History of Music in Popular Culture
Course Number: MUAC271
Subject: Music
Locating Scholarly sources
Scholars communicate with the academic community through journal articles, books, and book chapters. There are examples of each below, can you determine which each of them are?
Goodyer, I. (2026). Rock Against Racism, culture and social struggle. In Crisis music (pp. 98–126). Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781847793003.00013
Hyland, N., & Banks, H. J. (2025). Drowning Out Escapism: Performances of Transformative Confinement in the Work of Beyoncé and Harry Styles. Popular Music and Society, 48(2), 132–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2024.2444169
Holt, K. C. (2026). I Bet You Won’t Get Crunk!: The Performative Resistance of Atlanta Hip-Hop Party Music. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197792711.001.0001
Tutorials on Scholarly Sources
Background sources
Encyclopedias
Very Short Introductions (Oxford University Press)
- Country music 2020
- Film Music 2023
- Folk Music 2011
- Music 2021
- Music and Technology 2022
- Psychology of Music 2018
- Rock ‘n’ Roll 2026.
- World Music 2020
Cambridge Histories (Cambridge University Press)
- The Cambridge History of American Music
- The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music
- The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music
Grove Music
Grove Music Online is an Oxford Music database that includes over 57,000 articles written by over 6,000 authors from various areas of music. Remember to consult the "Bibliography" at the end of the articles.
Wikipedia
Remember that Wikipedia is not a scholarly resource and you wouldn't normally include an entry in your list of sources. However, you may find references to scholarly sources on a Wikipedia page. For example, see Taylor Swift.
Books
- Search Omni to identify books at Laurier and other Omni libraries
- Use facets at left of results to focus your search
- e.g, books and ebooks
Finding Books in Omni
Articles
- Search Omni to identify articles
- Use facets at left of results to focus your search
- e.g, Articles, peer-reviewed
Finding Scholarly Articles in Omni
Sometimes it is hard to narrow down results in Omni. Consider the following databases that provide direct access to scholarly articles in just music
For more detailed searching, and/or for more obscure topics, try searching across the full text through these databases:
You can also limit your search to just the Music titles in JSTOR.
Journal titles
While journals are usually indexed in academic databases, it can be helpful to "hand-search" the entire full text or browse the tables of contents (TOCs) of core journal titles, going beyond the index metadata, abstracts, and algorithmic relevance ranking.
Scores
- Scores in print and online.
- NOTE: Remember that photocopiers on campus allow you to scan pages (e.g., musical excerpts) to pdf
Audio
Under audio, add this to oxfor mus online
Includes American Music, Contemporary World Music, Jazz Music Library, Popular Music Library, and Smithsonian Global Sound.
Add this to naxos
Emphasis is on classical music, but is global in coverage and includes other genres.
Complete list of streaming audio library subscriptions.
Video
Finding Videos in Omni
The Library subscribes to a number of streaming video services and in general you can search for the included titles. Sometimes it can be helpful to search for content in the video service itself since unlike Omni, the entire full text of the transcripts are also searchable.
Primary Sources
Citing your sources
NOTE:
- Citing Music: Chicago Style (University of Manitoba)
- includes examples for Naxos and YouTube
- Owl Purdue - Chicago