John Street

It is common to hear talk of how music can inspire crowds, move individuals and mobilise movements. We know too of how governments can live in fear of its effects, censor its sounds and imprison its creators. At the same time, there are other governments that use music for propaganda or for torture. All of these examples speak to the idea of music's political importance. But while we may share these assumptions about music's power, we rarely stop to analyse what it is about organised sound - about notes and rhythms - that has the effects attributed to it. This is the first book to examine systematically music's political power. It shows how music has been at the heart of accounts of political order, at how musicians from Bono to Lily Allen have claimed to speak for peoples and political causes. It looks too at the emergence of music as an object of public policy, whether in the classroom or in the copyright courts, whether as focus of national pride or employment opportunities. The book brings together a vast array of ideas about music's political significance (from Aristotle to Rousseau, from Adorno to Deleuze) and new empirical data to tell a story of the extraordinary potency of music across time and space. At the heart of the book lies the argument that music and politics are inseparably linked, and that each animates the other.

Music and Politics

Matthew Worley

Peter Webb

Keith Gildart

Lucy Robinson

Bill Osgerby

Anna Gough-Yates

Sian Lincoln

This book brings together historians, sociologists and social scientists to examine aspects of youth culture. The book’s themes are riots, music and gangs, connecting spectacular expression of youthful disaffection with everyday practices. By so doing, Youth Culture and Social Change maps out new ways of historicizing responses to economic and social change: public unrest and popular culture.

Making a Difference by Making a Noise

Youth Culture and Social Change

This book assesses the legacy of Dick Hebdige and his work on subcultures in his seminal work, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979). The volume interrogates the concept of subculture put forward by Hebdige, and asks if this concept is still capable of helping us understand the subcultures of the twenty-first century. The contributors to this volume assess the main theoretical trends behind Hebdige’s work, critically engaging with their value and how they orient a researcher or student of subculture, and also look at some absences in Hebdige’s original account of subculture, such as gender and ethnicity. The book concludes with an interview with Hebdige himself, where he deals with questions about his concept of subculture and the gestation of his original work in a way that shows his seriousness and humour in equal measure. This volume is a vital contribution to the debate on subculture from some of the best researchers and academics working in the field in the twenty-first century.

Through the Subcultural Lens

Hebdige and Subculture in the Twenty-First Century

Martin Scott

Sanna Inthorn

From entertainment to citizenship reveals how the young use shows like X-factor to comment on how power ought to be used, and how they respond to those pop stars – like Bono and Bob Geldof – who claim to represent them. It explores how young people connect the pleasures of popular culture to the world at large. For them, popular culture is not simply a matter of escapism and entertainment, but of engagement too. The place of popular culture in politics, and its contribution to democratic life, has too often been misrepresented or misunderstood. This book provides the evidence and analysis that will help correct this misperception. It documents the voices of young people as they talk about popular culture (what they love as well as what they dislike), and as they reveal their thoughts about the world they inhabit. It will be of interest to those who study media and culture, and those who study politics.

Politics and popular culture

From entertainment to citizenship

Will Straw

Simon Frith

"Todo lo que hasta ahora no se ha contado acerca de la música popular, desde su origen, producción, evolución y consumo hasta los detalles más sorprendentes sobre su profunda repercusión social. Frente a las convencionales historias del rock, esta obra presenta las claves fundamentales que permitirán al lector alcanzar una comprensión global de la expresión musical con mayor éxito en nuestros días. A lo largo de sus páginas, comentaristas expertos destacan la evolución tanto de la producción como del consumo de la música popular, explicando desde sus inicios la aparición de una enorme industria capaz de generar incontables e inimaginables beneficios, así como el nacimiento de estrellas mundialmente conocidas, de la talla de Elvis Presley, Nirvana o las Spice Girls. Estos reconocidos analistas ponen de relieve cómo el desarrollo de las nuevas tecnologías (desde el amplificador hasta internet) ha hecho cambiar el sonido y la práctica de la música popular" - tapa posterior.

aspectos clave del desarrollo de la música popular: desde las nuevas tecnologías hasta la política y la globalización

La otra historia del rock

Subject: "This book examines music's political power. It shows how music has been at the heart of accounts of political order, how musicians from Bono to Blue have claimed to speak for peoples and political causes. It looks at the emergence of music as an object of public policy, in the classroom or in the copyright courts, as the focus of national pride or employment opportunities. The book brings together ideas about music's political significance (from Aristotle to Rousseau, to Adorno and beyond) to tell of the extraordinary potency of music across time and space. At its heart lies the argument that music and politics are inseparably linked, and that each animates the other"--Back cover

John Street

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