What is noticed by many is not always considered desirable: even a number-one hit can be viewed negatively. Subproject A04 explores the pheno­menon of devaluing the popular within popular music, using the heuristic cate­gory of “Low Pop.” In its first funding phase, the project focused on senti­mental ballads, drawing on the corpus of “Kuschelrock” compila­tions. The quanti­tative success of senti­mental ballads – reflected in high chart positions and streaming numbers – often stands in stark contrast to their qualitative assess­ment in music criticism and their limited attention in academic research. Yet, simply categor­izing a song as a senti­mental ballad is not enough to (dis)qualify it as “Low Pop” in music maga­zine discourse.
In its second funding phase, the subproject broadens its perspec­tive to include the “undesirably popular” elements of popular music, particu­larly in relation to the global­ization of certain pop idioms – most notably those dominated by American and British pop music. The trans­forma­tions of the popular are studied inter­nationally, focusing on how popular music is evaluated from both a compa­rative and histo­rical per­spective. This is illustrated by comparing the reception of “Schlager” music in West Germany and “Highlife” in West Africa between 1950 and 1970.
In the section on German Schlager, the project investi­gates how this highly popular genre was devalued, especially as Anglo­phone pop music spread globally. In parallel, the section on Highlife examines how high/low hierarchies were nego­tiated in Ghana and Nigeria – between Western (colonially estab­lished) classical music, indi­genous African traditions, and Highlife pop. In both cases, the popularity of Schlager in postwar Germany and Highlife in Ghana and Nigeria during the 1950s and 60s was closely linked to processes of demo­crati­zation and the reconsti­tution of nation-states, making their trans­forma­tions comparable. This compa­rative per­spective is especially valuable because, in both contexts, the relation­ship between popular music and imagined national commu­nities (German, Ghanaian, Nigerian) is nego­tiated against the backdrop of globally dominant Anglo­phone pop music.