Staff profile

Samuel Horlor is a Teaching Fellow 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 Chinese popular music interested in audiency, street music, and music's embeddedness in everyday urban life.

Samuel holds degrees from the University of Southampton (BA Music 2007) and Durham University (MA Ethnomusicology 2012 and PhD 2017). His doctoral work focused on public-space music-making in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and he was subsequently an Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Musical Research.

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.