A prescribed alternative mainstream: popular music and canon formation

Abstract

This article applies the processes of canon formation suggested by Philip V. Bohlman in The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World to the historiography of popular music. Bohlman distinguishes between at least three different types of folk music canon: a small group canon, a mediated canon and an imagined canon. Adjusting Bohlman's ideas to the case of popular music, a reformulation is proposed in the form of an alternative canon, a mainstream canon, and a prescribed canon. The unstable power relations implied by the juxtaposition of different canons are considered, as well as the cumulative aspect of canon formation. The article also looks for each type of canon in the media through which historical knowledge is transmitted, and considers the tendency to narrate the historiography of marginal musics with more ephemeral media than the printed word.

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