Percussion is an attempt—in the author’s words—to make sense of "senseless beating," to grasp how rhythm makes sense in music and society. Both a scholar and a former professional drummer, John Mowitt forges a striking encounter between cultural studies and new musicology that seeks to lay out the "percussive field" through which beating—specifically the backbeat that defines early rock-and-roll—comes to matter for raced, urban subjects.For Mowitt, percussion is both an experience of embodiment—making contact in and on the skin—and a provocation for critical theory itself. In delimiting the percussive field, he plays drumming off against the musicological account of the beat, the sociological account of shock and the psychoanalytical account of fantasy. In the process he touches on such topics as the separation of slaves and drums in the era of the slave trade, the migration of rural blacks to urban centers of the North, the practice and politics of "rough music," the links between interpellation and possession, the general strike, beating fantasies, and the concept of the "skin ego."Percussion makes a fresh and provocative contribution to cultural studies, new musicology, the history of the body and critical race theory. It will be of interest to students of cultural studies and critical theory as well as readers with a serious interest in the history of music, rock-and-roll and drumming.
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Examines drumming and beating as musical practice (musicological meaning), as the channelling of violence or shock (sociological meaning), and as a subjective, embodied agent (psychoanalytic meaning). This title contributes to the cultural studies, popular and critical musicology, the theorisation of the body, and the sociology of music.
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Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: (Re)percussions 1. The End of Senseless Beating 2. Knocking the Subject 3. Different Strokes for Different Folks 4. Sound of the City: A Musician Is Being Beaten 5. A Drum of One’s Own Notes Works Cited Index
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“This book contributes subtly and powerfully to the important project of self-reflexively retheorizing musical analysis. Mowitt knits together the most complex cultural theory with the most influential popular music in surprising and illuminating ways.”—Robert Walser, author of Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822329190
Publisert
2002-06-07
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
558 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
272

Forfatter

Biographical note

John Mowitt is Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Text: The Genealogy of an Antidisciplinary Object, also published by Duke University Press.