Sexuality and the nation: urban popular music and queer identities in Krámpack

Abstract

Since popular music entered film music studies debates between the mid-1990s and early-2000s (Romney and Wootton, 1995; Smith, 1998; Kassabian, 2001; Wojcik and Knight, 2001; Inglis, 2003; Lanin and Caley, 2005), scholarly attention for Spanish film music has grown (Vernon and Eisen, 2006; Fraile Prieto, 2010; Viñuela Suárez and Fraile Prieto, 2010) and contributions about songs quickly started appearing (Evans, 2002; Vernon, 2005; Shaw and Stone, 2012). There are obvious signs of a growing field including a broad range of disciplines. While different backgrounds produce a diverse picture, different disciplines can bring a certain focus, which predictably imposes a few recurrent limitations. Film scholars often focus on auteurs, often leaving not-yet-established directors off the scholarly map, while musicologists are still drawn towards the great film music composers – two sides that often come together to produce studies about established director-composer pairs. In Spain, film music studies remains largely centred in the musicological circles where these debates began and the interdisciplinary perspective which characterises Anglophone scholarship about Spanish films and their soundtracks has not yet reached film studies in the Spanish context.