Andrew Mall 3/4/22 Andrew Mall 3/4/22

Ethnographic Research and the Study of Christian Music

SCSM conference roundtable panelist (2022). The recent turn to ethnography in various disciplines has prompted renewed reflection on the basis of knowledge for scholars of religious music. Join us for a rousing conversation on the role of ethnomusicology and both its contributions and limitations in the study of religious musicking.

Andrew Mall 11/12/21 Andrew Mall 11/12/21

Musicking the Right Way: Performing Ethics and/as Aesthetics at Christian Music Festivals

AMS conference presentation (2021). Cornerstone Festival performed its organizers’ ethics into being, witnessed in its do-it-yourself scrappiness, its (at times) overwhelming sonic chaos, its sanctioned attendee-operated “generator stages,” and its willingness to engage difficult theological questions. From one perspective, this reflects a tautological relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxy grounded in theology; another perspective reveals the co-constitutiveness of ethics and aesthetics grounded in practice. To recast Jeffers Engelhardt’s “right singing,” at Cornerstone, if the performing was right, then the ethics expressed in that performing were right, and if the ethics were right, then the musical practices grounded in those ethics were right. In this paper, I draw on theories of music and ethics rooted in Christian musicking to generate a theoretical framework that situates these practices not within a shared faith but rather within a shared ethical framework irrespective of religious belief.

Andrew Mall 9/20/21 Andrew Mall 9/20/21

Keith Green Vs. the Music Industry

Keith Green was a Christian artist whose ethics came to contradict the commercial necessities of the Christian music industry. I glossed over this contradiction and its conflict in my earlier primer to Green’s career and discography, but here I go more detail and provide some primary sources that I have found to be very enlightening.

Andrew Mall 5/26/21 Andrew Mall 5/26/21

“God told me to give my records away”: Keith Green and the Ethics of Commerce in the 1970s U.S. Christian Music Industry

SAM conference presentation (2021). “God just told me to start my own label and give my records away.” So spoke Christian songwriter Keith Green to Billy Ray Hearn, his record label’s founder and owner, in 1979. Green was convicted that his music could not minister to those who most needed to hear God’s message unless it was freely available. In this paper, I examine Green’s career to illustrate how one artist navigated the delicate balance of ethical and commercial imperatives. I argue that ethical objectives can be just as important as aesthetic or commercial ones, particularly in their ability to establish markets’ boundaries.

Andrew Mall 3/23/21 Andrew Mall 3/23/21

Music Business, Ethics, and Christian Festivals: Progressive Christianity at Wild Goose Festival

Ethics and Christian Musicking, Routledge (2021). In this chapter, I consider the ways in which the business of music complicates the ethics and objectives of Christian music. I address some of the effects of yoking Christian music to the for-profit imperatives of entertainment conglomerates, but I quickly turn my attention to Christian festivals, which are unique places in which competing ethics find an equilibrium, albeit one that is always temporary and often uneasy.

Andrew Mall 1/28/21 Andrew Mall 1/28/21

Looking Towards the Future: Popular Music Studies and Music Scholarship

Twentieth-Century Music (2021). In this forum, we have collected articles from participants in a recent symposium on the future of popular music studies to reflect more deeply on the challenges we all face in in an increasingly diverse and divided world -- challenges of teaching, studying, comprehending, and embodying pop music in all its richness. The field must reckon with these challenges if it is to remain relevant, and in doing so (we argue) it perhaps models a way forward for music scholarship as a whole.

Andrew Mall 9/6/20 Andrew Mall 9/6/20

Conference Report: “The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century,” AMS Pre-Conference Symposium

Journal of Popular Music Studies (2020). In this article, we report on the two-day event, “The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century,” at Northeastern University in October 2019. The event was sponsored by the Popular Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society (AMS-PMSG), Northeastern University, and Amherst College as a pre-conference symposium tied to the AMS’s annual meeting in Boston.

Andrew Mall 7/30/20 Andrew Mall 7/30/20

Music / Business / Ethics at Christian Festivals

Music Festival Studies conference presentation (2020). In this paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork at Christian music festivals and formal interviews with festival organizers, I address festivals as sites of musical ethics made manifest. By focusing on specific niche Christian music festivals, I am able to emphasize the relationships between the values of their organizers, artists, and attendees and the lived experiences of the events themselves. But my conclusions have implications for the viability of the broader festival industry, particularly small events that cannot afford to compete with the Bonnaroos, Coachellas, and Lollapaloozas.

Andrew Mall 10/30/19 Andrew Mall 10/30/19

The Future of Pop: Big Questions Facing Popular Music Studies in the 21st Century

AMS pre-conference symposium (2019). Despite the normalization of popular music studies over the last 50 years, complex questions linger about the state of the field and the directions it will take. “The Future of Pop” fostered interdisciplinary collaborations between scholars of different ranks and diverse backgrounds by encouraging conversations about the future of popular music studies.

Andrew Mall 10/26/17 Andrew Mall 10/26/17

The Ethnomusicology of Religion: Fieldwork Methods and Ethics

SEM conference roundtable panelist (2017). Ethnographic fieldwork is often shaped by logistical issues including access, documentation, rapport, and fluency (both cultural and linguistic). Ethnomusicologists researching musics within religious or sacred contexts, however, face additional challenges. For example, moments of spiritual transcendence complicate participant-observation, both for ethnographers who belong to the faith tradition they are researching and for those who do not. Similarly, the varied expectations of the researcher’s audiences problematize documentation and representation. In this roundtable, participants consider these and other issues, addressing the ethical and methodological challenges of fieldwork posed by the ethnomusicology of religion.

Andrew Mall 11/4/12 Andrew Mall 11/4/12

“We Are Called Here to Worship Together”: Ethnographic Outsiderness and Insiderness in Religious and Popular Culture

SEM conference presentation (2012). In this paper, based on several years of ethnographic research at the Anchor Fellowship, I address the challenges of fieldwork as a religious outsider and cultural insider. In constructing a rich description of an Anchor worship service based on my observations, those of church-goers, and formal interviews of Anchor pastors, this paper confronts the multivalence of experience and the interpretation thereof, demonstrating the importance of phenomenology to ethnography of religious and popular cultures.

Andrew Mall 5/31/06 Andrew Mall 5/31/06

What Would the Community Think: Communal Values in Independent Music

voiceXchange (2006). An enthusiastic post on a website, a supportive audience in a smoky club, an animated conversation at a local music store—every interaction between fans of independent music binds them in a community. This paper presents my initial research into the ways in which the independent music community’s boundaries and values are expressed and shared in evolving social networks by means of interactions that authenticate participants into this community.