Policing Pop (Sound Matters) - Softcover

Cloonan, Martin; Garofalo, Reebee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566399890 ISBN 13: 9781566399890

Publisher: Temple University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Fans and detractors of popular music tend to agree on one thing: popular music is a bellwether of an individual's political and cultural values. In the United States, for example, one cannot think of the counterculture apart from its music. For that reason, in virtually every country in the world, some group identifies popular music as a source of potential danger and wants to regulate it. Policing Pop looks into the many ways in which popular music and artists around the world are subjected to censorship, ranging from state control and repression to the efforts of special interest or religious groups to limit expression.The essays collected here focus on the forms of censorship as well as specific instances of how the state and other agencies have attempted to restrict the types of music produced, recorded and performed within a culture. Several show how even unsuccessful attempts to exert the power of the state can cause artists to self-censor. Others point to material that taxes even the most liberal defenders of free speech. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that censoring agents target popular music all over the world, and they raise questions about how artists and the public can resist the narrowing of cultural expression.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Cloonan teaches Popular Music Culture at the University of Glasgow and is the author of Banned! Censorship of Popular Music in Britain, 1967-1992.

Reebee Garofalo is Professor at the College of Public and Community Service and is affiliated with the American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; his most recent book is Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA.

Contributors: Alenka Barber-Kersovan, Vanessa Bastian, Paul D. Fischer, Jeroen de Kloet, Michael Drewett, Steve Greenfield, Mike Jones, Keith Kahn-Harris, Dave Laing, Guy Osborn, David Parvo, José Roberto Zan, and the editors.

From the Inside Flap

"Policing Pop not only provides a fascinating survey of the ways in which pop has been censored and restricted, it also makes an eloquent argument for the political and social importance of popular music. This book serves as a rich reminder of how songs can make the powerful nervous and the powerless bold."
John Street, University of East Anglia

"Music censorship! What censorship? Policing Pop introduces the reader to the underlying mechanisms of music censorship and its effects on individuals and society in different parts of the world. Policing Pop will inspire and challenge further dissemination and the unveiling of appalling cases as well as concealed causes for censorship in this hitherto disregarded area of academic research."
Marie Korpe, Executive Director, Freemuse (Freedom of Musical Expression), The World Forum on Music & Censorship

Edition details

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566399890
• ISBN 13: 9781566399890
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 255