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Paper short abstract

Black British popular music forms in the 2010s are interrogated with the Musicological Discourse Analysis (MDA) framework to elucidate music as both sonic and social process; producing particular ways of knowing, being, expressing and a resource of power generation.

Paper long abstract

Musicological Discourse Analysis (MDA) as a holistic mode of analysis to contextualize music sociologically and musicologically. Its application retheorises genre to produce a specific, useful, and detailed 'Sonic Footprint Timestamp' (SFT). Music is both sonic and social (Lena 2012). The SFT gives insight to music as a social, cultural and political phenomenon at a particular moment in time.

The MDA framework provides a generic mode of musical analysis to elucidate key musical influences, particularly for music of the African diaspora. It uncovers material and immaterial factors of consideration in music making and culture generation. In doing so, it uncovers the power music can generate by penetrating and surrounding traditional political, cultural and political Western systems and structures. Music captures both the sonic and social practices laced and intertwined with neoliberal and colonial legacies. MDA will be applied to Black British music forms popular in the 2010s i.e. Grime, Drill and AfroSwing.