Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture

Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture presents eighteen original essays by leading scholars in the field of popular music studies. Each essay – drawing widely on work in feminist, postcolonial, and cultural studies and the disciplines of musicology and literary criticism – maps the competing perspectives on one of the key terms in ongoing debates on the meaning of popular music and culture, discusses the history of continuities and conflicts in its meaning, and presents the writer′s own views on its meaning and how he or she has come to adopt such a position. These essays combine to form a valuable overview of the state of popular music discourse at the end of the twentieth century. They will prove invaluable both to those new to the study of popular music and those already well–versed in popular music and cultural studies.

Acknowledgments. Notes on contributors. Introduction: Putting It Into Words: Key Terms for Studying Popular Music; Bruce Horner (Drake University) and Thomas Swiss (Drake University). Part I: Locating Popular Music in Culture: . 1. Ideology: Lucy Green (University of London). 2. Discourse: Bruce Horner (Drake University). 3. Histories: Gilbert Rodman (University of South Florida). 4. Institutions: David Sanjek (BMI Archives). 5. Politics: Robin Balliger (Stanford University). 6. Race: Russell Potter (Rhode Island College). 7. Gender: Holly Kruse (La Salle University). 8. Youth: Deena Weinstein (DePaul University). Part II: Locating Culture in Popular Music. 9. Popular: Anahid Kassabian (Fordham University). 10. Music: David Brackett (SUNY Binghamton). 11. Form: Richard Middleton (University of Newcastle upon Tyne). 12. Text: John Shepherd (Carleton University). 13. Images: Cynthia Fuchs (George Mason University). 14. Performance: David Shumway (Carnegie Mellon University). 15. Authorship: Will Straw (McGill University). 16. Technology: Paul Theberge (Concordia University). 17. Business: Mark Fenster (Yale Law School) and Thomas Swiss (Drake University). 18. Scenes: Sara Cohen (University of Liverpool). Index.

Bruce Horner has degrees in both music and English. His essays on song criticism have appeared in such journals as Mosaic, Writing on the Edge, and the Journal of Musicology. He is Associate Professor of English at Drake University, where he teaches courses on song criticism. Thomas Swiss has had essays published in Popular Music, Postmodern Culture, New England Review, and The New York Times Book Review. His most recent books are Rough Cut, a collection of poems (1997), and the co–edited Mapping the Beat: Popular Music and Contemporary Theory (Blackwell, 1997). He teaches courses on music and contemporary culture at Drake University, where he is Center for the Humanities Professor.

"The book features an excellent roster of authors and will make a valuable companion to popular–music studies, histories and surveys" CHOICE