Race, ethnicity and gender in popular music

Culture & Inequality Podcast

In this episode, dr. Julian Schaap (EUR)talks with dr. Jo Haynes (University of Bristol) on the role of race, ethnicity and gender in music. Of all forms of popular culture and art, popular music remains one of the primary platforms of identity formation. While music alledgedly ‘brings people together’ across various sociatal cleavag-es, in practice we see that music genres – as with many cultural genres in general – are shaped by and reflective of social divisions in society. In the session, we will focus on the relationship be-tween social categories such as gender and race/ethnicity, and popular music, to understand how cultural production and consumption play a role in the construction, maintainance and/or deconstruction of symbolic boundaries based on gender and race/ethnicity. By zooming in on cases within (popular) music – why are there relatively few people of color in rock music? Why is hip-hop often perceived to serve minority voices? – we aim to expolate to larger questions of (popular) cul-ture, difference and inequality. Readings: Haynes, Jo (2010). In the blood: The racializing tones of music categorization. Cultural Sociology 4(1): 81-100 Hesmondhalgh, David, & Saha, A. (2013). Race, ethnicity, and cultural production. Popular Communication 11(3): 179-195. Schaap, Julian, & Berkers, Pauwke (2019). “Maybe it’s… skin colour?” How race-ethnicity and gender function in consumers’ formation of classification styles of cultural content. Consumption Markets & Culture 1-17.