Introduction

Musique et médias, des connectivités à repenser

Abstract

Far from defining connectivity univocally, this issue of Kinephanos invites the reader to consider the term in its relational dimension and to broaden the reflection to a multitude of connections produced by the various encounters between music and media. It is therefore the multiple roles that music plays in the media, as well as the roles played by the media in the circulation of music, which are at the heart of this issue. Danick Trottier gives a statistical portrait of the audiences of Québec classical music festivals. In a context where the supply of music on digital media is increasing, Trottier is rather insisting on the hybridity of listening modes and he shows that traditional media and formats are still relevant in the cultural landscape. Mathew Flynn offers a complement to the sociological and musicological studies of listening and attention by questioning the postures that emerge from streaming platforms like Spotify. One such posture is the “conversational listening” category, adapted from a “cultural conversation” (Lanham, 2006) between the listener and the corporations that collect data related to their listening habits for promotional purposes. Martin K. Koszolko and Ed Montano’s article about the remote collective creation of electronic music challenges the notion of musical “scene”, since the distribution of music on the Internet breaks down geographical and stylistic boundaries. Jenna Ng and James Barrett are interested in popular music from the 1960s used in the television series Mad Men (Matthew Weiner, 2007-2015) and the first-person shooter game Wolfenstein: The New Order (Bethesda Softworks, 2014). The authors suggest that music is a privileged vehicle in the creation of a “half-imagined past,” which is a representation anchored both in the historical archive and in the imagination of the viewer/player. Finally, our guest author, Martin Lussier, signs an article exploring the various figures of Québécois protest music, as they are constituted in the written press of Quebec. He identifies four such figures, all of which are frequently mobilized by cultural commentators: the politics of the text, the politics of the context, the politics of cultural industries, and politics of awareness.