Synopses & Reviews
Music and Urban Geography is the first book to theorize musical aspects of the tremendous changes that have overtaken major cities in the developed world over the past few decades. Drawing on musicology, music theory, urban geography, and historical materialism, Krims maps changes not only in how music represents cities, but also in how music sounds and is deployed socially in new urban contexts. Taking on venerable musicological debates from entirely new perspectives, Krims argues that the cultural-studies approach now predominant in cultural musicology fails to address contemporary realities of production and consumption; instead, the social effects of space and new patterns of urban production play a shaping role, in which music takes on new forms and functions, with representation playing a significant but not always decisive role. While music scholars increasingly concern themselves with place, Krims theorizes it together with the shaping role of space.
Pushing urban geography into new cultural contexts Music and Urban Geography will offer those concerned with the social effects of space newtheoretical models. Ranging from Anonymous 4 to Alanis Morissette, from Cura ao to Seattle, Music and Urban Geography presents a truly wide-ranging, interdisciplinary, and theoretically ambitious view of both musical and urban change.
Synopsis
Music and Urban Geography is the first serious, wide-ranging study of how changes in urban life over the last 30 years have affected the way music is performed, sold, and experienced. Krims argues that the emergence, changes, and disappearance of many musical genres bears an intimate relation to publicly shared perceptions of urban life, as represented by an urban ethos promulgated through music, film, TV, and other media. The kind of city represented in songs like Petula Clark's Downtown (1964) differs drastically from Ice Cube's Gangsta's Fairytale (1990), as just one example. Wedding theory to concrete examples, the author bridges many disciplines in bringing new and provocative ideas to the study of how music shapes its world--and how the urban world in turn shapes the music. Music and Urban Geography will appeal to students of musicology, cultural studies, and urban studies.