Musical Emergence in Bjà rk's Medúlla

摘要

Björk's 2004 album Medúlla offers listeners radical and new combinations of vocal sounds in pop music. The album features emergent processes ranging from textural emergence, as in standard pop-rock formulas for song introductions, to less common emergent and transformative processes involving metrical, tonal, motivic and phrasal structure. When such processes involving different parameters are combined, other (non-emergent) processes recede to the background, and the effect of emergence assumes a fundamental role over the course of the composition as a whole. Recognizing emergent processes opens up connections with song lyrics and possibly also extra-musical narratives which can enrich our analytical understanding and ultimately our listening experiences of these songs. Furthermore, Medúlla models ways in which other contemporary songwriters could develop sophisticated emergent processes that disturb conventional understandings of popular music as simplistic and formulaic.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2011.562717