New publication
Situating Popular Musics
IASPM 16th International Conference Proceedings
Edited by Ed Montano and Carlo Nardi

We are pleased to announce that Situating Popular Musics: IASPM 16th International Conference Proceedings is now online. Continue reading →

New book
Marabi Nights – Jazz, ‘Race’ and Society in Early Apartheid South Africa
Christopher Ballantine

Marabi Nights – Jazz, ‘Race’ and Society in Early Apartheid South Africa is an updated and substantially expanded second edition of Christopher Ballantine’s classic study of the triumphs and tragedies of South Africa’s marabi-jazz tradition. New chapters extend the book’s in-depth account of the birth and development of urban-black popular music. Continue reading →

New book
Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity
Edited by Andy Bennett and Paul Hodkinson

What happens to punks, clubbers, goths, riot grrls, soulies, break-dancers and queer scene participants as they become older?

For decades, research on spectacular ‘youth cultures’ has understood such groups as adolescent phenomena and assumed that involvement ceases with the onset of adulthood. In an age of increasingly complex life trajectories, Ageing and Youth Cultures is the first anthology to challenge such thinking by examining the lives of those who continue to participate into adulthood and middle-age. Showcasing a range of original research case studies from across the globe, the chapters explore how participants reconcile their continuing involvement with ageing bodies, older identities and adult responsibilities. Breaking new ground and establishing a new field of study, the book will be essential reading for students and scholars researching or studying questions of youth, fashion, popular music and identity across a wide range of disciplines.

New journal issue
‘Erotic Screen & Sound’
A special edition of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 26(4)
Edited by Jodie Taylor and David Baker

Sexual desire and the intent to arouse—the erotic—is ubiquitous. Erotic impulses preoccupy our psyches, shape our identities, inscribe our bodies and mediate our relationships with others and objects. Proliferating into the banal everydayness of contemporary life, we find inscriptions of the erotic in the back corner of our local news agency, online, on stage, screens, airwaves, billboards, supermarket shelves, and on gallery walls. A public, private and often highly politicised concern, few subjects are as simultaneously commonplace and controversial as the erotic. Whatever its form—sacred, profane, ordinary, perverse, vanilla or kinky—the erotic has persisted in its ability to delight, entertain, panic and outrage us throughout history and across cultures. Continue reading →

New book
Redefining Mainstream Popular Music
Edited by Sarah Baker, Andy Bennett and Jodie Taylor

Redefining Mainstream Popular Music is a collection of seventeen essays that critically examines the idea of the “mainstream” in and across a variety of popular music styles and contexts. Notions of what is popular vary across generations and cultures – what may have been considered alternative to one group may be perceived as mainstream to another. Incorporating a wide range of popular music texts, genres, scenes, practices and technologies from the United Kingdom, North America, Australia and New Zealand, the authors theoretically challenge and augment our understanding of how the mainstream is understood and functions in the overlapping worlds of popular music production, consumption and scholarship. Spanning the local and the global, the historic and contemporary, the iconic and the everyday, the book covers a broad range of genres, from punk to grunge to hip-hop, while also considering popular music through other mediums, including mash-ups and the music of everyday work life. Redefining Mainstream Popular Music provides readers with an innovative and nuanced perspective of what it means to be mainstream.