Full Description
Fans and detractors of popular music tend to agree on one thing: popular music is a bellwether of an individual's political and cultural values. In the United States, for example, one cannot think of the counterculture apart from its music. For that reason, in virtually every country in the world, some group identifies popular music as a source of potential danger and wants to regulate it. Policing Pop looks into the many ways in which popular music and artists around the world are subjected to censorship, ranging from state control and repression to the efforts of special interest or religious groups to limit expression. The essays collected here focus on the forms of censorship as well as specific instances of how the state and other agencies have attempted to restrict the types of music produced, recorded and performed within a culture. Several show how even unsuccessful attempts to exert the power of the state can cause artists to self-censor. Others point to material that taxes even the most liberal defenders of free speech.
Taken together, these essays demonstrate that censoring agents target popular music all over the world, and they raise questions about how artists and the public can resist the narrowing of cultural expression. Author note: Martin Cloonan teaches Popular Music Culture at the University of Glasgow and is the author of Banned! Censorship of Popular Music in Britain, 1967-1992. Reebee Garofalo is Professor at the College of Public and Community Service and is affiliated with the American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; his most recent book is Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA.
Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Defining Issues and Themes1. Call That Censorship? Problems of Definition - Martin Cloonan2. I Want My MP3: Who Owns Internet Music" - Reebee Garofalo3. Twenty Years of Music Censorship Around the World - Vanessa Bastian and Dave Laing4. Remote Control: Legal Censorship of the Creative Process - Steve Greenfield and Guy OsbornPart II: Controlling the Artistic5. Death Metal and the Limits of Musical Expression - Keith Kahn-Harris6. Marxists in the Marketplace - Mike Jones7. Argh Fuck Kill-Canadian Hardcore Goes on Trial: The Case of the Dayglo Abortions - Rob Bowman8. Strelnikoff: Censorship in Contemporary Slovenia - David ParvoPart III: Up Against the State9. Music in the Struggle to End Apartheid: South Africa - Michael Drewett10. Confusing Confucius: Rock in Contemporary China - Jeroen de Kloet (Holland)11. German Nazi Bands: Between Provocation and Repression - Alenka Barber-Kersovan (Germany)12. Popular Music and Policing in Brazil - Jose Roberto Zan (Brazil)13. Challenging Music as Expression in the US - Paul D. Fischer (US)About the Contributors
