Description:
"This book examines the post-1960s era of popular music in the Anglo-Black Atlantic through the prism of historical theory and methods. By using a series of case studies, this book mobilizes historical theory and methods to underline different expressions of alternative music functioning within a mainstream musical industry. Each chapter highlights a particular theory or method while simultaneously weaving it through a genre of music expressing a notion of alternativity--an explicit positioning of one's expression outside and counter to the mainstream. Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music seeks to fill a gap in current scholarship by offering a collection written specifically for the pedagogical and theoretical needs of those interested in the topic."
Acknowledgements; Contents; Chapter 1 Introduction: The Process and Pedagogy of Historical Theory; Alternativity; Pedagogy; Prelude to the Alternative: Thinking About Modernity, the Longue Durée, and Ontology; Chapter 2 "400 Years": Modernity, The Longue Durée, and Jamaican Music; Modernity, Babylon, and the Caribbean; Ska-Rock Steady-Reggae; After Roots Reggae: Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt; Chapter 3 "This Charming Man": Queer and Alternative Masculinities, 1970-1994; Chapter 4 "Will the Wolf Survive?": Punk Rock and Chicana/o Identity in Los Angeles
Chapter 5 A Perfect New Loop: Hip-Hop, Deindustrialization, and the Post-Civil Rights Era, 1973-2000; The African Diaspora, Technology, and the Remnants of Industrialism (a Longue Durée Remix); Post-Industrial Blackness and Mass Incarceration; Hip-Hop and Post-Industrialism; Chapter 6 "The Pride of History": Post-punk and the Aesthetics of Post-modernity; Path(s) to Post-modernity; Getting the Story Crooked: History and Post-modernity; Post-punk: Crooked Narratives, Irony, and Visceral Entertainment; Conclusion; Chapter 7 Waveless: MTV and the "Quiet" Feminism of the 1980s
Chapter 8 Hiraeth: The Celtic Moment in 1980s Alternative Rock; U2; Big Country; The Alarm; Chapter 9 "Feels Blind": Counter-Hegemony in Alternative Rock During the ReaganThatcher Era; Hegemony: From Gramsci to Lears to Williams; Political Alternativity; Economic (Infrastructure) Alternativity; Aesthetic Alternativity; The Alternative Conclusion; Chapter 10 "No Depression": The Nostalgia and Authenticity of Alternative Country; A Genre Born (Again); Nostalgia and Authenticity; The Longue Durée Re-Cycling of Alt-Country; The Alt-Country Moment
Picking through the Alternatives of American Country Music Authenticity-Concluded; Chapter 11 Conclusion; Index