Putting Popular Music in Its Place

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Cambridge University Press, Apr 27, 1995 - Music - 390 pages
This volume of essays by the distinguished musicologist Charles Hamm focuses on the context of popular music and its interrelationships with other styles and genres, including classical music, the meaning of popular music for audiences, and the institutional appropriation of this music for hegemonic purposes. Specific topics include the use of popular song to rouse anti-slavery sentiment in mid-nineteenth-century America, the reception of such African-American styles and genres as rock 'n' roll and soul music by the black population of South Africa, the question of genre in the early songs of Irving Berlin, the attempts by the governments of South Africa and China to impose specific bodies of music on their populations, and the impact of modernist modes of thought on writing about popular music.

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Contents

Rock n roll in a very strange society
191
AfricanAmerican music South Africa and apartheid
261
Separate
271
13
277
14
312
A blues for the ages
325
15
336
nationalism racism
344
78
354
The Role of Rock a review
367
Genre performance and ideology in the early songs
370
John Cage revisited
381
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