Robert Bromley

Profile

I am currently a PhD student in the School of Music, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH). Before coming to Leeds in 2025, I completed a BA in Songwriting and (after a short break due to the COVID-19 pandemic) an MA in Popular Music Practice at BIMM University in Bristol where I specialised in experimental (or ‘avant-garde’) folk music via practice research. My musical practice sits primarily within the avant-folk genre of American primitive guitar: popularised by John Fahey in the 1960s, currently experiencing a modern resurgence. I have since engaged in further practice research, collaborating with Dr Matthew Mazanek (Bath Spa University) on the creative use of guitar tuning; this was conducted via the 21^st Century Music Practice Research Centre led by Professor Simon Zagorski-Thomas (University of West London).

Following on from this, my PhD project takes a broader look at the relationship between individual creativity and tradition in the genre of American primitive guitar, positing the notion of a ‘radical folk tradition’ that seeks to reimagine or reinterpret what it means (or could mean) to engage in ‘folk music’ in the modern world. The project will trace the genre of American primitive guitar from its historical emergence amid the post-war folk revival of the 1960s through to its contemporary resurgence, examining the ways in which different artists have engaged critically and creatively with certain folkloric and non-folkloric styles, mediating between past and present. This is positioned in contrast to (and in dialogue with) the prevailing discourse of conservative folk revivalism.

Research interests

My research interests include (but are not limited to):

• Folk and popular music
• Experimentalism and the avant-garde
• Critical and cultural theory
• Nostalgia, utopia, and temporality
• Creativity and/in tradition
• Semiotics and discourse studies
• Underground subcultures and outsider art
• Hybridity, remix, and bricolage
• Post-digital aesthetics
• Guitar tunings and augmentations
• Romanticism, modernism, and post-modernism

Qualifications

• MA Popular Music Practice, BIMM University
• BA (Hons) Songwriting, University of Sussex