I'll be intorducing a screening of Carlos Saura's film Fados as part of the Vamos! festival in Newcastle upon Tyne on 9 July. Details here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZgiKTQ-YF4
Author: Richard
Richard Elliott is a cultural musicologist with a particular interest in popular musics of the world.
He is the author of the books Fado and the Place of Longing: Loss, Memory and the City (2010), Nina Simone (2013), The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music (2015), The Sound of Nonsense (2018) and DJs do Guetto (2022). He has also published articles and reviews on popular music, literature, consciousness, memory, nostalgia, place and space, affect, language and technology.
Richard is Senior Lecturer in Music at the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University, where he specialises in courses related to popular music. Prior to this he taught courses on popular music, contextual music studies, and music and media at the University of Sussex. He has also worked as a teacher of English for Academic Purposes, a journal editor and a reviewer of books and music. Find out more about his work at https://latevoice.com/
Upcoming talk: Listening to Europe
On 27 June, I'll be presenting a paper at the IASPM International Conference in Gijón. The title of my paper is 'Listening to Europe: "Continental Records" in Britain’. Abstract This paper examines the circulation of recordings from continental Europe in Britain prior to the Second World War, focussing on the broadcast and critical reception of… Continue reading Upcoming talk: Listening to Europe
Nina Simone book published
My book on Nina Simone has been published by Equinox.
time working through us
To be alive is to feel the passage of time, and to have time working through us in every cell, nerve ending and organ, as it takes us through its paces and plays in our bodies its mortal, vital tune. Eva Hoffman, Time, 61
little holes in grief
I’ve always felt that there is that moment in your life, when you forget about something that is really terrible. For five minutes the sun is shining and everything is beautiful. Then all of a sudden you realize that the person you cared about is gone, and it all comes back. It is one of… Continue reading little holes in grief
grief reconfigures time
Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been picked out and given separate names? It also reconfigues space. You have entered a new geography, mapped by a new cartography. You seem to be taking your bearings from one of those seventeenth-century… Continue reading grief reconfigures time
I write in the empty sky
How far I have roamed to reach this point! Here at last, I write a line, bowing my head to all the ages of empty sky. I write, well, something. Ko Un, 'I Write in the Empty Sky', First Person Sorrowful
the emotivity of mourning
It is said … that Time soothes mourning – No, Time makes nothing happen; it merely makes the emotivity of mourning pass. Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary, March 20, 1978
The Lost Ones
Abode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one. Vast enough for search to be in vain. Narrow enough for flight to be in vain. Samuel Beckett, 'The Lost Ones'
On transience
The proneness to decay of all that is beautiful and perfect can, as we know, give rise to two different impulses in the mind. The one leads to the aching despondency felt by the young poet, while the other leads to rebellion against the fact asserted. No! It is impossible that all this loveliness of… Continue reading On transience
Late Voice 