Prisons of Note

Prisons of Note aims to map the use, experience, and circumstance surrounding popular music in contemporary places of detention.

Publications on this subject have so far appeared in journals Musicæ Scientæ (2021), Postcolonial Text (2014) and Torture (2013), , and in the monograph Dangerous Mediations: Pop Music in a Philippine Prison Video (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Project: Sonic Signatures: Irish Music in Oslo

Investigator: Áine Mangaoang (PI)

Publication: “(Be)Longing: Irish Musicking and Place-Making in Oslo, Norway” in Sonic Signatures: Music, Migration and the City at Night (Edited by Derek Pardue, Ailbhe Kenny, and Katie Young)

Events Organized

Public Seminar “This Really Happened”: Confirmation, Memory, & the Representation of Popular Music History” at Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo (2017)

Public Exhibition “Music, Photographs & Stories from the Archives” at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (2016)

Project: "Here Lies Love" and the Politics of Disco-Opera

This research suggests a range of perspectives and discourses for understanding the relationships between pop music and politics, through a case study of Here Lies Love (2013) -- a disco-opera based  on the life of former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. Despite composer David Byrne’s claims of separating art from politics in Here Lies Love, my analysis demonstrates how the music is, through its various multimodal forms, fraught with overt socio-cultural and political significance, that can be read as an escalating revisionist, apologist text that operates in defense of Imelda. An essay from this project ‘Here Lies Love and the Politics of Disco-Opera’ appears in the Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, edited by David Brackett, Kenneth Smith, & Ciro Scotto, (Routledge 2018).

Project: YouTube and Sign Language Music Videos

Music is frequently perceived as an exclusively auditory phenomenon. Within the field of music studies, literature on hearing loss and deafness is noticeably scarce. Widely-held assumptions are that deaf culture is one without music -- a community silent to the experiences of music & sound. Media have been instrumental in shaping how hearing people perceive deaf individuals and Deaf culture. Over this past decade, thousands of amateur, user-generated videos featuring an individual or group interpreting or translating a select Beyoncé song into a recognised sign-language have emerged via YouTube. This research explores how YouTube’s platform provides an ideal conduit for the mediation and re-examination of the art of signed songs on the one hand, while on the other, problematises issues faced in attempts to devise inclusive and exhaustive interpretations of Beyoncé’s music through visual signs. Findings from this research-in-progress is published in the following book chapter and additional forthcoming articles:

Project: Sing Out With Strings Reports 

With life-long interests in community music, music as social integration, and inclusive music education, Áine worked with the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s community engagement programme Sing Out With Strings from 2014-’16. Established in 2008, the Irish Chamber Orchestra provides weekly workshops in singing, song-writing and violin tuition for 300 children across Limerick city, as a Community Engagement Programme working in Limerick primary schools. The Sing Out With Strings project addresses issues of inclusion, equality of access and provision and highlights the numerous benefits that a long-term project of this nature has on the children, staff, parents and the wider community. Áine is the author of two reports on Sing Out with Strings, commissioned the Irish Chamber Orchestra (2015 & 2016). 

Investigator: Áine Mangaoang

Funding: Irish Chamber Orchestra