In Performing Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. What's good, what's bad? What's high, what's low? Why do such distinctions matter? Instead of dismissing emotional response and personal taste as inaccessible to the academic critic, Simon Frith takes these forms of engagement as his subject - and discloses their place at the very center of the aesthetics that structure our culture and color our lives. Taking up hundreds of songs and writers, Frith insists on acts of evaluation of popular music as music. Ranging through and beyond the twentieth century, Performing Rites puts the Pet Shop Boys and Puccini, rhythm and lyric, voice and technology, into a dialogue about the undeniable impact of popular aesthetics on our lives.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Acknowledgements; Part I Music Talk: 1 The Value Problem in Cultural Studies; 2 The Sociological Response; 3 Common Sense and the Language of Criticism; 4 Genre Rules; Part II On Music Itself: 5 Where Do Sounds Come From?; 6 Rhythm: Race, Sex, and the Body; 7 Rhythm: Time, Sex, and the Mind; 8 Songs as Texts; 9 The Voice; 10 Performance; 11 Technology and Authority; Part III Why Music Matters: 12 The Meaning of Music; 13 Toward a Popular Aesthetic; Notes; Index.
