Synopses & Reviews
Combining a critical evaluation of recent work on youth, music and local identity with original ethnographic work, this book provides a wide-ranging study of music and style-centered youth cultures in a local context. Detailed studies of dance music, rap, bhangra and progressive rock examine how these musical styles become part of daily life in different urban settings. In addition, the book features exploration of white hip hop culture in Britain, the socio-cultural significance of local pub venues and the increasing popularity of "tribute" bands.
Synopsis
Music- and style-centred youth cultures are now a familiar aspect of everyday life in countries as far apart around the globe as Nepal and Jamaica, Hong Kong and Israel, Denmark and Australia. This lucid and original text provides a lively and wide-ranging account of the relationship between popular music and youth culture within the context of debates about the spatial dimensions of identity.
It begins with a clear and comprehensive survey, and critical evaluation, of the existing body of literature on youth culture and popular music developed by sociologists and cultural and media theorists. It then develops a fresh perspective on the ways in which popular music is appropriated as a cultural resource by young people, using as a springboard a series of original ethnographic studies of dance music, rap, bhangra and rock. Bennett's original research material is carefully contextualised within a wider international literature on youth styles, local spaces and popular music but it serves to illustrate graphically how styles of music and their attendant stylistic innovations are appropriated and lived out' by young people in particular social spaces. Music, Bennett argues, is produced and consumed by young people in ways that both inform their sense of self and also serve to construct the social world in which their identities operate.
With its comprehensive coverage of youth and music studies and its important new insights, Popular Music and Youth Culture is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in sociology, cultural studies, media studies and popular music studies.
Dr ANDY BENNETT is lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He has published articles on aspects of youth culture, popular music, local identity and music and ethnicity in a number of journals, including Sociological Review, Media Culture and Society and Popular Music. He is currently co-editing a book on guitar cultures.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-215) and index.
About the Author
Andy Bennett is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Table of Contents
Theories of Youth Culture and Popular Music * The Sociology of Youth Culture * Youth Culture and Popular Music * The Significance of Locality *
Local Representations: Case Studies * Dance Music, Local Identity and Urban Space * Bhangra and Asian Identity * Hip Hop am Main, Rappin' on the Tyne * The Benwell Floyd * Conclusion: Youth, Music, Locality and Identity