My research covers a range of topics and concepts, focusing upon transitions embedded within technology and globalism and their effects upon the creative practices of Music.
As a composer/producer, I create works between Electronica, Ambient and Jazz Music.
Most of my creative practice involves an engagement with aesthetically driven music making, inter-mediality or engagements with non-Western music cultures. As of 2020 this includes the release of Intake, a two-track EP embedding the traditional Chinese Music culture of Jiangnan Sizhu within a Leftfield Electronica context. Intake was featured on the likes of BBC Radio Humberside, Balamii Radio and on the frontpage of Bandcamp.
As part of the Chinese Whispers Research cluster, my PhD research reflects on this practice, aligning personal creative processes with an analysis of located music culture that combines approaches undertaken within Ethnomusicology and Popular Music studies. As such, my research creates a dynamic analysis centred upon the concepts of digitisation, anachronism, decolonisation and the formation of music culture, embodied within the globalisation of contemporary East Asian culture and its imprints onto creativity more broadly. Recent research papers have contended with the social framework of sampling and its role in the portrayal of non-Western identity, alongside engaging with inconsistent musical and multi-media representations within the genre of Cyberpunk. My research has also drawn its focus on the frameworks of cultural pluralism at play within our creativity, especially regarding our public understanding of identity and cultural ownership and how these are informed in distinct manners by historic and contemporary precedents.
Conference Papers and Proceedings
Rushworth, J. (2021) Cultural Unfamiliarity in Electronic Music: the status of normalisation in ‘sampling’ non-Western music. 30 April 2021. Music and Intercultural Practice Symposium – University of Hull.
Rushworth, J. (2021) Perspectives on cross-cultural composition in Electronic and Popular Music. 9 February 2021. Newland Lecture Series – University of Hull Music Department
Rushworth, J. (2021) Cross-cultural creativity: Social Discourses as Electronic Music. 3 February 2021. Faculty of Arts, Cultures and Education PGR Research Culture and Community Seminar – University of Hull Doctoral College.
Rushworth, J. (2021) Sampling and East Asian identity within contemporary Electronica. 13 January 2021. BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference – University of Cambridge.
Rushworth, J. (2020) Composing Cyberpunk: Sampling Asian identity in Acoustic and non-Acoustic Creative Music processes. 16 December 2020. Sound Instruments and Sonic Cultures Conference – Science and Media Museum (Bradford, UK)
Rushworth, J. (2019) Evidencing Western/Chinese Musical Globalisation in Damon Albarn’s Monkey Journey to the West. 8 September 2019. 11th Biennial International conference on Music Since 1900 – University of Huddersfield.
Rushworth, J. (2019) Western/Chinese Trans-cultural Collaboration in the work Monkey: Journey to the West. 15 March 2019. Chinese Culture in the Global Context International Conference 2019 – The Open University of Hong Kong.
Rushworth, J. (2019) Evidencing Western/Chinese trans-cultural collaboration in Damon Albarn’s Monkey: Journey to the West. 10 January 2019. BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference – University of Sheffield.
Rushworth, J. (Chair) (2019) Session 2C: Perspectives on Chinese Instruments. 10 January 2019. BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference – University of Sheffield.
