Pop-Rock Music

Pop music and rock music are often treated as separate genres but the distinction has always been blurred.  Motti Regev argues that pop-rock is best understood as a single musical form defined by the use of electric and electronic instruments, amplification and related techniques. The history of pop-rock extends from the emergence of rock'n'roll in the 1950s to a variety of contemporary fashions and trends – rock, punk, soul, funk, techno, hip hop, indie, metal, pop and many more. This book offers a highly original account of the emergence of pop-rock music as a global phenomenon in which Anglo-American and many other national and ethnic variants interact in complex ways.  Pop-rock is analysed as a prime instance of 'aesthetic cosmopolitanism' – that is, the gradual formation, in late modernity, of world culture as a single interconnected entity in which different social groupings around the world increasingly share common ground in their aesthetic perceptions, expressive forms and cultural practices. Drawing on a wide array of examples, this path-breaking book will be of great interest to students and scholars in cultural sociology, media and cultural studies as well as the study of popular music.

Preface vii 1 Theories and Concepts 1 Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism: A Theoretical Framework 4 Characterizing Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism 6 Theoretical Framework 9 Rock, Pop, and Popular Music 17 Structure of the Book 23 Methodological Note 26 2 Expressive Isomorphism 28 Pop-Rock Styles and Genres 32 Pop-Rock Divas 33 Rock Auteurs 35 Progressive Rock 37 Punk and Metal 38 Electronic Dance Music 40 Hip-Hop 41 Ethnic Rock/New Folk 43 Dominance of the Musical Public Sphere 46 Legitimation Discourse 50 Ritual Classification: Tradition vs. Pop-Rock 52 Ritual Periodization: The “Birth of Rock” 54 3 A Field of Cultural Production 57 Working of the Field 59 Production of Meaning 61 Pop-Rock’s Ideology of Art 65 Mechanisms of Change and Innovation 75 Avant-Gardism 76 Commercialism 78 The Spiral of Expansion 80 Structure of the Field 83 National (Sub-) Fields of Pop-Rock Music 87 4 Long-Term Event of Pop-Rockization 91 Events 93 The Musical Event 95 The Historical Musical Event of Pop-Rock 96 Agency 97 Early “Pre-History” 106 Consecrated Beginning 108 Consolidation and Rise to Dominance 113 Diversification, Internationalization, Glorification 117 5 Aesthetic Cultures 123 Subcultural Scenes to Aesthetic Cultures 126 Aesthetic Cultures 129 Forms of Pop-Rock Knowledge 131 Early Participation 133 Global Microstructures 136 Internet Platforms 138 The Pop-Rock Intelligentsia 142 Indie/Alternative Pop-Rock 142 Alternative Pop-Rock on the Web 146 An Extended Case: Israeli Cognoscenti 148 6 Sonic Vocabularies, Spaces, and Bodies 158 Sonic Vocabularies 161 Tones and Timbres 162 Museme Stacks and Strings 165 Global Electro-Amplified Soundscapes 168 Aesthetic Cosmopolitan Bodies 172 Actants of Intercultural Phenomenological Proximity 177 References 180 Index 195