The Political Force of Musical Beauty (Refiguring American Music) - Softcover

Shank, Barry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822356589 ISBN 13: 9780822356585

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2014

Synopsis

In The Political Force of Musical Beauty, Barry Shank shows how musical acts and performances generate their own aesthetic and political force, creating, however fleetingly, a shared sense of the world among otherwise diverse listeners. Rather than focusing on the ways in which music enables the circulation of political messages, he argues that communities grounded in the act and experience of listening can give rise to new political ideas and expression. Analyzing a wide range of "beautiful music" within popular and avant-garde genres—including the Japanese traditions in the music of Takemitsu Toru and Yoko Ono, the drone of the Velvet Underground, and the insistence of hardcore punk and Riot grrrl post-punk—Shank finds that when it fulfills the promise of combining sonic and lyrical differences into a cohesive whole, musical beauty has the power to reorganize the basis of social relations and produce communities that recognize meaningful difference.

About this title

About the Author:

Barry Shank is Professor of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He is the author of Dissonant Identities: The Rock 'n' Roll Scene in Austin, Texas, and A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture, and a coeditor of American Studies: An Anthology and The Popular Music Studies Reader.

Review:

"In this ambitious, original, and compelling book, Barry Shank addresses the relation of music to politics. In the process, he makes a significant contribution to aesthetic theory. It is beautifully written, nuanced yet accessible. Its central theme, on the political agency of music, is refreshing and Shank's close readings and formal analyses of musical examples are both richly rewarding and entertaining." (Bernard Gendron, author of Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde)

"Treating noise as the recalibration of our sensibility settings and a vision for building community on difference, Barry Shank makes a politics of thorny sound. Even better, when this formerLong Ryders member, turned chair of Comparative Studies, takes on Moby’s half-borrowed 'Natural Blues,' Yoko Ono’s obstacle course art, the Velvet Underground’s 'Heroin' drone, then Patti Smith, Bad Brains, Bikini Kill, and TV on the Radio with Tinariwen, we get something amazingly long in arriving: an exploration of college radio music by a passionate college professor." (Eric Weisbard, editor of Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0822356589
• ISBN 13: 9780822356585
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344