This is an opportunity for you to take a critical look at the latest artists, music genres, or club scenes that excite your interests. Your essay research may include fieldwork, interviews with musicians and their fans, or draw from current periodical literature such as Billboard, Rolling Stone, and many others.

In this essay you must put the musical practices you write about in the context of the history and the issues that we have covered in this course. Those issues include appropriation, politics of identity (race, class, gender, age, etc.), globalization, and technology. Therefore, a significant portion of your research will be the course readings, lectures, and sections. You must reference substantially (at least 5 sources) and cite at least one source from the course reading. You must also include three outside sources from an academic journal (start with jstor or projectmuse) or a book from the Music Library. I also encourage you to use additional online media such as YouTube, Rolling Stone, and any other sources of popular culture you can think of – these can be part of the additional one source needed as well as citing information presented in lectures and discussion sections if you find it pertinent to your paper. You should cite a total of at least five sources. You must include a References Cited list (bibliography) at the end of your essay.

Your paper must have a clear topic and thesis statement. Your paper must contain descriptive, cultural, historical detail. Your paper must also contain cogent, thoughtful analysis. If you choose to write about music or musicians that are covered specifically in the lectures, readings or sections, you must be sure to go beyond the details presented in the course.

Some questions you might address include: Does this music or artist(s) repeat any trend(s) we have covered in this course? What issues addressed in this course apply to this music or artist(s) in some way and how? What does it have in common with other genres of music we have studied—Tin Pan Alley, minstrelsy, rhythm & blues, rock ‘n’ roll, protest music, subcultures or subcultural scenes, heavy metal, etc.?