Stan Hawkins
The British Pop Dandy: Masculinity, Popular Music and Culture
(Aldershot: Ashgate 2009)
Review by Nathan Wiseman-Trowse

In 1999 the British pop band The Divine Comedy released one of their most successful singles ‘National Express’. Secreted away as a B-side on the second CD single was a wonderfully wry and affectionate Noël Coward pastiche ‘Overstrand’. ‘Overstrand’ told the story of a Londonite coveting a well-to-do address in the metropolis to such an extent that he is willing to pimp himself to a ‘dirty old man’, murder a young woman in the Thames or even write for the Evening Standard in order to get his ideal, bourgeois home. Neil Hannon’s clever take on Coward marks out a clear link not only to a tradition of British comedy songs that have their roots in music hall, but he also connects himself, if somewhat archly, with a dandified persona that manifests itself throughout British popular culture, and British popular music specifically. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: July 2009
IASPM International Conference: 13-17 July 2009
The Institute of Popular Music (IPM) at the University of Liverpool is hosting the 15th Biennial IASPM International Conference, from 13th to 17th July 2009. The full programme can be found on the conference website.

Music and Arts in Action
Music and Arts in Action (MAiA) is a new, peer-reviewed, open-access journal that focuses on individual and group encounters with the arts in a practical social context, as well as theoretical work examining music and the arts as active components of human experience. Continue reading
Borderless Ethnomusicologies: SEM 2009 Annual Meeting
SEM 2009 Annual Meeting in Mexico City
November 19-22, 2009
The Society for Ethnomusicology will hold its 54th annual meeting on November 19-22, 2009, at the Meliã México Reforma Hotel in Mexico City and at the National Center for the Arts in nearby Coyoacán. This year’s meeting, titled “Borderless Ethnomusicologies,” will feature more than 400 presentations, as well as a variety of concerts and other special events hosted by arts institutions in Mexico City .
In conjunction with the 2009 meeting, there will be a pre-conference symposium, “The Past, Present, and Future of Musical Research in Mexico ,” on November 18 at the School of Music of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Visit www.ethnomusicology.org for more information about the meeting, hotel accommodations, and online registration.