Guest Post- Stephen Etheridge, PhD Student at the University of Huddersfield (Part 3)

Posted on 02/10/2012 by Lillian C.G

What is life a part-time PhD research student like?

Firstly it is true that PhD study is isolating. This is even more so when you are part time. Whether full or part-time the key to success is motivation, work, and getting your research known within the wider academy. The days of undergraduate study, where you have almost daily contact with your tutors, mentors, peers, and friends are gone. You need to be prepared to work alone and unsupervised for long periods of time. Naturally, the temptations for distraction are there, day-time television, afternoon naps, and the Xbox. That’s before we even consider that part-time students often have to fit their research in around a full-time job. There are plenty of guides for motivation and time management. All I will say is you will feel like giving up at some point. There will be days when you just can’t face the thing, however, there will also be days when you feel on top of the world, and, I like to think these outnumber the lows. Remember, this is a big project and you are in it for the long haul. Writing a PhD has highs and lows, sometimes you will achieve a lot, sometimes very little, the key is to always try and be moving forwards. Have the reasons why you want to do a PhD clearly laid out in your mind: write them down and pin them above your desk.

The first thing to deal with is the isolation. I have seen many research students just hang around campus, but this, especially for historians, is not achieving anything. I believe that a researcher should be in the archives, researching. This is, of course, a lonely pursuit, and, outside writing up the thesis, will be where you are most isolated. However, once you have started writing your first drafts, now is the time to get out there. You can have the most original research in the world but it is useless unless you communicate it to the wider academy. As a part-time researcher I am rarely in my own university, and I communicate with my supervisors regularly by email, but only see them in person perhaps quarterly. Also I am outside the mainstream of the social life of the university, and also have a full-time job to hold down I do, however, regularly attend conferences and seminars at other universities, often aiming to give a paper myself. This is where you meet other researchers, who, you will find, share all the same problems that you do. You find that you are not alone in your worries. I would also recommend giving talks to groups outside academia, a local history society, for example. These networks often have access to archives that you would not think about. In short, you can be as isolated as you want to be. The responsibility to maintain your social and research networks really does rest with you. Once you get out there the help, advice and encouragement can be overwhelming.

Secondly, there will be a day when you will face a real drubbing. Your theories, concepts and ideas will be torn apart, perhaps when you have your first article rejected, or, after you give a conference paper. You can rest assured that this will happen and it will be awful. Don’t panic and don’t throw you work in the canal. This happens to everyone and it is part of the research process. Believe it or not your work will benefit and become stronger, more centered and clear as a result. Always remain professional. Never ever lose your temper or get into an argument, and never email an editor saying they are wrong to reject your article.( I haven’t, by the way) Always bear in mind that whatever you are going through other researchers are going through it as well. If there is a constant theme to life as a PhD researcher then it is, ‘you are not alone.’

Finally, I don’t believe there is such a thing as a part-time PhD. The research process will take over your life. Even if you are not in the archives, writing, or at a conference, then you are thinking about the thesis. This is good, however, it can make you a nuisance to live with. When was the last time you spoke to your nearest and dearest and did not stop mid-sentence because a PhD thought popped into your head? Take time out, do things with your friends, family and partners. Believe it or not try and get a hobby. Doing a PhD is overwhelming for everyone, not just yourself, don’t ignore your friends. In the end the PhD process is one of the most rewarding and frustrating experiences you can go through, when I, perhaps not very long from now, emerge the other side, I will happily say it was worth it.

13 Martin Stokes, (Ed) Introduction in, Ethnicity, identity: the musical construction of place (Berg: Oxford, 1994), p. 6.

Stephen Etheridge, GLCM, MA

Guest Post- Stephen Etheridge, PhD Student at the University of Huddersfield (Part 2)

Posted on 02/10/2012 by Lillian C.G

Your early experiences helped you choose a topic, but why use the brass band movement as a way of understanding working-class identity, what was the gap in the research?

My research uses the brass band to fill a gap between musicology and social history. Whilst some work had been done to fill this gap, a great deal of work remains. Dave Russell made a call for the need to study music to understand social history, and the need to embrace an interdisciplinary approach, in his 1993 article, ‘The ‘social history’ of popular music: A label without a cause?’ Popular Music, 12/2, (May 1993). Significant inroads were made by the ‘Music and Cultures Research Group’, consisting of: Trevor Herbert, Martin Clayton and Richard Middleton, based at the Open University’s Music Department, in Milton Keynes, active from 1995-2003. The group’s stated purpose was, ‘to pursue research in the cultural study of music, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches drawing on musicology, social history, anthropology, ethnomusicology, cultural theory and other relevant areas.’^¹ The group was important in arranging conferences and seminars that pushed forward this research.^² The key text that resulted from this group was, Martin Taylor, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton, (Eds), The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (New York, 2003), ‘a collection of essays covering many aspects of the conjunction between music and culture.’^³ It is worthwhile quoting from the book proposal to the publishers of this collection to see the importance of music in the study of social history, and how my research is an important contribution to an emerging interdisciplinary field, they wrote:

A tendency to increasing concern with ‘culture’ has been manifested in music scholarship for some time, and in a variety of ways. It would be too much to say that various trajectories are converging, let alone that all will crystallize into a single field of ‘cultural musicology’. Nonetheless, different approaches are interacting, and with increasing intensity, such that it is clear that a new paradigm may well be on the horizon. All the disciplines involved in the study of music will continue to be changed by this process and, for some, reconfiguration seems inevitable.^⁴

Whilst brass bands are only a small part of popular music, the social history of music, popular or otherwise, is where the social historian should turn to reveal the working class and regional identities of the brass band movement. The researcher, however, should be aware that this starting point overlaps many historiographies that deal with working class and regional identities. Nevertheless, these problems of interpretation of analysis attracted me to this research. If we subscribe to the powerful argument of Taylor, Herbert and Middleton’s, and I do, when they asked the question, ‘does anyone still believe that musicology is the study of the scores of the great masters and nothing more?’ and that, ‘aren’t we all, to a greater or lesser extent, ‘culturists’ now?’^⁵ Then, as my research explores, the brass band needs to be re-examined to gain a full understanding of working-class culture. It would be naïve to say that every working-class person in the Southern Pennines, or the nation, was touched by the brass band. The attraction of analysing brass bands, however, is that they were tangible links to the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual lives of many working people. Brass bands were constantly present at events that drew people together such as, agricultural shows, fairs, old peoples’ treats, sports days, charitable events, and Whitsuntide holiday walks.^⁶ These events marked out the rhythms of work, leisure, and community life in the Southern Pennines. The base of this rhythm was the long sweep of history, a sweep that seemed almost changeless: it was the history of people and their surroundings. It was the histories of social groups, in this case the brass bands and their extended networks, and finally, the history of individuals, in this case bandsmen, and the rhythms of their daily lives.^⁷ The long sweep of history associated itself with the long duration of seasonal and natural growth that evolved very slowly. Then the bands played out there actions in ‘social time’ that related to not only the social lives of the bandsmen, but also how the bands acted and interacted within their communities and beyond. Brass bands created social networks in communities that become important in historical interpretation. This is because these networks were relatively stable, creating dynamism and flux among communities and settlements, such as villages, towns, regional centers, peripheries and the capital, together, with, as Rachel Cowgill and Peter Holman pointed out, what were essentially local venues and institutions, such as, ‘taverns ,assembly rooms, town halls, cathedrals, churches, chapels and individuals, via personal familial and professional ties.’^⁸ Finally, the history of individuals in the bands is how the bandsmen coped with the pleasures and strains of daily life.^⁹ As Tim Carter argues, music became a historical archive that was placed on a sure enough footing to ‘enable it to speak to the broader worlds of political, economic, social and cultural history.’^¹⁰ Music, and the social networks that grew from its performance, became an archive as valid as political coverage, newspaper reporting or personal diaries. As Simon Dentith argues ‘social relationships are partly realised in culture, and that culture is a space where such relationships are both cemented and contested.’^¹¹ A study of the social networks that grew from the bands in this area will define the authentic and essential elements of social identity that grew from brass band music in the north. As Martin Stokes argues when discussing the musical construction of place we will, ‘be able to question how music is used by social actors in specific local situations, to erect boundaries, to maintain distinctions between us and them’.^¹² Therefore, it is to the Industrialised area of the Southern Pennines that my research turns and by examining the brass band we gain a new perspective on the working class in this period.

1< http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/music/musiccult.shtml> accessed 6 October 2011

2Literature and Music in the Study of Culture, at Worcester College Oxford, 11 May 2002, Music and Literature in the 19^th and 29^th Centuries, Open University in London, 5 May 2001, Hosting the annual conference of the British Forum for Musicology, on the theme, Music and Meaning, at Milton Keynes on 14 November 1998,and the group’s first conference, Music Studies and Cultural Difference, was held in London in 1997 < http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/music/musiccult.shtml>

3 < http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/music/musiccult.shtml>

4 Martin Taylor, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton, (Eds.), The Cultural Study of Music: a critical introduction (New York, 2003), p. 1.

5 Taylor, Herbert and Middleton, p. 3.

6 For an example of the range of community activities brass bands played at see, Helmshore Brass Band Minute Books, November 1889-September 1911, held at Accrington Local Studies Library.

7 F. Braudel, On History, translated by S. Matthews (London, 1980), pp. 3-14, in, Richard Whipp, ‘’A time to every purpose’: an essay on time and work’, in, Patrick Joyce (Ed), The Historical Meanings of Work (Cambridge 1987, this edition 1989), pp. 213-214.

8 Rachel Cowgill and Peter Holman (Eds), Music in the British Provinces, 1690-1914 (Ashgate, 2007), pp. 2-3.

9 Whipp, ‘A time to every purpose’, pp. 213-214.

10 Tim Carter, ‘The sound of silence: models for an urban musicology’, Urban History, 29/1, (2002), p. 9.

11 Simon Dentith, Society and Cultural Forms in Nineteenth-Century England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 1.

12 Martin Stokes, (Ed) Introduction in, Ethnicity, identity: the musical construction of place (Berg: Oxford, 1994), p. 6.

Guest Post- Stephen Etheridge, PhD Student at the University of Huddersfield (Part 1)

Posted on 02/10/2012 by Lillian C.G

HOWDY EVERYONE! I am please to introduce you to our first guest blogger! STEPHEN ETHERIDGE. So today I will be posting this in his behalf as a contribution to our blog, (isn’t that nice of him?). Please note that this update will take the space of various posts. The information provided in the following lines has all been written by him, I am being basically just the messenger. I hope you enjoy it. If you would like to know more about him get in contact and we will pass your interest to him. ENJOY.

*************************************************************************************************************

Stephen Etheridge

PhD Student

School of Music, Humanities and Media

University of Huddersfield

Stephen Etheridge is a part-time PhD research student in social history and musicology at the University of Huddersfield. His thesis title is, ‘Slate Grey Rain and Polished Euphoniums.’ The Pennine Brass Band, 1840-1914, Social and Cultural Influences on Working-Class and Northern Identities. Stephen’s research explores contested and popular themes in social history and musicology to explain why, when the brass band movement was a national movement, in the popular imagination, the brass band movement became a metonym for working-class and northern identities in this period. Stephen uses the Pennine brass band to explore a number themes that contributed to the construction of working-class identities that emerged from the mid-nineteenth-century onwards, such as, community, rational recreation and social control, regional identity, working-class leisure, the links between musical performance and class identity, and musical hierarchies and masculinity. Stephen has presented over twenty talks and conference papers to local history groups and academic conferences about his research. He has recently finished jointly-editing, and contributing to, a new collection of essays that challenges accepted norms about the study of labour history, which is due to be released in October. (Anne Baldwin, Chris Ellis, Stephen Etheridge, Keith Laybourn and Neil Pye (Eds) Class Culture and Community: New Perspectives in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Labour History (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 2012)) We asked Stephen how he came to be a PhD researcher, the reasons for his research, and his experiences of being a part-time PhD student.

How did you pick a research topic?

As a teenager I played the trombone in a number of brass bands around Staffordshire. I later went to Leeds College of Music and ended up following a different musical path, nevertheless, this early experience introduced me to the brass band movement, its traditions, values, and customs. These experiences stayed with me throughout my musical career. I don’t think many people plan a PhD and I feel that occasionally something happens that starts a chain of events that results in an idea. For me, this was picking up a second-hand copy of E.P. Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class (1963) and being influenced by his argument that history was made by the ordinary person. As Thompson argued, class was not a thing, but was largely defined by the productive-and social- relations into which people were born. Thompson wrote, ‘Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms.’ ^¹On reading this, the first thing I thought was working-class brass bands have not been explored enough in terms of working-class culture.

Nevertheless, it was not until 2004, when I had the opportunity to study for a part-time master’s degree in social history, that I put this idea into practice. I felt that the brass band movement could shed new light on how the working-class lived their lives from the nineteenth-century onwards. You could say that I was using the writer’s cliché of, ‘write what you know.’ Influenced by Thompson I began my dissertation. Naturally, when I finished my master’s degree I felt there was a lot more research to be undertaken, and so I eventually ended up beginning my PhD at Huddersfield early in 2007. Clearly, I have read widely and have many more influences, Thompson, however, remains the core idea in my work. So, if I had not gone into Oxfam and bought his book I would not be here. In short, for me, PhD theses ideas do not come fully formed they develop over time, and from some unexpected events.

1 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963, this edition,1991), pp. 8-9.

History through Song Lyrics: Unconventional Sources

Posted on 09/12/2010 by Lillian C.G

I would like to inaugurate this blog (without considering last week welcome post) with my favorite controversial topic in history: Non-academical history. It does not really matter how it is called, but what does matter is that it exists, and it can be use for a better understanding of history, or a more engaging, touching and easier way to get along with history. “Learning about unconventional history is, at the very same time, learning about conventional history, its strengths and limitations” [1]. Usually, this kind of history, popular or public history, is conceived in a variety of ways. The most common are: museums, and in general the heritage industry, tv shows, and books. But today, I would like to talk about one which is not commonly considered and I, personally, think it is rather interesting and useful.

I remember how in my first year of A-levels one of my classmates made up a funny song about the French Revolution, in order to remember the main events and personalities. And thanks to that, I would never ever forget those things. The issue I am presenting here is music as a source in the learning and teaching of history. Music is an art that has been linked with history since ancient times, and it has been developed through it until the present day, and it will most likely continue the process in the future. We know about the role of entertainment of musicians in the past and nowadays…But what about the rest? It is not the most common of the cases but many artists and bands do create material related with history. Although sometimes it is needed to read deeply through the lyrics, the ideas are still there.

My research has brought together material from diverse places and periods, but I would like to focus on the most modern evidences. 1974 was a critical year in the history of Portugal; after years of dictatorship the country was ready to embrace democracy as their political system [2]. The use of music was crucial for the coordination of the whole movement known as ‘Revolução dos Cravos’ (The Carnation revolution). Those songs used during this revolution have prevailed in history. They are a symbol and they are living history, those lyrics portray the spirit and meaning of the whole event. One of the most famous songs used for this event was “Grândola, Vila Morena”, written by Jose ‘Zeca’ Alfonso [3], a couple of years before this happened. Despite the fact the song was previous to the event, the Portuguese people identify themselves in that circumstances with these lyrics:

”Grândola, vila morena

Terra da fraternidade

O povo é quem mais ordena

Dentro de ti, ó cidade

…Em cada esquina um amigo, em cada rostro igualdade” [4]

(Could be translated as: Granola, dark land, land of fraternity, your population rules within you, oh city…In everycorner, a friend, in every face equality)

The perfect song for a revolution against the fascist regime that was oppressing the population…The song by which this is remembered.

But this is maybe the most evident case. An even more modern example: in 1990, one of the most celebrated german rock band of all times, The Scorpions, released their album Crazy World, in which their famous song ‘Wind of Change’ was included [5]. Just with a quick look to the lyrics and a bit of historical knowledge, the topic can be disguised: The fall of Berlin Wall, in 1989. Such an important event in western modern history immortalised in a radio hit, famous in the whole world. And the list goes on. Published in May, 1983, Iron Maiden’s album Piece of Mind contains their famous song ‘Die with Your Boots On’ [6]. “They die with their boots on, yes they die” [7],lyrics in honor of the disastrous and miserable General G.A. Custer’s death at Little Big Horn. The last example is from the album Lost in Space Part II, the third EP of Tobias Sammet’s metal opera project known as Avantasia, published by Nuclear Blast[8].The following extract is from the song ‘Promised Land’, which embraces a rather historical and religious topic; the Crusades and the Holy Land:

“Like moths to a flame
Driven by vanity
They been off to Jerusalem
Chasing a dream
Calling on me
We re just trading in needs” [9]

The Crusades, the end of fascism in Portugal, the fall of the wall in Berlin and one of the biggest disasters in the history of war, all in music…All historical. And these are just four, rather recent, examples…We might question now: what can music offer to the study of history for academical historians (and other humanists) but, also, how can these lyrics been used for students (like ourselves) or for lower levels, where history in most of the cases is not a choice but a must.

I would leave here the topic, not without first putting the link to some interesting websites related with the topic:

http://www.voicesacrosstime.org/

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/IEC/iecmusic.html

References & Bibliography: