[Commlist] CfP: Listening to the Rising Right: Populist Rebels, Fascist Countercultures, and the Global Sounds of Right Wing Music

Call for Chapter Proposals

Listening to the Rising Right: Populist Rebels, Fascist Countercultures, 
and the Global Sounds of Right Wing Music

Editors: Nadav Appel and Fiorenzo Palermo

To be published by Bloomsbury Academic


The parallel emergence during the 1960s of modern styles of pop, rock 
and soul music together with new leftist and countercultural movements 
often leads to the identification of popular music in general, and 
"protest music" in particular, with political values and aspirations 
that are broadly associated with the left. However, the 21st century has 
seen a substantial rise in the commercial success and popular appeal of 
explicitly right wing music. As populist anthems such as "Try That in a 
Small Town" and "Rich Men of Richmond" top the US Billboard charts, 
Russian pop is becoming enamored with the authoritarian figure of 
Vladimir Putin, xenophobic sentiments are echoed by a diversity of 
global genres from Indian H-Pop to Serbian turbo-folk, and nationalist 
rappers are enjoying unprecedented success in such disparate locations 
as Japan and Israel.

The edited volume Listening to the Rising Right will focus on the many 
faces of global 21st century right wing popular music. We are especially 
interested in cases where musicians acknowledge their role as political 
actors and express their activism and militancy in additional ways 
beyond recording songs with right wing content. A running theme 
throughout the book will be the right wing appropriation of 
countercultural and oppositional tactics historically associated with 
the left, such as the concept of "protest music", the romantic image of 
the artist as a rebel/revolutionary, or the cultural function of popular 
musicians as organic intellectuals. Analysis of musical pieces will 
consider their use of generic conventions and stylistic tropes and place 
them in the context of the common meanings associated with their 
respective genres and styles in popular music history. Each chapter will 
deal with a defined case study from a specific country, using it to 
investigate one or more of the following questions:

  *

    How do right wing ideologies, values and discourses intersect with
    contemporary popular music?

  *

    Where can we identify such intersections of music with right wing
    formations, and in which ways is the nature of these formations
    affected by the music?

  *

    In which ways and under which circumstances is popular music
    instrumental in spreading and promoting right wing ideologies,
    furthering right wing causes and/or empowering right wing movements
    and communities?

  *

    What are the common strategies for the deployment of popular music
    for right wing mobilization, agitation and advocacy, and how
    effective are they?

  *

    How and why are common semiotic systems, stylistic conventions,
    generic tropes and/or discursive formations of 20th century popular
    music, most of them traditionally identified with left-leaning
    values, co-opted and organised coherently to articulate current
    right wing trends of struggle and rebellion?

  *

    What could be the historical causes for the growing right wing use
    of musical aesthetics formerly identified as “left wing” and/or
    “avant-garde”, and what are the conditions of possibility that
    enable them?

We invite chapter proposals on all geographical regions, musical genres 
and right wing tendencies, but *we are especially interested in studies 
of African and Asian cases*. Please send your proposal for a 6,000 words 
chapter to (nadavappel /at/ mail.sapir.ac.il) 
<mailto:(nadavappel /at/ mail.sapir.ac.il)> and (s.palermo /at/ mdx.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(s.palermo /at/ mdx.ac.uk)> until July 8, 2024. *Proposals should 
include chapter title, a 300-500 words abstract and a 50-100 words 
biographical note.* Notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 31, 
2024. In case of acceptance, the full draft of the chapter should be 
sent by December 31, 2024.

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