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The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans

Author: Catherine Baker

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-10

Total Pages: 857

ISBN-13: 1040039995

The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans is a comprehensive overview of major topics, established debates and new directions in the study of popular music and politics in this region. The vibrant growth of this subject area since the 1990s has been intertwined with the region’s political and socio-economic transformations, including the collapse of state socialism in much of the region, the break-up of Yugoslavia, the advent of neoliberal capitalism, the rise of Romani activism, the complex politics of ‘Europeanization’ before and after the global financial crisis, and the region’s relationship to the European Union border regime. The handbook illustrates the wide range of disciplines and methods that contribute to this field’s interdisciplinary dialogue and highlights emerging approaches such as the study of Black diasporas in the region, popular music’s links with LGBTQ+ communities, and the impact of digital technologies on musical cultures. This volume will benefit specialist researchers, tutors creating or refreshing courses on popular music in the region, and students interested in these topics, especially those who are at the point of developing their own independent research projects.

Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest

Author: Dean Vuletic

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-01-25

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1474276288

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Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest examines how the Eurovision Song Contest has reflected and become intertwined with the history of postwar Europe from a political perspective. Established in 1956, the Eurovision Song Contest is the world's largest popular music event and one of the most popular television programmes in Europe, currently attracting a global audience of around 200 million people. Eurovision is often mocked as cultural kitsch because of its over-the-top performances and frivolous song lyrics. Yet there is no cultural medium that connects Europeans more than popular music, the development of which has always been tied to cultural, economic, political, social and technological change – making Eurovision the ideal tool to explain the history of Europe in the last sixty years. This book uses Eurovision as a vehicle to address topics ranging from the Cold War, liberal democracy and communism to nationalism, European integration, economic prosperity and human rights. It analyses these subjects through their cultural, political and social relationships with Eurovision entries as expressed through lyrics and music, as well as by examining public debates that have accompanied the selection of the entries and the organisation of the contest itself. Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest also considers how states have used Eurovision to define their identities in a European context, be it to assert their national distinctiveness, highlight political issues or affirm their Europeanism or Euroscepticism in the context of European integration. Based on original sources, including hitherto unpublished archival documents from international broadcasting organisations, this is a novel historical study of interest to anyone keen to know more about the postwar history of Europe and its cultural history in particular.

Romancing Yesenia

Author: Masha Salazkina

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0520400755

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"This book considers the unexpected and mostly unexamined popularity of the Mexican film Yesenia (Alfredo B. Crevenna, 1971) in the Soviet Union. Set during the Second Franco-Mexican war, this unassuming movie melodrama was based on a successful television series, itself an adaptation of a popular women's romance graphic novel, a genre that was extremely common in mid-century Mexico. Screened in the Soviet Union in 1975, Yesenia became the highest grossing film in the history of Soviet film exhibition, unsurpassed by any movie, foreign or domestic. Based on ticket sales alone, it was seen by an astounding 91.4 million viewes in only the first year of its release. Yesenia's popularity in the socialist bloc, largely unbeknown to its Mexican producers, continued for decades after its initial release as the film migrated from cinemas to television screens and video. Boosted by its success with Soviet audiences, the film enjoyed a similarly spectacular exhibition history in China in the late 1970s, when the country was opening itself up to more international media, paving the way for other Mexican and Latin American productions broadcasted on Chinese television in decades to follow. Approaching this period restrospectively, cognizant of more contemporary developments in the global media, I conceive of this episode in film history through a framework of television culture whose increasing impact, I argue, shaped both the film's Mexican production and its subsequent reception within the Socialist bloc. I also argue that Yesenia's popularity carved out a crucial node within the global circuit of cultural and industrial networks, further enabling Latin American media's transcontinental reach"--Provided by publisher.

Introduction to Eurovision Song Contest 2023

Author: Gilad James, PhD

Publisher: Gilad James Mystery School

Published:

Total Pages: 49

ISBN-13: 3721227867

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The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual international song competition, first held in 1956 in Switzerland, that brings together contestants from various European countries and beyond. The contest's popularity has since skyrocketed, with over 200 million viewers tuning in each year to watch performances that showcase Europe's top musical talent and creativity. The 2023 edition of the contest will mark its 68th iteration, and is set to be held in the Spanish city of Valencia. The contest is expected to include performers, songwriters, and producers from over 40 countries, each vying for the coveted title of Eurovision Song Contest champion. While the event will be held in Valencia's Palacio de Congresos, it is set to be a national affair, with each of Spain's 17 autonomous communities involved in various aspects of the planning and production.

The Modern Fairy Tale

Author: Paul Jordan

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 9789949325580

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This book provides a unique and intriguing insight into current debates concerning the relationship between nation and state as well as the political management of international image in today's Europe through an examination of debates on nation branding and the Eurovision Song Contest. Europe is a contested construct and its boundaries are subject to redefinition. This work aims to advance critical thinking about contemporary nation branding and its relationship to, and influence on, nation building. In particular it focusses on key identity debates that the Eurovision Song Contest engendered in Estonia in the run-up to EU accession. The Eurovision Song Contest is an event which is often dismissed as musically and culturally inferior. However, this work demonstrates that it has the capacity to shed light on key identity debates and illuminate wider socio-political issues. Using a series of in-depth interviews with political elites, media professionals and opinion leaders, this book is a valuable contribution to the growing field of research on nation branding and the Eurovision Song Contest.

A Song for Europe

Author: RobertDeam Tobin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1351577980

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The world's largest and longest-running song competition, the Eurovision Song Contest is a significant and extremely popular media event throughout the continent and abroad. The Contest is broadcast live in over 30 countries with over 100 million viewers annually. Established in 1956 as a televised spectacle to unify postwar Western Europe through music, the Contest features singers who represent a participating nation with a new popular song. Viewers vote by phone for their favourite performance, though they cannot vote for their own country's entry. This process alone reveals much about national identities and identifications, as voting patterns expose deep-seated alliances and animosities among participating countries. Here, an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplines, including musicology, communications, history, sociology, English and German studies, explore how the contest sheds light on issues of European politics, national and European identity, race, gender and sexuality, and the aesthetics of camp. For some countries, participation in Eurovision has been simultaneously an assertion of modernity and a claim to membership in Europe and the West. Eurovision is sometimes regarded as a low-brow camp spectacle of little aesthetic or intellectual value. The essays in this collection often contradict this assumption, demonstrating that the contest has actually been a significant force and forecaster for social, cultural and political transformations in postwar Europe.

Performing the 'New' Europe

Author: K. Fricker

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1137367989

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This fascinating and lively volume makes the case that the Eurovision Song Contest is an arena for European identification in which both national solidarity and participation in a European identity are confirmed, and a site where cultural struggles over the meanings, frontiers and limits of Europe are enacted.

Understanding the Eurovision Song Contest in Multicultural Australia

Author: Jessica Carniel

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-11-02

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 303002315X

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This book presents the first in-depth study of the Eurovision Song Contest from an Australian perspective. Using a cultural studies approach, the study draws together fan interviews and surveys with media and textual analysis of the contest itself. In doing so, it begins to answer the question of why the European song contest appeals to viewers in Australia. It explores and challenges the dominant narrative that links Eurovision fandom to post-WWII European migration, arguing that this Eurocentric narrative presents a limited view of how contemporary Australian multicultural society operates in the context of globalized culture. It concludes with a consideration of the future of the Eurovision Song Contest as Australia enters into the ‘Asian century’.

Global South Discourse in East Asian Media Studies

Author: Dal Yong Jin

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-11-04

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1000778169

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This book examines the nexus of East Asian media, culture, and digital technologies in the early 21st century from a Global South perspective. Providing an empirically rich analysis of the emergence of Asian culture, histories, texts, and state policies as they relate to both Asian media and global media, the author discusses relevant theoretical frameworks as East Asian popular culture and media have shifted the contours of globalization. After overviewing Western media/cultural theories and histories, the book explores the ways in which East Asia-focused analytical frameworks are able to shift people’s understanding of globalization and media, drawing upon examples from different East Asian countries to illustrate how current cultural flows have influenced and have been influenced by a handful of dimensions. Offering an important contribution to understanding the historical trajectory and recent developments of East Asia media, this book will interest students and scholars of media, communication, popular culture, cultural studies, Asian studies, politics and sociology.