Search results for ""Author John Street""

It is common to hear talk of how music can inspire crowds, move individuals and mobilise movements. We know too of how governments can live in fear of its effects, censor its sounds and imprison its creators. At the same time, there are other governments that use music for propaganda or for torture. All of these examples speak to the idea of music's political importance. But while we may share these assumptions about music's power, we rarely stop to analyse what it is about organised sound - about notes and rhythms - that has the effects attributed to it. This is the first book to examine systematically music's political power. It shows how music has been at the heart of accounts of political order, at how musicians from Bono to Lily Allen have claimed to speak for peoples and political causes. It looks too at the emergence of music as an object of public policy, whether in the classroom or in the copyright courts, whether as focus of national pride or employment opportunities. The book brings together a vast array of ideas about music's political significance (from Aristotle to Rousseau, from Adorno to Deleuze) and new empirical data to tell a story of the extraordinary potency of music across time and space. At the heart of the book lies the argument that music and politics are inseparably linked, and that each animates the other.

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In an age where film stars become presidents and politicians appear in pop videos, politics and popular culture have become inextricably interlinked. In this exciting new book, John Street provides a broad survey and analysis of this relationship.

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From entertainment to citizenship reveals how the young use shows like X-factor to comment on how power ought to be used, and how they respond to those pop stars - like Bono and Bob Geldof - who claim to represent them. It explores how young people connect the pleasures of popular culture to the world at large. For them, popular culture is not simply a matter of escapism and entertainment, but of engagement too. The place of popular culture in politics, and its contribution to democratic life, has too often been misrepresented or misunderstood. This book provides the evidence and analysis that will help correct this misperception. It documents the voices of young people as they talk about popular culture (what they love as well as what they dislike), and as they reveal their thoughts about the world they inhabit. It will be of interest to those who study media and culture, and those who study politics.

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From entertainment to citizenship reveals how the young use shows like X-factor to comment on how power ought to be used, and how they respond to those pop stars - like Bono and Bob Geldof - who claim to represent them. It explores how young people connect the pleasures of popular culture to the world at large. For them, popular culture is not simply a matter of escapism and entertainment, but of engagement too. The place of popular culture in politics, and its contribution to democratic life, has too often been misrepresented or misunderstood. This book provides the evidence and analysis that will help correct this misperception. It documents the voices of young people as they talk about popular culture (what they love as well as what they dislike), and as they reveal their thoughts about the world they inhabit. It will be of interest to those who study media and culture, and those who study politics.

Read more less