Sound and fury? Film score and the geopolitics of instrumental music

Political geography has devoted substantial attention to visual popular culture. Where the aural has been considered, this has generally been through the spoken-word (e.g. radio) or lyrics (e.g. popular music). The geopolitics of instrumental music – music without words – is yet to be considered in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPolitical geography Vol. 75; p. 102054
Main Author Kirby, Philip
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2019
Elsevier Science Ltd
Subjects
Case studies
Classical music
Cold War
Counterterrorism
Film music
Geopolitics
Human geography
Identity
Instrumental music
Lyrics
Mass media
Motion pictures
Music
Non-representational theory
Political geography
Popular culture
Popular geopolitics
Popular music
Radio
Terrorism
War
War
Classical music
Non-representational theory
Film
Popular geopolitics
Film music
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Summary:Political geography has devoted substantial attention to visual popular culture. Where the aural has been considered, this has generally been through the spoken-word (e.g. radio) or lyrics (e.g. popular music). The geopolitics of instrumental music – music without words – is yet to be considered in depth. This article provides an outline of how such media might be approached, building on affectual analyses of sound in human geography. In particular, it examines the example of instrumental film score. It suggests that, rather than just providing background to the visual component of film, score provides a key mode through which geopolitical knowledges are communicated. Through case studies of musical constructions of identity/difference from three geopolitical periods – World War Two, the Cold War, and the War on Terror – this article makes the case for adding instrumental musical literacy to political geography's methodological toolkit.
ISSN:0962-6298
1873-5096
DOI:10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.102054