Studying Popular Music - Tapa dura

As interest in popular music has increased, so the need for better ways of studying it has become more urgent. It is the author's contention that popular music can be properly understood only through an interdisciplinary method, and this book aims to demonstrate this through a critical analysis of issues and approaches in a variety of areas, ranging from the political economy of popular music through its history and ethnography to its semiology, aesthetics and ideology. The focus of the book is on Anglo-American popular music of the last two hundred years, more especially of the 20th century. In Part One the author outlines a "historical map" of this field, offering on the way a constructive critique of existing musical histories, of T.W.Adorno's pessimistic picture of music in 20th century "mass culture", and of various theories of musical production and reproduction in contemporary capitalist societies. Part Two turns to the analysis of popular music, looking in turn at approaches drawn from musicology, from folkloristics, anthropology and cultural studies, from structuralism and semiology, and from aesthetics, ideological analysis and psychoanalysis. Throughout the book the character of "popularity" itself is a theme, as it impinges on folk song and music hall, Tin Pan Alley and rock `n' roll, punk rock and disco, and now "roots" musics.