Howl
Welcome. I'm John Howland.
Please explore & listen
with big ears.
Welcome. I'm John Howland.
Please explore & listen
with big ears.
Inside stuff on classy culture and music.
As a professor of musicology, I research and teach popular music, jazz, and music-in-media history and practice. I have written on a wide range of topics, but I am centrally an historical musicologist who specializes in studies of both "deluxe" pop and jazz production and arranging traditions, as well as issues of class (the “brows,” with special interest in the middlebrow), cross-racial exchange, and the ways in which taste cultures, image construction, and the business of showbiz intersect with ideas cultural hierarchy. Much of this work centers on hybrid orchestral-pop traditions, and particularly what I call “luxe pop.” This refers both to pop image constructions of luxury and glamour and the deluxe sounds of orchestral-pop production. This is central to my 2021 book, Hearing Luxe Pop: Glorification, Glamour and the Middlebrow in American Popular Music. In a similar vein, I am starting a new book project on mainstream disco across 1973–1979 (just in time for disco’s 50th anniversary!). I am also a multi-instrumentalist, a crate digger with big ears (i.e., I explore music widely across eras and genres), and a lifelong tinkerer and craftsman with passions for vintage musical instruments and technology.
Come on in. Have a look around. You'll probably find something you're interested in.
And, of course, do feel free to contact me: CONTACT PAGE.