University of Guelph-Humber

When you think of pop music, artists like Taylor Swift or Billie Eilish may come to mind. But how did the pop music of today’s superstars evolve from their predecessors?

Dr. Ryan Bruce’s AHSS*2280 Popular Music explores the history, social changes, and cultural contexts that shape the pop music we are familiar with today. Fall 2024 is the first time this Liberal Studies elective has been available to University of Guelph-Humber (UofGH) students since 2019.

“History is dynamic,” course instructor Dr. Bruce says. “The history of popular music informs how we engage with our favourite music today.”

The course takes students on a journey through the early days of the music industry starting in the 1800s, through technological and legal developments in Britain and North America that supported the start of the music industry as we know it today. The class also explores social changes and tensions of power related to class, race, and gender – all part of mass marketing and music sales at different times in history.

As the course’s instructor, Dr. Bruce is passionate about music beyond the classroom. He’s a classically trained pianist, with a background playing rock and blues guitar, who’s also a professional jazz saxophonist.

“It started with a love of playing music and transferring that into a love for understanding how music works on a theoretical level, but then also how the music works and makes connections between people socially,” he says.

Dr. Bruce says he always played “a lot” of music, even when he studied the sciences during his undergrad at the University of Guelph. But he remained passionate about music, especially jazz.

After he completed his undergraduate degree, he made the switch to study music full time at the University of Guelph. Showing commitment and passion, several important mentors and bandmates encouraged him to pursue his musical education further. So, he packed his bags to move from Guelph to Toronto, where he completed his Master’s and PhD degrees at York University – and hasn’t looked back.

“I was able to pursue my love of jazz and jazz history, analyzing the music, and I got to study with some amazing jazz people here in Toronto. And then from there, applying those ideas across a lot of different kinds of music,” Dr. Bruce says, adding that jazz was arguably considered popular music for several decades, way back. Understanding how jazz fits in with other genres gave him insights to think of music more broadly through history and why it’s meaningful in different contexts.

AHSS*2280 Popular Music at UofGH also focuses on race relations and Black cultural contributions to music. Dr. Bruce says that his courses bring anti-racism into the curriculum, which ties into his research that’s based on the contexts of race relations and Black musical achievements.

He says his anti-racist course design emphasizes how and why Black music is central to understanding all genres of popular music. This includes problematizing binaries like Black and White, and how systemic racism creates unequal access to the production of musical activity for the BIPOC population. “We face power relations open and honestly to critically think about how race is a major factor in shaping society’s experience with popular music,” he says.

Dr. Bruce has a deep interest in examining diverse perspectives in music. Alongside ethnomusicologist Dr. Howard Spring, he published an Open Educational Resource (OER) book called, “Beyond the Classroom: World Music from the Musician’s Point of View” through the University of Guelph’s OpenEd department.

“Our work was to really broaden ideas about online learning in the arts and especially music,” Dr. Bruce says.

This is a free resource about a variety of global music traditions, from Indigenous Pow Wow music in Canada, to music in Cuba, Zimbabwe, India, and more.

“A lot of what we listen to and enjoy today is based on a long history of amazing music,” Dr. Bruce says.

If you’re interested in enrolling in this course, don’t fret if you’ve missed Fall 2024’s session. Dr. Bruce will be teaching it at UofGH again in Winter 2025.

Listen to the Popular Music class Spotify playlist, created by Dr. Bruce here.