{"id":19,"date":"2012-11-25T15:00:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-25T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/o-dub.com\/cv\/?p=19"},"modified":"2022-08-09T18:15:07","modified_gmt":"2022-08-09T18:15:07","slug":"the-comfort-zone-shaping-the-retro-soul-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/?p=19","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Comfort Zone: Shaping the Retro-Soul Audience&#8221; (Essay, 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/pop-when.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/pop-when.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-133\" width=\"300\" height=\"453\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/pop-when.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/pop-when-199x300.jpeg 199w, https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/pop-when-520x785.jpeg 520w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Wang, Oliver. &#8220;The Comfort Zone: Shaping the Retro-Soul Audience.&#8221; <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dukeupress.edu\/pop-when-the-world-falls-apart\">Pop When the World Falls Apart<\/a><\/em>. Edited by E. Weisbard. Duke University Press: 201-229.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Anthology essay (solicited, refereed).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Discusses the racial\/cultural politics of the so-called &#8220;retro-soul&#8221; movement begun in the late 1990s that gained considerable mainstream attention circa 2007 because of such artists as Amy Winehouse and Sharon Jones.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Background: As both a DJ and soul music fan, I had been following the rise of so-called &#8220;retro-soul&#8221; music since its emergence in the late 1990s. Retro-soul is primarily distinguished by its fidelity to older, &#8220;vintage&#8221; styles of soul music production and early attempts at retro-soul recordings were often consciously engineered to sound as close as possible to R&amp;B\/funk recordings of the 1960s and &#8217;70s. When Amy Winehouse borrowed much of this sound for her hit 2007 album, Back in Black, controversies arose around how her success, as a white, British woman, overshadowed that of Black female pioneers in the same scene, especially Sharon Jones. This essay looked at how retro-soul&#8217;s audience \u2014 perceived as predominantly young and white \u2014 was shaped by the &#8220;comfort zones&#8221; of label managers and staff familiar with certain consumer demographics (but not others), suggesting that retro-soul&#8217;s appeal isn&#8217;t necessarily musicological but may be influenced by organizational decision-making and related social\/cultural capital.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wang, Oliver. &#8220;The Comfort Zone: Shaping the Retro-Soul Audience.&#8221; Pop When the World Falls Apart. Edited by E. Weisbard. Duke University Press: 201-229. Anthology essay (solicited, refereed). Discusses the racial\/cultural politics of the so-called &#8220;retro-soul&#8221; movement begun in the late 1990s that gained considerable mainstream attention circa 2007 because of such artists as Amy Winehouse&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academicessay","category-music","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oliverwang.net\/cv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}