relevant, to reveal how the music articulates discourses of protest alongside
authenticity.
Turkey’s mediascape, relations with the government and

protest music
Turkish political pop has had its share of government control at the levels of
production, distribution and performance with censorship (Bülent Ersoy,
Dev), arrests (Grup Yorum, Fazıl Say) and exiles (Cem Karaca, Ahmet Kaya).
Domestic music production is a multi-million pound industry involving both
major global record companies and independents. The majors dominate the
market while independent music production is confined to local record labels
and distribution. AKP government music policies have had a detrimental effect
on modernist composers such as Kamran İnce and Aydın Esen by trying to
eliminate modern musical institutions whilst musicians and genres positioned
against modernism such as Arabesk music performers Orhan Gencebay and
Nihat Doğan who openly support AKP policies are granted their support (Way
and Gedik, 2013).
Distribution of music is tightly controlled by the government. For a
recording to be released, it must get a ‘bandrol’. This is a sticker issued by the
Ministry of Culture which indicates the product’s manufacturer has paid the
required tax. However, bandrol is used by the government to censor music.
CDs can be refused a bandrol for ‘language [being] objectionable to the gov-
ernment for its political content, such as song lyrics perceived to advocate
violence, [or] political views the government would rather not see expressed’
(Solomon, 2005: 6). Live performances are also under the watchful eye of
the government. Sometimes authorities choose to not grant permission for
concerts. When it is granted, concerts may be cancelled at the last minute
despite being organized and paid for by bands and their supporters. These
actions are usually accompanied by band members being arrested for spread-
ing ‘propaganda’.
Broadcasting music is also under direct and indirect government control.
There are over 1100 radio and 200 television stations in Turkey. Despite these
large numbers, Turkey’s media are dominated by state-run Türkiye Radyo
Televizyon (TRT) and five private media conglomerates. Mainstream music

broadcasting is in the hands of the government and these corporate holdings,
some accused of ‘broadcast[ing], rank[ing] and promote[ing] music-clips and in
this way to a certain extent manipulate[ing] the music market in Turkey’ (Barış,
2010: 1). Furthermore, corporate holdings are not necessarily independent of
government control. Relations between media and politics are very close, char-
acteristic of Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) Mediterranean Model. Though Turkish
media conglomerates achieve low investment returns on their media interests,
they ‘use the media to manipulate other economic or political interests’ resulting
in a ‘notorious interlocking of interests between the media, politicians and the
businesses’ (Özguneş and Georgios, 2000: 414).
This relationship has taken on greater significance with AKP gaining more
control over media than any of its predecessors (Jenkins, 2012). AKP has put
pressure on existing media to become less critical whilst acquiring media out-
lets and initiating its own communication channels, resulting in AKP discourses
dominating mainstream media output (Sümer and Yaşlı, 2010: 17). This domi-
nance was seen in coverage of the 2013 protests where close ties to the gov-
ernment have been blamed on the under-reporting of the protests (Işik, 2013).
Social media have also seen a crack-down by the government, it demanding
the names of Twitter users who offended the government (Burch and Ozbilgin,
2013). Since the protests, the government has tendered huge fines on television
channels which opposed their views, such as Ulusal Kanal, Halk TV, Cem TV
and EM TV. According to Mehmet Özgenç from the government’s media watch-
dog RTÜK, the fines were given because ‘these channels are encouraging the
violence of the people’ (Hürriyet, 2013). Turkey’s pop industry is an integral part
of this mediascape, magnifying the importance of videos on the internet as an
alternative for countercultural musical voices.
Lyrics
With the exception of the song’s opening two lines, the lyrics are nine repeated
lines with no social actors identified (see appendix at the end of this chapter
for the full lyrics). It is through the multimodal video text that we are able to
identify the ‘you’ and ‘your’ as police and ‘I’ and ‘me’ as a protesting narrator. At
a first level of analysis, we can identify the discourse schema, which is the basic
structure of the song. By stripping ‘away the details of [the] narrative in order to
reveal its core structure’, we can uncover the cultural values in lyrics (Machin,
2010: 80). This song’s lyrical discourse schema may be read thus: ‘There is an evil
person(s) who is wrong, cowardly and does not help when s/he should. There
is a narrator who questions and is brave.’ Neither of these roles are particularly
powerful. On the one hand, the evil person(s) is activated though negatively
and with no agency (van Leeuwen, 1996). On the other hand, the narrator is
activated positively though again with no agency. As such, this sets up a simple
binary where we have two groups opposed to each other. Wright (1975) notes
that such basic structures point to wider issues and anxieties present in society
at particular times used to simplify far more complex issues.
Lyrics host a range of discourses which not only subvert, but also authenti-
cate the band and fans. Though like most pop music there are few mentions of
settings (Machin, 2010: 92), discourses of authenticity and subversion can be
found. Here, we see settings of ‘night’, ‘dawn’, ‘nightmare’, ‘dream’ and the ‘dark’.
Nightmarish, dark and mysterious settings are common in heavy metal, includ-
ing ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica, a band known to span the gap between heavy
metal and indie music. Representing such settings serves to authenticate Dev
as metal-influenced indie rockers. They also suggest a discourse opposed to the
police. Darkness has the universal meaning potential of evil, a lack of clarity and
untruths. With negative representations of police (see below) alongside settings
of darkness and night, negativity surrounds the police. Though these represen-
tations of settings lack detail, they serve to authenticate Dev and legitimize a
negative stance towards the police.
Collocations and activations also play a role in articulating a discourse of
negativity towards the police. Police are collocated with ‘nightmare’, ‘afraid’ and
‘darkness’. These collocations reveal a ‘collocative pattern’ of negativity surround-
ing the police, though no circumstances are represented (Fairclough, 2003: 131).
When they are activated, these are vague. Police ‘are not in your place’, ‘are even
afraid of the darkness’ and ‘flee’. None of these actions are transactive material
process activations which connote power (van Leeuwen, 1995: 90). Instead police
actions directly affect nobody, connoting less power whilst ‘not in your right
place’, being ‘afraid’ and ‘flee[ing]’ all suggest wrong doing and cowardliness.
Slang in each chorus is also used to suggest both negativity and authentic-
ity. The line ‘Your head is not in the right place’ is slang for either ‘You are high
from smoking marijuana’ or ‘You are stupid or brainless.’ In both cases, these
are negative and do not represent police with power. Such negative represen-
tations help authenticate Dev as being anti-establishment, an essential part of
indie authenticity. Furthermore, by Dev choosing to use slang, their ‘street cred-
ibility’ authenticates themselves and their fans by ‘telling it like it is’. This type of
first- and second-person authenticity (Moore, 2002) is notable in the use of slang
by hip hop musicians which authenticates fan and musician’s street credibility.
Police are also represented as blindly following orders given by the govern-
ment and not working to protect the public, a popular sentiment at the time.
This is evident in lines like ‘Dance, hands in your pockets’ and ‘whose hero are
you’. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) note that metaphor is ‘a functional mechanism
which affects the way we think, act and experience reality’ (in Flowerdew and
Leong, 2007: 275). In the first excerpt, police obedience to the government
is recontextualized in a commonly used metaphor of not getting involved by
‘keeping your hands in your pocket’, simplifying what must have been a very
difficult situation for many officers. The second excerpt again questions police
actions and their commitment to protecting the public, though again in vague
terms. During the protests, police killed and injured scores of protesters whilst
obeying government orders. To do otherwise in Turkey would be instant dis-
missal at best, a life-changing prospect for police officers, most of whom are
recruited from poor backgrounds in a country with high unemployment. Here,
the situation is recontextualized through simplification to echo public opinion.
As such, Dev suggests first-person authenticity within the genre of indie rock
by articulating an anti-authority stance without having to deal with any of the
socio-economic realities surrounding police actions.
The chorus sees Dev command the police to dance in four of the nine
repeated lines sung throughout the song. These imperatives work in two
ways to articulate first-person authenticity. First, to command someone to
do something grants the one who commands power and legitimacy. Second,
music and dance were a significant activity in the protests. This is evident by
the number of music videos and dance events uploaded on to YouTube as
part of the protests. Uploads include street performances by professional and
university dance troops, individuals doing the Tango, the moon dance and
dancing in front of police lines. Another common activity during the protests
was large crowds chanting ‘Jump, jump, who doesn’t jump is Tayyip [Prime
Minister Erdoğan]’ accompanied by protesters jumping in unison in a dance
of protest. By commanding the police to dance, the chorus alludes to the pro-
test’s dancing activities which authenticates Dev as ‘being in the know’ about
the protests. This authenticates the band as being authentic and authenticates
the listener for also ‘being in the know’ about the protests, another example
of first- and second-person authenticity.
The narrator’s power is also suggested in the lines ‘whose nightmare are you
again, I wish you could come into my dream’ and ‘Dance, I wish you’d take me
too’. The first line indicates the police are a terror to some, while the second
line challenges this negative power. The narrator wants to be involved with the
police, be a part of his dream. The third line is derived from the Turkish ‘içeriye
aldilar’ (they took him inside) meaning the person spent the night in jail. In
Gezi, there were many arrests and people taken into custody. Most protesters
tried their hardest to keep out of custody. Here, the narrator is showing his sym-
pathy and alliance with those who went into custody by offering to share in their
discomfort. By aligning himself with protesters, the narrator again shows his
anti-establishment credentials by being part of the anti-AKP protests. This line
also suggests second-person authenticity, authenticating those protesters and
fans who have been ‘taken in’.
Images
Images make more explicit the discourses heard in the lyrics, articulating both
popular discourses of police subservience and brutality, protester power and
band, protester and listener authenticity. Participants are the police and pro-
testers who are represented as the band, a dancer and the iconic standing man,
woman in red, woman in black and gas mask man. The discourse schema may
be read as ‘police obey orders and act violently against protesters who are strong
and defiant’. Like the lyrics, these represent police and their actions negatively
though not powerful because they are following orders. In contrast, protesters
are represented as brave, powerful and defiant, challenging authority. As such,
these authenticate protesters, listeners and the band as being anti-establishment
and powerful. A closer look at the representation of actors and their actions
makes this abundantly clear.
Images of protesters articulate discourses of power, opposition and defiance
towards authority. These authenticate protesters as a powerful anti-establishment
group. One of the protesters in the video is the dancer. She acts as a metonym for
the dances of protest discussed above, activated throughout dancing energeti-
cally. In Figure 5.1, she is represented as both a protester and an indie rock fan.
She wears a set of flimsy goggles on her forehead similar to the makeshift protec-
tive gear worn by protesters. Her dyed red hair, black bandana, jeans and t-shirt
are similar to both the majority of young protesters on the streets and indie fans
watching the video. She stares defiantly at the camera, pulling a bandana down
from her face. This is an image of power and closeness. She directly addresses
the viewer in a demand image, creating symbolic interaction with the viewer
Figure 5.1. Dancing protester
whilst suggesting power (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 127–128). Eye contact
and facial expressions connote she is challenging the viewer and/or police. At
the same time, social distance is close, one of intimacy. The viewer is drawn
close to her and her ideas of protest (Machin, 2007: 118–119). This works to
legitimate protesters’ views, another case of second-person authenticity authen-
ticating protesters and fans alike.
Four iconic protesters from the Gezi protests are represented in the video.
They became icons symbolizing bravery and defiance with their images dis-
tributed on the internet and foreign media. The woman in red (Ceyda Sungur)
stands as police sprayed tear gas at her at close range. The woman in black (Kate
Mullen) stands with arms spread open wide as a water cannon is aimed at her.
A lone man is standing in Taksim Square staring at a statue of Atatürk and
Turkish flags defying police calls to leave; a man with a gas mask stands with
his arms outstretched like a conductor atop a building in Taksim Square looking
over thousands of protesters. In the video their actions are recontextualized in
ways which articulate power. The representation of Ceyda Sungur is one multi-
modal example of this.
On 28 May 2013, Ceyda Sungur was sprayed with tear gas in the face by a
23- year-old policeman on the orders of his superiors. She did not run away but
stayed and suffered the discomfort. In the video, she is activated in both non-
transactive (dances, poses) and material transactive (hits the spray mechanism,
metaphorically attacks the police) actions, the latter connoting great power (van
Leeuwen, 1995: 90). This is in contrast to the policeman who for the most part
kneels as he sprays, low horizontal position connoting less power (Machin,

2007: 114). Ceyda’s non-transactive actions of posing and dancing symbolize the
joy of being rebellious and standing unaffected by actions of the police, legitimat-
ing protest and fans’ anti-establishment sentiments. In Figure 5.2, the woman
in red is represented as powerful in a material transactive activation. Both she
and the policeman are in a close up, connoting social proximity. Though the
side view enables less symbolic interaction than a front shot, the social distance
between the viewer and the policeman is severely reduced by a dark mask and
full helmet which cover his face and head (Machin, 2007: 113). In fact, most
police shots are the same. This impersonal representation makes it easier to treat
the police as an enemy because they are essentialized as an unchanging Other
(Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 127–128). The woman’s facial expressions, how-
ever, are dominantly sexual. Her eyes are closed, she is relaxed and in charge of
the situation as she comes up close to the policeman, leaning into him almost
as though ready to give him a kiss. She is activated with agency, blowing smoke
into his face, metaphorically returning the tear gas and pepper spray the police
used in excess when confronting the protesters. This draws upon a popular dis-
course at the time that the protesters were powerful. In the video, power over
the police is also articulated when the masked man poses with the police, his
arms spread out above them. Police kneel around him whilst heavy breathing
through his mask is heard. These images and sounds not only articulate a dis-
course of protesters’ positive power by overcoming the power of the state and
police who mindlessly obey all their commands, it also legitimates protest and
fans’ anti-establishment views.
Figure 5.2. Iconic protester

Imagery also acts to authenticate the band as anti-establishment indie

rockers. Indie rock style choices are evident in dress and visual representa-
tions of instruments. The singer’s choice of a black t-shirt, longish hair and
razor stubble are seen throughout indie rock from Muse to Coldplay to Arctic
Monkeys. Instrumentation in the visuals include an electric guitar, an iconic
instrument in indie rock, whilst excluding the drums, bass and synthesizer
heard in the music. These semiotic resources help legitimize Dev as an indie
rock band.
Anti-establishment legitimation is also connoted through setting, style, shot
choices and activations. The band, protesters and police share the same location,
a grey smoky studio. This sharing creates a type of ‘integration’ connoting close-
ness between the groups (van Leeuwen, 2005: 112). However, protesters and the
band also share a similar indie rock dress code, aligning the band with protesters.
In fact, the multimodal discourse also posits the band-as-protester. For the first
minute of the song, the singer sings into a microphone which resembles a police
car radio or one used by soldiers during war time to call in reinforcements. He
holds it aggressively with the cable wrapped around his hand so it does not fall,
as one would in times of crisis. Many of these shots are close-ups with the singer
staring directly into the camera defiantly, suggesting he is standing strong in
the face of danger. Later, he sings into a megaphone like one used by a speaker
who leads a rally or gathering of large people. In the context of this video, the
gathering is Gezi Park and the people Dev leads are protesters. In Figure 5.3, the
singer is close to the camera connoting a close social proximity, while the police’s
mask and helmet contradict such closeness. He is empowered, activated verbally
singing into the policeman’s face, while the policeman does nothing. This articu-
lates the popular notion of protesters’ power. Facial expressions make clear he
is angry and aggressive towards the policeman. He is further empowered here
by demanding the police to dance in the accompanying lyrics. This first-person
authenticity legitimates the band as powerful anti-establishment protesters who
have significant social agency – important for indie rock authenticity. It also
works as second-person authenticity, authenticating fans and protesters’ feelings
of frustration at police abuse of power and obeying government instructions,
allowing fans to engage in a fantasy of being able to yell in the face of their
abusers.
Part of being anti-establishment is to represent authority negatively.
Visually, this is done by representing the police impersonally and anony-
mously as essentially, non-thinking abusers of power. There is one excep-
tion to this in a sequence where a policeman takes off his helmet and dances
Figure 5.3. Band and fan’s anti-establishment authenticity
with the woman in black. His movements change from being robotic and
abrupt to a sensual dance, acting as a metaphor for his liberation from the
confinement of his hegemonic duties. This sequence offers insights into how
Dev would like the police to act, being free from obedience and acting with
more compassion. However, the vast majority of shots of the police represent
the police dancing a very different tune. They wear full helmets and masks,
dressed identically and in group shots denying viewers a point of identifica-
tion and making it easy to treat them as an enemy (van Leeuwen, 1996: 48;
Kress, 1989: 134). In some sequences, they are represented negatively in
transactive activations, spraying the woman in red, showering the woman in
black, whilst in others in non-transactive activations like standing menac-
ingly in groups, running and stumbling. These are all negative, and some rep-
resent police using power negatively. In Figure 5.4, the dominant discourse
that police unthinkingly obey commands is articulated metaphorically. Police
are represented impersonally, identically dressed and helmeted. They move
abruptly and robotically in unison, as though moving only when commanded.
They are activated saluting, a universal sign of respect for those in authority.
Although there is overwhelming proof the police were following the orders
of those above them including the prime minister himself (Amnesty, 2013),
to represent the police as robots is an oversimplification. However, this serves
the purpose of legitimating an anti-establishment stance taken by the band.
In turn, this serves to authenticate themselves as indie rockers and legitimates
fans’ anti-establishment ideas.
Figure 5.4. Police as unthinking robots
Music
The song is in the key of C# major. Typical rock instrumentation of a guitar

and vocals are up front in the mix, bass and drums make up the rhythm section
and a keyboard is used sparingly. Three sets of verses are separated by three
choruses. Together, these sounds are used to articulate discourses of police obe-
dience, danger, angst and subversion, all of which represent the band as an anti-
authority indie rock band. Here we consider musical elements which articulate
these discourses.
There is the meaning potential of danger from police in the use of sound
effects, instrumentation, melody and tempo. These are notable at the beginning
of the song. Reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ opening, ‘Dans Et’ begins
with a gust of wind and an electronically generated humming sound with bass
enhancement. Dogs bark in the background whilst a cracking sound intermit-
tently occupies the foreground, suggesting a stalker in the woods. Further into
the song, horror film sound effects are used again, this time heavy breathing
through a mask like Jason from Friday the 13th films, again with bass enhanced
sounds of howling wind in the background. In both cases, foregrounded sounds
suggest danger and the bass-enhanced low register wind suggests dangerous
power in a way a higher register would not (van Leeuwen, 2005).
After the song’s initial 13 seconds of sound effects, a distorted guitar is
introduced. The guitar sounds draw upon heavy metal, a genre with its own
connotations of rebelliousness, danger and menace. It is upfront in the hierar-

chy of sound, emphasizing its importance. A C# chord (the tonic) is strummed
quickly and regularly, followed by a pregnant pause, then a D powerchord (the
minor second). The song’s guitar sounds are almost exclusively variations on
these two chords. This melody is characterized by low notes and a very nar-
row pitch range. Again, the low register suggests power whilst the very narrow
pitch range suggests that this power is constrained, something to be feared (van
Leeuwen, 1999: 106). Similar to the Jaws two-note leitmotif, this melody plays
on the song’s key note and its minor second. In Jaws, this was used to represent
danger, evil and menace (Wingstedt, Brandstrüm and Berg, 2010: 199). In the
films, tempo increases with perceived danger. In this song, the fast tempo of
the guitar strumming articulates imminent danger. Furthermore, van Leeuwen
notes how fast changes in notes, or ‘disjunctive sound production’ can come to
stand for a ‘lively and energetic approach, or a bold or forceful attack’ depending
on context (1999: 110). Here the articulation of the melodic phrase is fast, con-
noting danger is close at hand. Together, sound effects, instrumentation, melody
and tempo in the song’s opening connote danger. In the context of the anti-
police lyrics and visuals, the source of this danger is obvious.
Police obedience is also connoted through instrumentation and timing. In
the first verse, the guitars and vocals are dominant. But at the beginning of the
second verse, drum sounds rise in the hierarchy of sound. The drums are sparse
with minimal reverb, sounding like the drums used in a military march. They
are very regular in timing with the meaning potential of something mechani-
cal, predictability and order (Tagg, 1990: 346). Van Leeuwen (1999: 58–63) also
notes regularity connotes rigidity, ‘to stand at attention’, emphasizing police
unthinking obedience. This discourse is enhanced multimodally by visuals of
the police dancing like robots in unison, suggesting police unthinkingly obey
the commands of the elite.
Instrumentation and melody also suggest angst at police and the elite. The
D power chords noted earlier and the distorted guitars throughout the song
suggest this. To this listener, guitar power chords have been used to connote
angst in The Who’s ‘My Generation’, Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ and Radiohead’s
‘Creep’ to name but a few. Here, the D breaks up the C# strumming, add-
ing angst to danger and obedience noted earlier. The instrumental melody
in the build up to the first chorus also connotes angst (represented in graph
form in Figure 5.5 where one and eight are a C#). Here, for the first time the
guitar strays from the C# and D melody. After spending one beat on the D,
guitar sounds drop down to the G# then rapidly climb eight steps up to a
Instrumental melody
10
9
8
7
6
C# Scale
5
4
3
2
1
0
Time
Figure 5.5. Instrumental melody
high E before going back to the C# for the chorus. The drop of three and a
half notes down to the G# (the bass note of the C# chord) adds gravity to the
sequence and the anger being connoted (van Leeuwen, 1999: 103). The fol-
lowing eight-step ascending pitch to the E suggests a ‘more active and more
outgoing and dynamic’ movement than a descending pitch movement (van
Leeuwen, 1999: 103). Ascending pitch movement can also ‘energise, rally lis-
teners together for the sake of some joint activity or cause’ (van Leeuwen,
1999: 103). In this case it is anger over police actions and protesting against
this. However, this is repressed somewhat by the small steps of pitch ascend-
ancy, which ‘constrains the expression of strong feelings. . .because we are par-
alysed with fear’ (van Leeuwen, 1999: 106). Furthermore, this sequence ends
on the third minor suggesting stability, but also sadness and pain (Machin,
2010: 218). Anger, sadness, danger and fear are connoted alongside a some-
what constrained rallying of listeners to dance the dance of protest.
Voice style and melody throughout the song are used to connote anger, this
being a key emotion in this song. During the verses, the singer’s voice is relaxed
and in control, connoting a close social distance (van Leeuwen, 1999: 25). In the
choruses voice quality changes to a gritty style of yelling suggesting anger and
a lack of emotional control. Van Leeuwen (1999: 175) notes that ‘naturalistic
representation [in voice] requires a certain amount of “grit”, or “noisiness” ’. The
singer’s rough and gritty voice is noticeably moreso during the almost yelling
of choruses symbolizing ‘real’ anger at police actions (van Leeuwen, 1999: 131).
During these times, his voice tenses adding to a sense of urgency to his anger.
Voice melody
6
4
C# Scale
0
Time
Figure 5.6. Voice melody
Furthermore, vocal pitch rises to the highest notes in the song (shown above
in graph form in Figure 5.6). Rising vocal pitch is used to assert and dominate
(van Leeuwen, 1999: 133), here the singer asserting his belief that police are
on the wrong side of this dispute, which is collocated with the accompanying
lyrics of ‘tell, whose hero are you’. The melody here is dominated by the first
and fifth which suggest stability, whilst the reliance on the third again connotes
sadness at police actions (Machin, 2010: 218). During this line a backing vocal
track further emphasizes the lyrics, as does the durational variation in vocals.
Van Leeuwen (1999: 173) notes emotion is expressed by lengthening key words,
as opposed to rushing words in excitement or anger, or speaking in a meas-
ured style which symbolizes restrained emotions. During the chorus, emotional
attachment is symbolized by elongating this line, especially the word ‘tell’ (van
Leeuwen, 1999: 173). Together, voice style and melody articulate and emphasize
anger at police wrong doing (van Leeuwen, 1999: 14–15).
Musical choices not only criticize police, but suggest subversion, key to
first-person indie rock authenticity. Notions of indie rock authenticity are
determined by live performance and being anti-establishment (Machin, 2010;
Hibbett, 2005; Frith, 1981). Dev suggests subversiveness and authenticates itself
at the same time through choosing indie rock aesthetics in instrumentation and
rock guitar playing style. Electric guitars, an instrument central to indie rock,
dominate the instrumental hierarchy of sound, suggesting their importance
over other instrumentation such as bass, keyboards and drums. Power chords,
another sound associated with rock and indie rock, authenticate Dev as being a
part of this genre. A good part of the video sees the band playing ‘live’. All these
multimodally contribute to the idea that Dev is an authentic indie rock band
with an anti-establishment subversive message.
First-person authenticity is also suggested through choices in timing. Though
most of the song is characterized by a highly regular rhythm, there is a brief
break from this between the third and fourth verses and a noticeable stop to
the music before the final double chorus at the end. Tagg (1990: 112) notes that
music can subvert ‘the implacable exactitude of natural science, computers and
clock time’ through changes in timing such as delaying or anticipating the beat.
Here the song’s relentless rhythm is subverted, like the regulated movements of
the police in the visuals. This subversion is short-lived but noticeable, similar to
the Gezi protests themselves, before the song continues, returning obediently
to its regular rhythm. Subversion is also suggested in the singing of the chorus.
Here, a back-up singer is introduced into the video soundtrack. Both voices sing
the same words and the same notes which has the potential ‘to mean solidarity,
consensus, a positive sense of joint experience and belonging to a group’ (van
Leeuwen, 1999: 79). While sung notes rise, suggesting a rallying call to protest-
ers during the chorus, these voices which sing in unison, connote the togeth-
erness and uniformity of those who join the protests and subvert police and
the authorities. By musically representing subversion, Dev authenticates itself as
anti-establishment indie rockers.
Conclusion
Dev imaginatively uses semiotic resources inspired by the Gezi Park protests
to articulate discourses of subversion multimodally. These discourses vaguely
and metaphorically articulate police as a dangerous, abusive Other who obedi-
ently follow the orders of the authorities. Likewise, protesters’ anger at police
and protester (and band) power, defiance and legitimacy are also connoted in
lyrics, images and sounds. These subversive discourses are multimodally collo-
cated, and simultaneously work to also articulate authenticity. First- and second-
person authenticity is articulated in different multimodal ways throughout the
song. Dev is represented as an authentic anti-establishment indie rock band
by conveying the impression that each ‘utterance is one of integrity’ (Moore,
2002: 220). This is done by first establishing Dev as legitimate indie rockers, a
genre with anti-establishment, countercultural connotations. The band is then
represented in ways which emphasizes it as being anti-establishment in all three
modes. The video also articulates second-person authenticity, validating not
only listeners, but also protesters’ anti-establishment sentiments, experiences

and actions. This is achieved by creating a commonality between the band, indie
rocker fans and protesters, and then legitimating these groups, their power and
their anti-establishment stance through a number of strategies identified in lyr-
ics, images and musical sounds.
The video was released shortly after the protests were all but done. This was
not part of the protest but something made afterwards as part of the band’s pro-
motional package. Close ties between the media and the government ensured
the video never received airplay on mainstream media, though the internet
acted as an alternative. This worked again to authenticate the band. Dev was able
to get the publicity of being banned from the airwaves other bands would not
get, drawing upon anti-establishment indie rock authenticity. Furthermore, the
video was accessed by a large number of fans (396,491 hits on YouTube at the
time of this research). What the band has achieved is notoriety and a reputation
for being an authentic anti-establishment indie band. In this sense the video is
a success. Ironically, the band released a TV edit of the same song which has
none of the visual references to Gezi. This has received only 40,024 views on
YouTube and the author has not heard any airplay on mainstream Turkish radio
or television.
Some musicians benefit from striking a subversive countercultural pose. By
vaguely articulating discourses of being anti-establishment, musicians articulate
authenticity for themselves and their fans. Though it is easy to be cynical about
the political commitment and effectiveness of videos which use protest as part
of their semiotic package, articulating discourses which are anti-establishment
is important, especially in a country like Turkey. The mainstream media are all
but following the party line and opposition is subdued. Though subversion can
result in arrests, censorship and exile, popular music is still one of the few areas
where protest can be articulated.
Appendix: lyrics
‘Dans Et’
Dawn has broken, you are not in your place

It was the night, if I ask where you are
Tell, whose hero are you
Whose nightmare are you again
I wish you would come into my dream

You are even afraid of the darkness
Even if I asked you to save me, you’d flee
but you. . . but you
Dance, hands in your pockets
Dance, your head is not in the right place
Dance, I wish you’d take me
Whose nightmare are you again
I wish you would come into my dream
You are even afraid of the darkness
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6
Sonic Logos
Theo van Leeuwen
Introduction
Brian Eno is often credited with the invention of ambient music.1 When ill and
in bed, so the story goes, he was listening to music at such a low volume that
it was hard to disentangle from other sounds. As a result he discovered ‘a new
way of hearing music – as part of the ambience of the environment just as the
colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience’ (Eno,
1975). Today, ambient music has become an important part of sound design,
for instance in restaurants and shopping centres (cf. Graakjær, 2012). Often
it is seen as ‘elemental, like atmosphere’ (Kim-Cohen, 2016: 54), not meant
to be consciously heard as conveying information. Yet, as Kim-Cohen also
points out, ambient sound is deliberately produced and seeks to add some-
thing to the environment, to change it in some way, to infuse it with ‘mood’
and ‘atmosphere’.
But Eno is also known for creating a piece of music that was meant to con-
vey something – the startup sound of the Windows 95 operating system. As he
explained in an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle (Selvin, 1996):
The agency said ‘We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah,
da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional’, this whole list of adjec-
tives and then at the bottom it said ‘and it must be 3¼ seconds long’.
Sonic logos of this kind intend to be meaningful, to convey the values and
principles brands want to be seen (and heard!) to stand for. But they also have
something in common with ambient music – the idea, constantly reiterated by
marketing experts, that these values and principles will somehow get in by the
backdoor.2 According to Heath (2001: 44, 83):
120 Theo van Leeuwen
We rarely use ‘active’ processing, which makes use of our working memory to
think about and interpret what we are learning [. . .instead] we use ‘automatic’
or ‘shallow’ processes which are able to penetrate at semi-conscious or even sub-
conscious levels.
The same idea informs ‘classic Hollywood practice’: film music, too, is meant to
be heard, but not listened to, to influence perception in an emotive rather than
a reflective way, below the level of consciousness (Gorbman, 1987). The sonic
branding industry understands this well and draws heavily on film soundtracks,
acknowledging that ‘almost every emotion has been tackled musically in the
cinema (Jackson, 2003: 16).
Sonic branding is applied to many different ‘touchpoints’ – sonic logos, hold
music on the telephone, mobile phone ringtones, start up and shut down sounds
and even product design (for instance in the automotive industry), and it uses
not only music, but also sound effects and ambient sounds, and the sound of the
voice, blending these sonic elements into a multimodal whole. In this chapter,
I focus especially on sonic logos of the kind Eno composed for Microsoft, as they
are usually the point of departure for other applications. I will ask what it is they
do and mean, and how they use music and other sounds to do so; in short, how
they translate values and principles of brands into sound.
The heraldic function of sonic logos
Sonic logos have two major functions: (1) the heraldic function of drawing the
listener’s attention to whatever the logo is a logo for, whether a product or a ser-
vice, a company or some other organization, or a radio or television programme,
and (2) an identity function, expressing the values and principles which that
product or service, or other entity, stands for.
Musical heralding is primarily expressed by melody and rhythm. Two aspects
of melody play a particularly important role: pitch movement and pitch intervals.
To begin with pitch movement, melodies can be either ascending, rising in pitch,
or descending, going down in pitch. According to Cooke (1959: 102ff ), ascend-
ing melodies are ‘active’ and ‘dynamic’. This, he argues, is because in singing
pitch ascending melodies relate to vocal effort. The higher the notes, the greater
the effort required from the singer. Hence songs that seek to energize people, to
rally people behind a cause (for instance national anthems), tend to have melo-
dies characterized by rising pitch. A second key aspect of heraldic melodies is
the size of the pitch intervals. Large, energetic steps upwards characterize strong,
Sonic Logos 121
Figure 6.1. The Internationale
Figure 6.2. Sung brand names
assertive, ‘heroic’ motifs (Marothy, 1974). In addition, heraldic melodies do not

end on the tonic, and this gives them a sense of being unfinished, to be continued
by something else – whether by an episode of the television series they announce
or the consumer’s purchase of the product they spruik. Rhythmically, dynamic
melodies will be relatively up tempo and often have what is known as a ‘dotted
rhythm’, in which each note is anticipated by a short note (de-DAA-de-DAA-de-
DAA), giving a sense of exact, precisely disciplined timing. All these features can
be used to different degrees and in different combinations, and while the melody
may be wavy, going up and down, the upwards movement will somehow have to
be its defining and most salient moment.
Heraldic melodies have a long and remarkably stable history. They are not
only used in many classical compositions (e.g. Beethoven’s Leonore Overture
and Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra), in rousing nineteenth-century patriotic
songs (cf. the ‘arise’ moment in ‘The Internationale’ in Figure 6.1) and in milita-
ristic hymns such as Wesley’s ‘Soldiers of Christ Arise and Put Your Armour On’,
but also in the sung brand names shown in Figure 6.2: Dentaguard even jumps
up by a whole octave between ‘-ta-’ and ‘-guard’, and the other two also end on a
high note. Such logos signal energy and excitement, the melodic contour of the
exclamation – Helms (1981) discusses many other examples.
The sonic expression of identity
Identity is most crucially expressed by voice quality. The sound of our voice,
whether we speak, sing or produce non-linguistic vocalizations, indexes not
only our unique identity, but also, and at the same time, our social identity,
our age, gender, class, regional origin, and so on. Musical instruments, and
the way they are played, can express identity through the same sonic qualities.
Branding experts understand this. They methodically catalogue ‘vocal attrib-
utes’ and the way these can create ‘personality profiles’ (Jackson, 2003: 136) and
acknowledge that musical instrumentation can become ‘the very essence of
the message’ (Jackson, 2003: 94) – again, because of the different qualities dif-
ferent instruments represent and the meanings and values these qualities can
express.
Below I will discuss a number of such qualities, arguing that their ability to
make meaning rests on the physical, bodily experience of vocalization which
we share with all human beings, and that this experience can also be brought to
bear on our interpretation of musical sounds, and of sound effects and ambient
sounds, including electronic ones. Take vocal tension, for example. We can rec-
ognize the sound of a tense voice, as it is higher, sharper and brighter than a lax
voice. We know, again from experience, where such tension comes from – from
excitement, for instance, or apprehension. We can therefore also use it to express
tension when we do not actually feel tense. And we can recognize tension, that
high, sharp, bright quality, also in musical instruments and the way they are
played, or in other sounds. Just what tension will actually mean will of course
depend on the other musical and non-musical signifiers it combines with, and
on the context. Tension can express a fleeting tense moment as well as a habitu-
ally tense disposition, and it can characterize an individual’s as well as a culture’s
style of speaking and singing. Lomax (1968: 193) has described how tensing of
the voice in female singing is customary in cultures that practice sexual repres-
sion of women:
It is as if one of the assignments of the favoured singer is to act out the level of
sexual tension which the customs of the society establish as normal. The con-
tent of this message may be painful and anxiety-producing, but the effect upon
the culture member may be stimulating, erotic and pleasurable, since the song
reminds him of familiar sexual emotions and experiences.
Other aspects of voice quality and timbre can be understood on the basis of
physical, bodily experiences and social experiences in similar ways. Loudness,
for instance, is, as we know from experience, most crucially associated with dis-
tance (the further away we are from the listener, the louder we must speak to be
heard), and therefore also with social distance (Hall, 1966: 184–185) – at an ‘inti-
mate range’ we whisper, at ‘close personal range’ we speak softly, and so on, and
Sonic Logos 123
only at ‘public range’ we fully project our voices. The microphone and amplifica-
tion have disengaged loudness from actual social distance, so creating a flexible
semiotic resource for expressing relationships: we can now whisper intimately
to an audience of thousands.
Because men’s voices are on average lower than those of women and children,
the meaning potential of pitch level relates to gender and age in complex ways.
Men use the higher regions of their range to assert themselves (in operas the
tenors tend to be the heroes) women the lower regions. In combination with,
for instance, loudness, this has created iconic and deeply influential models of
female identity such as the low soft voice of Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have
Not, at once assertive and seductive, or the higher, breathy voice of Marilyn
Monroe, at once childlike, vulnerable and seductive.
Like other aspects of voice quality, vibrato ‘means what it is’. We can recognize
trembling or wavering in the sound of a voice or instrument, and we know from
experience what causes it – emotion, whether it be love or fear. Vibrato is there-
fore equally good at pulling the heartstrings in a love song as in creating a sense
of fear and foreboding in the music of a horror film. In breathiness, the sounds
of voices or wind instruments mix with the sound of breathing. Again, we know
where that comes from – exertion, or excitement. Soft breathy voices can suggest
intimacy and sensuality. Advertisers use it to give their message erotic appeal,
and singers and instrumentalists use it for the same reason. In roughness we can
hear other things beside the tone of the voice itself – friction, hoarseness, harsh-
ness, rasp. A smooth voice, by contrast, is one from which all noisiness is elimi-
nated. Again, roughness means what it is: rough. We know from experience that
it may come from the wear and tear of a tough day or a hard life, and from illness
or distress. On this rests it meaning potential. That meaning potential can then
be activated in different ways in different contexts. It was used, for instance, in a
logo produced for Castrol Oil, which had to express ‘smoothness’ (‘liquid engi-
neering’). The first part of the logo was ‘rough’: ‘purposefully distorted sound
with jarring timbres’ and ‘roughness, friction’, signifying ‘alarm, emergency and
trouble’. This then resolved into ‘gentler timbres’ and a ‘melodic process’ (Arning
and Gordon, 2006: 12).
All these qualities are, in different proportions, simultaneously present in
every timbre, characterizing the habitual style of a singer or instrumentalist,
the preferred speaking style of a social class or the preferred singing style of a
musical genre. And they also apply to sound effects and ambient sounds, which
derive their meaning not only from their source, from what they are the sound
of, but also from their qualities. A closing door, too, can sound loud or soft,
tense or lax, rough or smooth. Car manufacturers know that car doors should
sound ‘reassuringly solid’ when they close, and buttons ‘click with purpose’
(Jackson, 2003: 106). In the early days of the sound film, the Hungarian film
theorist Bela Balasz (1970 [1931]: 179–180) foresaw a language of sound along
those lines:
It is the business of the sound film to reveal for us. . . the speech of things and
the intimate whisperings of nature. . . the meaning of a floorboard creaking in a
deserted room, a bullet whistling past our ear, the deathwatch beetle ticking in
old furniture and the first spring tinkling over the stones.
It is only now, in the age of sound design, with its blended sound effects and
tracks that blur the distinction between music and ambient sound that this
vision is beginning to be realized.
Finally, electronic sound can also realize identity meaning. Distortion is a
form of roughness. Filtering, reverb and/or added hiss can suggest breathiness.
Digital tremolos can be understood as a form of vibrato. Today’s scores for elec-
tronic music often combine rudimentary musical scores with words evoking
human experiences – words such as squeak, scream, growl, buzzy, reedy, warm,
flutey, swirly, grainy, clashing, clanking, throbbing, banging, rumbling, splashing,
whooshing, ticking, clicking, or references to musical instruments such as ‘a gong-
like sound’, ‘almost like a bowed vibraphone’ (cf. Niebur, 2010). At the same time,
we will recognize these sounds as technological, as displaying a clean regularity
that is lacking in humanly produced speech and music, and sometimes we will
recognize them as ‘non-human’, not possible to be produced by human articula-
tion – sustaining for longer than the human voice can, warbling or shimmering
at an impossibly fast rate. The meaning potential of such sounds can be used to
contrast the ‘human’ and the ‘technological’, as we will see in the discussion of IT
logos below, or to evoke other ‘non-human’ things, for instance ‘nature’, or the
‘divine’, or the ‘alien’ – and the sense of menace or mystery, of awe or dread, that
can attach to such meanings.
The sonic expression of group identity
Speaking, singing and music making are by nature forms of social interaction,
and the relations of power or solidarity this creates can therefore signify dif-
ferent kinds of group identity. Musical interaction, for instance, can blend dif-
ferent voices and instruments together in different ways. In social unison (or
Sonic Logos 125
‘monophony’, as it is called in music theory) all participants sing and/or play

the same notes. This can express solidarity, a positive sense of being united by a
common purpose or interest, and the voices uniting in this way may either fully
blend, so that no individual voices stand out, or be ‘heterophonic’, with indi-
vidual voices standing out to a greater or lesser extent, so that individual identity
combines with group solidarity. ‘Rough’ choirs of this kind are often used in
advertising jingles to express that the product appeals to men as well as women,
the young as well as the old, and so on. In social pluralism (or ‘polyphony’) differ-
ent melodies are simultaneously sung by different voices and/or played by differ-
ent instruments, yet all fit harmoniously together – it is a form of interaction in
which the parties that are involved are ‘equal but different’. In social domination
(the musical term is ‘homophony’) one voice (the melody) becomes dominant
and the other voices subordinate, accompanying and supporting the dominant
voice. The role of these other voices is ‘harmonic’ – they must ‘harmonize’ with
the dominant voice. But this unequal relation can be subverted: with harmony
comes disharmony – muffled tension and dissonance behind, or even overt
clashes with, the melody, the hegemonic voice. The music must then resolve this
dissonance if it is to progress towards a harmonic resolution. This too creates
meaning potential. In a sonic logo for The Times, a clash between a minor and
a major chord was used to express ‘the value of different points of view and the
nature of debate’: ‘a major chord was mingled with a minor chord and one note
is always striving to be resolved into another but never quite gets there’ (Arning
and Gordon, 2006: 15).
Call-response patterns are common in many forms of music, and always
involve interaction between a real or symbolic leader (the soloist) and his or
her followers (the choir and/or the whole ensemble), whether the leader is a
priest, a male singer backed up by female vocalists, or a male voice in a jingle
singing the praise of a washing powder and responded to by a well-blended
choir of housewives. Much can be learnt from a close study of the relation-
ships this can create (van Leeuwen, 1999: 71–77). There can, for instance,
be a respectful distance between the part of the leader and the part of the
chorus, or the two an overlap and in then, in the end, join forces, as in the
example below:
Leader: So listen to me baby

Got a new plan
Why don’t we
Leader + chorus Take a shot of Comfort
And the responses may either be full responses that add new information, as in
the example above, or simple affirmations such as the congregation’s ‘Amen’ or
‘Halleluiah’ or the female vocalists’ rapturous ‘Aaah’ in this example:
Leader: Take me to the stars

And shoot me into space now
Move. . .
Chorus: Aaah
Intertextuality
Sonic identity can also be expressed on the basis of cultural references, of inter-
textuality. The vocal styles developed by iconic singers and actors may eventually
become a semiotic resource, understood, not on the basis of the meaning poten-
tial of their qualities, but on the basis of familiarity with the meanings and values
expressed in the movie roles or songs the actors and singers are renowned for, and
in their public profiles as celebrities. The instrumental styles of key instrumental-
ists such as Miles Davis or Bill Evans similarly can become part of the toolkit of
many musicians in many genres. Sonic branding often uses existing music for
their intertextual references. Michael Nyman’s music for Jane Campion’s film The
Piano (1993), for instance, was used in a 2003 television commercial for Lloyds
TSB Bank, so that, according to Arning and Gordon (2006: 14):
the listener would immediately have linked the emotional resonance of the film
with the brand and concluded that the brand stood for the same principles and
values that the film sought to communicate (independence, passion, commit-
ment, creativity, integrity, strength).
To give another example, after British Airways had, for 15 years, used the mel-
ody of the ‘Flower Duet’ from Delibes’ Lakme, Ford used it for the launch of its
people carrier Galaxy – they could do so, because the composer had been dead
for more than 70 years and the music was therefore in the public domain. In this
way Ford ‘borrowed all the brand values that had become associated with the
track through years of investment’ (Jackson, 2003: 109).
Case study: news signature tunes
I have told the story of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) news
signature tune before (van Leeuwen, 1999: 60–64), but it is worth repeating, as it
Sonic Logos 127
Figure 6.3. ‘Majestic Fanfare’ (ABC news signature tune)
neatly illustrates what I have said so far and shows how there is both continuity
and change in heraldic music. For 32 years, the ABC, Australia’s national broad-
caster, had used a news signature theme called ‘Majestic Fanfare’. It had a call-
response structure with a typical heraldic call to action (see Figure 6.3): a rising
melody, using large intervals and dotted rhythms, in a major key and a bright
march tempo, was followed by a response using a range of instruments, slowing
down somewhat, and rising to an unresolved high note.
What did this say about the identity of the ABC? First of all, the ‘call to atten-
tion’, the voice of the national broadcaster was the voice of a leader (the call-
response structure). Also, it was played by trumpets (intertextually the sound
of military parades and nationalistic ceremonies), disciplined (the march tempo
and the dotted rhythm), unified (unison), authoritative (loud), confident (large
intervals), and optimistic (major key). As Siegfried Helms commented on simi-
lar radio signature tunes: ‘Despite two world wars, the march appears not to have
lost any of its attraction across the world”(Helms, 1981: 81, my translation). The
response united a large and diverse group (the whole orchestra, using different
instruments and including even a harp glissando) which nevertheless was in
harmony with itself (homophonic harmony). In short, the news theme was a call
to action from an authoritative national broadcaster, obediently responded to by
a diverse, but harmonic nation.3
In the late 1980s this theme was replaced with a new theme. It had three parts.
The first part opened with a synthesizer drone which continued throughout the
whole part – the era of the satellite and global technology had begun. Several
‘call and response’ phrases followed (the first of these is shown in Figure 6.4), still
using a trumpet, but this time it was a single piccolo trumpet (less assertive and
unified), and it played a descending melody in a minor key (more ‘sentimental’
and less optimistic), using jazz-like syncopation (an element of entertainment).
The response was also descending (less enthusiasm) and played by a muted brass
ensemble (less diversity). The middle section had a fast ostinato rhythmic pat-
tern that could be taken as a musical imitation of, say, a teletypewriter, signify-
ing the urgency and immediacy of the news (in many other news and current
affairs tunes of the time actual sound effects were used). A newsreader read the
Figure 6.4. Call and response section of the new ABC tune
headlines over this middle section, punctuated by very short melodic phrases
that alternated between a rather harsh sounding motif played by synthesized
brass and a softer, more lyrical one, played by a more reedy synthesized sound
(the news as varied and containing both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ items). It was the late
1980s. Neoliberal voices questioned the value of public institutions, calling for
privatization, and the ABC felt it needed to learn from the success of the com-
mercial broadcasters, with their greater emphasis on entertainment. In short the
tune represented a crisis of confidence. The old theme was soon reintroduced,
but never with the same majestic aplomb.
Case study: sonic logos of IT companies
We now return to Brian Eno’s sonic logo (http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=miZHa7ZC6Z0). It started on a low note that ascended glissando-like
by a fourth and then jumped up an octave to four identical high notes – a static
‘melody’ that remained open, unresolved. Under the four high notes a synthe-
sizer drone increased in loudness, ending abruptly. The heraldic function is
therefore realized by the same attributes as the Majestic Fanfare – a steep rise up
and an unresolved ending (cf. Figure 6.5). But the timbre is quite different. No
trumpets here, but a soft, chime-like sound, suggesting a calm, new age mood
(the tune was composed in the 1990s), as if sitting on a verandah, listening to the
tinkling of a chime and contemplating the blue sky. Yet there is also an electronic
edge, suggesting technological perfection. And unlike the Majestic Fanfare, no
sense of group identity is invoked, reminiscent of television commercials from
the period which showed people working with laptops in remote locations,
amidst the grandeur of nature, with no human being in sight.
The AT&T sonic logo was designed by Joel Beckermann, CEO of the New York
sonic branding agency Man Made Music. The company’s website describes the
brief: ‘AT&T tasked us with creating a Sonic Identity System that would embody
“Rethink Possible” in a more human and relatable way’ (Man Made Music,
2016). This ‘Identity System’ included startup sounds, ringback tones, tones that
reveal that security protection is engaged, and so on, all taking the company’s
Sonic Logos 129
Figure 6.5. Brian Eno’s 1995 Microsoft startup sound
Figure 6.6. AT&T sonic logo
sonic logo as their point of departure – a four-note ascending melody remaining

unresolved, a ‘stair-step of crisp, bright tones’ (Man Made Music, 2016) express-
ing a ‘rally cry’ (Jurgensen, 2012) – cf. Figure 6.6 and http://www.youtube.com/
watch?=vaMoKo34a3bw:
In the version I analysed, the timbre mixes an old piano, a glockenspiel and
a Wurlitzer with an electronic edge, thus blending sounds evoking technologi-
cal perfection and innovation with the human touch of traditional instruments
to make ‘AT&T more human and expressive’ (Kessler, 2014). Beckermann also
created a longer ‘Sonic Anthem’ in which the logo goes through a number of
repetitions with different timbres, ranging from purely electronic to synthesized
strings, ‘from warm to forward thinking’ (Man Made Music, 2016), and with
an energetic drum rhythm throughout: ‘in every repetition of these four tones
there is opportunity for reinvention, mirroring the brand’s culture of innovation’
(Ibid.).
The INTEL sonic logo, first launched in 1995, and composed by Walter
Werzowa, is one of the most famous sonic logos of all (http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=OHjKDdXCR3l), hailed by the industry for having ‘achieved a high
level of consumer awareness and recall of its Pentium processes in excess of the
tangible influence that the brand or its product have on people’s lives’ (Arning
and Gordon, 2006: 5). It starts with a high impact ‘audio sparkle’ mixing 20
different sounds (Jackson, 2003: 128), including a tambourine, an anvil and an
electric spark, which first becomes louder, then softer again, as if describing an
orbit – the sonic equivalent of the dynamic circle that surrounds the company’s
name in the visual logo. This is followed by a four-note ascending staccato mel-
ody that spells ‘Intel Inside’ (see Figure 6.7) and blends electronic sounds with a
xylophone, bells, a marimba and a ‘secret recipe of instruments’ (Ibid.), while we
see the slogan ‘leap ahead’. Again the optimism and forcefulness of the ascending
Figure 6.7. Intel logo
melody is married to a timbre that combines the sounds of technological perfec-

tion with sounds that seek to evoke affective resonance, so as to create ‘a logo
with emotional content, in the same way as a film score works’ (Ibid).
Compared to the ‘Majestic Fanfare’ and other heraldic themes of the past,
there is therefore both continuity and change. The assertive optimism of the
rising melody continues. But the timbre has changed. Instead of the militaristic
bugle call, we now have timbres that blend technological perfection with human
appeal, the former through electronic sounds, the latter through a variety of
approaches, from the gentle, wind-driven sound of chimes to the nostalgia of old
pianos and the sweet retro sound of the Wurlitzer. As Cooke (1959) has shown,
many melodic phrases have, through the centuries, been used with similar lyrics,
expressing similar themes. Timbres, on the other hand, change with the times,
as instrumental technologies reflect the preoccupations of the period, from the
gentle harpsichord of the eighteenth century to the piano which, according to
Schafer (1994: 109) ‘typified the greater aggressiveness of a time in which objects
were punched and beaten into existence by means of industrial processes where
once they had been stroked, carved and kneaded into shape’ – and to the current
era of digital instruments with their focus on providing a wide array of timbres
(a modern digital stage piano will offer hundreds of preset timbres). Melodic
continuity and timbral change not only characterize the history of Western
music, but also the history of specific logos. The Intel logo, like other sonic logos
has often been updated, but ‘crucially, the one thing that has not changed in the
Intel sonic logo is the melody. With a consistent melody in place, sonic identities
can be rearranged but still maintain their essence’ (Jackson, 2003: 94).
The way I have analysed sonic logos reflects the way they are produced.
Jackson describes how his company Sonicbranding (now part of CuttingEdge
Commercial) set about creating a sonic logo for an IT company called Vivazzi.
The process started with the identification of the values of the company. In
the case of Vivazzi these were (1) ‘soft technology’, technology with a human
touch; (2) ‘modern heritage’, combining the values of continuity and the trust
it generates with innovation; and (3) ‘human energy’. These values were then
matched with musical attributes and intertextual references. ‘Soft technology’
Sonic Logos 131
was expressed by ‘contemporary synthesized drum loops’ as familiar from drum

and bass music, but played by traditional African drums, to ‘soften things up
and add some humanity’ (Jackson, 2003: 119). Heritage was expressed by using a
string section, referencing the kind of classical music ‘traditionally used in com-
mercials for banks and insurance companies’, but adding synthesized textures
to give it ‘an electronic edge and an unexpected bit of interest’ (Ibid). Human
energy was produced by a gospel choir with some vocal percussion (a la Bobby
McFerrin’s ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’) (Ibid: 120). This process created what else-
where I have called a ‘composite of connotations’ (van Leeuwen, 2005: 275),
expressing a composite of values. But Jackson recognizes that some composers
work intuitively and holistically rather than following a rational, step-by-step
process of this kind. In that case, he argues, there has to be a post hoc analysis to
ensure that the intended meanings are expressed: ‘Sometimes it is better to let a
composer create as a whole and then analyze the branding down to its individual
components rather than adopt the sonic layering process of building one layer at
a time’ (Jackson, 2003: 120).
Conclusion
A few conclusions can be drawn.

First of all, sonic logos, like other contemporary consumer products, com-
bine a practical function with the expression of identity. Their functional
structure is quite stable and homogeneous, calling the listener to attention
through a melodic structure characterized by ascending melodies, large inter-
vals, dotted rhythms, and a lack of resolution, so that the music has an open
ending, continuing in what follows, whether it be a news bulletin or a work
session of the computer user. The identity function is less stable and more
varied and flexible, able to respond to new trends as they occur, and primar-
ily carried by timbres, often created through blending sounds with specific
meaning potentials or cultural references into novel ‘composites of connota-
tions’. Sonic logos therefore embody both continuity and change, both genetic
homogeneity and stylistic variety.
Sonic logos also blur the distinction between the private and the public. The
ringtones we choose to personalize our phones can reference musical genres,
ethnic origins, and so on, but the online catalogues from which they can be
downloaded also include ringtones with names like ‘iPhone’, ‘Apple’ ‘Google’
and so on. Like the sonic logos of IT companies these ringtones have simple
ascending melodies and timbres that blend the electronic and ‘metallic’ with
warmer edges. The ‘iPhone’ ringtone even has a high warbling, sometimes
whistle-like drone and a three-note descending background melody sounding
somewhat like strings. The meanings Eno had to express in the Microsoft startup
sound (‘optimistic’, ‘futuristic’, ‘emotional’, ‘universal’, etc.) can also become indi-
vidual identity markers.
Finally, we have seen that the semiotic analysis of sonic logos has much in
common with the methods used to produce them. Sonic branding companies,
like semioticians, methodically study the meaning potentials of vocal and musi-
cal attributes, creating systematically classified inventories of sounds. As Jackson
argues (2003: 116): ‘the visual branding world is very familiar with the concept
of a language system’ (e.g. colour palette, fonts, layouts and shapes) and so is the
world of sonic branding.
In fact, marketers have often been ahead of semioticians in this regard. In our
work on ‘branding the self ’, Machin and I (2008) showed how the 1980s’ cultural
studies trend to see identity as fluent and flexible was preceded by at least ten
years by the change, in marketing, from traditional demographics to ‘lifestyle’
characterizations of consumers, based on their values, leisure activities and con-
sumer preferences. In a similar way, I have now discovered that the paramet-
ric approach to the semiotics of voice quality, which I began to develop in the
2000s (see van Leeuwen, 2008) was preceded by the work of companies such as
Orange who developed ‘a set of 14 attributes that they could use to describe the
sound of a voice’. With these attributes Orange can describe voices as, for exam-
ple, ‘dynamic’, as well as adjusting the definition of ‘dynamic’ cross-culturally
(Jackson, 2003: 134ff ). Semioticians would do well to pay attention to this kind
of work and relate the analysis of semiotic resources and the texts in which they
are used to the practices that create the texts and bring them into circulation.
Notes
1 The roots of ambient music go much further back. Telemann wrote ‘table music’
for his aristocratic sponsors in the eighteenth century, and in 1917 Erik Satie wrote
musique d’ameublement’ (‘furniture music’) for the opening of an exhibition which
he deliberately intended to be background music. But as soon as the musicians
started to play, people stopped talking and started listening, and Satie, apparently,
walked around, waving his arms and inciting people to talk: ‘Parlez! Parlez’ (Murray
Schafer, 1994: 90).
Sonic Logos 133
2 While marketers’ interest in the ‘shallow processing’ of music is no doubt motivated

by the quest for the holy grail of implanting ideas directly into the brain, there
is evidence that music is somewhat of a special case. Oliver Sacks (2007), for
instance, recounts the case of a man with severe amnesia, who can nevertheless
remember music, which suggests that music is remembered differently from other
experiences.
3 In an excellent book on advertising music, Helms (1981: 305) calls such themes
‘signal music’, notes the use of trumpets, broken triads, ascending melodies and
‘accents on the last tone’, and links it to fanfares which ‘remind of heralds and
kings – we involuntarily associate them with power, victory and triumph’.
References
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London: Routledge.
7
‘If You Have Nothing To Say – Sing It!’: On

the Interplay of Music, Voice and Lyrics in
the Advertising Jingle
Johnny Wingstedt
The Latin verb advertere means ‘to turn toward’. From the eighteenth century, the
British verb advertise was used with the meaning ‘to call attention to something’,
for example goods for sale, rewards, and so on (Oxford English Dictionary). To
‘call attention’ is of course also today a basic function of advertising; not least it
is an essential objective of the advertising jingle, a short song or tune used in
advertising. Attracting attention by means of sound and music takes advantage
of how sound is a ‘wrap-around’ medium, that is, the listener does not have to
turn towards a sound to experience it. The sound will instead ‘turn towards the
listener’; it will extend and reach anyone within hearing distance (van Leeuwen,
1999). Advertising on television takes advantage of this distinctive quality. Even
when the listener is away from the television set the sound will call attention
to itself during commercial breaks, typically supported by an increase in loud-
ness. But of course advertising aims to do more that just to attract attention – or
rather, it attracts attention for a reason. Some important functions of the adver-
tising jingle are to create an ‘image’ of a product or service, to affect and to per-
suade. Nicholas Cook (1998b: 3) argues that music does this very efficiently, that
‘advertisers use music to communicate meanings that would take too long to
put into words, or that would carry no conviction in them’. In this, the musical
jingle, like all advertising, becomes a significant carrier of values, attitudes and
ideologies.
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss and exemplify how discourses
can be expressed by the advertising jingle through the interweaving of lyr-
ics, music and voice. Freitas (2012) points out how advertising makes for
136 Johnny Wingstedt
rewarding study, due to its relevance as a continuously updated source of

information as to past and present social values and beliefs – and also because
of its ubiquitous presence in contemporary Western societies. This as well as
its distinct purpose and compact design makes it an essential and valuable
object for analytic inquiry.
Guy Cook (2001) argues that most relevant meanings in a multimodal adver-
tising text are commonly conveyed non-linguistically, through channels such
as image or sound. In examining how discourses are represented by combining
modes such as lyrics, voice and music, different, or additional, semiotic resources
and choices must be taken into consideration compared with looking at speech
or writing alone. The concept of semiotic resource is used here to indicate and
comprise ‘the actions, materials and artefacts we use for communicative pur-
poses, whether produced physiologically. . .or technologically’ (van Leeuwen,
2005: 285). Each mode of communication, and associated semiotic resources,
individually constructs meaning but above all, meaning emerges from the
complex interweaving of the modes and resources involved (Kress et al, 2001;
Wingstedt 2008; Wingstedt et al., 2010). To examine such multimodal commu-
nication as discourse, Kress (2012) argues they need to be viewed as texts. In this
sense, the concept of text should be understood as a multimodal semiotic entity
in multiple dimensions.
Texts, of whatever kind, are the result of the semiotic work of design, and of
processes of composition and production. They result in ensembles composed of
different modes, resting on the agentive semiotic work of the maker of such text.
(Kress, 2012: 36; unless otherwise noted all emphases are in original)
The study of discursive aspects of multimodal texts, pursued by means of mul-

timodal discourse analysis (MMDA), aims to ‘elaborate tools that can provide
insight into the relation of the meanings of a community and its semiotic mani-
festations. In MMDA, the apt use of modes for the realization of discourses in
text in a specific situation is a central question’ (Ibid., 36).
Fundamental to discourse analysis is the view that meaning always emerges in
relation to different levels of context (Cook, 1998a; van Dijk, 2008; van Leeuwen,
2008; Gee, 2011). Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress (2011) discuss how we
must pay attention to the specific communicative potential of specific modes,
and how it is important to be aware of their common properties and poten-
tials. Semiotic resources have a meaning potential, a range of possible meanings,
based on their past uses. Meaning potentials are ‘actualized in concrete social
contexts’ of use (van Leeuwen, 2005: 285). A central question, as van Leeuwen
Music, Voice and Lyrics in the Advertising Jingle 137
and Kress (2011) point out, is to understand how semiotic resources are actu-
ally used in multimodal texts. This chapter explores how attention needs to be
directed, not only towards social, cultural, situational or institutional contexts,
but also to multimodal contexts; how modes constructing specific multimodal
texts contextualize each other.
To illustrate and exemplify how semiotic resources and contexts come
together when discourse takes the form of designed multimodal ensembles, two
examples of vintage American jingles will be analysed; a jingle for the cleaning
detergent Mr Clean®, ‘Mr Clean (gets rid of dirt and grime)’ – and a beer com-
mercial for Lowenbrau®, ‘Here’s to good friends’ (aka ‘Tonight, tonight, let it be
Lowenbrau’).
The ‘Mr Clean’ jingle was composed in the late 1950s by Thomas Scott
Cadden, and arranged by Bill Walker. The song is performed as a duet by
singers Don Cherry and Betty Bryan. This musical theme has, in several dif-
ferent versions, been used by the company Procter and Gamble™ in various
campaigns using the brand name of Mr Clean. The version analysed is the
original version and is about 55 seconds long. The song is performed as an
up-tempo polka. Teixeira (1974) lists typical categories of jingles, and this
one could be described as being in the style of a ‘hit song’. The polka was
a common genre of popular, ‘easy listening’ melodies of the time (Greene,
1992). The strategy of using a popular style for a jingle is to blend in with the
regular radio music programming, to avoid the listener ‘turning off ’ their
attention, otherwise typically an instant reaction to commercial breaks on
radio or television. The ‘Mr Clean’ jingle is an example of a ‘classic’ jingle
style, with a simple, rhythmic and catchy melody with frequent mentions of
the brand name. The lyrics go as follows:
Male: Mister Clean gets rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute,
Female: Mister Clean will clean your whole house and everything that’s in it.
M: Floors, doors, walls, halls, white sidewall tiles and old golf balls,
F: Sinks, stoves, bathtubs he’ll do, he’ll even help clean laundry too.
M: Mister Clean gets rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute,
F: Mister Clean will clean your whole house and everything that’s in it.
M: Can he clean a kitchen sink? / F: Quicker that a wink.
M: Can he clean a window sash? / F: Faster than a flash.
M: Can he clean a dirty mirror? / F: He’ll make it bright and clearer.
M: Can he clean a diamond ring? / F: Mister Clean cleans anything!
Both: Mister Clean gets rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute,
Mister Clean will clean you whole house and everything that’s in it,
Mister Clean, Mister Clean, Mister Clean.
(Thomas Scott Cadden, 1957)
The ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle is from a campaign in the mid-1970s, when the brand
was distributed in the United States by Miller Brewing Company™. The
music is composed by William M. Backer, then an employee of the ad agency
McCann Erickson, and performed by singer Arthur Prysock. The song could,
just as the ‘Mr Clean’ commercial, be described as a hit song jingle. It is 59 sec-
onds long and performed in a laid-back and mellow country-pop style, with a
loose shuffle rhythm. At the same time it is an example of what Teixeira (1974)
calls the ‘standard type’, which in the advertising business is also known as a
‘donut’ – that is, a jingle with a ‘hole in the middle’. This is a formal structure
that starts out with the first part of the jingle (the ‘front’), where usually the
main theme is sung. It is followed by an instrumental part (the ‘bed’, that is,
the ‘hole’) that is used as a background for a spoken voice-over. The end of
the jingle (the ‘tag’) is again sung. The different parts of the jingle are usually
designed so that they can be played separately, truncated into so-called lifts, if
shorter versions are needed. The lifts are often used at later stages in an adver-
tising campaign, as a form of multimodal synecdoche (McKerrell and Way, this
volume), when the audience can be expected to recognize the jingle as well
as the message established by the full-length version. A shorter version of the
jingle is then sufficient, just to remind the listener of the brand image estab-
lished by the campaign. The advantage of the short version, besides reducing
advertising costs, is also to not wear out the listener. Instead, the listener can
be engaged to mentally ‘fill in’ what is missing from the melody and words.
The full lyrics are:
LEAD: Here’s to good friends, tonight is kind of special,

the beer will pour, must say something more somehow,
so tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau.
It’s been so long, hey, I’m glad to see ya’,
raise your glass, here’s to health and happiness,
so tonight, tonight, let it be all the best.
(VOICE-OVER:
When you’re with good friends having good times,
don’t just have a beer, have a Lowenbrau,
because good friends and good times deserve the taste of a great beer,
and there’s really only one – Lowenbrau.)

LEAD: Tonight, let it be Lowenbrau.
(William M. Backer, 1976)
I have chosen these examples since they clearly illustrate relations of form, con-
tent and expression at the same time as they reflect certain aspects of the times
and cultural contexts in which they were used. Both jingles were also relatively
well known in their respective cultural settings, and are today available on the
web for listening. In both songs, similar semiotic resources are employed for pur-
poses of communication, such as pitch, tempo, rhythm, harmony, voice timbre
and so on – although largely differently applied, using contrasting approaches.
In this, they illustrate how different discursive choices are made depending on
purpose, contexts and available resources. Cook (2001) points out the challenge
of trying to describe modal expressions such as music through the mode of writ-
ing, as is done in this book. A transformation, or transduction (Kress, 2010), has
to be made between the different modes where much is ‘lost in translation’. To
grasp, as fully as possible, the impact of lyrics, music and voice as a multimodal
text the reader is therefore encouraged to search for and listen to the examples
being discussed in the following sections. A few suggestions of sources for lis-
tening to the two jingles are available at the end of this chapter.
In order to investigate the functional organization of the multimodal texts,
the following discussion will be organized according to Halliday’s (1978) three
metafunctions of communication, the textual, ideational and interpersonal
metafunctions. Halliday describes the metafunctions as components that are
present in all communication in every social context, a text is a product of
all three components. The metafunctions are here taken as a starting point in
exploring how discursive aspects of the two jingles are multimodally structured,
how the world is represented and how persuasion is achieved.
Structural meaning potentials
Halliday (1978) describes the textual metafunction as the component of com-

munication that provides the texture. It is the organizing of a text (in a broad
sense) as a coherent message through textual resources of a mode. It expresses
the relation of the communicative act with its environment, including both the
‘internal’ modal environment and the situational environment. The textual com-
ponent has an enabling function with respect to the other two metafunctions. ‘It
is only in combination with textual meanings that ideational and interpersonal

meanings are actualized’ (Ibid: 113). Textual features of music are constituted
by material aspects and the social use of musical sound. Fundamental temporal
resources for music to achieve cohesive textual meaning are the use of structural
features such as form, continuity and phrasing (Wingstedt, Brändström and
Berg, 2010). The following section will exemplify how music structures multi-
modal meaning in combination with lyrics and voice.
The favoured important word in most commercials is the product name, or
sometimes a prominent word of the slogan. In the ‘Mr Clean’ jingle, the cen-
tral word is ‘clean’. In English, the word ‘clean’ can be used as an adjective (the
table is clean) or as a verb (it is necessary to clean the bathtub). In this jingle,
clean is also a noun since it is part of the product name. In combining words
and music the verbal structure of the lyrics is directly affected by conventions
of musical structure. The metrical regularity and cyclical form of music allows
for (or even calls for) time-based constructions that make possible repetition
of the phrases that are outlined by melody as well as by lyrics. As the musical
structure builds on repetition, so is also repetition of words made possible.
The ‘Mr Clean’ jingle takes advantage of this, and in the 55 seconds of the
song, the word ‘clean’ is repeated 19 times. In common speech this would be
thought of as being absurd and annoying. When certain words or synonyms
are being ‘over-present’ in a text, it is known as overlexicalization (Machin and
Mayr, 2012: 222). When words are set to music, excessive overlexicalization
will not only be acceptable to the listener – it may even be expected, following
conventions of traditional song forms and genres. The ‘Mr Clean’ jingle also
illustrates how the exact repetition of the same word, rather than synonyms, is
used and ‘normalized’.
Looking closer at the combined music-lyric structure reveals that most of the
repeated words appear at strategic metric positions, which occur at stressed beats
and at stressed bars. The song is performed in the style of a polka, notated in 2/
4 time (see Figure 7.1). This means that the basic underlying pulse of the music
is organized into short repeating divisions of two beats. In music notation the
divisions are indicated as the space between two bar lines – what is known as a
bar or a measure. It can be thought of as a metrical ‘micro cycle’. The first beat of
each bar is a downbeat, which is also referred to as a stressed (or strong) beat. It
doesn’t matter what the time signature would be (e.g. 2/4, 3/4 or 4/4 time etc.),
the downbeat of each bar is always referred to (and experienced) as a stressed
beat – as opposed to an unstressed or a weak beat. This does not mean that the
downbeat is necessarily played stronger or more accented. Music theorist Justin
London (2012) suggests that the experience of the downbeat as being the start of
each bar results from the embodied phenomenon of entrainment: ‘a synchroni-
zation of some aspect of our biological activity with regularly recurring events in
the environment’ (London, 2012: 4). However, he continues, metre is more than
just a stimulus-driven form of attending; it is also culturally learnt, rehearsed
and practiced. Entrainment involves the ability to predict the timing of antici-
pated future events. Although the experience of musical metre is grounded in
the production and perception of a pulse, a metrical pattern requires coordi-
nation with at least one other level of organization. This could for example be
related to rhythmical, melodic, harmonic or dynamic patterns. How this is done
varies with musical style and genre.
When entrainment is in process, it ‘leads us to focus our attention to the most
salient temporal locations for events; attention is, by its very nature, selective’
(Ibid., 12). Even though the beats of the underlying pulse may be of equal length,
they will not be experienced as being equal in character or importance. When
we are entrained to a regular meter, such as the 2/4 metre in ‘Mr Clean’, the
downbeat of each bar will carry greater expectation and semiotic salience. Any
lyrical text occurring on the downbeat will therefore be afforded more salience.
As can be observed in Figure 7.1 the word ‘clean’ is almost always placed on a
downbeat, and therefore is emphasized with more semiotic salience because of
the multimodal interactions in the song.
In similar ways that beats in a bar are experienced differently, individual
bars in a sequence will be perceived differently depending on their position in
the sequence. Following conventions of traditional Western music, sequences
of bars are often organized into larger cycles, ‘periods’ or ‘parts’, typically of
four, eight or sixteen bars. The first bar in such a period is referred to as a
stressed (or strong) bar. Just as with stressed beats, stressed bars (and associ-
ated components) achieve more importance (Huron, 2006). As can be seen in
Figure 7.1, the word ‘clean’ most often falls on the downbeat of stressed bars,
in four-bar periods. The salience of the word is thereby further emphasized by
its position in the meta-structure of the song. The important word is also used
to frame the entire jingle: the song starts directly with the first notes being
the male voice singing ‘Mr Clean’. The song’s last words are performed by the
male and female voices in harmony, three times hammering home the product
name. This example illustrates how temporal form of speech and music come
together as ‘cycles in cycles’, how music provides a structural framework for
targeted language components to achieve salience to an extent normally not
available in speech only.
The issue of repetition does not end there. A commercial jingle is part of an
advertising campaign and will itself be repeated over a longer period of time, for
months or sometimes even years. Furthermore it will be available across vari-
ous media, for example television, radio, cinema – and in recent years on the
internet. The ‘Mr Clean’ jingle is exceptional in this respect, as it was introduced
in the late 1950s. It has since been used on and off, and in various new versions,
until today. Moriarty (2015) claims it to be the longest running advertising jingle
in television history. The recurrent use of a certain song is of course the basis for
the listener learning to recognize the melody and words, a function of funda-
mental importance in advertising.
Musical salience can be achieved through a long list of factors. Machin
(2010), van Leeuwen (1999, 2005) and Wingstedt, Brändström and Berg (2010)
discuss several factors, such as volume, pitch, accent, repetition, timbre and
potent cultural symbols, to name a few. Worth noting here is how the brand
name in the example is consistently sung using an ascending interval, which can
be described as going from a lower to a higher frequency and energy level (van
Leeuwen, 1999; Machin, 2010). Assigning the word ‘clean’ to the higher note
is a way to achieve salience. How pitch direction may also be associated with
ideational and interpersonal meaning potentials will be discussed later in this
chapter.
A different approach is taken for the jingle ‘Let It Be Lowenbrau’. The lead
vocal starts off directly, after a two-beat piano intro (see Figure 7.2). Again, the
brand name is central, but in this song it is not heard until the eighth bar (about
17 seconds into the song), and then only once more right at the end, as the
last word (at about 55 seconds). The structural strategy here is quite different
compared to ‘Mr Clean’, and builds on principles of phrasing, and harmonic
and melodic tension-release. Harmonically it is structured so that it starts on
the tonic chord (the ‘home chord’ of the key) and then commences a harmonic
progression that does not come to rest again until bar eight, coinciding with
the word ‘Lowenbrau’. The listener is taken on a harmonic journey building on
the principle of tension-release that is not resolved until the cadence (or resolu-
tion), which is synchronous with the brand name. Bars six and seven heighten
the expectations of what is to come, through a four-chord progression leading
firmly towards the resolution (see Figure 7.2). The melodic structure performs
a similar journey, finally landing on the ‘home note’ (the first scale degree of a
tonal scale) on the last two syllables of ‘Lowenbrau’. Here, the prominent tem-
poral and semiotic principle is not so much periodicity but rather connection
(Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006: 210), building on the sense of continuity and
Mr Clean, bars 17-32 Musical resources Functions
Meter, period: Central word Textual: Brand name made salient

('Clean') repeated on stressed through repetition and strategic
beats (downbeats) of stressed metric placement, and consistent
bars (4-bar periods). use of melodic interval.
Melody, pitch: Brand name on Ideational: Participants

ascending consonant interval represented through voice quality
(minor third). (gender, age, attitude). Roles
emphasized through call-response.
Actions implied by tempo,
Form, phrasing: Call–response rhythm, and melodic and
patterns. harmonic movement.
Harmony and melody: Simple Interpersonal: Emotive functions

and catchy. Harmonic and afforded through means of
melodic tension–release rhythmical entrainment, melody,
emphasize Q & A, provide harmony, timbre etc. Attention
forward motion. guided towards salience of brand
name.
Tempo, rhythm: Fast tempo and
regular rhythm further provide
forward motion and continuity.
Figure 7.1. ‘Mr Clean’, bars 17–32, examples of musical resources and functions
Let it be Lowenbrau, bars 1-9 Musical resources Functions
Tempo, rhythm: medium slow, Textual: Brand name salient

shuffle rhythm. through melodic pitch direction
and connection;
Instrumentation: Beginning of song harmonic/melodic tension-release
just piano and lead vocals. Strings with resolution at bar 8.
and more instruments enter at bar 8.
Ideational: Participants
represented through voice quality.
Location, situation and activity
implied through interplay with
backing vocals, instrumentation,
Harmony, melody: Melody and relaxed shuffle rhythm and tempo.
chord progression lead through
tension-release towards resolution Interpersonal: Mood and emotive
at end of phrase (tonic chord at bar function through voice quality,
8). low pitch and interaction of
resources such as harmony,
Pitch, timbre: Brand name at lowest melody, tempo, and rhythm. From
note – affects timbre of lead vocal. naturalistic to sensory modality
through instrumentation.
Form, phrasing: Brand name at end
of phrase (bar 8). Call-response
with lead and backing vocals at
bars 6-9.
Figure 7.2. ‘Tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau’, bars 1–9, examples of musical
resources and functions
forward motion of harmony and melody. The eight-bar phrase firmly leads the
listener towards the inevitable final release, thus giving salience to the brand
name. The structure is further strengthened by a backing chorus repeating the
phrase ‘Tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau’.
A similar form and technique is also used for the spoken voice-over, layered
on top of the instrumental ‘bed’ section. It is in the form of two extended spoken
clauses, each leading up to and ending with the brand name. The jingle ends
with the lead vocal finishing off with a modified version of the previous bars 5–
8, condensed into two bars – now without the backing chorus. Contrary to ‘Mr
Clean’, the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle consistently synchronizes the brand name with the
lowest note of the melody. Even the spoken voice-over uses a markedly lower
pitch for the word ‘Lowenbrau’. This recurring pitch-related device creates sali-
ence by what sometimes is referred to as a negative accent, that is, emphasizing
an event by ‘taking away’ something (such as lowering volume, or here, pitch).
Representing the world
The ideational metafunction is about the part of communication that tells

us about the world – the world we live in or fictional or ‘represented’ worlds.
According to Halliday (1978: 112) the ideational metafunction represents the
interlocutor’s meaning potential as an observer. It is the content function of com-
munication expressing phenomena of the environment, such as the creatures,
objects, actions, events, qualities and states – ‘of the world and of our own con-
sciousness’. Kress et al (2001: 13) further describe ideational meaning potentials
as ‘who does what, with or to whom and where’. It could be added: with what
and when – and how. Van Leeuwen (2008) takes the view that all representa-
tions of the world should be interpreted as representations of social practices. He
presents a model of how elements of social practices enter into texts. Categories
of elements include participants, actions, times, locations and resources. Certain
elements, such as participants, locations and resources, are associated with eligi-
bility conditions – that is, qualifications necessary ‘in order to be eligible to play
a particular role in a particular practice’ (Ibid.: 10). Furthermore, performance
modes are the manners or the pace in which actions are performed, and presen-
tation styles involve dress and body grooming requirements for the participants.
How are then elements of social practices represented through music, voice and
lyrics in these jingles?
The participants of the two jingles are most directly represented through
voice quality. On a basic level, by the sound of the voice, gender and age of the
singers of ‘Mr Clean’ are readily recognized as two relatively young (to middle-
aged) male and female Anglo-Americans. Initially, through the lyrics, they pre-
sent themselves in alternating phrases as ‘qualified users’, having knowledge and
opinions about the product by telling us about its advantages. About halfway
into the jingle their roles emerge as more specialized: the man begins to ask
questions such as ‘can he clean a kitchen sink?’ and the woman answers ‘quicker
than a wink’ and so on. He poses four questions like this, and each time she
promptly replies – answering the last question with ‘Mr Clean cleans anything!’
In this exchange of questions and answers the female singer assumes the role of
expert authority on cleaning, in a sense fulfilling a historically normative gen-
dered social role. After this section, the two singers repeat the beginning of the
song, this time in two-part harmony. The question-answer section is musically
emphasized by the use of a common musical device known as call and response.
As the term implies it is a succession of two distinct phrases, where the second
phrase is a direct response to the first. In this song the call-response structure
is further accentuated by the harmonic structure. Here the chord progression
plays a tension-release sequence, where the question is harmonized using a
tension (dominant) chord pushing forward towards the answer that lands on
a release (tonic) chord. A dominant chord is typically experienced as strongly
pulling towards the tonal centre (the tonic), in a way demanding resolution
(Goldman, 1965) – here, demanding an ‘answer’. The tonic chord gives a sense
of conclusiveness and decisiveness to the answer, lending it a quality of stability
and self-assurance.
The voice and the music together also express aspects of the participants’
mood and attitude, as the up-tempo music and simplicity of the melody may
be understood as suggesting positive and enthusiastic mind-sets. As described
earlier, the product name is consistently sung using an ascending interval.
Furthermore, the melody is composed so that the brand name, ‘Mr Clean’, is
always sung across the same ascending relative interval – a minor third, which
is considered a consonant interval. A consonant interval (the opposite of a dis-
sonant interval) is usually defined as a stable, harmonious and pleasing combi-
nation of notes (Baker, 2009). The consistent use of the same melodic interval
for the brand name will provide for it to become established as a recognizable
melodic shape, associated to the product name. As a consequence, the melodic
sound can eventually carry the meaning of the lyrical text without the words,
which is also an illustration of the concept of a multimodal synecdoche, dis-
cussed in Chapter 1 of this volume. When the word-melody connection is firmly
established it may, later in the advertising campaign, be possible to play the mel-
ody without the lyrics – and the listener can mentally fill in the missing words.
This is a powerful technique for persuasion, potentially making the listener ‘sing’
the name of the product (at least inwardly) – that is, a way to interpersonally
engage the listener.
Here it should be noted that music, seen as a mode of expression, offers a
wide range of meaning potentials. It is essential to bear in mind that care must
be taken not to attribute specific meanings to single musical factors. As Cook

(1998a: 9) puts it, ‘Instead of talking about meaning as something that the music
has, we should be talking about it as something that the music does (and has
done to it) within a given context’. The view taken here is that meaning emerges
from complex and dynamic interactions of semiotic resources and layers of con-
texts. According to a research overview presented by Gabrielsson and Lindström
(2001), ascending and consonant intervals may potentially be associated with
expressions such as happiness, serenity and pleasantness, but also with a range
of other emotions depending on context. Gabrielsson and Lindström point out
that interactions between melodic contour and rhythm is a factor that will affect
judgements of perceived emotion, as will the complexity of the harmonic con-
tent. In the case of the ‘Mr Clean’ jingle, the regular rhythm and brisk tempo,
and also the simple and consonant harmony potentially supports associations to
happiness and gaiety. This is further strengthened by the ascending interval dis-
cussed above, which produces an extremely stable sound because of the conso-
nance between the melody and the harmony.1 Other contextual factors include
the multimodal interactions of music with lyrics and voice quality, and the con-
notations of the polka as a musical genre in American culture in the 1950s. Of
course, the individual use of available semiotic resources for meaning-making is
also shaped by what Kress (2010: 108) describes as ‘contingencies of individual
experience, always in specific environments, expressed as interest’.
In the case of ‘Mr Clean’, there is for many potential customers also a visual
image related to the name. Already during the original commercial campaign in
the 1950s, a friendly looking bald and muscular character was introduced – ‘Mr
Clean’ himself. Even when the jingle is played on radio many listeners will men-
tally associate the brand name and melody with the visual image of ‘Mr Clean’.
This is further emphasized by the lyrics consistently referring to the detergent as
he rather that it, humanizing the product, such as: ‘Can he clean a dirty mirror? /
He’ll make it bright and clearer’. This detergent is not just a resource or a tool – it
is presented as a vivacious participant performing cleaning activities.
In the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle, the participants represented through voice – the
lead singer, backing chorus and voice-over – are all male. The lead singer’s voice
has a slightly rough quality and projects a laid-back relaxed attitude – suitable
attributes qualifying an expert beer drinker. Here too, melody is a decisive ele-
ment in the delivery of the brand name – this time however by lowering the
pitch, as previously described. Lowering the pitch also dramatically affects the
voice timbre, emphasizing the relaxed attitude as well as adding to the ‘mascu-
linity’ factor. It is also obvious that these voices (lead singer and voice-over) have
had many beers over the years. Comparing how melodic shapes are used in the
‘Mr Clean’ and ‘Lowenbrau’ jingles, illustrate how strongly pitch and melody
regulate aspects of engagement and attitude. It could be described as the melody
shapes the performance of the lyrics by a kind of musical prosody, modulating
the words through affordances of melodic contour and related musical resources.
Also in the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle the relationship between the singing par-
ticipants is established through the previously discussed technique of call and
response. In this case not as question-answer, but instead the backing chorus
echoing the slogan ‘Tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau’. This signals agree-
ment and closeness, suggesting friendship and male camaraderie – making the
‘good friends’ of the lyrics and spoken copy come to life. This discourse of ‘male
bonding through drinking’ would be difficult to express as directly and clearly
through speech alone.
The actions performed in the two examples are partly suggested by the lyr-
ics, but more distinctly expressed through the musical sound. In ‘Mr Clean’
the action-words are straightforward, the main activity being to ‘clean’, to ‘get
rid of dirt and grime’ and to ‘make it bright’ – the ‘what’ of the activities. The
music more effectively illustrates the ‘how’, the performance mode, the man-
ners and pace of cleaning. The brisk tempo and steady forward motion of the
polka rhythm, combined with the simplicity of melody and chord progression
makes the cleaning act appear joyful and easy. The brightness can be heard also
in the instrumentation, most notably by a supplementary vibraphone part that
through its clean overtones, distinct attack and long decay adds metaphorical
‘shine’ to the musical sound. Of course, the before-mentioned call and response
pattern is a speech act – here performed as a ‘singing act’ where the male singer
demands information (van Leeuwen, 2005: 118) and gets appropriate answers
from the female singer (highlighted by the harmonic progression, as described
earlier). The information provided is of course at the same time conveyed to the
listener, potentially getting interpersonally engaged in the activity by means of
musical entrainment and emotive expression.
In the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle, similarly, the main activities are outlined by the
lyrics (‘having good times’, ‘beer will pour’, ‘raise your glass’) but again the per-
formance mode is more closely specified through the musical expression. The
tempo is relatively slow with a relaxed shuffle bounce providing a laid-back and
easy-going feeling. The activities here are obviously performed at a comfortable
pace. The singing act performed by lead and backing chorus can be described
as the lead offering goods (‘Let It Be Lowenbrau’) and the echoing/confirming
reply of the backing singers shows willing acceptance. The low pitch and rough
timbre of the voices (also including the voice-over) show no sign of stress or ten-
sion in the activities performed.
The location of the performers and activities of the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle is in
the lyrics only implicit. The musical instrumentation however, more explicitly,
initially suggests a possible pub or bar setting. The song starts out with just an
upright piano and lead vocals – proposing a naturalistically represented bar
environment. Once established, the naturalistic modality (aspect and degree
of ‘truth’) however gives way to a more sensory modality when backing vocals
and strings enter as the lyrics approach the first mention of the product name.
Van Leeuwen (2005: 170) describes sensory modality as ‘a degree of articulation
which is amplified beyond the point of naturalism’, as ‘more than real’ and ‘used
in contexts where pleasure matters’. Here, the music, through instrumentation,
arrangement, harmony, melody, rhythm, tempo and performance style, provides
a lush sound and a relaxed expression that is maintained until the end of the
jingle. A heightened reality is established, well suited for (interpersonal) emotive
and persuasive purposes.
The ‘Mr Clean’ jingle is less musically descriptive or specific in relation to
the imagined location. Here it is however clearly stated by the lyrics that ‘Mr
Clean will clean your whole house (and everything that’s in it)’. Then it reels
off attributes like floors, doors, walls, halls and so on, and inventory details like
sinks, stoves and bathtubs. The musical expression is inexplicit about location
but could be understood as a kind of music that is likely to be played on the radio
in such a house in the 1950s, contributing a safe and positive atmosphere and
vigorous energy to the home environment.
The two jingles appear to take place at different times of the day. The
‘Lowenbrau’ lyrics are specific about the time, as ‘tonight’ is mentioned several
times, especially as part of the slogan. This is validated by the laid-back musi-
cal performance, relaxed singing style, lush sound and deep voice quality. The
energetic musical expression of ‘Mr Clean’ instead suggests a daytime activity,
even though this is not explicitly stated. In the lyrics there is however mention
of another aspect of time, in that ‘Mr Clean gets rid of dirt and grime and grease
in just a minute’. This swiftness and efficiency is articulated by the musical per-
formance. Yet another aspect of time is also how these jingles are time stamped
by ways of style, genre and production aesthetics, telltale signs of the production
period as well as of the cultural setting.
As mentioned, the ‘Mr Clean’ lyrics list a range of resources, mainly attrib-
utes and inventories of a household. The foremost resource however, as in most
advertising, is the product to be sold. It is described above how the product
name of ‘Mr Clean’ achieves salience by repetition and metrical position. The
descriptive and metaphorical ‘shine’ attributed to the timbre of the supplemen-
tary vibraphone part provides qualities that are appropriate for the product. One
can literally hear the whole house sparkle and gleam as a result of using the
product. This is further emphasized by how the melodic vibraphone line con-
sistently hits its highest note every time when the lyrics reach the word ‘clean’
on a stressed bar, as previously described. The vibraphone part is present during
the whole song and is also the very last sound heard in the recording, playing
the interval of an ascending and consonant perfect fifth – musically echoing the
product name and at the same time leaving the listener with a lingering impres-
sion of shiny brightness. The previously mentioned ascending minor third inter-
val for the product name not only defines the attitude of the participants, but
equally the qualities to be collocated with the product.
The few resources mentioned in the ‘Lowenbrau’ lyrics, mainly ‘glass’ and
‘beer’, relate directly to the product. Also here, the product name achieves sali-
ence through the structural design of the music, in this case through the process
of harmonic and melodic tension-release, and the hitting the low notes on the
product name. Again, the musical and vocal sound and expression demonstrate
eligibility by articulating the effects of using the product, connoting desirable
qualities such as wellbeing, leisure and togetherness.
Engaging, convincing and seducing
Advertising is first and foremost about persuasion. It is about engaging, influ-

encing, convincing, inspiring or seducing. In this sense advertising sets out
not only to tell or show something but also to do something to the listener
or viewer. Of course, it is mainly about, implicitly or explicitly, convincing
the potential customer to buy something. Therefore, the most important
communicative dimension in advertising is to act on others – what Halliday
(1978: 112) terms the interpersonal metafunction of communication. Halliday
describes the interpersonal component of communication as ‘the speaker’s
meaning potential as an intruder. . .the speaker intrudes himself into the
context of situation, both expressing his own attitudes and judgements and
seeking to influence the attitudes and behaviour of others’. Wingstedt (2008)
has suggested how music in film, games and advertising – in interaction with
other modes – commonly contributes interpersonal meaning by emotive and
guiding narrative functions.
Emotive functions have partially been discussed above, for example in how
mood and attitudes of represented participants of the jingles are established
through musical expression. In studies of emotions, it is often distinguished
between perceived or induced emotions (e.g. Sloboda and Juslin, 2010) or simi-
larly between observed or experienced emotions (Wingstedt, 2008). Emotions
in music can be said to be observed if the listener mainly on a cognitive level
will recognize a feeling, for instance will understand that a musical expression
represents happiness – but not necessarily ‘feel’ it. If the listener however is
emotionally affected by the music, for example feels happy from listening to a
musical piece, then the emotion can be considered as experienced. Observed
emotions can be thought of as ideational meaning-making, something is told
about the world – such as expressing emotive qualities of the participants in
the fictional world represented through a jingle. Communication of experienced
emotions through music takes place on the interpersonal level; it does some-
thing to the listener. In a given situation there is typically a blend of experienced
and observed emotions.
In the world of advertising, experienced emotions are preferred. The pre-
vious discussion of how musical semiotic resources such as tempo, rhythm,
melodic contour and harmony contribute emotive qualities on the ideational
level is of course also relevant for how emotive communication work musically
on the interpersonal level. The positive and enthusiastic musical expression of
‘Mr Clean’, and relaxed and comfortable feel of the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle may (and
from the advertiser’s point of view, should) affect and engage the listener also on
the interpersonal level, as experienced emotions.
Related to this perspective on musical expression is also the notion of sen-
sory modality discussed earlier, in connection to how strings and backing vocals
contribute to a heightened reality in the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle. The resulting lush
sound invites emotional involvement and immersion for the listener. Similar
immersive effects can be associated with the deep and resonant sound of the
low-pitched voice when pronouncing the product name of Lowenbrau. In this
sense, modality basically works on the interpersonal level.
Emotive involvement may also be based on functions related to remem-
brance and recognition. As discussed earlier, the jingles described (as any piece
of music) are time stamped – or associated with certain cultures or genres.
The two jingles represent popular music of different time periods, which may
prompt listener reactions related to personal taste or sentiments. It could be
feelings such as belonging or nostalgia – but also of indifference, dislike or ridi-
cule. Aspects of style and genre are consequently powerful interpersonal tools of
persuasion – but may also severely backfire if poorly selected by the advertiser.
As mentioned in the introduction, the choice of a popular genre to ‘blend in’, to
avoid that the listener ‘turns off ’ his/her attention during a commercial break, is
also to use genre to interpersonally address the listener.
The phenomenon of musical entrainment was discussed earlier in connec-
tion to how musical meter provides for salience of the product name in the ‘Mr
Clean’ jingle, which also illustrates aspects of musical guiding functions. London
(2012: 5) describes metric entrainment as a kind of behaviour, guiding the listen-
er’s attention as well as interacting on a pronounced physical level: ‘When we are
entrained our attention literally “moves with the music”, and this engenders and
encourages our bodily movements as well, from tapping toes and swinging arms
to dancing and marching’. Entrainment being based on principles of embodi-
ment by definition works on an interpersonal level. The brisk forward motion of
the ‘Mr Clean’ jingle, or the laid-back shuffle of ‘Lowenbrau’ is set up to manifest
in the listener’s embodied response, discreetly or overtly. Another example of
the listener’s embodied response (although not directly due to entrainment) is
the aforementioned ‘making the customer sing the name of the product’.
Van Leeuwen (1999), Machin (2010) and McKerrell (2015) have described
how social distance and address can be expressed using sound and music through
for example musical arrangement, performance style, and recording and pro-
duction techniques. The two jingles illustrate somewhat different approaches to
this. Listening to the singing voices, they are in both cases recorded close to
the microphone and mixed to the foreground of the musical arrangement. This
establishes basic conditions for a close relationship to the listener. The vocal style
of the two singers of the ‘Mr Clean’ jingle is however rather controlled, polished
and formal. Diction is distinct and clear, and the presentation style has, even if
positive and enthusiastic, a somewhat rigid and ‘schooled’ quality. The presen-
tation is – maybe appropriately for this product – clean. At the same time, the
singing performance is relatively vigorous and loud as if the singers are some
distance away, suggesting remoteness to the listener. The described type of per-
formance is at the same time fairly representative of how mainstream popular
music of this time period were typically performed and produced.
The singing style of the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle displays a more informal level of
address. The lead singer uses a relaxed and casual singing style. The voice level
is soft, as if being close to the listener. The deep, warm and slightly raspy voice
quality reinforces the informal impression. Here, the listener is addressed more
directly and straightforward. The lyrics support this approach by addressing the
listener with ‘hey, I’m glad to see ya’. The voice-over follows a similar concept,
with a dark and rough voice quality. It is recorded even closer to the microphone,
resulting in a heightened sense of intimacy. The two examples illustrate how the
social distance of the key characters in the songs is established through record-
ing techniques, performance style and the timbre of the voices. The differences
in tempo and rhythm between the two jingles further support their respective
approaches to how to establish degrees of distance, and how to address the lis-
tener on an interpersonal level.
Conclusion
The discourses apparent in the jingles discussed concern issues on different lev-
els. On a surface level it is about the images that sell products. For Lowenbrau
it is about issues such as comfort, wellbeing, friendship and togetherness. ‘Mr
Clean’ foregrounds qualities such as efficiency, competence, happiness and well-
being. Beneath the surface level, we find more complex issues, such as those of
gender (for both jingles), alcohol and drinking (‘Lowenbrau’), and social and
family values (‘Mr Clean’).
By discussing the discursive meaning potentials of the jingles from a
metafunctional perspective, the intention has been to investigate how the
involved semiotic resources simultaneously communicate on the levels of
structural, content and interpersonal meaning. Analysing the jingles has
illuminated how overlexicalization and salience of targeted language compo-
nents is constructed from the interplay of lyrics with a structural framework
of musical resources such as metre, period, phrasing and pitch. Similarly,
resources such as voice quality, tempo, rhythm, instrumentation, pitch and
harmony work together to represent multimodal metaphors and elements of
social practices (e.g. participants, actions and locations). Emotive and guiding
functions, and the establishing of social distance, are accomplished through
interactions of a multitude of resources including melodic contour, harmony,
rhythm, metre, voice timbre and recording techniques. Many of the semiotic
resources investigated work on a ‘micro level’, such as pitch direction or tempo.
Other resources are more complex, for example musical genre that involves
intricate subsets of interrelated components and dimensions. This chapter
concludes with a further discussion of some of the more complex resources
constructing discursive meaning of the two jingles. Besides musical genre,
instrumentation, the singing voice and the ‘jingle as an entity’ will be given
some additional thought.
The choice of musical genre for the ‘Mr Clean’ jingle has to some degree
already been discussed above. Polka, as a genre, was in the 1950s associated
with traditional and conservative American values (Greene, 1992). This can be
viewed as opposed to the emerging Anglo-American youth culture that musi-
cally challenged and rebelled against the old values with rock and roll. The musi-
cal genre used for the ‘Mr Clean’ jingle signals a view on social values to be
associated with the product. Nicholas Cook (1998a) points out how composers
of advertising music not only work with notes, rhythms and timbres, but actu-
ally ‘compose with styles and genres’ as a basic musical technique. There are
good reasons for this. Having only a few seconds to communicate a message,
‘musical styles and genres offer unsurpassed opportunities for communicating
complex social or attitudinal messages practically instantaneously’ (Ibid.: 16).
Lyrics, melodies or spoken messages take time to unfold. Just a few notes in a
distinctive musical genre or style are ‘sufficient to target a specific social and
demographic group and associate a whole nexus of social and cultural values
with a product’ (Ibid.: 17).
Closely related to aspects of genre is instrumentation or orchestration, how
music ‘dress up’ (or down). The choice of instruments is on one level directly
associated to specific musical genres. But instrumentation as such also involves
a complex set of interrelated dimensions concerning factors such as tim-
bre characteristics, performance conditions, historical aspects, personal taste
and cultural or subcultural associations to attitudes, values and ideologies.
Instrumentation and musical genre, together with musical expression styles and
production techniques, are used as powerful means for establishing a sense of
personal address based on how music touch on discourses on social status and
authenticity (Machin, 2010).
The basic instrumentation of the ‘Mr Clean’ jingle is simple (bass, piano,
drums with brushes), which appears unpretentious and appropriate for the
genre. The only thing that sticks out is the inclusion of a vibraphone which
here, as discussed earlier, contributes mainly to the semiotics of timbre. There is
however potential for attributing a certain ‘jazzy elegance’ to the sound, at the
same time as the supplementary vibraphone part during the verses contributes
additional harmonic variation and sophistication. The instrumentation of the
‘Lowenbrau’ jingle, as mentioned, starts out with only an upright piano accom-
panying the singer. The upright, slightly out of tune, piano contributes different
connotations than a refined grand piano sound would do. At the first mention
of the brand name, however, a larger band enters including a string section, gui-
tar, bass, drums/brushes and also backing vocals – plus a tenor sax during the
voice-over. Besides the sensory aspects discussed earlier, this orchestration also
contributes a dimension of luxury and elegance, placing the intimacy of the lead
vocal in a different musical context. The saxophone adds possible associations
to mellow jazz. In all, this instrumentation could be said to emphasize a sense of
comfort and wellbeing.
Central to the sound of the jingle is the projection of the singing voice. The
listener will be inclined to direct special attention to the voice in its capac-
ity of being ‘human’. In this sense it parallels how the human face and gaze
works in visual representations. The singing voice as a medium also includes
and carries the dimensions of language, music and timbre-specific qualities.
In this, the voice itself constitutes a multimodal ensemble, simultaneously
expressing complex interrelations of verbal semantics and grammar, musical
form, rhythm, pitch and genre, timbre-related content and expression, and
so forth.
An important feature for building brand identity is also how music can
be made highly recognizable and memorable, often by means of melody. The
jingle itself (the ‘work’) can thus be understood as a semiotic sign, directly
signifying/denoting a product – and at the same time connoting ideas and
ideologies. This can be described as kind of nominalization, how verb pro-
cesses are replaced with a noun construction ‘which can obscure agency and
responsibility for an action’ (Machin and Mayr, 2012: 137). Machin and Mayr
point out how ‘nominalisations can themselves become stable entities that
will enter common usage’ (Ibid.: 143). An example would be recognizing the
‘Mr Clean’ jingle as just that, ‘the Mr Clean jingle’, just as the product name
itself would be recognized. In contemporary societies there are numerous
examples of commercial jingles that are established as entities on the level of
cultural symbols.
On a fundamental level, all advertising involves discourses on commercial-
ism. The potential buyer is today critically aware of the persuasive aims and
techniques of advertisements. The soft sell technique of the ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle,
relying on mood and the implicit promise of a better life with the product, is
probably obvious to most listeners. The ‘Mr Clean’ jingle is maybe not a typical
hard sell, but the insistent overlexicalization of repeating the brand name, and
the slightly formal but direct appeal make intentions clear to most even with-
out a close analysis. However, as customer knowledge and critical awareness
grows, the classic advertising techniques of persuasion are gradually replaced
with alternative strategies. Guy Cook (2001: 2) remarks that ‘advertising itself
has changed, becoming more subtle and more entertaining than the crude hard
selling of the 1950s and 1960s’. Along with changing strategies, so are also venues
and platforms for advertising changing, mostly based on emerging digital tech-
nologies. As a consequence of this the continually evolving strategies and plat-
forms for advertising are also turning increasingly multimodal, which stresses
the need for more knowledge about how discourses are multimodally mediated.
Meaning is always contextually situated. Looking at the emerging commercial
landscapes and keeping in mind how the modes constructing multimodal texts
contextualize each other, brings perspective to advertising legend David Ogilvy’s
classic statement: ‘If you have nothing to say – sing it!’.
Note
1 The melody starts on the third of the tonic chord (for ‘Mister’) and ascends a minor
third to the fifth of the chord (for ‘Clean’). This pattern recurs every time the melody
is sung over a tonic chord. When alternately performed over a dominant chord,
the same melodic interval is sung a major second lower, maintaining the ascending
minor third interval relationship (this time from the fifth to the seventh of the
dominant chord). In short, the product name is always sung using the same relative
interval.
References
Baker, T. (ed.) (2009), Pocket Manual of Musical Terms, 5th edition. London: Schirmer
Trade Books.
Cook, G. (2001), The Discourse of Advertising, 2nd edition. London and New York:
Routledge.
Cook, N. (1998a), Analysing Musical Multimedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cook, N. (1998b), Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Freitas, E. S. L. (2012), ‘Advertising and Discourse Analysis’, in J. P. Gee and M.
Handford (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, pp. 427–440. Oxon
and New York: Routledge.
Gabrielsson, A. and Lindström, E. (2001), ‘The Influence of Musical Structure
on Emotional Expression’, in P. N. Juslin and J. A. Sloboda (eds), Music and
Emotion: Theory and Research pp. 223–248. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gee, J. P. (2011), An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. New York
and London: Routledge.
Goldman, R. F. (1965), Harmony in Western Music. New York: Norton.
Greene, V. (1992), A Passion for Polka: Old-time Ethnic Music in America. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978), Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.
Huron, D. (2006), Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kress, G. (2010), Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication. London and New York: Routledge.
Kress, G. (2012), ‘Multimodal Discourse Analysis’, in J. P. Gee and M. Handford
(eds), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, pp. 35–49. Oxon and
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006), Reading Images: the Grammar of Visual Design,
2nd edition. London: Routledge.
Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J. and Tsatsarelis, C. (2001), Multimodal Teaching and
Learning: The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom. London: Continuum.
London, J. (2012), Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter, 2nd edition.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Machin, D. (2010), Analysing Popular Music: Image, Sound, Text. London: Sage
Publications.
Machin, D. and Mayr, A. (2012), How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal
Introduction. London: Sage.
Sectarian Song’, Social Semiotics 25(5): 614–632.
Moriarty, S. E. (2015), Advertising and IMC, 9th edition. Eurasburg: Cram101.
Sloboda, J. A. and Juslin, P. N. (2010), ‘At the Interface Between the Inner and Outer
World: Psychological Perspectives’, in P. N. Juslin and J. A. Sloboda (eds), Handbook
of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications, pp. 73–98. Oxford and
Teixeira, A. Jr (1974), Music To Sell By: The Craft of Jingle Writing. Boston: Berklee Press
Publications.
van Dijk, T. A. (2008), Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
van Leeuwen, T. (1999), Speech, Music, Sound. London: Macmillan press.
van Leeuwen, T. (2005), Introducing Social Semiotics. Oxon: Routledge.
van Leeuwen, T. (2008), Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse
Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Leeuwen, T. and Kress, G. (2011), ‘Discourse Semiotics’, in T. A. van Dijk (ed.)
Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, 2nd edition. pp. 107–25.
London: Sage.
Wingstedt, J. (2008), ‘Making Music Mean: On Functions of, and Knowledge about,
Narrative Music in Multimedia’, Doctoral diss., Luleå University of Technology,
Dept. of music and media, <http://epubl.ltu.se/1402–1544/2008/43/>.
Wingstedt, J., Brändström, S. and Berg, J. (2010), ‘Narrative Music, Visuals and
Discography
The recordings of the discussed jingles can be found at several locations on the internet.
Here are a few suggestions for listening:
Hark (n.d.), Mr Clean 60s Jingle [audio]. <http://www.hark.com/clips/myvvmlbfpw-mr-
clean-60s-jingle> [accessed 28 September 2015].
Scupper77 (2 July 2013), Lowenbrau Beer Commercial: So Tonight Let It Be Lowenbrau
Christmas [video]. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQuwg8wWNm4>
[accessed 28 September 2015].
TvAdSongs (n.d.), Lowenbrau – Heres to Good Friends Commercial [audio]. <http://
www.tvadsongs.com/Lowenbrau_-_Heres_To_Good_Friends.html> [accessed 28
September 2015].
TvAdSongs (n.d.), Mr Clean – 1950s Commercial [audio]. <http://www.tvadsongs.com/
Mr_Clean_-_1950s.html> [accessed 28 September 2015].
8
When the Fairy Tale Is Over: An Analysis

of Songs and Institutional Discourse against
Domestic Violence in Spain
Laura Filardo-Llamas
Introduction1
Following recent trends in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Machin, 2010;

Machin and Mayr, 2012; van Leeuwen, 2012), it can be argued that songs may
spread ideological beliefs in such a way that they may reach a wide audience
thanks to the combination of different semiotic resources – including text, music
and image. The cognitive effect of listening to a song is certainly not the same
as the one of reading or listening to a speech, for example, as we approach dif-
ferent communicative genres in different ways (Machin, 2010: 22). In songs, the
text-determined meaning potential of the lyrics is widened because it is often
integrated with two other modes of communication: music and images. It can
be thus argued that the combination of meanings stemming from these three
semiotic resources results in a new blended discourse space (Fauconnier and
Turner, 2002; Filardo-Llamas, 2015) which is more communicatively effective
than other type of monomodal discourses.
With this in mind, in this chapter, I analyse two songs which were produced
in Spain in 2004 and 2005 to react against domestic violence, which is under-
stood here as referring to one of the three contexts in which violence against
women is exercised (United Nations, 1993: Article 2.a). This type of violence
is not the consequence of biological differences, but of a cultural conception
of genders and the roles and identities that are usually associated with them
(Maqueda, 2006: 2). Given the cultural origin of some of the beliefs underlying
episodes of domestic violence, songs are arguably an interesting and fruitful area
of research, not only because they offer us the possibility of identifying those
160 Laura Filardo-Llamas
originating cultural beliefs, but also because through songs we can also oppose
them. This has been the case in Spain, where we can see an increasingly growing
interest on the elaboration of lists including songs which either promote gender
stereotypes or can be used to fight against domestic violence (cf. Peña Palacios,
2009; Llorens Mellado, 2013). However, hardly any research has been done on
the semiotic resources which characterize these songs and why this combination
of different modes of communication is effective.
While trying to fill that gap, this chapter builds bridges between cognitive
linguistics and multimodality. I hypothesize that the emotional impact – or
cognitive effect (Steen and Gavins, 2003: 6) – of songs about domestic violence
is partly caused by the mental representation triggered by these songs, and
partly by the relationship established between such mental representations
and those experiences of the world that are socially shared by the audience.
The hypothesis that in songs we construct multimodally given mental rep-
resentations – or worldviews – will be tested by analysing two songs according
to the postulates of Text-World Theory (TWT) (Werth, 1999; Gavins, 2007).
This theory proves to be particularly interesting for this objective, as it aims at
uncovering the mental representations (or ‘text-worlds’) that can be evoked by
particular instances of discourse. This approach is useful for describing the lin-
guistic cues which help the audience trigger those text-worlds. To prove that the
discourse (Gee, 1999) transmitted through these songs resembles other pub-
lic examples of discourse aimed at fighting domestic violence, reference will be
made to some cases of institutional discourse as seen in awareness campaigns
produced in the same years as the analysed songs.
Given that songs are multimodal discourses, not only the lyrics of the songs
will be analysed, but the textual findings will be backed by an analysis of music
and image. The emphasis will be particularly placed on how the combination of
modes results in the creation of a blended mental space (Fauconnier and Turner,
2002) in the song. I will prove that these multiple semiotic resources increase the
emotional impact of songs, thus making them very powerful in the fight against
domestic violence.
Domestic violence in Spain
Domestic violence is understood in Spain as violence against women which hap-

pens in the domestic context (United Nations, 1993: Article 2.a). This includes
physical violence and emotional abuse exercised by one person in a relationship
Discourse against Domestic Violence 161
to control the other. The origin of this type of violence is frequently presented
as a consequence of discriminatory, unequal and subordinated situations which
arise from the normative social roles found in patriarchal society (Puleo, 2005;
Maqueda, 2006). Therefore, this type of violence does not stem from biological
factors, but emerges from specific socio-cultural notions of gender. This implies
that social expectations about what can be considered male or female may
change throughout time, and may vary across regional contexts.2
Even if gender-based discrimination and violence have been suffered by
women throughout history, the existence of this problem was not acknowledged
until the 1990s when after a World Conference on Human Rights, the United
Nations issued a Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (20
December 1993) (Maqueda, 2006: 2). In Spain, legal responses can be found with
Organic Law 14/1999 (9 June) and Organic Law 27/2003. Both of these modify
the criminal code with the aim of protecting victims of domestic violence.
Particularly important is 2004, when Organic Law 1/2004 was passed, offer-
ing measures to protect victims of gender-based violence.3 In the preamble to the
law, this type of violence is identified as the one that is exercised against women
just because they are women (Maqueda, 2006: 4). This new law tries to eradicate
domestic violence by taking measures aimed at lengthening prison sentences for
the aggressors, creating specialized courts, or producing awareness campaigns.
Awareness campaigns are particularly important for this chapter as they
exemplify institutional discourse and the official posture about this problem.
Currently available at the website of the Ministry of Health and Social Policy,4
official awareness campaigns produced between 2006 and 2010 have been con-
sidered, as it is in them that we can more easily see official and institutional
discourse on domestic violence. The choice of 2010 shows the year when the
Ministry of Equality is disbanded. This ministry had been created in 2008 to
promote the legal measures included in the above-mentioned Law against
gender-based violence (2004) and the Law for Equality (2007). No campaigns
for the years 2004 and 2005 have been found. All the awareness campaigns were
communicated across television, radio and posters.
A number of recurrent features can be seen in the studied awareness cam-
paigns:5 Violence is delegitimized by removing the ‘male’s’ distinguishing feature
(‘you stop being a man’ (2008)), and this type of behaviour is socially condemned
(2006 and 2010). There is a focus on the role of the victims, particularly on the
psychological process followed by the woman (2009, 2010) and on how the new
law – or other institutional measures – can help her overcome this problem
(2006, 2007). Although they are not explicitly recognized as victims in the law,
the role of children as victims is also acknowledged in two campaigns (2008,

2010). Finally, we also see attempts to create a strong woman who can handle
situations of domestic violence and discursively oppose her aggressor (2008).
Two other significant aspects are the reference to the role of the victim’s inner
circle in helping her solve the problem (2006, 2010), and the acknowledgement
of different types of abuse, both physical and verbal. All these aspects construct
a unitary social and institutional discourse which, as we will see below, can also
be observed in songs aimed at fighting domestic violence.
Methodological approach
Departing from a CDA approach to the study of discourse, the objective of this
chapter is to understand how episodes of domestic violence are constructed in
two songs and how these discursive constructions result in a delegitimation of
those episodes.6 This emphasis on the notion of discursive constructions justifies
in itself the adoption of a cognitive (linguistics) approach to multimodality, as it
is through it that we can explain the mediating role that discourse plays between
language (or images and music) and the social effect they have (Filardo-Llamas,
Hart and Kaal, 2015). TWT (Werth, 1999; Gavins, 2007) proves to be useful
for this as it has not only been widely applied to the stylistic analysis of literary
and filmic discourses (see Gavins, 2007 for example), but also to the study of
ideologically motivated discourse (Filardo-Llamas, 2013, 2015). This evaluative
discourse can be explained by doing a text-world analysis in which we identify
those entities which are represented in discourse while establishing the speak-
er’s point of view about those identities (Werth, 1999: 52). By identifying text-
worlds we can, thus, identify how discursive constructions explain and justify
given views of the world.
Worldviews, I argue, are the outcome of the combination of given text and
discourse worlds. Text-worlds are the mental representations that can be trig-
gered from a particular instance of discourse, and discourse worlds refer to
the construal of those text-worlds in context (Gavins, 2007: 9–10, 18–31). Two
main elements determine the existence of these worlds: world-building elements
(including participants, locations, and times), and function-advancing proposi-
tions (or the actions done by participants). This is why a textual analysis based
on cognitive linguistics helps in identifying the referential entities that are con-
structed through discourse. Text-worlds acquire new meanings in collocation
with music-worlds and video-worlds, and when the three of them together are
used in context they become a discourse world. It is when text-worlds become

discourse worlds that they are related to spreading ideological beliefs.
Chilton’s (2004, 2005) Discourse Space Theory (DST) proves to be a fruitful
complement to TWT in order to explain that ideological meaning, which stems
from the proximal-distal relationship that is established between the different
entities that are discursively presented and the deictic centre. By relying on DST,
we can recast mental representations and place them ‘across spaces as coordinate
correspondences on three fundamental dimensions’ (Chilton, 2005: 81): Space,
Time and Axiology (Cap, 2010). Point of view, as the defining concept to explain
ideological meaning, is thus related to the position which the speaker adopts in
terms of space, time, and axiological space. Emotions arise from the relationship
between the (ideally ego-centric) deictic centre and the other entities present in
the discourse world: the closer entities are located in terms of space, time and
axiology to the speaker – and those who share knowledge and beliefs with him/
her – the more effective discourse is in creating a shared identity, characterized
by a shared notion of space, time, values and beliefs. Although DST has mainly
focused on the study of textuallydetermined meaning, the notion of social prox-
imity can be also applied to the study of images and music (Moore, Schmidt and
Dockwray, 2009), and it is particularly useful to understand how intimacy or
otherness are discursively constructed.
As theories of discourse, both DST and TWT stress the importance of
uncovering linguistic features, which are considered cues to (multiple) con-
textual interpretation(s). The meaning of an instance of discourse can be
described by relying on the notion of a ‘mental space’, that is ‘a construct
distinct from linguistic structures but built up in any discourse according
to guidelines provided by the linguistic expressions’ (Fauconnier, 1994: 16).
It can be argued that both text and discourse worlds are contextually deter-
mined mental spaces. Thus, given that the emphasis of this chapter is to iden-
tify some mechanisms through which ideological meaning is constructed, all
the analysed linguistic features share an indexicality trait, that is they can be
explained by relying on a proximity relationship established within a particu-
lar space (regardless of whether this points at space, time or axiology). In the
same way that linguistic categories have to be acknowledged when looking at
the construction of text-worlds, certain multimodal features have to be con-
sidered. As noted by Sweetser (2012: 3), viewpoint is built as a consequence of
linguistic and multimodal stimuli, and the Mental Spaces framework proves
to be a useful tool to represent that. Following this, I argue that TWT and
DST can be equally useful to explain the conceptual structure that underlies
the two music videos analysed in this chapter. If we consider that a discourse
world is accessed not only by relying on linguistic cues, but also on any other
element which can be sensorially perceived, the analysis of multimodal fea-
tures becomes significant. The three communication modes are thus of key
importance, and it is their combination that increases the impact of the two
analysed music videos.
In 2004, Spanish pop-rock singer María Nieves Rebolledo Vila, Bebe,
releases what is probably still today the best-known song against domes-
tic violence in Spain, entitled ‘Malo’ (Bad). This song is part of the album
Pa’fueratelarañas (EMI Music), of which around five million copies were sold
only in Spain. The album was so popular that it occupies number 14 in the list
of the 50 most important albums of 2004 in Spain (Promusicae, 2013). The
album also had an important international success, and since then, Bebe has
been frequently considered a symbol of the fight against domestic violence
and female empowerment. One year later, in 2005, Domingo Antonio Edjang
Moreno, El Chojin – one of the most famous rappers in Spain –, releases ‘El
final del cuento de hadas’ (The end of the fairy tale) as part of the album 8jin
(Bombo Records). Although he is well-known among hip hop fans, no official
figures about the number of sales of this album have been found and it does not
appear either in any of the lists of popular songs or albums of 2005. However,
this song was chosen by Amnesty International to fight against domestic vio-
lence. Both songs have been chosen because they were produced at a time
when there was an increasing social awareness about domestic violence in
Spain, and their release coincides with the beginning of the introduction of
new legal and institutional measures aimed at fighting this problem. As we
will see in the analysis, the discourse worlds that are constructed through
them reflect very well given aspects of what later became salient features of
institutional Discourse (Gee, 1999) on domestic violence.
Analysis
1. Bebe’s ‘Malo’
A close look at the basic song structure (Machin, 2010: 78) shows that two parts
can be clearly identified in the lyrics and the music of this song. In both cases,
we have a female voice telling her story from her own perspective – that is with
a first-person singular pronoun. In the main stanzas an account of domestic
violence from the point of view of the female victim is presented, whereas in the
chorus the singer addresses the physical abuser. The activity schema (Ibid.: 80) of
the song, which is repeated twice, can be thus summarized as follows:
Woman suffers physical abuse

ෑ
Woman reacts to violent episode
ෑ
Woman addresses physical abuser
It is interesting to note that this activity schema is not only found in the lyrics,
but it is also present in the music and the video. In the description of the violent
episodes we hear Bebe’s husky voice in a very low tone which rises in pitch at the
same time as the story progresses. This ascending melody reaches its peak at the
chorus, where we can also see the use of more instruments. It is significant to
note how the first time the chorus is used, Bebe plays the guitar herself in such
a way that a quicker rhythm is emphasized. As we can see, the gradual female
awakening that can be inferred from the activity schema in the lyrics is also
matched by the use of an ascending melody accompanied by a short burst of
attacks in phrasing. These musical features show the dynamic and energetic role
that is acquired by the woman (van Leeuwen, 2012: 321; Machin, 2010: 112),
and it could be argued that the combination of vocals with drums and the guitar
in this particular song acquire the metaphorical meaning of moving forward
(Machin, 2010: 128) and rejecting a violence-dominated relationship.
The same active role of women is transmitted through the images in the
video. Shot in black and white, in the video we only have the image of Bebe
singing. The ‘size of frame’ (Machin and Mayr, 2012: 97) changes throughout
the video (see Table 8.1) and it gradually moves from a long shot to a close one.
This has ideological implications, as the distance between the singer – Bebe –
and the audience – in this case symbolized by the physical abuser she’s directly
addressing – is minimized. In this way, the relationship established between the
victim – represented by Bebe – and her physical abuser is presented as a close
one; something which is already implicit in the definition of domestic violence.
Likewise, the humanity and emotion of the victims are highlighted, thus stress-
ing the negative evaluation evoked by the word ‘malo’ (bad (guy)) which gives
title to the song and with which the chorus begins (cf. Kress and van Leeuwen,
1996: 133).
Gaze and pose are also important in understanding the attitude of Bebe (and
the woman victim in the activity schema above) towards the physical abuser. In
the closer shots, and particularly in the chorus of the song, we can see that Bebe
Table 8.1 Activity, visual and musical schemas for Bebe’s ‘Malo’
Activity schema Visual schema Musical schema

Woman suffers physical Long shot of singer, Husky voice, low tone,
abuse contextualized, unclear gaze long decay in phrasing,
and more relaxed pose background instruments
ෑ ෑ ෑ
Woman reacts to violent Medium shot, Rising tone, percussion
episode decontextualized, gaze indicates end of each line
addressed at viewer, change
in pose
ෑ ෑ ෑ
Woman addresses physical Short shot, Higher voice, short burst
abuser decontextualized, gaze of attack and decay in
clearly addressed at the phrasing, guitar and
viewer, aggressive pose percussion together.
Quicker rhythm.
is directly looking at the viewer’s eyes, as if she was trying to establish some kind
of contact with him7 (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 122). This implies that Bebe
is both textually and visually addressing the physical abuser, while at the same
time demanding some answer from him (Machin and Mayr, 2012: 71). How the
viewer shall respond is partly determined by the ‘aggressive’ attitude – or pose
(Machin and Mayr, 2012: 75) – of the singer, through which the intensity of her
feelings is emphasized.
The discourse strategies used to construct participants in this song are par-
ticularly interesting. The song is uttered by a female voice who tells the story in
the first-person singular pronoun and who addresses a male participant with
the second-person singular pronoun. The use of pronouns, as person deictics,
without any other textual mark allows the audience to interpret them in such
a way that any person could occupy those discursive positions. In this way, it
can be argued that participants, as one of the key aspects helping to construe a
discourse world (Werth, 1999: 167; Gavins, 2007: 36), do not acquire meaning
textually but discursively, thus allowing for an empathy/hostility relation to be
established with different members of the audience. Likewise, the use of the
first-person singular pronoun is important because of its musical and inter-
textual connotations that link this song back to other songs related to women
empowerment that were produced in the United States between the 1940s
and the 1990s where the same first-person-singular strategy is used (Bruno,
2011: 7–9).
The textual representation of discourse participants has been analysed by

looking at the attributive processes found in the lyrics (Gavins, 2007: 43). These
are mainly of two types: nouns and adjectives which are used to describe the
physical appearance, and words that are either actively or passively related to
the participant’s action. Thus, the woman is described as a beautiful girl (‘niña
linda’) who is tired (‘cansada’) and growing old (‘envejeciendo’). The outcome
of her being physically abused can be seen in her tears (‘lagrimitas’), the purple
in her cheeks (‘el morao de mis mejillas’) or the sadness in her heart (‘la penita
de mi corazón’). These latter nominalizations deprive the woman of any active
role while suffering the episodes of physical domestic violence. The woman only
occupies a domestic space, which is presented as the deictic centre – the one in
which she’s standing – and which is symbolized in the reference to the stove in
the kitchen (‘el fogón’). The main attribute associated to the man is not a physical
feature, but an evaluation of his behaviour as seen in the words bad (‘malo’) and
stupid (‘tonto’). Even if a reference to beauty can be found, particularly interest-
ing is the fact that the man’s steel fists are mentioned as the ones causing the
harm to the woman. Unlike in the case of the woman, the man does not occupy
clearly defined spaces. However, the use of verbs indicating movement towards
the deictic centre stresses the proximity of the male threat (Cap, 2010). This hap-
pens at the beginning of the song, where the man is presented as turning up in
the house on a cold night (‘apareciste una noche fría’).
All of these strategies together allow for an individualization of the partici-
pants who are at the same time anonymized. This discursive construal of an
anonymous female victim of domestic violence – a strategy which can be also
frequently found in the instances of institutional discourse studied – makes it
possible for different members of the audience to identify with the content of
the song. As a consequence its marketing and influence potential are increased
(Bruno, 2011: 11). This is partly the consequence of a blend (Fauconnier and
Turner, 2002) between the textual world in the lyrics, the visual world evoked by
the images in the video, and the use of both of them in context (Figure 8.1). It
is this deictically centred blend that is of key importance in order to explain the
social effectiveness of this song.
The negative evaluation of domestic violence can also be explained by look-
ing at how modality is used. This results on the axiological characterization of
the violent action (Cap, 2010; Hart, 2014), that is on the creation of two opposed
text-worlds, one for each of the discursively, and visually, represented genders.
On the one hand, the use of metaphorical expressions shall be noted. On the
second step of the activity schema identified above, the female reaction against
Social space: Audience (society)
• Person
• Gender
• Social role
• Relationships
Input 1: Images Input 2: Lyrics
• Victim
• Bebe (singer)
• Female
• Female
• Passive Active
• Passive Active
• With male agressor
(Rising intonation)
Multimodal Blend: Audience as singer & female victim
• Bebe/Victim/audience
• Female/(male?)
• Passive active
• With male aggressor (as social participant)
Figure 8.1. Multimodal blend in Bebe’s ‘Malo’
domestic violence is presented via the metaphor anger is fire (Kövecses,

2003: 21), as seen in the verse ‘voy a volverme como el fuego, voy a quemar tu
puño de acero’ (I’m going to become like fire, I’m going to burn your steel fist).
By relying on a natural force to represent the woman’s reaction, and focusing
on the destructive power of fire – whose object is in this case a negative entity –
some emphasis is placed on the role of (female) emotions and their importance
in order to react against domestic violence. This type of strategy can also be
observed in some of the institutional campaigns study. The ascending music that
accompanies this part of the song also helps in emphasizing this as it shows the
active role of the singer (van Leeuwen, 2012: 321), and of female victims, in
reacting to this social problem.
On the other hand, the use of negation in the chorus is equally significant
(Hidalgo Downing, 2000). As it has been mentioned above, it is in the chorus
that the male participant is directly addressed and negatively characterized as a
‘bad’, ‘stupid’ and ‘weak’ person. The factual tone associated to the present simple
in which the verb to be is employed (‘malo eres’ – you are a bad person) stresses
the certainty of the beliefs held by the woman about the male behaviour. The
same present simple appears in the following verses, where the singer tells the
male addressee what should not be done: ‘no se daña a quien se quiere’ (one does
not hurt the loved person), ‘no te pienses mejor que las mujeres’ (don’t you think
you’re better than women). There is a clear reference to the audience in the use
of the pronoun ‘you’, and the action is evaluated by the blended singer-victim
self that occupies the deictic centre position (Nuyts, 2000). By doing this, the
male abuser is axiologically distanced from the speaker, as shown in Figure 8.1.
Besides, the use of the negative rechannels the actions and beliefs held by the
man, hence delegitimizing them (Hidalgo Downing, 2000: 149). This results in
a discursive construal of two social groups – victims and abusers – with whom
the two discourse participants can feel aligned. This is particularly interesting
as it is not only one of the strategies that is used in institutional discourse (as it
happens in the 2008, 2009, 2010 campaigns), but it also explains why some of the
men convicted of domestic violence who have been interviewed for another part
of this study point at this song as one they do not like (interview T07)
2. El Chojín’s ‘El final del cuento de hadas’

Two aspects shall be mentioned about the basic song structure (Machin,
2010: 78) of this song. On the one hand, a clear narrative schema can be iden-
tified in which a love fairy tale seems to be told. This fairy tale, which can be
found in the first stanzas of the song, reproduces commonly held beliefs which
are related to the myth of romantic love and the process of wooing. On the other
hand, this pseudo fairy tale is part of a broader discourse schema in which the
violent episode(s) recalled in the song are included. Both schemas are mixed
throughout the song, with the chorus – and the title ‘The end of the fairy tale’ –
stressing the intertextual relation between the lyrics of the song and traditional
fairy tales. This results in an activity schema (Ibid.: 80) which can be summa-
rized as follows:
Woman falls in love with man
ෑ
The love relationship becomes violent
ෑ
Man kills woman
This activity schema, which seems to reflect the way in which domestic vio-
lence evolves and which stresses the process through which a love relationship
may become violent, has also been found in some public accounts of episodes
of domestic violence.8 The reproduction of gender stereotypes in fairy tales is
identified by some authors as one of the causes of domestic violence (Duque
Sánchez et al, 2015). El Chojin tries to oppose this view of fairy tales as pre-
senting prototypical love relationships by creating a discursive blend of fairy
tales and domestic violence episodes. Likewise, the activity schema shown above
stresses the inextricable link between being in love (or loving someone) and
having to cope with absolutely everything, which are at times identified as key
beliefs that explain why some people justify given episodes of abuse in love rela-
tionships (Ruiz Arias et al, 2010: 297).
By departing from this schema, El Chojin tries to oppose the fairy tale narra-
tive, whereby a princess meets a prince, they get married and they live happily
ever after.9 To do this, certain episodes of psychological or physical abuse are
inserted within the fairy tale. These episodes of domestic violence are multimo-
dally marked in the visual and musical schemas, which also stress the shift from
‘love’ to violence, as we can see in Table 8.2. First, we can observe a change in the
lyrics’ narrative technique, which shifts from a third-person narrative in which
the story of a woman is told to a first- and second-person dialogue between a
man and a woman, thus exemplifying ‘real’ conversations. The music changes
and the repetitive instrumental beat that underlies the rap stops for a second
before each beating, which is also indicated with ‘real’ sounds that could be
heard in those situations.
The video, which was not officially commissioned by El Chojin even if it is
accepted by him, is equally effective and each violent episode is visually marked.
The video begins with a black screen, and it later shows a woman who gradually
advances towards the audience. The proximizing effect that can be associated to
changes in size of frame (Machin and Mayr, 2012: 97) – from long to short shot –
are thus stressed, and the empathy that can be felt between the audience and the
visually depicted woman is strengthened (cf. Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 133).
Given that the woman is physically in the visual deictic centre, which is occupied
both by her and the audience, when she is beaten, it is easier for the audience to
feel as if they were also beaten themselves, particularly given our physical and
spatial understanding of reality (Hart, 2015). Multimodal metaphors also help
in stressing this meaning, and the movement of the woman towards the deictic
centre could be understood as a visual representation of the metaphor life is
a journey (Kövecses, 2002; Forceville, 2009). The lack of female movement,
usually during the beating episodes, becomes equivalent to a lack of life. It can
thus be argued that the multimodal combination of the features summarized in
Table 8.2 contributes to delegitimizing domestic violence.
The title and chorus are highly meaningful as they both indicate that the fairy
tale has ended. The linguistic context, or co-text (Benke and Wodak, 2003: 225),
in which the word ‘the end’ can be found does not only imply a rejection of the
fairy tale narrative, but it also stresses the fact that this type of narrative does
not necessarily work in real life. This can be seen in phrases such as ‘quién
Table 8.2 Visual and musical schemas for El Chojin’s ‘El final del cuento de hadas’
Stanza’s main activity Visual schema Musical schema

Long shot of woman Rapped stanza. Male voice.
decontextualized, gaze Instrumental beating. No
addressed at viewer rising or lowering pitch
ෑ Movement ෑ
One episode of domestic Short shot of woman, Dialogue. Male and female
violence decontextualized, gaze voices in conversation.
addressed at viewer Instrumental beating
ෑ ෑ
Black screen Melodic chorus. Male voice
with female choir singing
title of song. Rising pitch
and decay in phrasing
le iba a decir que sería así’ (who would have told her it would be like that) or
‘nunca pensó que podría pasar’ (she never thought this could happen). The cho-
rus appears only twice: once after the first beating and another time at the end
of the song. It could be argued that this has a double function. On the one hand,
it stresses the need to react to domestic violence from the beginning; something
which is frequently repeated in institutional discourse. On the other hand, it
stresses the fact that a significant number of women are dying at the hands of
their partners. The lack of images (a black screen) while the chorus is sung also
stresses the invalidity of the fairy tale narrative. Based on the metaphor ‘know-
ing is seeing’ (Kövecses, 2002: 218), and mappings triggered by it, the visual
use of black arguably signifies the lack of knowledge of those who believe in the
fairy tale narrative. The rising pitch and female voice which musically accompany
the ‘end of the fairy tale’ verse in a chorus which is not as clearly rapped as the
rest of the song also confirm this meaning. The rising pitch can be also explained
by relying on the same ‘knowing is seeing’ metaphor, as the association of
brightness and truth it evokes stresses the idea that fairy tales are not necessarily
real (cf. Machin, 2010: 100). We can clearly see how the combination of the three
communication modes emphasizes the invalidity of the fairy tale narrative.
This song is also significant in as much as it reproduces some of the fea-
tures of domestic violence that have been identified by the experts (Ruiz Arias
et al, 2010). First of all, we can observe how several types of domestic abuse (cf.
Monereo and Triguero, 2012: 45) can be found: psychological abuse is implicit
in phrases like ‘estás gorda’ (you are fat) o ‘todo el día en casa acumulando
grasas’ (you spend your day at home gaining weight), verbal abuse is observed
in the shouting done by the man in the dialogued sections of the song, and
physical abuse is clearly indicated through the actual beatings. This attempt to
show that domestic violence is not only equivalent to physical abuse can also
be seen in some of the institutional campaigns studied, for example focusing
on verbal abuse in 2010.10 In the song, however, the sequence in which these
three types of violence generally evolve – from psychological to physical – can
be observed.
Equally important is the reproduction of the discourse of the aggressors,
in which some commonly held beliefs and stereotypes can be identified (Ruiz
Arias et al, 2010). Particularly interesting for this is the reference to the myth of
romantic love (Sampedro, 2004; Ruiz Arias et al, 2010) and its associated beliefs.
In ‘sé que eres mía. Estabas destinada a mí, lo supe desde el primer día’ (I know
you’re mine. You were destined for me. I know it from day one), we can observe
the ideas of love happening at first sight, the influence of fate and the existence
a Mr Right, and the fact that men possess women. In ‘te he demostrado que te
quiero’ (I’ve proved I love you), the idea that love has to be constantly proved
is stressed, and in ‘se que no le gusto a tus padres . . . lo que opinen los demás
no vale nada (I know your parents don’t like me . . . Other people’s opinions are
not worth it), the opinion of others is downplayed while at the same time stress-
ing the omnipotence of love, which can always overcome external obstacles. All
of these beliefs reproduce a discourse which does not only construct an unreal
view of love but which contributes to objectifying and passivizing the role of
women. The fact that these beliefs are recontextualized in a song aimed at del-
egitimizing domestic violence subverts their meaning.
Those beliefs are held by the male participant in the text-world, who is mainly
characterized by his relationship with alcohol (‘estaba un poco borracho’ (I was a
bit drunk)). The male participant occupies two spaces: the house and the outside
world, and his actions are mainly violent: courtship, insulting, shouting, beating
and killing the woman. The use of verbs of knowledge (‘sé que’ (I know)), which
trigger mental processes (Halliday, 2004), to characterize the man is likewise
important as he is presented as the source of knowledge. Although the male
participant is not visually acknowledged, a proximizing relationship (Cap, 2010)
is both textually and visually established between this negatively evaluated man
and the (victim) woman, thus resulting in the song stressing the threat posed
by this type of behaviour. The female character is mainly presented through the
male gaze, and her role in the narrative changes from that of a (fairy tale) queen
to her degradation as being a big mouth, fat and being in charge of household
chores. A clearly sexist stereotypical description of the role of men and women
can be thus seen in the song.
The fact that these two participants are only indexed through the pronouns
‘he’ and ‘she’ allows their story to be generalized as it only acquires meaning
contextually. Time and space deictics are also universal, which allows the del-
egitimized domestic violence situation to be presented as a global problem.
A strategy of individualization and anonymization (Machin, 2010: 88) similar
to the one found in Bebe’s ‘Malo’ can be also observed here. The blended dis-
course world created in the song, particularly prominent in the conversations
and the visual proximity moments, allows for the audience to identify with the
main participants textually involved in the recalled situations. Generalization
and repetition are also musically indicated throughout the song which is rapped
over a constantly repeated instrumental beat with a falling pitch that could also
indicate the falling, mourning, mood of the song (Machin, 2010: 104). The fall-
ing tone is particularly prominent at the end of the song where El Chojin refers
to this ‘fairy tale’ as a fairy tale that is told every week in every city. All of these
aspects together serve to reject once again the fairy tale narrative schema and
present it as one of the possible causes of some of the commonly held beliefs that
are recalled when explaining why domestic violence happens.
Conclusion
The analysis presented here shows the importance of multimodality for the con-
struction of effective communication. The effectiveness of the two songs stud-
ied in this chapter stems not only from the text-world constructed in the lyrics,
but also from the combination of those text-worlds with music and images. As
discussed in the analysis, these three worlds combined together result in a new
blended mental representation, or discourse world, in which a particular point
of view about society is presented. Therefore, it can be argued that in the case of
songs the world is understood by constructing working models of it in our mind
which are multimodally evoked and contextually meaningful.
The two songs try to delegitimize or subvert narratives of domestic violence.
Even if they are sung by different gender artists who have different musical
styles, similar strategies can still be identified. Both songs rely on a process of
individualization and anonymization which makes it easier for their message
to become global, thus reaching a wider audience. This is the consequence of
a vague textual construction of participants that relies on the use of pronouns,
the present tense, and unspecified spaces. These together result in decontextual-
ized accounts of domestic violence which are only meaningful when the audi-
ence interprets them. Visual strategies also have a similar effect in both songs,
as they both rely on the visual proximization of the abusing threat. Because this
happens in a decontextualized setting, the audience can establish an empathic
relationship with the visually represented female victim. Although with a similar
effect, this visual strategy differs slightly in the case of the two singers. Given
that Bebe is a female singer, she’s the one that metaphorically represents the
(female) victim while visually, textually and musically addressing the physical
abuser. However, in the case of El Chojin, there is a clear visual addressing of the
audience from the point of view of the female victim. This is neither textually
matched, because there are no second-person pronouns, nor musically matched,
given the male voice singing the song.
Certain similarities can be found between the discursive delegitimization of
domestic violence in the analysed songs and that of institutional discourses. This
results in a unitary Discourse on domestic violence. If we compare the songs
with the awareness campaigns broadcasted in similar years, we can see that they
all rely on similar discursive strategies. In the songs, the lyrics activity schema
mainly includes at least two discourse participants: the female victim and the
male physical abuser although this is slightly widened in the case of El Chojin
who also acknowledges the importance of the victim’s inner circle, including
friends and family, and the judiciary. Similar accounts of participants can be
seen in the public awareness campaigns. Likewise, both songs and awareness
campaigns negatively evaluate the behaviour of the aggressor, be it explicitly in
the case of Bebe and the 2008 and second 2010 awareness campaigns, or implic-
itly in the case of El Chojin and the 2006, 2007, 2009 and the first 2010 cam-
paigns. Stereotypical gendered roles are opposed either by seeking to activate
the woman and make her react to domestic violence in the case of Bebe, or by
recontextualizing these and implicitly identifying them as the cause of domestic
violence. Both aspects are also evident in the awareness campaigns. Finally, a
textual and musical reference to the different types of domestic violence can be
found both in ‘El final del cuento de hadas’ and some of the studied campaigns.
This is important in as much as it contributes to rejecting the belief that domes-
tic violence is only physical. If we compare the analysed campaigns and songs,
it can be seen how in all of them a unitary Discourse against domestic violence
can be found. However, even if all of them spread similar views, songs can reach
a wider audience, and this can be partly explained because their effectiveness
stems from the combination of three communication modes: text, music and
images. This is particularly the case of Bebe’s ‘Malo’, a song which has almost
become a socio-cultural symbol of the fight against domestic violence, and
whose impact can only be understood by studying the discursive combination
of different semiotic resources.
The bigger socio-cultural impact of songs can help us argue in favour of stud-
ying them as effective socio-cultural discourses which may be useful to react to
different social (and political) events. Using cognitive linguistics to do this, and
pairing it with tools taken from multimodality, particularly musical analysis and
visual communication, has proved to be useful to understand how given points
of view are transmitted. Understanding the construal of different mental repre-
sentations or discourse worlds that songs may trigger is thus of key importance
if we want to explain the socio-political effect, be it in terms of sales, marketing,
or social action, of such musical responses.
Notes
1 Research funded by the Instituto de la Mujer (Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios

Sociales e Igualdad) under the National Programme of R+D+I, in the framework of
the Project entitled ‘La transmisión de estereotipos de género a través de la canción
y su relación con la violencia de género’ (039/12).
2 A much more complex debate underlies how the terms gender and sex have been
used in the case of the Spanish legislation about domestic violence (Coll-Planas,
Moreno and Rodríguez, 2008).
3 It is important to note that a distinction can be found in Spain between domestic
violence and gender-based violence. After a debate, it was the latter term that was
chosen to define the content of the 2004 law (Coll-Planas, Moreno and Rodríguez,
2008: 189–190). Given the content of the analysed songs, I have decided to use the
term domestic violence.
4 These campaigns can still be consulted at the following webpage: <http://www.
msssi.gob.es/campannas/portada/home.htm>
5 This chapter focuses on the multimodal strategies that are used in songs. This is why
no thorough description is made of the discursive strategies used in these awareness
campaigns. However, their content is significant in order to understand how both
songs and awareness campaigns are parts of a unitary Discourse aimed at opposing
domestic violence.
6 We follow in this Berger and Luckmann’s (1966: 110–146) idea of the construction
of social reality, and their identification of legitimation. This process implies the
objectivation of meaning. This can be done through explaining – or ascribing
cognitive validity to the said meaning – or justifying – or giving normative dignity

to related actions. Given the negativity of the actions portrayed in the analysed
songs and that they show an against-domestic-violence discourse, we talk about
delegitimation.
7 The masculine pronoun has been chosen to reflect the use of masculine adjective
‘malo’ in Spanish. Also important for this is the setting in which the video is shot,
which we only see at the beginning and end: Bebe appears singing in a theatre, and
there are only two persons – whose shades resemble those of male persons – in the
audience.
8 See, for example, some of the stories compiled in the website ‘Amores que
matan’ that is hosted by the TV station Telecinco <http://www.telecinco.es/
amoresqueduelen/>.
9 This type of strategy can be also found in books, such as the ones written by Marcia
Grad (2008) or López Salamero (2009), and it was also used by Maria Tardon (a
judge expert on domestic violence) in an interview broadcasted in COPE radio
station in March 2015 <http://www.cope.es/detalle/No-hay-reinas-ni-princesas-ni-
cuentos-de-hadas.html>
10 Although not acknowledged in the analysis in this chapter, it shall be noted that in
recent years (2014 and 2015) the focus of awareness campaigns has shifted towards
psychological violence, particularly in the case of young people.
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9
Indigenous Hip Hop as Anti-colonial

Discourse in Guatemala
Rusty Barrett
Introduction
Guatemala has a long history of racial discrimination against indigenous peo-

ples. Although the population is roughly evenly divided between indigenous
(primarily Maya) and non-indigenous, there is a long history of Maya oppres-
sion. The ethnic divide in Guatemala reached a tipping point during the height
of the civil war (1960–1996) in which the Guatemalan government committed
genocide against the Maya (Perera, 1995). The end of the civil war saw the rise of
the Maya Movement, a political movement promoting Maya culture and human
rights. This movement encouraged the use of Mayan languages in new contexts,
such as in popular music. Although most music in Mayan languages has been
pop or soft rock music, in the last decade, hip hop in Mayan languages has begun
to gain popularity.
This chapter examines the emergence of Mayan-language hip hop, focus-
ing on the music of the group Balam Ajpu who rap in Spanish and a combina-
tion of Mayan languages. The chapter follows the methodology of scholars like
van Leeuwen (1999, 2012) and Machin and Richardson (2012) in analysing the
meaning potential of sounds as part of multimodal discourse. Following van
Leeuwen (1999), the chapter examines the ways in which various elements of
Balam Ajpu’s music (rhythm, timbre, the relationship between voices, and so on)
work together to produce music that challenges the colonial discourse associ-
ated with the historical domination of the Maya.
180 Rusty Barrett
Colonial discourse and ethnicity in Guatemala
The period of Spanish colonial rule in Guatemala (1524–1821) saw the for-
mation of an elite indigenous class known as ladinos, who became fluent
in Spanish and interacted primarily with colonial rulers. In most of Latin
America, this ladino identity evolved into mestizo identity (or mestizaje) in
the period following Spanish colonial rule (see Frye, 1996: 37). This new mes-
tizo identity recognized a multicultural heritage including both European and
indigenous traditions. In practice, however, mestizo identity typically involved
only symbolic appropriation of elements of indigenous culture as part of the
creation of a nationalist identity that perpetuated the colonial denigration of
indigenous peoples. In contrast to other parts of Latin America, Guatemala has
maintained ladino as the primary identity category for those who do not iden-
tify as indigenous. The persistence of ladino as a Guatemalan identity category
in Guatemala is part of a broader maintenance of colonial discourse involv-
ing the simultaneous appropriation and denigration of indigenous people and
their cultures.
Colonial discourse in Guatemala is founded upon a presumed disconnect
between the contemporary Maya and their pre-Columbian ancestors (Montejo,
2005; Hale, 2006). Because of the supposed ‘collapse’ of pre-Columbian Maya
civilization and the ‘disappearance’ of the Maya, the dominant ideology in
Guatemala has held that today’s Maya have no authentic connection to the pre-
Columbian Maya. The ‘collapse’ of Maya civilization did not mean that the Maya
ceased to exist or disappeared. There is ample genetic, linguistic and cultural
evidence to demonstrate that today’s Maya are without question the same Maya
that existed before the conquest (see Fischer and Brown, 1996; Montejo, 2005).
Even so, the dominant view holds that the ‘true’ Maya had disappeared before
Columbus and that the ‘Indians’ that the Spanish encountered in Guatemala
were a mix of groups from Mexico who were not Maya.
The denial of Maya cultural continuity allows for disparate attitudes towards
pre-Columbian and modern Maya. Contemporary Maya have been depicted as
backward and primitive people who ‘have been rejected as active participants in
the social, political, or economic life of the country’ (Montejo, 2005: 4). Mayan
languages, historically viewed as dialectos (dialects), rather than idiomas (lan-
guages), are seen as having only local relevance and being generally incompat-
ible with modern society. While the contemporary Maya have been denigrated
as primitive Indians, the pre-Columbian Maya have been celebrated as a classi-
cal civilization that symbolizes Guatemalan national heritage (see Otzoy, 1996;
Indigenous Hip Hop as Anti-colonial Discourse 181
Montejo, 2005; del Valle Escalante, 2009). Thus, elements of Maya culture have
been appropriated for use as symbols of a Guatemalan nationalist identity, even
as the Maya themselves have been denigrated and excluded from Guatemalan
society.
The combination of appropriation and denigration in Guatemalan colonial
discourse can be seen in analyses of non-musical modes of discourse. In particu-
lar, scholars have examined visual images of traditional Maya clothing and nar-
rative and visual depictions of Tecún Umán [Tekum Umam], the K’iche’ Maya
king believed to be killed by Pedro Alvarado during the Spanish invasion of
Guatemala (see Hendrickson, 1991; Otzoy, 1992, 1996, 1999; Montejo, 2005).
Maya women in highland Guatemala typically wear traditional indigenous
clothing or traje as it is commonly called in Guatemala. The designs of traje
are specific to individual towns, but generally involve a huipil (a hand-woven
blouse) worn with a skirt folded from a large piece of fabric. Guatemalan
national discourse often exploits this national dress as a marker of national iden-
tity (Hendrickson, 1991; Otzoy, 1992, 1996). For example, the ‘national costume’
of Guatemala always involves the use of a traje. Ladino beauty pageant contest-
ants wear traje as a national costume, although it is always styled in a way that is
marked as clearly inauthentic (see Hendrickson, 1991). Images of women wear-
ing traje can be seen on Guatemalan currency and are commonly used in mate-
rials marketed to tourists (Hendrickson, 1991). In contrast, materials aimed at
local Guatemalan audiences depict the use of traje as backward and primitive.
Even though the Maya huipil serves as a symbol of Guatemalan banal nationalism
(Billig, 1995), discrimination against women who wear traje is still common. In
2002, for example, anthropologist and journalist Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj
was denied entrance into a Guatemalan city restaurant explicitly because she
was wearing traje that conveyed her Maya identity (Velásquez Nimatuj, 2005).
The narrative of Tecún Umán also shows the combination of appropriation
and denigration typical of Guatemalan colonial discourse (see Otzoy, 1999;
Montejo, 2005). According to legend, Tecún Umán was the K’iche’ king who
fought against Pedro de Alvarado during the Spanish invasion of Guatemala.
Tecún Umán dies in the battle and a quetzal bird (the national symbol of
Guatemala) falls and dies beside him. As with indigenous dress, the story
of Tecún Umán has been appropriated as a symbol of Guatemalan national-
ism. Tecún Umán is a national hero, recognized with his own holiday when
children enact his story in local school pageants. Statues of Tecún Umán are
common throughout Guatemala and potraits of him are common in schools,
government offices and on currency. In these representations, Tecún Umán is
182 Rusty Barrett
depicted as the ideal hero who sacrificed his life for the freedom of his people.
Montejo analyses the traditional version of the Tecún Umán legend as pre-
sented in a social studies textbook used in Guatemalan elementary schools
(2005: 54–59). Although Tecún Umán is depicted as a brave warrior, the
Spanish invaders are represented as inherently superior throughout the text.
As with most public images of the battle, Tecún Umán is portrayed as wear-
ing a loincloth and holding a spear while fighting armed men on horseback.
The textbook depicts Tecún Umán as not being smart enough to distinguish
between Alvarado and his horse while the Spaniards are represented as try-
ing to save and ‘civilize’ the primitive ‘Indians’ that Tecún Umán represents
(Montejo, 2005: 58).
Colonial discourse in Guatemala thus appropriates elements of Maya culture
as symbols of nationalism while denigrating the actual Maya as primitive and
unable to function in modern society. Colonial discourse is multimodal, involv-
ing visual modes such as images of indigenous dress and textual modes as in the
depictions of Tecún Umán. The following section examines the ways in which
colonial discourse is reproduced through musical culture in Guatemala.
Musical manifestations of colonial discourse

in Guatemala
Classic Maya art and literature clearly demonstrate that musical performances
such as processions and dances were central components of pre-Columbian
Maya culture (see Grube, 1992; Sanchez, 2007; Looper, 2010). The murals at the
archaeological site of Bonampak, for example, depicts an elaborate musical per-
formance. In addition to artistic representations, archaeologists have described
a wide variety of musical instruments used by the Maya before the conquest
(Hammond, 1972a, 1972b; Bourg, 2005). These instruments include a variety
of drums and other percussion instruments, wind instruments such as flutes
and trumpets, and instruments taken from nature like conch horns and turtle
shell drums. In addition to the archaeological records, there are Maya musical
traditions that have survived to the present day. For example, the dance-drama
Rab’inal Achi, which is still performed today, includes instruments and perfor-
mance features that match those in the archaeological records (Tedlock, 2003;
Breton, 2007; Howell, 2007). The Rab’inal Achi is a play infused with dance num-
bers that tells the story of a war between the K’iche’ Maya and the Achi Maya.
Such war dance-dramas are common throughout the highlands of Guatemala,
though most have shifted to focus on the Spanish conquest rather than pre-
Columbian conflicts such as the one depicted in Rab’inal Achi.
Comparing the musical structure or Rab’inal Achi with another dance-drama
about the Spanish conquest, Howell (2007) concludes that the instruments
of Rab’inal Achi are likely a reflection of pre-Columbian musical traditions.
In Rab’inal Achi, music is performed on slit drums and trumpets like those
reflected in Classic Maya art. Howell finds that Rab’inal Achi contains a number
of possible musical features with probable pre-Hispanic origins. For example,
the structure of Rab’inal Achi is built around sacred Maya numbers (particularly
13). The numbers 13 and 20 are sacred in Maya culture as they serve as the basis
for the 260-day lunar calendar (consisting of 20 days each repeating 13 times).
Indeed, Howell suggests that pre-Columbian Maya music may have been con-
structed around sacred geography (such as cardinal directions) as well as being
constructed around the Maya calendar.
Another distinctive characteristic of Rab’inal Achi is that although rhythmic
patterns regularly repeat, the repeated pairs do not share a unifying metre. While
Howell notes that while it would be possible to divide the music of Rab’inal Achi
according to metre, doing so would be pointless as the metre changes regularly
throughout any given song. In contrast, other Maya dance-dramas are more
closely tied to metrical organization. These shifting rhythmic patterns with-
out a unified metre are a feature that O’Brien-Rothe (1975, 2010, 2015) has
described for traditional folk songs of the Tz’utujil Maya. These songs mix tra-
ditional Maya and Western musical elements and contain a mix of Spanish and
Mayan-language lyrics. The variable rhythmic structure of Tz’utujil folk songs
is associated with the poetic structure of the lyrics of the songs, which follows
the traditional couplet structure found in Mayan verbal art (see Barrett, forth-
coming). Mayan verbal art involves widespread use of syntactic parallelism and
couplets in which a clause is repeated with one constituent replaced. An example
can be seen in the opening of the Popol Wuj, an extensive K’iche’ Maya text tran-
scribed in the seventeenth century:
(1) Waral xchiqatz’ib’aj wi Here we shall inscribe,

xchiqatikib’al wi ojer tzij. we shall implant the Ancient Word.
In this example (Tedlock, 2010: 310–311), the structure of the verbs in the
two lines is exactly the same (‘we shall X it’) but the two verbs have different
roots. The object of both verbs (ojer tzij or Ancient Word) only occurs after
the repeated verb. The poetic character of the couplet (and what makes it an
184 Rusty Barrett
artistic use of language from a Maya perspective) is the repetition of an identical

verb structure. This form of poetic parallelism contrasts sharply with Western
views of poetry that emphasize phonological parallelism (through unified met-
rical and rhyming structures). Although the lines in Maya poetry show parallel
morphological and syntactic structures, they do not display parallel rhythms or
rhymes. When this poetic structure is used to form musical lyrics, the varying
length and rhythmic structure of (syntactically parallel) lines results in regu-
lar rhythmic alternations. In the Example (1), the rhythm of the verbs within
each line would be identical, but the larger rhythm of each line would be dif-
ferent. This corresponds to the description of rhythmic structure described for
both Rab’inal Achi and Tz’utujil folk songs (Howell, 2007; O’Brien-Rothe, 2010).
There are internal elements that repeat specific rhythmic structures, but there
is not a larger unifying metrical structure like that found in Western musical or
poetic traditions.
The poetic parallelism in Maya verbal art reflects another broad pattern in
Maya music involving pairings between related but oppositional signs. Maya
music is constructed in a similar way as Maya poetry involving pairings between
syntactic structures or related words (mother/father, sky/earth, wind/rain, etc).
Navarrete Pellicer notes that Maya music builds on created balances between
complementary pairs, such as high/low, left/right, or q’ojom (percussion instru-
ments)/su’ (wind instruments) (2005: 54). Music is arranged so that members of
a pair are in dialogue with one another. Thus, high-pitched trumpets will be in
dialogue with low-pitched trumpets, flutes will be in dialogue with drums, and
so forth. This creation of balance in Maya music corresponds to similar pair-
ings throughout Maya culture. For example, Maya prayers often involve pair-
ings between complementary spirits, opposing cardinal directions (east-west,
south-north), or opposing ends of the axis mundi (the sky, the earth). Thus,
Maya music is constructed in ways that reflect broader Maya cultural patterns
and beliefs.
It is clear that there is a diverse Maya musical tradition that extends back before
the Spanish conquest. Even so, with music one finds the same pattern of denigra-
tion with appropriation that one finds in other aspects of colonial discourse. As
with Maya traje, the Maya use of the marimba has been appropriated as a symbol
of Maya nationalism. Apart from marimba music, Maya music is typically rep-
resented as restricted to the pre-Columbian period. Maxwell (2009) reports that
even after efforts to develop a multicultural educational curriculum, depictions
of Maya music were restricted to the pre-Columbian period. Indeed, public
imagery of Maya music typically involves representations of loincloth-wearing
men blowing on conch shells or beating a drum. Representations of contempo-

rary Maya music are almost entirely limited to marimba players.
The marimba is without question the Guatemalan national instrument and is
often portrayed as ‘a symbol of Guatemalan national unity’ (Taracena Arriola,
2011: 150). Similar to Piotrowska’s (2013) discussion of the appropriation of
Gypsy music in Hungaian nationalist discourse, the Guatemalan national ‘unity’
associated with the marimba emerges only through ladino appropriation of the
Maya marimba tradition. Although there have been suggestions that the marimba
has African origins, Guatemalans generally believe that marimbas have been
used by the pre-Columbian Maya (O’Brien-Rothe, 1982). Guatemalan marimba
music has traditionally involved two distinct musical genres, the son and the
pieza (see Navarette Pellicer, 2005). The son is defined by ‘homophonic texture,
major tonality, diatonic melody, triadic harmony, a moderate to rapid tempo,
and a combination of simple triple and compound duple meters’ (Navarrete
Pellicer, 2005: 98). Although sons may be of either ladino or Maya origin, the son
is the defining genre for indigenous music. For example, Rab’inal Achi involves
sets of sons that may be combined in unique ways in each performance. In con-
trast to the son, the pieza is not a traditional Maya genre and involves popular
music of other genres (waltzes, foxtrots, cumbias, merengues, etc.) adopted for
the marimba (Navarrete Pellicer, 2005: 58). While sons show characteristics of
Maya music (such as the combination of multiple metres), piezas adhere to the
Western musical traditions of their origins (such as a uniform 3/4 metre for a
waltz).
The use of ‘Indian’ marimba groups as entertainment for ladinos and foreign
tourists has a long tradition in Guatemala. The pieza emerges from this con-
text, in which Maya musicians perform for ladino audiences wishing to hear
popular Western music. Because of this history, the distinction between son
and pieza symbolically maps onto the ethnic division between the Maya and
ladinos (Navarrete Pellicer, 2005: 163). This does not mean, however, that Maya
audiences are not fond of piezas. In his study of Achi Maya marimba music,
Navarrete Pellicer found that piezas are being incorporated into ritual contexts
traditionally reserved for sons (2005: 211). The broadened use of piezas leads to
a further loss of Maya musical tradition as sons contain uniquely Maya musical
elements absent in piezas.
There is a long history of mixing ladino and Maya musical elements in sons,
so that Maya folk music is often performed in Spanish rather than in Mayan lan-
guages. However, marimba music is almost always purely instrumental. Popular
representations of Maya music are typically reduced to marimba groups, so that
186 Rusty Barrett
Maya music is often thought of as not having lyrics at all. Although folk songs
with lyrics certainly persist (O’Brien-Rothe, 2010, 2015), they are not widely
heard through the media and they are rare even in purely Maya social settings.
In local Maya contexts (such as festivals, parties, wedding receptions and so on),
the music is almost always instrumental marimba music. The form of danc-
ing associated with marimba music in Maya communities is quite specific. The
dance partners do not touch; the male partner must keep his hands behind his
back and the female partner must keep her hands on her skirt (which she lifts up
from the ground in order to move more freely). Both partners hop from side to
side in rhythm with the music, with the arms remaining still.
Maya hip hop artists use their multimodal performances to challenge the sym-
bolic colonialism prevelant in these discourses of traditional Maya folk music.
For example, Tz’utujil rapper Tz’utu Baktun Kan notes, ‘What they call tradi-
tional is really just colonial. They have made music another form of oppression.’
The popular representation of ‘traditional’ Maya music in Guatemala involves a
group of marimba players (often wearing elements of traje) playing popular pieza
songs as the Maya dance without moving their arms. In colonial discourse, the
full range of Maya musical traditions is reduced to a single form (instrumen-
tal marimba music). With the increased use of piezas, marimba music contains
fewer and fewer distinctive Maya elements despite being portrayed as ‘traditional’
Maya music. The only genre of widely recognized Maya music is purely instru-
mental, with the Maya voice being completely erased. Tz’utu sees the restricted
movement of the dance associated with the marimba as another form of colonial
oppression, saying ‘they expect us to dance as if we were tied up like slaves’.
Marimba music is a central component of colonial discourse in Guatemala.
On the one hand, the marimba is a symbol of Maya culture believed to have pre-
Columbian roots. Indeed, even contemporary Maya rock bands always include a
marimba player to index their Maya ethnic identity. As an appropriated symbol
of national unity, however, the marimba presents a reductive and false view of
Maya music and culture. The music itself is increasingly devoid of traditional
Maya elements and is often geared to non-Maya audiences. For younger activ-
ist audiences like Tz’utu, the absence of lyrics and the restrictive dance associ-
ated with the marimba produces semiotic associations with the colonial history
of silencing, slavery and genocide. Thus, while Maya activist musicians may
include marimba in their music, it is always combined with vocals and elements
of rock or hip hop that do not lend themselves to the restrictive dance typically
associated with marimba performance. Rock bands like Kab’awil, for example,
combine marimba with electric guitars and rock percussion. Similarly, in Maya
hip hop, marimba is mixed with other sampled music and electronic drum beats.
Before discussing contemporary Maya hip hop in more detail, it is important to
understand the context of its emergence (and its anti-colonial stance) as part of
a larger Maya cultural revitalization movement in Guatemala.
The Maya movement and anti-colonial discourse in

Guatemala
Since the late-1990s, there has been a rise in popular music performed in Mayan
languages in Guatemala. The first Maya rock group to gain popularity was
Sobrevivencia, a Mam Maya group that sang in a variety of Mayan languages
(in addition to Mam). Following the success of Sobrevivencia, other rock bands
began to perform in their local languages, such as the K’iche’ group, Kab’awil,
and the Sakapulteko group, Tujal Rock. Hip hop gained popularity in Guatemala
in the early twentieth century, particularly through Reggeatón music in Spanish.
There are now rappers who perform in a variety of Mayan languages across
Belize, Mexico and Guatemala. The rise of popular music in Mayan languages
is part of a broader Maya cultural revitalization movement that gained ground
following the civil war in Guatemala (and the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico).
There has, of course, been continual Maya resistance to Spanish and ladino
domination since the arrival of Spanish invaders. However, a concerted pan-
Maya political movement emerged in the wake of the violence of the Guatemalan
Civil War (1960–1996). The violence (la violencia) peaked in the early 1980s with
a genocide in which over 200,000 Maya were killed (see Carmack, 1988; Perera,
1995). During la violencia, Maya often tried to hide their indigenous identity
from ladinos and government officials through abandoning traje or refusing to
speak Mayan languages in public. Traditional Maya religious ceremonies, such
as burning rituals, were also banned during this period.
During the years following the worst of the violence, the Maya Movement
emerged as a cultural revitalization and human rights movement focused on
preserving and promoting Maya culture and Mayan languages (see Fischer and
Brown, 1996; Cojti Cuxil, 1997; Gálvez Borrell and Esquit Choy, 1997; Warren,
1998; Montejo, 2005). The Maya Movement challenges the colonial assump-
tion of a cultural disconnect between the pre-Columbian and modern Maya.
Drawing on research in historical linguistics, activists emphasized the fact that
contemporary Mayan languages are clearly related to the language found in pre-
Columbian hieroglyphic writing. The linguistic view of a unified genetic family
188 Rusty Barrett
of Mayan languages supported a broader political goal of pan-Maya unity. Maya

linguists and activists worked to develop reference and educational materi-
als related to their languages (see England, 2003; Barrett, 2005; French, 2010).
Much of this work aimed at increasing communication across different Mayan
languages. The Unified Mayan Alphabet was introduced so that all of the Mayan
languages would share the same writing system. Similarly, uniform neolo-
gisms (to replace Spanish loanwords) were introduced into related languages to
increase shared vocabulary.
The Maya Movement also challenged the assumption that Mayan languages
(and the Maya more generally) were inherently primitive and unsuited for partic-
ipation in modern, global society. To demonstrate the utility of Mayan languages
for modern society, activists sought to change the strict compartmentalization
(Kroskrity, 2000: 337) in which Mayan languages and Spanish were relegated
to separate social domains. Although there has certainly been variation, many
towns in Maya regions of Guatemala have a pattern of bilingualism with diglos-
sia (Fishman, 1967) such that Spanish is used in public and official domains
(education, religion, media, literature) and Mayan languages are restricted to
local or private/domestic domains. Language activists involved with the Maya
Movement worked to change this, developing materials for bilingual education
(see Maxwell, 2009) and promoting local literacy in Mayan languages. Maya
began to use their native languages in a wide range of new contexts, including
literature, technology, law, journalism and healthcare. The emergence of popular
music in native languages is part of this larger trend.
Efforts to standardize Maya languages for use in public contexts led to the
adoption of Western language ideologies associated with a single language for
a single nation (Reynolds, 2009; French, 2010; Fox Tree, 2011). This resulted
in a shift in dominant understandings of Maya identity from a local village-
based identity (e.g. ‘a person from Sololá’) to a language-based ethnic identity
(e.g. ‘a Kaqchikel Maya’). Thus, despite efforts to promote pan-Mayanism, the
categorization of Maya along linguistic lines introduced new divisions between
Maya communities (see England, 2003; French, 2010). The Maya Movement has
introduced a new discourse of multiculturalism into Guatemalan politics (del
Valle Escalante, 2009; Maxwell, 2009). The use of Mayan languages in education
and government in now more common and there is more public acceptance
of displays of Maya identity. However, as del Valle Escalante (2009) notes, this
multiculturalism is one-sided so that while displays of Maya identity are more
tolerated, Maya are still expected to assimilate to ladino society and ladinos typi-
cally have minimal interest in learning about Maya culture (see Barrett, 2016).
While the Maya Movement has challenged colonial discourse, prejudice and
ethnic discrimination are still common in Guatemala. Many ladinos still adhere
to the assumptions underlying colonial discourse; Maya are still denigrated
and they must still justify their relationship to their pre-Columbian ancestors.
Although del Valle Escalante (2009) has held that ladinos take no interest in
Maya culture, they have shown increased interest in learning Mayan languages
(Maxwell, 2009). Hip hop music is one social domain where Maya and non-
Maya have found common ground and challenged assumptions regarding eth-
nic identity (Barret, 2016). The hip hop group Balam Ajpu includes both Maya
and non-Maya, but promotes a overtly Maya-centric form of hip hop that is both
highly political and grounded in traditional Maya spirituality. The following sec-
tions will discuss the work of Balam Ajpu examining the ways in which their
music performs an anti-colonial stance across multiple modes.
Maya hip hop and Balam Ajpu
The early part of the twenty-first century saw the sudden popularity of hip hop
in Guatemala. Although Guatemalan hip hop has been primarily in Spanish,
artists who perform in Mayan languages have been part of the hip hop scene
in Guatemala for some time. Some Maya rappers perform in both Maya and
Spanish, while others (like Tz’utu Baktun Kan) rap only in Maya. Maya hip hop
simultaneously gained popularity in the Maya regions of Mexico, with artists
such as Pat Boy (Yukatek Maya) and Slaje’m K’op (Tzotzil Maya). Maya hip hop
groups have not had major rivalries or conflicts and tend to promote an ideol-
ogy of pan-Mayanism. For example, Tz’utu Baktun Kan has performed duets
with the members of Slaje’m K’op in Mexico. As with the promotion of pan-
Mayanism, Maya hip hop tends to follow the ideologies associated with the
Maya Movement. Indeed, rapping in a Mayan language is itself a subversive act
that challenges the view of Mayan languages as unfit for modern society.
Tz’utu Baktun Kan formed the group Balam Ajpu with two other musicians,
MChe and Dr. Nativo. While Tz’utu is Tz’utujil Maya, MChe and Nativo do
not identify as Maya, but identify as mestizo unlike most other non-indigenous
Guatemalans who identify as ladino. Nativo is the musical director of the group
and typically composes and performs instrumentals and back-up vocals. MChe
raps in Spanish in bilingual songs, but also beatboxes to accompany Tz’utu in
songs that are entirely in Maya. Although Tz’utu is the only Maya member of the
group, Balam Ajpu’s music focuses entirely on promoting Maya culture. Thus,
190 Rusty Barrett
Balam Ajpu is a clear counter example to the view that non-Maya have no inter-
est in learning about Maya culture (see Barrett, 2016). Balam Ajpu promotes an
ideology of Hip Hop Cosmovision in which hip hop and Maya culture are intrin-
sically linked. For members of Balam Ajpu, the emergence of hip hop in Mayan
languages is understood as part of a larger new era for Maya culture that began in
2012 with the ending of the thirteenth baktun. A baktun is a cycle of 144,000 years
in the Mayan calendar. The end of the thirteenth baktun was also the end of a
smaller 52- year cycle known as a calendar round. A calendar round marks the
period between days in which the 365.25-day solar calendar and the 260-day lunar
calendar coincide. According to the members of Balam Ajpu, this last calendar
round began with the earliest emergence of hip hop in the United States and cul-
minated with the emergence of Maya hip hop at the end of the thirteenth baktun.
The name Balam Ajpu conveys the centrality of Maya culture to the group’s
musical image. The name is taken from the two ‘hero twins’ in the Popol Wuj,
the sacred Maya book that describes the creation of the earth (Tedlock, 1996).
The twins, XBalamke (Deer Jaguar) and Jun Ajpu (One Hunter), represent the
pairing of complementary elements found throughout Maya culture. In combin-
ing the names of the two twins, Balam Ajpu follows a Maya rhetorical tradition
of creating new compound words through the pairing of related words. Balam
Ajpu also links hip hop and Maya worldviews in their understanding of the basic
elements of hip hop. Following K.R.S. One, hip hop is often said to contain four
basic elements: rapping, break dancing, graffiti art, and DJ-ing (or scratching).
Balam Ajpu teaches three basic elements (without DJ-ing which is difficult in
contexts without electricity). For Balam Ajpu, these three elements correspond
to the three stones that form a traditional Maya hearth (or xkub’). The three
stones of the xkub’ are said to have been laid in place at the beginning of the
world, with the world tree (axis mundi) growing out of the hearth’s centre. The
placement of the xkub’ marks the centre of a Maya home in addition to symboli-
cally marking the axis between the underworld and the centre of the sky.
The lyrics to Balam Ajpu’s music are written in collaboration with local
spiritual guides, traditional Maya priests who provide guidance based on the
Maya calendar and communication with the Maya ancestors or with local nat-
ural spirits known as nawals. Each of the 20 days in the Maya (260-day) cal-
endar is associated with a nawal. For their first CD, a tribute to the 20 nawals,
Balam Ajpu asked their spiritual guides to help prepare hip hop lyrics related
to each of the 20 nawals. In each case, the spiritual guide would perform a
burning ceremony (the ritual that had been prohibited during the civil war).
These burning ceremonies involve arranging a large circle of various elements,
including candles, copal incense, ocote pine chips (which are highly flamma-
ble), flowers, sugar and other elements such as fruit or candy. The elements
included in the circle are meant to please the ancestors and nawals as they
burn. The collection of these elements is burned and the burning is accompa-
nied by a long prayer that moves through all 260 days of the lunar calendar.
After asking the nawals to transmit hip hop lyrics, the spiritual guide closes
his eyes and goes into a trance-like state where he rapidly utters the lyrics sent
by the nawals. As the spiritual guide produces lyrics, Tz’utu rapidly transcribes
them into Maya. Once the ceremony is complete, Tz’utu arranges the tran-
scriptions into rap lyrics and works with the other members of Balam Ajpu to
develop songs from them and write corresponding Spanish lyrics.
In addition to their music, the members of Balam Ajpu run a hip hop
school for local children in the town of San Pedro la Laguna. The Casa Ahau
Escuela de Hip Hop teaches painting, rapping and break dancing in addition
to teaching lessons about Maya culture and promoting the use of Mayan lan-
guages. Although the school has had sporadic funding, it typically operates
on a minimal budget. Even so, the school has developed a number of projects
for children in the area, including a hip hop dance performance of the Popol
Wuj and painting a series of political murals in the town of San Pedro. The
murals focus on themes related to the preservation of Maya culture, historical
memory regarding the genocide of the civil war or environmental messages
protesting the mining of Maya lands. The school thus combines hip hop and
Maya culture along the lines promoted by Balam Ajpu’s ideology of Hip Hop
Cosmovision.
In bringing Maya culture and hip hop together, Balam Ajpu challenges the
view that Maya culture is a relic of a primitive past. Balam Ajpu’s Maya-centric
understanding of hip hop, the political messages of their art and philosophy,
and the critical pedagogy of the Casa Ahau school all contribute to anti-colonial
discourse. However, the heart of Balam Ajpu’s subversion of colonial discourse
is their music, which constructs related but distinct anti-colonial stances across
a range of modes.
Maya hip hop as anti-colonial discourse
The music of Balam Ajpu articulates anti-colonial discourse across a range of

distinct modes. This is true not simply of visual and linguistic modes, but also
through the musical elements included in their music and the ways in which
192 Rusty Barrett
these elements are combined. This section lays out the various articulations of
anti-colonial discourse within Balam Ajpu’s music and musical performances.
In the visual mode, Balam Ajpu draws heavily on highly traditional and pre-
Columbian sources. At their concerts, the members of Balam Ajpu wear long
white hand-woven robes. The robes are not typical forms of traje, but are more
reminiscent of ceremonial clothing in pre-Columbian Maya art. The members of
the group also paint their faces in black, white and red paint. The face paint styles
are taken directly from depictions of musicians in pre-Columbian art. Thus, the
clothing worn by Balam Ajpu indexes their cultural heritage as descendants of
the pre-Columbian Maya. At their performances, Balam Ajpu builds a ceremo-
nial fire similar to the one used by spiritual guides (although often contained
inside a ceramic bowl). Balam Ajpu concerts open with the lighting of the fire
and a prayer for blessings from the ancestors and the nawals. The fire reproduces
and celebrates the rituals banned during the civil war period. Before music has
even begun, the members of the group have articulated anti-colonial discourse
through their appearance and through the lighting of the fire.
The cover of Balam Ajpu’s CD also articulates anti-colonial discourse in mul-
tiple ways. The CD has hieroglyphs for each of the 20 nawals arranged in a circle
with the glyphs that fall in the cardinal directions painted in the color associated
with that direction. Inside the circle are two heads, a jaguar (Balam) facing left
and a hunter (Ajpu) facing right. Beneath the two heads, the words hip hop are
written in hieroglyphic Maya. All of the visual imagery in the CD cover reflects
central elements of Maya culture that are also tied to the philosophy of Hip Hop
Cosmovision.
Another mode for articulating anti-colonial discourse can be found in the
internal structure of Balam Ajpu’s music. As Howell (2007) notes, traditional
Maya music may be organized around sacred numbers. Balam Ajpu’s music is
structured around the Maya calendar and sacred geography. The CD Jun Winaq
Rajawal Q’íj (Tribute to the 20 Nawals) is constructed around the 260-calendar,
with one song for each of the 20 days in the calendar. The cycle of the 20 days
repeats continuously so that there is no ‘first’ day in the calendar. Balam Ajpu’s
cycle of songs follows the progression of days in the calendar and the musicians
recommend that when one listens to the CD they should always begin with the
song associated with the day on which they are listening. Thus, like the calendar,
the CD has no inherent beginning or ending but follows a regular repeating
pattern.
As van Leeuwen (1999: 2) notes, modern recording technologies and forms
like the spoken songs of rap music blur the boundaries between music and the
sounds of everyday life. The hip hop music of Balam Ajpu juxtaposes sounds
associated with contemporary Maya life against those associated with everyday
life of the pre-Columbian Maya. The musical instruments used (and sampled)
by Balam Ajpu include a number of pre-Columbian instruments such as drums,
flutes, conch shells and turtle shells. The use of such instruments in contempo-
rary hip hop music visually and sonically challenges the colonial representa-
tion of Maya music as limited to the pre-Columbian era. Balam Ajpu regularly
include sampled sounds from nature in their music such as bird calls, jaguar
howls, rain or thunder. The inclusion of natural sounds indexes a view of ladino
culture as overly detached from the natural world and the central place of natu-
ral sounds in Maya verbal art (see Barrett, 2014). The animal and bird sounds are
those of species found specifically in the Maya region, creating a locally specific
soundscape that links the pre-Columbian instrumental sounds with the modern
sounds of hip hop. Several songs on Jun Winaq Rajawal Q’ij begin with sampled
sounds from nature (such as bird calls) playing alone for several seconds before
being joined by an accompaniment on pre-Columbian flutes or drums. This is
followed by the incorporation of hip hop beats and rapping so that the natural
sounds continue through a soundscape that moves from the pre-Columbian to
the modern. This parallels anti-colonial political discourse which emphasizes
the cultural continuity between the pre-Columbian and contemporary Maya
(Montejo, 2005).
The alternation between Spanish and Maya in Balam Ajpu’s music places the
two languages on equal footing, challenging the colonial discourse that deni-
grates Maya languages as inferior. The alternation between langauges also reflects
the use of complementary pairings found in traditional Maya poetry and music
(Howell, 2007; O’Brien-Rothe, 2015). Similarly, the rhythmic structure of Balam
Ajpu’s music also follows the broader pattern of complementary pairings found
in Maya verbal art and music. Musical samples are often combined in ways that
create alternations between different metres. Thus, the sampled elements pro-
duce the structure pattern of shifting metres that Howell (2007) describes for
Rab’inal Achi. Similarly, the alternating raps in Maya and Spanish often produce
similar shifts in metre so that the pairing of languages often corresponds to the
pairing of rhythmic patterns. In terms of rhythmic structure, the music of Balam
Ajpu is also anti-colonial, refusing to assimilate to the unified metrical pattern
found in Western music.
The anti-colonial semiotics of Balam Ajpu’s music can be illustrated by the
song ‘Ajmak’ from Jun Winaq Rajawal Q’íj. Within Maya cosmology, the nawal
Ajmak (Sinner) is associated with asking for forgiveness from the ancestors. In
194 Rusty Barrett
particular, Ajmak is associated with sins against one’s own family or commu-
nity (see Tedlock, 1992: 121–122). Because these sorts of sins require asking the
ancestors for forgiveness, the day of Ajmak is one for reflecting on the ancestors,
not only praying to them for forgiveness but also giving them thanks for provid-
ing life. The lyrics of the song ‘Ajmak’ revolve around this theme, conveying the
importance of the ancestors associated with this specific nawal. Praying to the
ancestors is done through the traditional burning ceremonies that were banned
during the civil war. The theme of the lyrics is itself anti-colonial, celebrating
aspects of Maya religion that defy colonialist efforts to eradicate Maya culture.
These burning rituals begin by partitioning the world into the four cardi-
nal directions associated with sacred Maya geography. ‘Ajmak’ is structured
around groupings of four, some directly refering to the four cardinal directions.
The song opens with samples of a capella fragments from four different sing-
ers. Although none of the singers actually produces recognizable lyrics, each
has a unique voice quality and timbre (van Leeuwen, 1999: 9) associated with
a particular ethnic musical style. The four singers are (in order) a European
woman, an African man, an Asian woman and a Native American man. The
harmonic relations within the melodies each sings is also indicative of a par-
ticular regional/ethnic musical style. Within Maya cosmology, each of the four
cardinal directions is associated with a specific color (north/white, west/black,
south/yellow, and east/red). The four colors are associated with the four colors
of corn (the Maya refer to ‘blue corn’ as ‘black’). Humans were created from
corn (Tedlock, 1996), so that the four colours of corn also represent four ‘races’
of humanity (which are white, black, yellow and red like the corn). The order
of the cardinal directions associated with the singers in ‘Ajmak’ moves counter-
clockwise (North-West-South-East), following the counter-clockwise direction
used in prayers to the nawals and to the ancestors (Hanks, 1992).
As with other forms of Maya music and poetry, the complementary pairings
found in these four samples extend beyond marking the four cardinal direc-
tions. In Maya poetry, traditional quatrains are structured so that there are spe-
cific relationships between alternating lines as well as between inner and outer
pairs of lines (Barrett, forthcoming). Thus, one structure will mark a relationship
between lines one and three and between lines two and four while some other
structure marks a relationship between lines one and four and between lines two
and three. The four sampled voices that open ‘Ajmak’ reflect this poetic struc-
ture in the musical mode (indeed, without words at all). The voices also alter-
nate between male and female singers, so that voices one and three are female
and voices two and four are male. However, the melodies sung by each voice
mark opposing directions in terms of tonal gravity (McKerrell, 2015). In each

of the fragments, the melody includes unidirectional movement from the start-
ing note, to the same note an octave higher or lower. Although the melodies
contain distinct harmonic relationships, the pitch range and tonal associations
are the same. The direction in which the pitch moves across the octave, how-
ever, differs from line to line. The melodies of the first and fourth voices both
involve movement to an octave higher while the melodies of the second and
third voices involvement movement to an octave lower. Thus, through different
modalities, the music produces distinct relationships between the four sampled
voices. These relationships reflect both traditional Maya poetics and the sacred
geography associated with Maya religious beliefs and practices that the domi-
nant culture has tried to eradicate for centuries.
This pattern of complementary pairings continues through the song with
alternations between quatrains in Maya and in Spanish. The Maya lyrics play on
the phonological similarity between the name of the day (Ajmak or Ajmaq), the
K’ichean word for ‘nation’ or ‘tribe’ (ajmaq’), and the word for sin (mak or majk).
The Maya lines open with the primary elements of the prayers associated with
the day Ajmak, namely giving thanks and askng for forgiveness. The following
Spanish quatrain repeats the pairing of giving thanks and asking forgiveness
raised in the Maya quatrain, but also involves a secondary set of complementary
pairings (between air and water and between fire and earth):
(2) Ajmak (Balam Ajpu, 2015)
Ajmaq’ kinmaltyoxij chawe Great nation of the ancestors, I thank you

Ajmaq’ tasacha k’a li numajk Great nation of the ancestors, forgive me
for my sins
Ajmaq’ kinmaltyoxij chawe Great nation of the ancestors, I thank you
Ajmaq’ tasacha k’a li numajk Great nation of the ancestors, forgive me
for my sins
GRACIAS por el AIRE por el AGUA Thank you for the air, for water
GRACIAS porque alimento nos DAS Thank you for the food that you give us
GRACIAS por el FUEGO por la TIERRA Thank you for the fire and the earth
PERDON por nuestras Faltas AJ MAK Forgive us for our sins, Ajmak
The two verses complement one another in that they each contain four lines
and convey the same basic meanings (giving thanks and asking for forgiveness).
The internal structures of the verses, however, are not the same. Although not
involving perfect rhyme, the Spanish quatrain has end rhyme, a pattern typical
of Spanish-language hip hop (including all of the Spanish lyrics of Balam Ajpu).
196 Rusty Barrett
In contrast, the Maya lyrics show syntactic parallelism without the use of rhyme.
The pairing of these two quatrains is not simply a pairing of two languages, but
also a pairing of contrasting poetic styles. Of course, the pairing also indexes the
opposition between Maya and ladinos. However, the Maya quatrain precedes the
Spanish one (an ordering that is clearly anti-colonial). The ordered alternation
between the two languages (which pairs them as equals) also challenges articula-
tions of colonial discourse that claim the inherent superiority of Spanish. This
pair of quatrains serves as the chorus for the song. In addition to this chorus,
there are two verses to the song, one in Spanish and one in Maya. The Spanish
lyrics reaffirm the meaning of the Ajmak nawal, repeating the themes of giving
thanks and the healing power of performing the burning ceremony to ask for
forgiveness:
Que es el Amor sin sentir DOLOR What is love without pain

AJMAQ es el Pecado también es el Ajmak is sin but also forgiveness
PERDON
Un pecador con buen manejo de A sinner skilled with words
PALABRA
El humo es Abuelo sanador cuando The smoke is the ancestor, the healer when
HABLAS you speak
As with the two quatrains in the chorus, the Spanish lyrics are not a direct
translation from the Maya lyrics. The Mayan-language verse in ‘Ajmak’ is taken
directly from the words channeled by the group’s spiritual guide and contain
more symbolic and esoteric lyrics:
Ojer taq Te’ Ta’, saq kePAS Our ancestors, with white belts
Saq kijolom, saq keMETZ’ with white hair, with white eyelids,
Q’en taq alanxax, Saq taq ALANXAX Yellow citrus fruits, White citrus fruits,
Rex taq kotz’i’j, tikil pa li ULEW. Blue flowers planted in the earth
The lyrics again build on the pattern of complementary pairs (white hair/
white eyelids, yellow fruit/white fruit), even though the symbolism involved
would not be immediately apparent to most listeners. The more symbolic char-
acter of the lyrics indexes the origins of the verse as channeled words received
from the ancestors themselves and marks the lyrics as inherently spiritual. This
contrasts sharply to the Spanish verse in which comparatively obvious meanings
are paired with Western rhythmic and rhyming structure.
It might be argued that a song like ‘Ajmak’ fails to serve as anti-colonialist dis-
course because the symbolism in the lyrics is so symbolic and abstract that it is
devoid of any clear political meaning. As Way (2013: 18) suggests for Turkish pro-
test music, such abstraction may be an inherent part of popular music. Even so, an
analysis based solely on the content of Balam Ajpu’s lyrics would fail to recognize
the ways in which anti-colonial discourse is articulated across modes. In addition
to visual imagery, combinations of sampled elements and choice of musical instru-
ments, the modes involved include the basic internal structure of songs and the
rhythmic patterns found within the music. By rejecting Western musical traditions
and incorporating pre-Columbian elements into contemporary hip hop, Balam
Ajpu challenges dominant discourses that attempt to erase Maya musical tradi-
tions (and Maya culture more generally) from contemporary Guatemalan society.
Conclusion
The music of Balam Ajpu illustrates the ways in which music operates as multi-
modal discourse. The content of lyrics and the purpose of their songs are directly
linked to their political activism and efforts to promote Maya culture. The instru-
ments used and the sounds sampled in their music connect the musicians both
to the pre-Columbian Maya and to the natural environment of the Guatemalan
highlands. The musical structure of Balam Ajpu’s songs builds on traditional
Maya understandings of mathematics, geography and time. Alternations in
metre reflect pre-Columbian musical patterns while creating complementary
pairings between different rhythmic patterns.
Hegemonic discourse in Guatemala has long held that Mayan languages and
Maya culture have no place in the modern world. While the Ancient Maya have
been celebrated, the contemporary Maya have been repeatedly denigrated as
having no connection to their pre-Columbian ancestors. In their music, Balam
Ajpu challenges this colonial discourse through demonstrating that Maya cul-
ture (and Maya music in particular) has not only survived 500 years of oppres-
sion but is likely to flourish as we enter into the new baktun.
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10
Song, Sonic Metaphor, and Countercultural

Discourse in British Folk-Rock Recordings
Matthew Ord
Introduction
This chapter explores the contribution of sound recording techniques to the

communication of countercultural meanings in the British folk-rock move-
ment of the late 1960s and early 1970s. While discourse analysts have tended
to concentrate on verbal/textual communication and official forms of dis-
course, the recent turn to multimodal approaches has meant a greater attention
to entertainment media and the role of non-verbal modes, including music,
in the communication of cultural values (Way, 2015: 181). Discourses, Way
notes, ‘project certain values and ideas which contribute to the (re)production
of social life’, and music ‘can be shown to communicate ideas, attitudes and
identities, through cultural references and through specific meaning potentials’
(2015: 184). In this chapter I consider recorded songs as multimodal blends
which generate complex meanings through the interplay of textual, musi-
cal and production elements and suggest that record production, the creative
manipulation of recorded musical sounds, can be considered an active compo-
nent of discourses in which the values of groups are communicated, explored
and celebrated.
Recent work in critical discourse analysis (CDA) and musicology sug-
gests that sound recording can transform the semiotic potential of multi-
modal texts by shaping the material properties of sounds and constructing
multimodal metaphors (van Leeuwen, 1999, 2012; Zbikowski, 2002, 2009;
Forceville, 2009; Machin, 2010). This chapter considers sound recording as a
mode of discourse,1 combining techniques from CDA, conceptual metaphor
theory (CMT) and blending theory (BT) to explore the link between sound
202 Matthew Ord
production and countercultural values in the context of British folk-rock. The

folk-rock movement emerged at a transitional point in the performance of
folk music in Britain in which, I suggest, an anti-commercial recording aes-
thetic associated with the post-war folk revival was challenged by musicians
seeking to draw on the semiotic resources of the studio in their interpretations
of traditional song and align themselves with the oppositional discourse of
progressive rock. This chapter thus explores the uses of recording at a specific
moment in its evolution as a semiotic mode, by a particular community of
practice, and for the expression of extra-musical values linked to countercul-
tural discourse.
The controversial evolution of the recording mode
Van Leeuwen (2004: 26–27) notes that semiotic innovation often involves con-
troversy over the legitimacy of new practices, pointing out that the evolution of
the ‘self-effacing art’ of typography into a semiotic mode was initially resisted by
some practitioners as ‘anathema’ to the craft’s ‘true calling’ (Ibid.: 27). Similarly,
as sound recording developed beyond the mimetic into a powerful set of semi-
otic resources, its creative use gave rise to controversies related to discourses of
musical authenticity and critique of industrial mass-culture.
With the explosive development of recording technology and the record
industry after 1945, techniques such as multi-tracking, echo and reverb began
to open up rich seams of creative possibility for musicians, and allowed the
record producer to emerge as ‘an indispensable interpreter between the tech-
nical and artistic aspects of making records’ (Moorefield, 2005: 41). ‘Serious’
music critics, however, often equated the use of new studio techniques
such as echo with commercial gimmickry and cultural homogenization
(Zak, 2012). Technical innovation did not guarantee musically interesting
results: Middleton (1990: 85) argues that the experimentation of the late 1940s
and early 1950s was followed by the reestablishment of a ‘new symbiosis, rec-
ognisably related to the old dominant model’, while Zak (2010) notes that
studio production was closely associated with a new generation of recording
stars, often perceived as the puppets of Svengali-type producers adept at using
technology to mask a basic lack of substance. Perceptions of production as
a commercially motivated talent compensator fuelled fierce debates over the
legitimacy of approaches which moved beyond the mimetic representation of
live performance.
Song, Sonic Metaphor, and Countercultural Discourse 203
Folk into Folk-Rock
The folk revival’s valorization of unadorned performance and acoustic instru-

mentation has been seen as a reaction against the mass-produced sounds
emanating from major labels (MacKinnon, 1993), and revivalist folk record-
ings of the early 1960s typically downplayed evidence of technological media-
tion. By endeavouring to keep the art of traditional performance separate
from the supplementary craft of recording, revivalist producers asserted a
vision of authenticity and creative autonomy deliberately opposed to indus-
trial mass-culture.
A tangential offshoot of the revival, folk-rock began to emerge from inde-
pendent rock labels such as Island and Chrysalis at the end of the 1960s. Rock
music had by this time attained a countercultural status which was increasingly
associated with innovative approaches to studio sound production. Whiteley
(1990: 37) argues that countercultural discourse constructed music as ‘a sym-
bolic act of self-liberation and self-realisation in which reality and musical expe-
rience were fused’, and rock musicians were routinely treated as generational
spokespersons despite the comparative lack of political content in their lyrics.
Instead, the oppositional status of musical texts was located in sounds them-
selves, from Hendrix’s fuzz-laden guitar to the echoic spatiality of Pink Floyd.
‘Such was the power of rock music’, Bennett observes, ‘that it came to bespeak
notions of an alternative community that hippies believed could be experienced
and realized through the music itself ’ (2014: 18). Rock records were thought to
bear witness to and even to manifest an alternative community in sound, indi-
cating a shift in the perceived significance of music and sound in political life.
In their adoption of rock instrumentation and studio techniques, bands such
as Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span brought a countercultural
aesthetic to bear on the interpretation of traditional material. Excoriated by
traditionalists for abandoning the naturalist aesthetic of the early revival and
embracing what were seen as commercial production techniques,2 folk-rock
reflected the shift towards a countercultural politics of sound; its departure from
the revival’s aesthetic values was an indicator not so much of commercial intent
but of musicians’ desire to incorporate the new sonic palette into folk perfor-
mance practice. As fiddler Dave Swarbrick of leading folk-rock act Fairport
Convention put it:
You know, if you’re singing about a bloke having his head chopped off, a girl
fucking her brother and having a baby and the brother getting pissed off and
cutting her guts open and stamping on the baby and killing his sister . . .having
204 Matthew Ord
to work with a storyline like that with acoustic instruments wouldn’t be half as
powerful or potent, dramatically, as saying the same things electrically. Because
when you deal with violence. . .someone slashing with a sword, say, there are
sounds that exist electrically – with electric bass, say – that can very explicitly
suggest what the words are saying. (Swarbrick in Denselow, 1975: 140)
Music and metaphor theory
Swarbrick’s vivid evocation of the capacity of electronic sound to convey the

actions, events and images in traditional texts hints at the explanatory potential of
metaphor theory for understanding how recording can intervene in the construc-
tion of song narratives. In the sonic analogies that Swarbrick describes, metaphors
such as ‘volume is physical force’ are used to structure interpretations of musi-
cal sounds and extend the power of textual images. Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980)
CMT argues that abstract domains of experience such as music rely on processes
of cross-domain mapping, in which structure from a basic-level source domain
is mapped across onto a more abstract target domain. One example is the use of
spatial concepts to understand musical pitch, where an ‘up/down’ schema drawn
from the spatial domain is used to think and talk about musical notes as if they
occupied a position in physical space (Zbikowski, 2002). Cognitive metaphors
thus allow us to understand relatively abstract experiences in terms of more basic
ones. As Johnson and Larson (2003) argue, the conceptual structures that allow us
to understand the domain of music have embodied experience at their core.
Going further, recent work on musical metaphor suggests that musical
sounds not only enter into homologous relationships with other modes, but do
so in principled and culturally mediated ways. CMT is concerned with the kind
of stable, entrenched metaphorical relationships that support more abstract cog-
nition: the conceptualization of time in spatial terms, for example, is a very basic
mapping which supports a vast number of conceptual and linguistic activities,
as indicated by expressions such as ‘facing the future’ or ‘Christmas is coming
up fast’. Although these examples are based in universal cognitive processes, the
content of conceptual mappings is culturally specific. In English, Lakoff and
Johnson (1980: 4) note, it is conventional to use the domain of war to talk about
verbal debate, for example, ‘There’s a breach in your argument’ or ‘his position
was attacked and undermined’ (Figure 10.1).
Zbikowski notes that understanding musical pitch in terms of verticality
is a European phenomenon; other cultures use metaphors of size, age, or the
Target domain: ‘argument’

Source domain: ‘war’
Two speakers, intellectual
Two armies, defensive
positions, assertion/counter-
positions, attacking/defending,
assertion, facts, propositions,
weapons, strategy, victory,
acceptance, refutation of
defeat
argument
Figure 10.1. Cross-domain mapping for the metaphor ‘argument is war’
physical structure of natural phenomena (like waterfalls) to conceptualize

tonal relationships in spatial terms (2002: 67–68). Although these mappings
all share a basic underlying schema (‘notes are points along a continuum’)
their articulation is informed by the shared experiences and values of cultural
groups.
Identifying the cognitive metaphors that underlie discourses can reveal the
values and assumptions of their producers, and indicate how metaphors are used
strategically to shape others’ perceptions of social reality. Hart (2010: 153) for
example, shows how flood metaphors can be used to manipulate immigration
discourse in the interests of powerful groups. Zbikowski (2009) and Forceville
(2009) have argued that music and non-verbal sound can supply source domains
for multimodal metaphors involving music, image and/or text. Their work raises
new possibilities for understanding how recorded songs communicate social
meanings; if underlying cognitive metaphors can be identified in musical com-
positions, then perhaps record production can also be used to construct mean-
ings in a cohesive and observable way, reflecting producers’ values and shaping
perceptions of social reality.
Fauconnier and Turner’s (1998) conceptual blending theory (BT) allows
analysis of metaphorical constructions at a more local and specific level. While
it acknowledges the existence of CMT’s domains, BT is more concerned with
the temporary and novel conceptualizations that occur in ongoing processes of
representation and interpretation (Grady, Oakley and Coulson, 1999: 101). BT
posits the existence of ‘mental spaces’, ‘partial and temporary representational
structures which speakers construct when thinking or talking about a perceived,
imagined, past, present, or future situation’ (Ibid.: 102). These temporary spaces
build upon the basic cognitive metaphors identified by CMT, but map only
selected structure across in the course of an ongoing, pragmatic process.
206 Matthew Ord
Zbikowski (2002) shows how conceptual blending underpins the technique

of word-painting in music. In his example from a mass by Palestrina, the text
‘descendit de caelis’ is illustrated by a descending scalar passage in the music,
creating the blended entity of a physical descent that has the qualities of stately,
stepwise motion mapped across from the musical articulation (Ibid.: 63). The
entrenched metaphor ‘pitch is position in space’ supports a temporary meaning
which emerges in the blend of text, music and articulation.
The key aspect of conceptual blends is that they produce new emergent mean-
ings in a blended space; they are more than the sum of their parts. A melodic
descent can be conceived as motion in space because of the shared structure
of the two ‘input spaces’ (the content of the ‘generic space’) but its meaning in
the local interpretive context is the product of a blend which incorporates the
textual and musical inputs and the spatial, textural or timbral qualities of the
performance, generating new meanings which exceed those already present in
the input spaces.
Where CMT deals with a relatively stable system of underlying cultural meta-
phors, conceptual blending describes an ongoing process of interpretation in
which concepts are articulated into ‘short-term [constructs] informed by the
more general and more stable knowledge structures associated with a particu-
lar domain’ (Grady, Oakley and Coulson, 1999: 102). It thus allows for more
detailed discussion of the live processes of sense-making that we engage in when
composing, playing or listening to music. The following example uses blending
theory to consider recording’s contribution to emergent meanings in the multi-
modal context of recorded song.
Recording, meaning and metaphor
Patti Page’s ‘Confess’ (1947) has become a classic example of how recording began
to transform popular song after 1945.3 The song had already been recorded as
an upbeat duet by Buddy Clark and Doris Day.4 As the recording budget could
not stretch to a second vocalist, however, Page used the relatively new technique
of overdubbing to add the second part herself (Lacasse, 2000: 128). In her slow,
introspective reading the languid vocal is framed by a sparse piano, guitar and
bass accompaniment, as she plaintively urges her lover to admit his true feelings:
Confess,
(Confess, confess)
Why don’t you confess?

(Say yes, say yes)
I wish you’d reveal to me,
(Reveal to me)
The way that you feel.
(I wish you’d tell me the way that you feel)
In Page’s version, aspects of the recording process contribute significantly to

the meaning potential of the total recorded performance. The main vocal is
recorded dry and frontally positioned, while the second is positioned back in
the mix, as if it were an echo of the lead part, and is noticeably reverberant.
Although echo-chambers and reverb units were initially developed to mimic the
reflective properties of real spaces, Lacasse (2000) notes that the semiotic poten-
tial of reverb was recognized by film-makers and recordists as early as the 1930s.
Van Leeuwen (1999: 167) observes that reverberation can be used ‘to make some
sounds appear subjective and “interior”, almost as though heard from inside the
body’, and the relationship between the reverberant quality of the vocal and the
song’s textual structure supports such an interpretation here. The lines given to
the second, reverberant voice (shown in brackets) are shorter and more urgent
(‘say yes, say yes’) compared to those in the lead voice (which might be inter-
preted as representing Page’s outward social persona) which is more wistful, less
direct (‘I wish you’d reveal to me/ the way that you feel’). This, combined with
the fact that the second voice is clearly Page herself, and the lyrical concern with
feelings that remain unvoiced encourages the notion, as Lacasse (2000: 128) and
Doyle (2005: 145) both suggest, that the second part is Page’s inner voice, rising
to the surface with ‘an aching need to be heard’.
Where Clark and Day’s realist recording evoked an image of two lovers
poised together on the brink of a deeper intimacy, Page’s version uses echo and
overdubbing to suggest a lonelier and more introspective experience. We are less
sure of the reality of the feelings that Page demands that the other confess – is
she imagining them? The recording affords the listener an emotional intimacy
with the singer that is lacking from other versions (we seem to hear her inner-
most thoughts) while it denies her the kind of interpersonal intimacy that Clark
and Day’s duet version vividly portrays. In Page’s ‘Confess’, the production pro-
vides crucial material for aesthetic interpretation; the potential interpretation
of Page struggling with her own unexpressed feelings emerges multimodally in
the imaginative space conjured between the recording and the listener by the
combination of text, music and studio sound.
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BT can help describe this as an emergent meaning resulting from a blend of

two input spaces. When we listen to Page’s ‘Confess’ and hear her overdubbed
second vocal, we can make sense of the experience because of our capacity
to construct imaginative blends of structure from two or more spaces. Our
interpretations can also draw on existing cultural tropes (such as the notion
of an interior monologue, common, for example, in cinema) to construct a
blended mental space in which the second voice we hear on the recording is
Page’s inner voice, her conscience or soul. This emergent meaning feeds into
how we interpret the song as a whole. Page’s reading becomes a study of anxi-
ety, introspection and possibly unrequited love, rather than a celebration of
shared intimacy.
‘Confess’ drew on a preexisting cultural link between the echoic space of
recordings and the mind. This convention acquired new countercultural signifi-
cance in the 1960s with psychedelia. Where Page’s ‘Confess’ used overdubbing
and echo to suggest the voice of unconscious desire, the countercultural preoc-
cupation with consciousness led to the use of studio techniques to represent the
experiential quality of altered states (whether the result of psychedelic drug use
or of spiritual awakening) sonically. As Whiteley (1990: 38) notes, these tech-
niques quickly became indexical of countercultural identity through what she
calls ‘psychedelic coding’; in adopting sound as a means for exploring the psy-
chology of song characters, folk-rock musicians tacitly aligned themselves with
countercultural aesthetics and values.
The uses of production in folk-rock: ‘Boys of Bedlam’
When folk singer and guitarist Martin Carthy joined folk-rock outfit Steeleye
Span in 1971, he had already recorded a string of albums featuring his solo voice
and acoustic guitar, sometimes with fiddle accompaniment. In this new context,
he was able to draw upon the semiotic resources of a rock band line up and
the contemporary studio in his interpretations of traditional material. Whilst
recording the song ‘Boys of Bedlam’ (1971),5 he and joint lead-vocalist Maddy
Prior experimented with an unusual approach to recording their vocals:
[T]he idea was to make the voices sound odd. Well, nowadays you’d just put a
lot of nonsense and that bought stuff, but then we hadn’t that kind of thing you
see. So we sang in the back of a banjo. That’s why it’s got this strange vocal sound.
Martin said, ‘oh yes, this sounds great! Sounds like crazy lunatics’ (Prior quoted
in Sweers, 2005: 180).
In the song’s eighteenth-century text, a sequence of absurd yet ominous images

conveys a sense of lunacy and vague threat.6 The lyric is set to a recently com-
posed tune in a seventeenth-century style by revivalist band The Halliard which
strongly suggests an unspecified and exoticized past. The unorthodox mic posi-
tioning lends the vocals a highly unusual timbre, as if the singers’ voices were
distorted by an impure or obstructed signal. In the context of the lyric, this tech-
nique, by changing the frequency profile of the singers’ voices and altering and
obscuring their natural tone with a rough sonic patina, is able to stand for the
altered mental state of the song’s protagonists; it is, as Prior remarks, an audible
representation of lunacy.
Van Leeuwen (1999: 205) argues that the semiotic affordances of timbre are
rooted in what he calls ‘experiential meaning potential’, which arises from ‘our
experience of what we physically have to do to produce a particular sound’. Thus
perceived articulatory qualities of smoothness, roughness, laxness or tension
invoke interpretations based in our own experiences of our physical state when
producing these sounds: ‘The sound that results from tensing’ van Leewuen
suggests, ‘not only is tense, it also means tense – and makes tense’; and these
meaning potentials can be extended to other sources, machines, instruments,
and so on, which share the same timbral properties (1999: 131). Sound record-
ings can evoke experiential meaning by manipulating the perceived articula-
tory characteristics of sounds. The treatment given to the vocals in this track
accentuates qualities of nasality and roughness, creating a sense of tension and
rigidity which is further emphasized by the relatively small space assigned to
the two vocals within the stereo array. In the musical-textual space of the song,
these generalized embodied meanings of tension, rigidity, and roughness are
inflected by the lyrical references to madness to construct a sense of otherness
and threat.
Applying a CMT approach can add a further layer to this analysis by reveal-
ing the underlying conceptual metaphors which might structure such uses of
the medium. The implied proposition made in the song’s production could be
expressed verbally as ‘madness is obstructed signal’, framing ‘understanding’ in
terms of point-to-point communication. The basic conceptual metaphor at play
here – ‘understanding is hearing’ – underlies linguistic constructions such as
‘I hear you loud and clear’, or ‘you’re not hearing me’. As CMT requires that
we identify a source domain and a target domain, it could be argued that the
domain of communication, as cued by the unusual sound of the vocals, which
evoke the common cultural experience of a poor signal hampering understand-
ing (on the telephone or radio, perhaps) is used to construct madness in terms
210 Matthew Ord
Generic space
Sender-Receiver
Relationship;
Channel of
communication
Input 1
Timbral and spatial Input 2
characteristics; Textual images of
frequency profile of madness
vocals
Blended space
Madness as audibly
distorted signal
Figure 10.2. Conceptual integration network showing the blend of production and
musical-textual elements in ‘Boys of Bedlam’
of this metaphor of an obstructed or altered signal. This would constitute a mul-

timodal metaphor whose source domain is primarily cued by the sonic medium,
and whose target domain is located in the textual mode.
Using blending theory, we could argue that the mental spaces set up by the
textual and production aspects combine in a blended space in which emergent
meanings are produced. This relationship can be expressed as a ‘conceptual inte-
gration network’ (Figure 10.2) which has at least four spaces (Fauconnier and
Turner, 1998; Zbikowski, 2002).7 The input spaces feed into the blended space,
but there is also a fourth ‘generic’ space which contains the shared invariant
structure recruited from the input spaces, in this case, a sender and receiver
and a signal passing between them. The salient aspects of each input space (the
sound of the vocals, the image of madness in the text) create a temporary blend
in which madness has an audible (vocal) aspect (Figure 10.2).
CMT and BT both hold that identifying underlying metaphors in representa-
tions can reveal tacit values. What then does this example tell us about the song’s
underlying values or cultural assumptions? The effect of this treatment of the
vocal has implications for how the relationship between the song’s persona and
the listener is constructed: the effect of the vocal sound in the introduction is
‘othering’, distancing us from the singers by virtue of their vocal strangeness and
the notion that this reflects an altered mental state. We do not identify directly
with the singers, but are threatened by their essential difference from us. In the
lyrical context suggested by the title’s reference to Bedlam, we are placed in a
voyeuristic relationship to the song’s mad protagonists. The song’s production
helps establish a subject-position in which we see the Bedlamites as other.
Later in the song, the mix changes, and the vocal sound becomes much
clearer, with Prior dropping out and Carthy taking the lead vocal. The vocal
sound image is larger and more prominent in the mix, and articulated more
clearly. It is a mix that, aside from the slightly unusual instrumentation, is much
closer to a conventional rock configuration, with a centrally positioned vocal
and other instruments balanced across the stereo array – the arrangement that
Dockwray and Moore (2010) call the ‘diagonal mix’.8 If a sound, van Leeuwen
(1999: 23) argues, ‘is positioned as Figure, it is thereby treated as the most
important sound, the sound which the listener must identify with, and /or react
to and/or act upon’. The positioning of Carthy’s vocal as figure in the second mix
enacts a more intimate social distance, suggesting that we identify with the song
persona more closely, that we are less estranged from it. The song’s production
thus constructs two distinct social distances, suggesting that madness whether
experienced as sense or nonsense is a function of perspective. Structural aspects
of the mix create the outline of a narrative, an audible shift in perspective that
feeds into the text and allows new potential meanings to emerge.
Here, as in ‘Confess’, production is used to tell us about the inner state of the
song’s personae and how we should respond to them, managing the perceived
social distance between protagonist and listener. The production choices not
only reflect entrenched cultural metaphors that organize a range of verbal, tex-
tual and sonic practices, but speak to cultural values, desires and assumptions;
in ‘Confess’, these have to do not only with conventional ways of mapping the
mind and the internal structures of thought, but with the social implications
of the relationship between inner desire and outward behaviour; in ‘Bedlam
Boys’, they relate to the nature of madness as a cultural construct. In both cases a
212 Matthew Ord
meaning not present in the lyric is constructed multimodally, using production

techniques to elaborate on the textual images.
Recorded space as psychic space: ‘Pentangling’
Other examples can be found of aspects of recording technique helping fill out
a subject’s inner life. In Pentangle’s track ‘Pentangling’ a widening of the stereo
field using panning and echo is used to suggest a corresponding broadening of
the subject’s mental horizons.9 At the beginning of the track, the stereo space of
the recording is comparatively narrow, dry and depthless, an effect achieved by
close mic positioning, a centrally clustered mix and avoidance of echo. At the
point of transition to the next section of the piece (0.32s), however, the stereo
field suddenly becomes wider and deeper, creating an aural effect which is the
equivalent of an adjustment of a camera lens’ aperture. This is produced by
using panning to increase the width of the stereo image while a simultaneous
increase in the level of echo applied to the track creates a sense of enhanced
depth. As a result, the three-dimensional space of the recording suddenly
seems to ‘open up’.
Applying a CMT/blending approach, I suggest that production techniques are
used here to construct a multimodal metaphor in which space (specifically, the
stereo field) acts as source domain for understanding the evolving mental state
of the song’s subject. There are three main elements in the construction of this
metaphor: First, and most importantly, the use of panning and echo allows the
space of the recording to supply the source domain for the metaphor. Second,
the text establishes an introspective orientation and specifies the subject of the
song through a series of impressionistic images. Third, stylistic changes in the
musical domain further elaborate the nature of the transition in the subjective
state of the song’s protagonist (specifically, a transition from introspection and
stiffness to a more relaxed outward orientation); this is done through a stylistic
shift from a relatively tensely articulated folk-baroque style to a lighter, looser,
jazz-inflected feel in the song’s second section.
In the first section of the lyric, passive verb processes suggest a trance-like
state, with verbs like ‘slip’ and ‘float’ evoking smooth, gentle movement, and the
casting off of a familiar viewpoint for a transformed perceptual orientation:
The swimmer slips below the surface
Floating slowly in clear water
Drinking sunlight through the fisheye

See the moon broken
A subject for the song (‘the swimmer’) is identified, described in the third per-
son before the final line of the verse shifts grammatically from third- to second-
person imperative, with the phrase ‘see the moon broken’. This line immediately
precedes the transition to the song’s second section and the shift from a flat,
anechoic mix to a more spacious configuration. This section’s lyric invokes a
more complex field of interaction for the song’s subject, one far richer in inter-
actional possibility:
Moonflowers bright with people walking
Drinking wine and eating fruit and laughing
Heart and soul life passes one to another
Death alone walks with no one to converse with
Grammatical aspects of the lyric, and the stylistic contrast between the sections
of the song, outline a narrative of perceptual change, but production also plays a
crucial role; it is primarily through the use of stereo panning that the metaphor
of an ‘expanded’ consciousness comes to frame the meaning, elaborating on and
clarifying the shift from stiffness and constraint to relaxation, as one that results
from a change in mental orientation on the part of the subject (Figure 10.3).
Image schemata
The condition of possibility for the ‘stereo space = mind’ metaphor is the shared
structure that underlies conventional thinking about both stereo recordings and
the mind as physical containers. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) posit the existence of
preconceptual ‘image schemata’, which are rooted in primary experience and link
the sensorimotor level to abstract thought and language. The ‘container’ schema
allows us to cognize relationships such as ‘inside/outside’ and to make inferences
such as ‘If ‘A is in B, and X is in A, then X is in B’ (Ibid.: 31). The minimal structure
of the container schema includes ‘an inside, an outside and a boundary’ (Ibid.: 32).
Image schemata, Lakoff and Jonson argue, are cross-modal: they can be imposed
upon a visual or an auditory scene (marking out a sub-field within it), ‘as when we
conceptually separate out one part of a piece of music from another’ (Ibid.: 32).
In recorded song, use of the container schema is observable in the way
the stereo field is conceived as a four-dimensional space with lateral, vertical,
214 Matthew Ord
Generic space
Transition between
states of being
Input 1
Text images passive
Input 2
to active;
Change in spatial
articulation tense to
characteristics of mix;
lax; harmony static
small, depthless to
to moving; melodic
spacious, echoic
contour narrow to
wide
Blended space
Change in mix
configuration is
change in psychic
state
Figure 10.3. Conceptual integration network showing the blend of musical-textual

elements and production techniques in ‘Pentangling’
temporal and axial dimensions and an audible boundary (the space between
the speakers) (Dockwray and Moore, 2010; Moylan, 2012).10 This space can be
mentally divided into smaller sub-fields, with sound sources distributed across
them. The shared structure of a container schema is what allows for the tempo-
rary mapping of stereo space onto psychic space in the previous example, sug-
gesting a broadening of the perceptual field of the song’s subject. The notion of
the mind as a container for thoughts, concepts, impressions and experiences is
one which underlies many linguistic expressions relating to thought. The song’s
use of panning thus relates to popular ways of thinking and talking about men-
tal states as qualities of spaces, or objects within spaces, in phrases like ‘keeping
an open mind’, ‘in the back of my mind’ or a ‘head full of ideas’. The underlying
preconceptual framework of the container schema underpins the suggestion

that in the transition between musical sections, we should hear an expansion of
the subject’s field of consciousness.
Similar approaches can be observed in other countercultural song-texts such
as The Small Faces’ ‘Itchycoo Park’ (1967) and The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields
Forever’ (1967) which use changes in the spatial or timbral characteristics of
the recorded space to signal altered perception. Moreover, through the textual
imagery and the stylistic shift in the music, in this track, psychic exploration and
consciousness expansion are represented as desirable. Again, metaphor theory
grounds the uses of production in shared, cross-modal conceptual structures,
linking the aesthetics of production to group ideologies.
Production and subject-position: ‘The Murder

of Maria Marten’
The Albion Country Band’s ‘The Murder of Maria Marten’ (1971)11 also uses
multimodal metaphor to elaborate the inner experience of the song’s persona.
Like the previous examples, it makes use of tape editing to splice together differ-
ent mix configurations and atmospheres. Here, however, this technique is used
to set up the metaphor ‘different mixes are points in narrative time’. The filmic
quality of the piece, with its audible ‘scene changes’ reflected a conscious strategy
on the part of the band’s bassist, Ashley Hutchings:
It was my idea to cut it up, to cut up the song so that it doesn’t start at the begin-
ning and end with him being hung, it takes the action from the middle – it’s
like a movie. That song at the time was unique because it treated the song like
a film with flashbacks. (Ashley Hutchings, fieldwork interview by the author,
Newcastle, July 2014)
The track is based on a nineteenth-century broadside in the form of a last con-

fession by the murderer William Corder who was executed for the murder in
1828.12 Hutchings reordered the ballad’s original verse sequence for the record-
ing, beginning the song at the moment when Corder arranges to meet Marten
at the Red Barn, the scene of the killing. At this point, the protagonist is speak-
ing to his prospective victim in the future conditional tense, the murder of the
title has yet to take place and we are in the middle of a story already unfolding:
If you meet me at the Red Barn

As sure as I have life
216 Matthew Ord
I will take you to Ipswich town

And there make you my wife
In order to convey this sense of our entering at a crucial moment in the narra-
tive, the track fades in to reveal a temporal sequence already in motion; the song,
effectively, has no beginning. The first section recounts Corder’s preparation for
the murder itself before a cross-fade into the second mix takes us straight to
the execution scene and the killer’s warning from the gallows. With this dra-
matic change in the instrumentation and the vocal quality, which becomes
highly echoic, the recording effects a quasi-cinematic scene change allowing us
to switch between two different points in narrative time. After two verses, we
are returned to the unfolding present of the ballad and Corder’s first-person
narrative:
I went unto her father’s house

The 18th day of May
And said ‘my dear Maria
We will fix our wedding day’
The narrative continues for several verses, recounting the murder itself, the
appearance of Maria’s ghost to her mother in a dream, the discovery of the
girl’s body by her father and his confrontation of Corder with the corpse at the
trial. The song then ends up once more at the gallows, and Corder’s appeal to
the crowd:
So all young men that do pass by
With pity look on me
For murdering of that young girl
I was hung upon a tree
The recording then concludes with the sound of a horse-drawn wagon (intended,
Hutchings says, to represent the executioner’s cart) crossing the stereo field from
left to right, before a final fade out (fieldwork interview by the author, July 2014).
The track uses instrumentation and mix characteristics to locate the action
at different points in time. The unfolding present of the main action of the
ballad is denoted by full rock-band instrumentation (two vocals, two electric
guitars, electric bass, kit and violin) and an overall mix which is comparatively
dry and present and uses a conventional ‘diagonal’ configuration. The second
point in narrative time is represented by a mix in which a highly echoic female
vocal is accompanied by a droning hurdy-gurdy, also treated with reverb. This
section is harmonically and rhythmically static and characterized by a sense
of stasis and entropy, contrasting with the ‘staggering’ irregular metre of the
previous section.
In the context of the narrative, this sparse, echoic mix accompanies the verses
in which the song’s main character stands awaiting execution and issuing a
warning from the gallows to the gathered spectators. Machin (2010: 125) refers
to the cultural-historical connotations of reverb, linking it to spaces of authority,
even the ‘voice of God’, and to isolation and loneliness. In this case, I argue, the
use of reverb accomplishes a number of discursive effects; first, it evokes cultural
references signalling, as Machin suggests, a sense of loneliness and exposure,
and encouraging us to identify with the emotional trajectory of the song’s anti-
hero; second, it augments the song’s narrative rhythm by its difference from the
song’s other mix configuration; and third, it smooths the vocal timbre, contrib-
uting to its lax and breathy quality, and the low-affect, entropic mood of the
performance.
The music/sound discourse in the Albion Band’s reading of ‘Maria Marten’
(1971) both amplifies and exceeds aspects of the textual structure. The character-
istic switching between tenses, times, and from first to third person in the ballad
text itself provides a frame for interpreting certain musical and textural features
of the recording, and the two contrasting mixes allow us to move between two
different times within the narrative. But the blend of textual and musical/tex-
tural spaces allows for significant elaboration on the text-image, and meanings
are produced multimodally that cannot be reduced to meanings inherent in any
of the modes taken individually.
Conceptual blending can again help to explain how these meanings emerge
through the interaction of music, text and sound. A blend (Figure 10.4) between
aspects of the textual structure – its switching between different tenses, view-
points and times – and the musical structure constructs a sense of the music’s
representing different times and places. The music exemplifies a meaning that
seems to reside in the text itself; but there is also a remainder that allows fur-
ther elaborated meanings to emerge in the song’s blended space. The repetitive
rhythmic character of the arrangement in mix 1 could be heard as mechanistic;
one verse follows the next in quick succession, the vocal seeming to be pushed
forward by the ensemble, which could suggest a determinist reading of the
song’s narrative. Coupled with singer Shirley Collins’s delivery (breathy, low-
affect), a sense of passivity or even automatism could be read into the song at
this point, a sense that Corder, rather than an autonomous actor, is caught up
in events that are unfolding outside of his control. In mix 2, which accompanies
the song’s ‘gallows scene’, the slower tempo (combined with a more rubato feel),
218 Matthew Ord
Generic space
Division of
narrative and mix
into sections
Input 1 Input 2
Temporal structure Mix 1 (during) and 2
of narrative: (after); rhythmic,
'during' and 'after' timbral and
sections articulatory properties
Blended space
A 'staggering'
forwardly-moving
main section;
entropic, low-energy
final scene
Figure 10.4. Conceptual integration network showing the blend of musical-textual

and production elements in ‘The Murder of Maria Marten’
the static harmony, the smoothing out of articulation with echo, and the low-
energy of Collins’s vocal combine to create a sense of entropy, as if the narrator
has reached a point of termination, no longer driven along by the force of events
and lacking the energy to continue.
Hutchings points out that in its broadside form, ‘The Murder of Maria
Marten’ was sensationalist tabloid fodder, ‘the equivalent of a whole month of
front page stories in The Sun’ (fieldwork interview by author, July 2014). Where
previous readings of the tale (such as Tod Slaughter’s portrayal of Corder in the
somewhat overheated film version of 1935) revel in its lurid aspects,13 the Albion
Country Band’s recording, while retaining the language of the original ballad
text, adds a layer of interpretation that moves the piece beyond pure melodrama
and affords a more nuanced perspective, one which identifies more strongly, if
not sympathetically with the killer, rather than with the victim.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have argued that within the multimodal context of recorded
song, recording constitutes a powerful set of resources for the construction of
textual and social meanings. The example of folk-rock in the late 1960s and
early 1970s demonstrates how studio techniques such as echo, reverb and multi-
tracking were used to reinterpret traditional ballad texts and to construct coun-
tercultural values and identities. Studio recording was exploited as a semiotic
mode, generating interpretive affordances that exceeded the textual or musical
components of traditional song-texts.
The work of multimodal discourse analysts such as van Leeuwen, Machin,
and Forceville provides a theoretical toolkit which can be usefully augmented
by theories of conceptual metaphor and cross-domain mapping as advanced by
Lakoff and Johnson. By grounding the meaning potential of the sonic aspects of
production in embodied and cultural experience, metaphor theory helps to clar-
ify how recorded songs establish countercultural subject-positions and afford
experiences of group identity and shared values. Analysing the way recordings
are made to sound as well as their musical and textual elements, I suggest, can
offer an insight into historical values and attitudes, as well as the felt resonances
between sound and political meaning in contemporary musical practice.
Notes
1 A mode is considered here as ‘a set of socially and culturally shaped resources for
making meaning’ (Mavers and Gibson, 2012).
2 For discussions of the negative response to folk-rock among traditionalists on the
folk scene see Watson (1983), Sweers (2005) and Burns (2012).
3 See references to the record in Lacasse (2000: 127), Doyle (2005: 30, 144) and
Moore (2012: 130).
4 YouTube version available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC_X9lYfXjo>
[accessed 7 April 2016].
5 YouTube version available at <https://youtu.be/o8VD8tx3l_w?list=RDo8VD8tx3l_
w> [accessed 15 March 2016].
220 Matthew Ord
6 The song, also known as ‘Mad Maudlin’ (Roud No. V16366) certainly predates
Thomas D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy (1728), its earliest appearance in a
printed collection.
7 The concept is outlined in Fauconnier and Turner (1998). The format for diagrams
is adapted from that used by Zbikowski (2002).
8 The ‘diagonal mix’ refers to the now standard configuration in stereo rock
recordings which places guitars left and right, vocals forward and rhythm section
instruments (bass and drums) at the back of the mix.
9 YouTube version available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PyPj9W0xyE>
[accessed 15 March 2016].
10 Dockwray and Moore’s ‘sound-box’ uses this notion of the recording space as a
container capable of being subdivided into smaller spaces as a hermeneutic device.
Dockwray and Moore (2010: 181–197).
11 YouTube version available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBVYotyxSdU>
[accessed 15 March 2015].
12 The broadside sold over a million copies, became the inspiration for a series of
dramatic retellings, a film of 1935 and a song by Tom Waits.
13 Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn, directed by Milton Rosmer,
performed by Tod Slaughter and Eric Portman, 1935, film.
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Index
TABLES AND FIGURES IN BOLD
33 Revolutions per Minute 96 ‘Bad’ 164–9

8jin (Bombo Records) 164, 169–73 baktun 190
A Place called England 81 Balam Ajpu 179
anti-colonial music 193–4
action, and music 25 Casa Ahau Escuela de Hip Hop 191
Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) 95 ceremonial fire 192
censorship by 100–1 CD 192
music policies 100–1 clothing 192
adjectives, for analyses of music 25 and hip hop 189–91
advertising 125 lyrics 190–1
‘Ajmak’ 193–7 sounds 193
AKP, see Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) Balasz, Bela 124
Albion Country Band 215–19 ‘bandrol’ 100
alogogenic sign system 14 banjo 38–41
ambient music 119 Beatles, The 215
ambiguity, of musical sound 3–4, 13–15, 52 Bebe 164–9
Amnesty International 164 Beckermann, Joel 128–9
analysis, of sounds, lyrics and Blackshirt 75
images 99–100 blending theory (BT) 14, 201, 205–6
‘angrygirl92’ 82 ‘Confess’ (1947) 206–8
anti-establishment discourses 4, 96–7, 102, Böda Camping 21
104, 106–9, 112–115 opening sequence 27–9
articulation, meaning potentials of 35–6 Boden, Jon 81–2
AT&T sonic logo 128–9 ‘Born Free’ (2010) 96
audiences, 22, 84, 99, 166–8, 170, 174 ‘Boys of Bedlam’ (1970) 208–12
prejudices of 62–3 madness as cultural construct 211
see also listeners Bragg, Billy 86
Australian Broadcasting Corporation breathiness 123–4
(ABC), signature tune 126–8 British National Party (BNP) 81
authenticity 96, 102–4 British Union of Fascists 9, 75, 87–9
first-person authenticity 97, 103, Brutal Attack 76
107, 113
folk 97 C. S. Way, Lyndon 1
hip hop 5, 97 Cabaret 82–5, 90
indie rock 5, 97 calendar round 190
and pop 4–5 call and response 145, 147
rock 96–7 sonic logo 127
second-person authenticity 97, 103–4, ‘call to attention’
105, 107 sonic logo 127
third-person authenticity 97 Cameron, David 63
224 Index
Carthy, Martin 208 diegetic music 12, 36

Casa Ahau Escuela de Hip Hop 191 Dillane, Aileen 47
Castrol Oil 123 Discourse Space Theory (DST) 163
CDA, see Critical Discourse discourse, music as form of 3, 99
Analysis (CDA) discourses, meaning 5, 24
censorship 98, 100–1, 114 documentary film 36–7
character motif 33–5 Doğan, Nihat 100
Clapton, Eric 97 domestic violence
classical music 2, 26, 31, 121, 131 awareness campaigns 161–2
clause relations 37, 42 ‘El final del cuento de hadas’ see as main
Collins, Shirley 217 heading
commercials 126, 128, 131, 135 ‘Malo’ see as main heading
beer 32, 137 Domingo Antonio Edjang Moreno,
see also jingles, advertising see El Chojin
communicative uses of music in film 25–7 Donaldson, Ian Stuart 82–5
‘conceptual integration network’ 210–11 ‘donut’ advertising jingles 138
conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) 14, Dr. Nativo 189
201, 204–6, 209, 211–12, 215 DST, see Discourse Space Theory (DST)
‘Confess’ (1947) 206–8 Dylan, Bob 96
Conventional Wisdom (2000) 56
country blues music 97 Ebb, Fred 82–5
cover versions 78, 82–5 echo 207–8
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 1 El Chojin 164, 169–73
defined 6 ‘El final del cuento de hadas’ 164, 169–73
and discourse 5–6 gender stereotypes 169, 172–3
and Multimodal Critical Discourse lyrics 170
Studies (MCDS) 7, 24 multi-modality 170
political stance of 6 video 170–1
cross-domain mapping 3, 14, 204–5 electronic sound 124
Culture, Class, Distinction (2009) 55 and traditional texts 203–4
‘emotive connotations’ 49
‘Dans Et’ 98 ‘End of the fairy tale, The’ 164, 169–73
images 104–9 Eno, Brian 119
indie rock band 98, 102–4, 107–9, Windows logo 119, 128–9, 132
112–114 entrainment 141, 151
instrumental melody 110–111 Eriksson, Göran 21
lyrics 101–4, 114–115 Esen, Aydın 100
music 109–113 ethnomusicology 73
vocal pitch 111–12 ‘experiential meaning potential’ 209
‘Die Fahne Hoch’ 85–9
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Fairport Convention 203–4
against Women (1993) 161 fan tribute recordings 78
decontextualization 77 fascist movements 9
degenerate art 74 fascist music 74–6
Dentaguard 121 and Skinhead subculture 75
Dev 98, 100, 102–3, 107–8, 112–14 ‘feeling’, lexical trope of 55–6
‘DEV- GENÇ 98 Feminine Endings 56
‘DEV- LİS’ 98 Filardo-Llamas, Laura 159
Devereux, Eoin 47 ‘Finality’ 87–9
‘diagonal mix’ 211 ‘Folk Against Fascism’ 82
Index 225
‘Folkhemmet’ 23, 29 intertextuality 77

folk song 35, 73 sonic logos 126
authenticity 97 ‘Itchycoo Park’ (1967) 215
into folk-rock 203–8
folk-rock 203–8 jazz 35
Fox 55–6 jingles
Francoism, and music 74 advertising 125
Frith 48 ‘donut’ 138
emotive communication 149–51
gay 4, 52, 83 entrainment 141, 151
Gencebay, Orhan 100 ‘Lowenbrau’ 137, 138–9
gender, and music 56–8 ‘Mr Clean’ 137–8, 140–6
Germany 75, 82–5 repetition of words in 140, 142
NSDAP 9 standard type 138
Gezi Park protests 95 Jordan, Colin 76
analysis 98–100 Jun Winaq Rajawal Q’í 193–4
data 98 Justice and Development Party 95
protesters 104–8
Goebbels, Joseph 75 Kander, John 82–5
Guatemalan Civil War (1960–96) Klansmen, The 83
179, 187 Knightley, Steve 81
‘Hail the New Dawn’ 87–9 Labour governments 51

Hendrix, Jimmy 203 ladinos 180
‘Here Lies a Soldier’ 81 language
‘heterophony’ 125 conjoining with melody 12
‘high art’ 50 and music 11–13
hip hop 5, 186–7, 189–91 ‘leitmotif ’ 33–5
authenticity 97 ‘Lowenbrau’ jingle 137, 138–9, 142–4
Holiday, Billie 96 aspect of time 148
Holocaust 75 lyrics 138–9, 149
‘homophony’ 125, 127 melody 146–8
homosexuality 4, 52, 83 participants represented through
‘Horst Wessel Lied, The’ 85–9 voice 146
Hutchings, Ashley 215 vocal style 151–2
listeners
ideational metafunction, as component of focus on different aspects of song 49
communication 144 meaning in mind of 2, 4, 49, 97,
ideological realignment 82–5 99, 150–1
Ian Stuart Donaldson 82–5 see also audience
‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ 82–5 Lloyds TSB Bank, sonic logo 126
image schemata 213–15 loudness 122–3
images Lynn, Elgar 81
analysis of 99 Lynn, Vera 81
‘Dans Et’ 101–4 lyrics 4, 48
İnce, Kamran 100 analysis 99
indie rock 5 creating classed subject through
authenticity 97 53–4
Gezi Park protests 104–8 ‘Dans Et’ 101–4
INTEL sonic logo 129–30 hip hop authenticity 97
226 Index
M.I.A. 96 mestizo identity 180

Machin, David 21 metaphor theory 14, 201, 204–6, 209,
‘Majestic Fanfare’ 127, 128 211–12, 215, 217
‘Malo’ 164–9 cognitive 205
image 165–6 and pitch 204–5
lyrics 164–5, 167 militaristic hymns 121
multi-modality 167–8 mind, internal states of 37–42
participants modernism 2
discourse strategies used to ‘monophony’ 124–5
construct 166 Moore, Allan 3
textual representation of 167 Moral Underclass Discourse 50, 63
use of negation 168–9 Morrissey 10
Man Made Music 128–9 as raconteur of marginalized 47–9, 51–2
march-music 33–6, 86–9 sexual ambiguity 57–8
‘Marching Song, The’ 87–9 motif, musical 33–5
María Nieves Rebolledo Vila, ‘Mr Clean’ jingle 137–8, 140–2
see Bebe aspect of time 148
marimba 184–6 lyrics 137–8, 148–9
Maya 179 melody of 145–6, 147
denial of cultural continuity 180 participants of 144–6
denigration of 179–85, 184–5 vocal style 151
Rab’inal Achi 182–4 Mullen, Kate 105
Tz’utujil folk songs 183 Müller-Blattau, Josef 86
verbal art Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies
poetic parallelism in 183–4 (MCDS) 7, 23–4
women 181 and Critical Discourse Analysis
Maya Movement 179, 187–9 (CDA) 7
Maya music Multimodal Discourse (2001) 7
archaeological records 182 multimodal synecdoche 10, 138
dancing 186 ‘Murder of Maria Marten, The’
denigration with appropriation 184–5 (1971) 215–19
hip hop 186–7, 189 Murray, Charles 50
Kab’awil 186 Music for Pleasure 48
marimba 184–6 music stopping, technique of 36
Popol Wuj 183–4 music
Rab’inal Achi 182–4, 185 and action 25
Sobrevivencia 187 adjectives for analyses of 25
Tz’utu Baktun Kan 186 feminization as art form 56
McClary, Susan 56–7 and gender 56–8
MCDS, see Multimodal Critical Discourse musical prosody 147
Studies (MCDS)
MChe 189 national anthems 32
meaning potentials 136 ‘nationalbildung’, concept of 74
meaning, musical 2 National Front (NF) 75–6
Mediterranean Model 101 songbook 79–80
melodies, and sonic logos 120–1 textual appropriation of British National
‘Men of Harlech’ 80 Anthem 79
‘mental space’, notion of 163 National-Socialism 76
mestizaje 180 Nazi Musicology 75
Index 227
Nazism 82–5 Popol Wuj 183–4

‘The Horst Wessel Lied’ 85–9 Popol Wuj 190
‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ 82–5 popular music, see pop
‘New Musicology’ 2 ‘positional implications’ 49
NF, see National Front (NF) ‘positional values’ 49
Nineteen Eight-Four (2003[1949]) 54–5 poverty, ‘moral’ sources of 50
Nokia message alert 10 power abuse, role of music in 73–4
nondiegetic music 12 Power, Martin J. 47
presentation styles 144
Oi 76 Prior, Maddy 208
opera 36 protest songs, meaning 96
Ord, Matthew 201 ‘psychedelic coding’ 208
Organic Law 1/2004 161 punk 76
Organic Law 14/1999 161
Organic Law 27/2003 161 ‘quotation’, musical, see interpolation
Orwell, George 54–5
‘othering’ effect, of vocal sound 211 Rab’inal Achi 182–4, 185
overlexicalization 140 racism 75–6
Raise the Flag 85–9
Pa’fueratelarañas (EMI Music) 164 Randall, E.D. 87–9
panning 214 Rangers football fans, ‘Rule Britannia’ 79
pasodoble music 37–42 rave music 4
Pat Boy 189 Reading Images (1996) 7
Patti Page 206–7 ‘re-contextualization of social practice’ 24
Pentangle 203 recontextualization 77–89
‘Pentangling’ 212–13 cover versions 78, 82–5
performance modes 144 ideological realignments 82–5
phrasing 35 interpolation 85–9
pieza 185 of social practice 24
Pink Floyd 203 textual appropriation 79–82
pitch 31, 36, 38, 41 British National Anthem 79
level 122 National Front (NF) 79–80
meaning potential of 32 opposition of 81–2
in sonic logos 120–1 ‘Rule Britannia’ 79
pitch, terms of metaphors 204–5 recording mode, controversial
police evolution of 202
discourse of negativity towards 101–4 Red Skins’, The 96
as robots 110 Reich Culture Chamber 75
politicized music Reichskulturkammer (RKK) 75
folk 73 relativism 2
rock 72–3 repetition of words, in advertising jingles
polka 137, 140, 146–7, 153 140, 142
‘polyphony’ 125 reverb 207–8, 216–17
polyrhythmic music 32 ‘rhetorical connotations’ 49
pop 3–4 rhythms 27–8, 29–30
and authenticity 4–5 even 27, 29–30
counterculturalism 4 fast 27–8, 29–30
political power of 4 slow 27–8, 29–30
pop song 49 uneven 27, 29–30
228 Index
Richardson, John E. 71 group identity 124–6

ridicule, of working-class people heraldic function 120–1
Böda Camping 21, 23, 29, 37–42 identity function 120–4
‘Slum Mums’ 53–64 INTEL 129–30
‘Rock Against Communism’ 76 intertextuality 126
rock music 32–3, 203 loudness 122–3
authenticity of 4–5, 96–7 news signature tunes 126–8
indie 5 Vivazzi 130–1
politicized 72–3 Windows 95, 119, 128–9
rock’n’roll music 33 soul music 31, 35
‘Roots’ 81 sounds
roughness 123–4 analysis of 99–100
‘Rule Britannia’ 79 domains of 9
meaning potential of 32–3
Saga 82–5 musical 2
‘Sash my Father Wore, The’ 80–1 Spain 74
‘Scarborough Fair’ 81 Speech, Music, Sound (1999) 9
‘Snow Fell, The’ 82 Spiers, John 81
‘Strange Fruit’ (1939) 96 standard type advertising jingles 138
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (1967) 215 Star of David 89
scripts 24 Steeleye Span 203, 208
Sidmouth Folk Festival 82 summer, Swedish 31
signature tunes, news 126–8 Sungur, Ceyda 105–6
silence, sequences of 36–7 Swarbrick, Dave 203–4
single mothers, negative stereotypes 51 Sweden, shift away from welfare 23
Skinhead subculture 75
Skrewdriver 76, 82–5, 87–9, 90 Tecún Umán 181–2
Slaje’m K’op 189 television, reality show, 22–3
slum mum 51, 53, 57–8, 62 Böda Camping
‘Slum Mums’ 47–62 tension, vocal 122
harmonic outline of 59–60 tension-release, principle of 142
illogical verse and chorus 60–2 text
listeners’ uncomfortable sonic compositional choices in 5
world 60 concept of 136
misogynistic lyrics 53–4 textual appropriation 79–82
‘slum mum’ in 62 British National Anthem 79
Small Faces, The 215 National Front (NF) 79–80
Sobrevivencia 187 opposition of 81–2
social conflict, role of music in 73–4 ‘Rule Britannia’ 79
social domination 125 textual metafunction, as component of
social pluralism 125 communication 139–40
social semiotics 8 Text-World Theory (TWT) 160
social unison 124–5 therapy, music as 71–2
Sociology of Rock, The (1978) 71 Times, The, sonic logo 125
son 185 ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ 82–5
Song Means ( 2013 ) 3 Türkiye Radyo Televizyon (TRT) 100–1
sonic logos 119 TWT, see Text-World Theory (TWT)
AT&T 128–9 Tz’utu Baktun Kan 186
call-response patterns 125–6 Tz’utujil folk songs 183–4
Index 229
Tz’utujil Maya 183 White power music 74

Tzotzil Maya 189 Whitely, Sheila 57
Windows 95 operating system, startup
Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) 81 sound of 119, 128–9, 132
‘under-coded’ songs 3 Wingstedt, Johnny 135
‘Underclass’, concept of 50 Wiseman, Derick 36–7
United Nations 161 working-class people
‘hazard’ to moral and social order 50–1
van Leeuwen, Theo 119 positive media representations fostered
Velásquez Nimatuj, Irma Alicia 181 by authorities 23
vibrato 123 ridicule of
videos 99 Böda Camping 21, 23, 29,
Vivazzi, sonic logo 130–1 37–42, 53–64
vocal tension 122 women’s bodies 56–8
welfare dependency, ‘moral hazard’ of 50 YouTube 78, 79, 82, 94

welfare, shift away from Yukatek Maya 189
Sweden 21, 23
United Kingdom 47–8, 63–4 Zbikowski, Lawrence 14
Werzowa, Walter 129–30 Zulu (1960) 80

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Music as Multimodal Discourse

Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics

Semiotics has complemented linguistics by expanding its scope beyond

Titles in the Series:

A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics, Fabio Rambelli

Edited by Lyndon C. S. Way and Simon McKerrell

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo

First published in Great Britain 2017

Copyright © Lyndon C. S. Way, Simon McKerrell and Contributors, 2017

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xxii constitute

Cover image © RedKoala/Shutterstock | © Hein Nouwens/Shutterstock

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-6442-6

Series: Bloomsbury Advances is Semiotics

Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India

To ﬁnd out more about our authors and books visit

List of Figures viii

1 Understanding Music as Multimodal Discourse Simon McKerrell

2 The Role of Music in Ridiculing the Working Classes in Reality

3 ‘Shame Makes the World Go Around’: Performed and Embodied

4 Recontextualization and Fascist Music John E. Richardson 71

5 Authenticity and Subversion: Articulations in Protest Music Videos’

6 Sonic Logos Theo van Leeuwen 119

8 When the Fairy Tale Is Over: An Analysis of Songs and Institutional

9 Indigenous Hip Hop as Anti-colonial Discourse in

10 Song, Sonic Metaphor, and Countercultural Discourse in British

2.1 Böda Camping opening sequence 28

10.3 Conceptual integration network showing the blend of

2.1 Meaning potentials for rhythms 30

Rusty Barrett is Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the

Denmark. He has published widely on critical discourse analysis, multimodality,

Lyndon C. S. Way is an associate professor at Izmir University of Economics

it is therefore our firm belief that this interdisciplinarity is lacking in much

audiovisual logos of a range of IT corporations, the chapter argues that they

entity, signifying/denoting a product. This can be described as a kind of nominali-

about domestic violence is recontextualized. It is also argued that this combina-

centrally controlled to one of the most deregulated in sectors such as education

Understanding Music as Multimodal

articulate ideology. In this book therefore, we seek to contribute to this body of

Music, discourse and meanings

example, is still very often located in countercultural ideologies (Frith, 1981;

Critical Discourse Analysis

CDA may be defined as fundamentally concerned with analysing opaque as well

Music and multimodal analysis

Talk and text in musicology

the build up of dynamic tension in a film soundtrack really do matter in a way

1 We take meaning (after Johnson, 2007: 268) to indicate embodied semiotic

Abousnnouga, G. and Machin, D. (2010), ‘Analysing the Language of War Monuments’,

The Role of Music in Ridiculing the Working

Critical studies of reality television

The programme we examine is a Swedish docu-soap titled Böda Camping,

Methodology: studying music in film and television

Obviously, the pace required in conjunction with a hunt – intensity of heart-

Analysis of Böda Camping

Music and setting

Figure 2.1. Böda Camping opening sequence

To begin with, the rhythm of the opening sequence, in terms of adjectives, is

Table 2.1 Meaning potentials for rhythms