Living Genres in Late Modernity rehears the American 1970s through the workings of its musical genres. Exploring stylistic developments from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, including soul, funk, disco, pop, the nocturne, and the concerto, Charles Kronengold treats genres as unstable constellations of works, people, practices, institutions, technologies, money, conventions, forms, ideas, and multisensory experiences. What these genres share is a significant cultural moment: they arrive just after “the sixties” and are haunted by a sense of belatedness, loss, or doubt, even as they embrace narratives of progress or abundance. These genres give us reasons—and means—to examine our culture’s self-understandings. Through close readings and large-scale mappings of cultural and stylistic patterns, the book’s five linked studies reveal how genres help construct personal and cultural identities that are both partial and overlapping, that exist in tension with one another, and that we experience in ebbs and flows.
Charles Kronengold is Assistant Professor of Music at Stanford University and, with Adrian Daub, the author of The James Bond Songs: Pop Anthems of Late Capitalism.
"Some of the sharpest and most intelligent writing I have read in years, radically enriching my thinking on how popular music works. I have never before read a work on music that so successfully tackles issues I've known at some subconscious level were key but that I've never seen made so explicit."—Will Straw, Professor of Urban Media Studies, McGill University
"Combining an encyclopedic knowledge of repertoires with a conversational tone, Charles Kronengold is one of the best writers in music studies these days—and it is no exaggeration to say that. This book is a major reassessment of the role of genre in musical practice and experience."—Eric Drott, Associate Professor of Music Theory, University of Texas at Austin
354 pp.6 x 9Illus: 15 music examples
9780520388765$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Aug 2022