2010 Pop Conference Bios/Abstracts

Daphne Carr

Daphne Carr is an editor, writer, and ethnomusicologist currently living in the Czech Republic. She is the Series Editor of Best Music Writing and assistant editor of the scholarly journal Current Musicology. She is the author of Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine (Continuum 2010).Abstract:

"Nostalgia for cassette culture in the MP3 age"
One image of the late 2000s is this: a hip hop, electro, or emo-loving ''tween wearing an neon all-over printed cassette hoodie. Go to any urban clothing shop, Hot Topic, skate and surf shop, or other youth retailer right now and you''ll see dozens of items covered in lo-fi style silkscreen images of quintessential 1980s format. The question for this paper is: what are the similarities between the cassette culture of the early 1980s and the present cultural moment that make this image, and the hissy sound it connotes, so compelling for young people, those who never experienced cassette listening? To answer this question I will use ethnographic interviews, observations, critical listening, and media analysis to address the cassette as an analog format, a lo-fi technology, a radical read-write medium, as medium for sharing music, and as an iconic representation of 1980s popular music cultures and subcultures. In this process I will show how rich the medium is as a site for contemporary reflection on the last 30 years of technological change in popular music. In this paper I will work between U.S., U.K, and Czech examples to show that nostalgia for cassette culture is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather an emerging global response to the rapid, overwhelming changes in modes of music making and musical consumption in the online era.

Daphne Carr cannot be physically present, but in keeping with her topic, and the conference theme, has made available several vintage Walkmen with her presentation on cassette. Ask at the conference information table.