Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West

by Mark Slobin

Overview

The study of subcultural musics, what Mark Slobin calls “small musics in big systems,” is characterized by a tremendously expanding search for cultural identity within multiethnic societies that are increasingly caught up in global cultural flow. Subcultural Sounds is the first critical attempt to explore the dynamics of this process in Europe and America, the heartland of music production and bellwether for global culture. By combining interpretation with concrete analysis, Slobin works toward a comparative approach for understanding the “micromusics” of Euro-America. Includes a new preface that was added to the second printing in 2000.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819562616
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	04/01/1993
Series:	Music/Culture Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	139
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

MARK SLOBIN is a professor of music at Wesleyan University. Among his books are Chosen Voices: The Story of the America Cantorate (1989). Tenement Songs: The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants (1982), Music in the Cuklture of Northern Afganistan (1976), and Kirgiz Instrumental Music (1969).

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Printing
Preface
Part One: Framing the Project
Opening Thoughts
The Big Picture
Part Two: Setting the Terms
The Superculture
Searching for the Subculture
Interpolating the Interculture
Part Three: Subcultures at Work and Play
The Modes and Means of Expression
Ensembles- Banding versus Bonding
Closing Thoughts
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Lawrence Grossberg

“Slobin’s highly original effort to develop a system that respects the complex diversity of musical practices and cultures in people’s everyday life is an important contribution to popular music studies"

Editorial Reviews

“Although Subcultural Sounds primarily maps out possible responses for ethnomusicology to the current situation of global interaction of conflicting mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, ethnoscapes, and ideoscapes, there are numerous lessons to be learned from these essays for musicology, music education and related discplines . . . productive and inspiring.”—Music and Letters

From the Publisher