Analyses of music and environment are proliferating, yet new conceptions are needed to make sense of growing ecological crisis in the Anthropocene. From an empirical project tracing guitars all the way back to the tree, I argue for deeper conceptual and empirical integration of music into the material and visceral processes that constitute ecological crisis itself. Musicians are not only inspired by environmental concerns for compositional or activist purposes. They are entangled in environmental crisis through material and embodied relations with ecosystems, especially via the musical instruments we depend upon. I foreground three ‘more-than-musical’ themes to make sense of unfurling forces: materiality, corporeality and volatility. Musical instruments are gateway objects that invite contemplation of material and corporal relations. Such relations bind together musicians and non-human others. Material and corporeal relations with increasingly threatened upstream forests, and endangered tree species, are being confronted and reconfigured. In the context of ecological crisis, guitars do much more than make pleasing acoustic sounds. Via guitars we co-generate, with non-human others, a sound track of crisis both melancholy and hopeful.

Authenticity is a key concept in the evaluation of rock music by critics and fans. The production of fakes challenges the means by which listeners evaluate the authentic, by questioning central notions of integrity and sincerity. This article examines the nature and motives of faking in recorded music, such as inventing imaginary groups or passing off studio recordings as live performances. In addition to a survey of types of fakes and the motives of those responsible for them, the article presents two case studies, one of the ‘fake’ American group the Residents, the other of the Unknown Deutschland series of releases, purporting to be hitherto unknown recordings of German rock groups from the 1970s. By examining the critical reception of these cases and taking into account ethical and aesthetic considerations, the article argues that the relationship between the authentic (the ‘real’) and the inauthentic (the ‘fake’) is complex. It concludes that, to judge from fans’ responses at least, the fake can be judged as possessing cultural value and may even be considered as authentic.

This inquiry deals with the changing role of the technology and the use of phonographs and gramophones during the first half of the 20th century. Rather than looking at the UK or USA, which much previous research has done, the focus is on peripheral Sweden. More specifically the question is how phonography turned from being a scientific curiosity into becoming an everyday media technology, and how it thereby influenced culture and everyday musical communication. The findings show two distinct approaches to recorded music, which intermingle in today's unprecedented musicalisation of culture and everyday life around the globe – approaches respectively described as utilitarian and solipsistic.

This article re-examines the use of arguments in favour of free speech when faced with difficult subjects in music, such as sexual violence against women. We present a new perspective on the 1985 US Senate Hearing on Record Labeling and challenge the orthodoxy that the Hearing was only a matter of free speech. Using critical discourse analysis we argue that the sexist environment of the Hearing, the misogyny of the musicians, plus homosocial bonding resulted in the PMRC's arguments being unaddressed as attention turned to censorship. Subsequent academic work has continued to focus on censorship, neglecting to investigate how music can propagate dangerous representations. This article indicates the need for a shift in popular music studies towards careful consideration of those aspects which are difficult and dangerous for women. It therefore opens up popular music to important new areas for critical examination and feminist analysis.

This article discusses the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Council project researching how music festival communities in Scotland can address issues of environmental sustainability and climate change. It investigates how music festival communities are constructed with a focus on what role, if any, they might play in responding to the global challenge of environmental sustainability. Using music festivals in Scotland as a case study, we employed a variety of research methods to interrogate different constituents in music festival communities about their views and behaviours regarding climate change and environmental sustainability. These included festival audiences via onsite questionnaires; festival organisers and promoters via interviews and focus groups; and musicians via creative practice-led research. We conclude that rather than necessarily being a site for progressive or utopian socio-cultural experimentation (as they are occasionally portrayed in festival literature), music festival communities engage in complex and often contradictory behaviours when it comes to responding to – and making sense of – their own complicity in social challenges such as climate change.

We trace the history of Indonesian Islamic metal bands, including Purgatory, Tengkorak and Kodusa, and the One Finger Movement that revolved around these bands (centred mainly on Jakarta). We look at the differences in symbols, heroes, rituals and values between One Finger Movement bands and the Bandung (Indonesia) secular Death Metal scene. We also study Bandung Death Metal band Saffar, which was known for its Islamic lyrics on its debut album but which has been for a few years in something of a limbo owing to the departure of vocalist and lyricist Parjo. We also look at Saffar's positioning of itself as a ‘secular’ band with Islamic and Anti-Zionist lyrical themes rather than as an Islamic band per se. This dichotomy can be best explained by the phrase ‘a band of Muslims rather than a Muslim band’. The secular Bandung scene context is a significant explanatory factor here.

Popular music in Israel has recently seen a surge in the use of Arabic in music made by Israeli-Jewish musicians. Most of these, although descendants of immigrants from Arab countries, never acquired Arabic at home or in school, owing to national ideology which sought to label Arabic as the language of the non-Jewish other. This article reveals and contextualises this recent trend, offering a typology of the ways in which musicians engage with Arabic, their motivations for doing so and the challenges that they face. Discussing musicians who approach Arabic as Jewish heritage, as an aesthetic repository, or even as mere sound, we identify these mobilisations of Arabic as postvernacular uses of language, which often privilege its non-semantic qualities. Observed in the context of Israeli–Arab enmity, this trend appears to have emerged surprisingly not in spite of, but partly because of, the decline in peace prospects.

This article examines how Roberto Leydi and Giovanna Marini, two important figures of the Italian ‘folk revival’, negotiated diverse American cultural influences and adapted them to the political context of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that American musical traditions offered them valuable models even as many Italian intellectuals and artists grew more critical of US society and foreign policy. To explore this phenomenon in greater depth, I take as examples two particular moments of exchange. I first discuss American folklorist Alan Lomax's research in Italy and its impact on Leydi's career. I then examine how Marini employed American talking blues in order to reject US society in her first ballad, Vi parlo dell'America (I Speak to You of America) (1966). These two cases provide specific examples of how American influence worked in postwar Italy and the role of folk music in this process.