Thursday 18 February 2016, 15:30-17:00

Elvis has finally left the building? Boundary work, whiteness and the reception of rock music
dr. Pauwke Berkers

Music genres are constitutive of social boundaries as they are often structured along ethno-racial lines. Since Elvis Presley in the 1950s, rock music has been appropriated by whites, edging out non-whites from this music genre – the so-called Elvis Effect. Drawing on two ongoing studies with Julian Schaap, this presentation focuses on how music critics as well as audiences draw ethno-racial boundaries in rock music.

First, using content analyses of professional and lay reviews, our analyses show evidence of social marking: (1) the presence of ethno-racial markers e.g., “Black singer”; (2) the extent to which such markers crowd out aesthetic classifications, e.g. focusing on ethno-racial similarities instead of aesthetic differences; and (3) the way in which ethno-racial markers affect the rating of the album, as unmarked artists are arguably rated as superior.


Second, making use of the innovative subjectivity-based visual Q-methodology and post-sorting interviews, we will demonstrate how (1) non-white musicians are habitually marked as opposed to the unmarked white (male) norm; (2) non-white artists are both seen as tokens and role-models, revealing how difference can function as a double-edged sword; (3) discourses of color-blindness, color-consciousness and ironic minimization are employed to discuss ethno-racial inequality.