Staff profile

Samuel Horlor is, from October 2023, a Lecturer in Ethnomusicology in the Department of Music, Durham University.

Previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Ethnomusicology, Yunnan University (China), he is an ethnomusicologist and scholar of popular music currently most interested in global street music, Chinese-language performances in the UK, and audience research.

Samuel holds degrees from the University of Southampton (BA Music 2007) and Durham University (MA Ethnomusicology 2012 and PhD 2017) and is a member of the Coordinating Committee for CHIME Worldwide Platform for Chinese Music.

He is the author of Chinese Street Music: Complicating Musical Community (Cambridge University Press), and co-editor (with James Williams) of Musical Spaces: Place, Performance, and Power (Jenny Stanford Publishing).

See Samuel's ResearchGate profile.

• Ethnomusicology
• Popular music studies
• Chinese music
• Street music
• Music in everyday life
• Audiency

Authored book

• Horlor, Samuel (2021). Chinese Street Music: Complicating Musical Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Book review

• Horlor, Samuel (2020). The Sounds of Social Space: Branding, Built Environment, and Leisure in Urban China. Ethnomusicology Forum 29(1): 136-139.

Chapter in book

• Horlor, Samuel (2020). A Social Aesthetics of Imperfection: Spontaneity and Meaning in Pop on the Streets of China. In The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts: Spontaneity, Flaws and the Unfinished. Hamilton, Andy & Pearson, Lara London: Bloomsbury Academic. 73-85.

Conference Paper

• Horlor, Samuel & Amaro, Tat (2021), Money, Music, and Interpersonal Meanings: Researching Economic Exchange in Local Musicking in China and Thailand, in Hughes, David W., Intajamornrak, Chommanad, Rungruang, Apichai & Padgate, Usa eds, Moving from Disruption to Resilience: The Dynamics of Humanities and Social Sciences. Naresuan University, Thailand, 175-188.

Edited book

• Williams, James & Horlor, Samuel (2021). Musical Spaces: Place, Performance, and Power. Jenny Stanford Publishing.

Edited Journal

• Horlor, Samuel & Williams, James (2018). Geography, Music, Space. Musicology Research, (4).

Journal Article

• Horlor, Samuel (2022). Audiencing in China: Foreign Rock Musicians’ Perceptions of Difference and Sameness. Popular Music and Society 45(5): 584-599.
• Horlor, Samuel (2019). Neutralizing Temporary Inequities in Moral Status: Chinese Street Singers and the Gift Economy. Asian Music 50(2): 3-32.
• Horlor, Samuel (2019). Popular Song Afterlives: Oral Transmission and Mundane Creativity in Street Performances of Chinese Pop Classics. Journal of World Popular Music 6(1): 10-31.
• Horlor, Samuel (2019). Permeable Frames: Intersections of the Performance, the Everyday, and the Ethical in Chinese Street Singing. Ethnomusicology Forum 28(1): 3-25.
• Horlor, Samuel (2019). Chinese Street Pop and Performing with the Urban Environment. Sound Ethnographies 2(1): 39-68.