A Glimpse into Mainstream American Music through MuzikMafia Part 1

Modern, mainstream popular music is also becoming the subject of ethnomusicological research. David B. Pruett of Boston University conducted a remarkable research on MuzikMafia, an informal collection of American country music artists founded in 2001 in Nashville, Tennessee, from 2004 through 2007. The paper in discussion here is “When the Tribe Goes Triple Platinum: A Case Study Toward an Ethnomusicology of Mainstream Popular Music in the U.S.” published in the journal Ethnomusicology in 2011. MuzikMafia enjoyed popularity and relative success in the country music scene until they disbanded around 2009. The project was begun by Big Kenny and John Rich (of the duo Big & Rich fame) in order to provide a platform to country musicians. Pruett’s initial interactions with country music artists at an after-party in September 2004, bore no fruit. He had been invited by Big & Rich and was considering the party as an initiation of his fieldwork. He realized that these artists whom he believed he knew from the various tabloids and popular media representations, were much more than as portrayed to the general public. He thought he “knew” them but actually did not.

Pruett slowly comes to the query why should research be conducted into popular music artists. To that he answers convincingly that it is simply because the popular public image of this music and artists was heavily modified and filtered, and not true representations of these people (something he understood upon interacting with Kid Rock, personally, at the latter’s home in 2005). It is stated by Pruett that there exists a complicated and symbiotic relationship between individual identity and public persona of popular artists and a careful examination of the former leads to a more comprehensive understanding of the latter. The public persona is built based on what the people, the audience, want. Even the performances on stage, are rehearsed and choreographed in a manner which is supposed to strike a chord with the public. Pruett warns that even analyzing the records and music of such artists becomes a problem because such a musical piece is not only an artist’s own but bears influences from others as well, such a people dealing with their PR, record-label executives, sound engineers, and many others.

The other query Pruett makes is what steps can be taken by a researcher to gain access to popular music artists. Initially, he began his research based on contacts he had procured beforehand. But during the course of the fieldwork, the number of his respondents increased and by the end of his research, the number of musicians among his respondents was less than half. Most of the respondents now were producers, managers, venue owners, record company executives, crewmembers, family members, and others. These people were significant sources who provided details, enriched existing data, and could corroborate and validate information. Pruett suggests that having a good rapport with the manager and publicist of an artist is vital, as they are the closest people to an artist when it comes to the professional setting. Another problem with access is the fact that ethnomusicologists or any such researcher do not work to publicize a musician, thus transpiring into no benefit to the musician’s career. This makes many popular artists view academicians with disdain. Very few realize the value of academic research. On such occasions, a researcher needs to rephrase their objectives in order to at least gain access to the musician, and then take it further from there.