I had written a dissertation on prince, and here are just some extracts, which u might like to discuss/agree/disagree with:

Amongst others, I analysed how Prince uses words, performance and music to convey meaning!

1) Prince’s musicality, whether in form of his lyrics, body, performance or the way how he came to describe himself as or simply ‘symbol’, is undoubtedly laden with symbolic representations like no any other star. He uses his black ethnic origin and mixes with elements of black and white instrumentation. In this form he presents himself as a crosscultural object of desire and locates himself in comparison of black/white ethnicity, within an absent ‘other’ leading to his transformation of a controversial star personae like his song ‘Controversy’ suggests.

2) As a theoretical method, I analysed a vast quantity of Prince’s released/ unreleased song titles to understand the thematic he deals with in his musical lyrics and his presentation.

3) Prince takes a contradictory position within commercial mainstream music culture rather than contradicted. Within this culture he distinguishes himself and constructs a group alliance such as with his own band ‘New Power Generation’ pointing a style towards a relationship between class interests and forms. For Prince has a contradictory image who links his cultural ethnic roots in a rebellious manner with those of he understands as non black articulating political and racial concerns within his musical field such as the songs ‘Race’ or ‘New World’. He overtly emphasizes the role of ‘experience’, i.e. ‘Purple Experience’, ‘Gold Experience’ and points towards a particular experience which he feels and wants to share with others.

4) Prince and the ‘New Power Generation’ are to be seen as to arise within the counter-hegemony in opposition to dominant culture by inventing a new ideology through musical forms. At this point I want to turn to the notion of Prince’s own position within culture and how these are reflected in his lyrics, bodily performance and bodily voice within the musical structure which then are interpreted by listeners and serve as social constructions of reality.

5) Here I will compare his work within the musical structure and language structure and analyse how they both are to be understood as a communication within the social structure in which listeners are positioned, because both depend on each other. The new ideology supported in his songs is the defining end result of cultural relations in struggle to define itself. Prince defines himself within a specific cultural process as an idealised notion of culture. Parting from the essentialist perspective on culture, I wish to emphasize that within the internally contradictory ground of cultural relations lies the accretion of Prince music and agree with Hall ‘Popular culture is neither the popular tradition of resistance nor is it the forms which are superimposed on and over them. It’s the ground on which the transformations are worked’ !!!

Any comments?

To be Continued...///
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Whats that!
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OzlemUcucu said:

It's a reply.

Fauxie said:

A DEATH FISH:hmm:

ok

gimmmme the whole thing to read.

Yeah, post the whole thing and I'll have something to tell you, no doubt... or else, just orgnote it to me.

I'm doing some writing about Prince as well. Wrote two papers last year for first year of masters. Writing about the New Romantics this year (in French, however) and hopefully, these will be the subjects of a doctoral dissertation, should they accept lil ol' me...

So suffice to say, I'm fairly interested in anything folks have to say about Prince, in an academic context.

Heiress said:

about the new romantic?

OzlemUcucu said:

Yes. Prince is a New Romantic, in my estimation.

Fauxie said: