黑料不打烊

My dissertation focuses on how popular music genres form and stabilize. In particular, I examine the 1950s genre of 鈥渆xotica鈥� through a historicist and genealogical lens. Exotica was a type of popular music in which artists arranged standards and original songs in an 鈥渆xotic style鈥� by adding animal sounds, Latin percussion and rhythms, and a variety of non-Western instruments. During the 1990s, a nostalgic impulse generated the 鈥渓ounge music鈥� revival in which easy listening post-war styles such as exotica were hailed as an antidote to mainstream 鈥渁lternative鈥� music. Participants in the lounge revival tended to emphasize the weirdness of this music, often portraying it as a generic anomaly that was in direct opposition鈥攇enerationally and aesthetically鈥攖o other styles of the 1950s. My dissertation reconsiders this retrospective narrative by situating exotica in a relational network of circulating sounds and styles. Broadly, I explore how musical boundaries are constructed and how these boundaries can be reevaluated thereby allowing new connections to emerge.