Humanities, University of Southampton

The module covers the larger styles of jazz music including ragtime, New Orleans jazz, big band swing, bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, and free jazz. It also covers the more broadly developed styles of Anglo-American popular music including ‘roots’ country, rock ’n’ roll, 1960s folk, British ‘beat’, psychedelia, progressive rock, reggae, punk, new wave, rap and Britpop.

Co-ordinator:  Dr Ben Piekut

This module aims to provide students with an outline style history of twentieth-century popular musics and to hone listening skills. Students will gain a more precise historical and cultural understanding of twentieth-century popular musics.

Students will be able to discern and describe style features from an aural text, transcribe at least one solo line, of approximately 1 minute in length, and make a basic analysis of a recording, of approximately 4 minutes in length.

One two-hour lecture per week.

Jazz:

• Mark Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis
• Barry Kernfeld, What to Listen for in Jazz
• Frank Tirro, Jazz: A History

Pop:

• Simon Frith, Sound Effects
• Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City
• Hatch & Millward, From Blues to Rock

• Four short listening exams (10% each).
• One written assignment (15%)
• One transcription assignement (15%)
• Final exam (30%)