The Pop Festival: History, Music, Media, Culture

by George McKay

Overview

"A brilliant collection of essays on popular music festival culture as a whole, from its origins to a wide range of contemporary manifestations"--Provided by publisher.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623568207
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/21/2015
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

George McKay is a leading writer on alternative cultures and music. He is Professor of Media Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK; his website is georgemckay.org

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Picture credits

Contributors

Introduction
George McKay

Chapter 1.
'The pose … is a stance': popular music and the cultural politics of festival in 1950s Britain
George McKay

Chapter 2
Out of sight: the mediation of the music festival
Mark Goodall

Chapter 3
'Let there be rock!' Myth and ideology in the rock festivals of the transatlantic counterculture
Nicholas Gebhardt

Chapter 4
'As real as real can get': race, representation, and rhetoric at Wattstax, 1972
Gina Arnold

Chapter 5
The artist at the music festival: art, performance and hybridity
Rebekka Kill

Chapter 6
Photo-essay: Free festivals, new travellers, and the free party scene in Britain, 1981-1992
Alan Lodge


Chapter 7
Festival bodies: the corporeality of the contemporary music festival scene in Australia
Joanne Cummings and Jacinta Herborn

Chapter 8
The Love Parade: European techno, the EDM festival, and the tragedy in Duisburg
Sean Nye and Ronald Hitzler

Chapter 9
Protestival: global days of action and carnivalised politics at the turban of the millennium
Graham St John

Chapter 10
Alternative playworlds: psytrance festivals, deep play and creative zones of transcendence
Alice O'Grady

Chapter 11
No Spectators! The art of participation, from Burbaning Man to boutique festivals in Britain
Roxanne Robinson

Chapter 12
Musicking in Motor City: reconfiguring urban space at the Detroit Jazz Festival
Anne Dvinge

Chapter 13
Branding, sponsorship, and the music festival
Chris Anderton

Chapter 14
Everybody talk about pop music: Un-Convention as alternative to festival, from DIY music to social change
Andrew Dubber

Index

Editorial Reviews

"The festival has long been an essential facet of the popular music experience. In this wonderful book, McKay assembles a series of masterful essays that take us on a thought provoking journey through the history, politics and aesthetic qualities of the pop festival." --Andy Bennett, Professor of Cultural Sociology, School of Humanities, Griffith University, Australia

"George McKay has brought together a lively, challenging, accessible and eclectic collection of essays spanning diverse aspects of the pop music festival: its history, politics, and cultural meaning; its muddy, sweaty, dancing bodies, its mythology and racial tensions, the euphoric (and sometimes tragic) crush of the crowd. I warmly recommend The Pop Festival to anyone interested in the politics of festivals across music and media studies, cultural history and event management." --Chris Gibson, Professor of Human Geography, University of Wollongong, Australia, author of Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia

"Ranging widely in time and space, from early 1950s British cultural festivals through Love Parade and Burning Man, this original and compelling book examines the music festival from a rich variety of perspectives. The Pop Festival is particularly good at tracing the political, racial and musical contexts which have made festivals such important moments in cultural life around the world. Woodstock is here, and analyzed with great skill, but so are a wide range of other festivals whose importance has been forgotten. This is nothing less than an alternate history of popular music since the Second World War." --William Straw, Professor, Department of Art History & Communication Studies, McGill University, Canada

"George McKay has brought together a lively, challenging, accessible and eclectic collection of essays spanning diverse aspects of the pop music festival: its history, politics, and cultural meaning; its muddy, sweaty, dancing bodies, its mythology and racial tensions, the euphoric (and sometimes tragic) crush of the crowd. I warmly recommend The Pop Festival to anyone interested in the politics of festivals across music and media studies, cultural history and event management." --Chris Gibson, Professor of Human Geography, University of Wollongong, Australia, author of Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia

"The Pop Festival is the most comprehensive collection explaining the underlying nature of music festivals. From humble beginnings of community folk festivals to political movements and to the evolution of the EDM festivals of our time, there is something that will intrigue everyone in here. The essays are each fairly short with their own distinct tone and voice, so each story and era feels self-contained. Yet, they weave together a vivid story of where we've been, with eyes on where we are now." -SLUG Mag

From the Publisher

Ranging widely in time and space, from early 1950s British cultural festivals through Love Parade and Burning Man, this original and compelling book examines the music festival from a rich variety of perspectives. The Pop Festival is particularly good at tracing the political, racial and musical contexts which have made festivals such important moments in cultural life around the world. Woodstock is here, and analyzed with great skill, but so are a wide range of other festivals whose importance has been forgotten. This is nothing less than an alternate history of popular music since the Second World War.

William Straw

George McKay has brought together a lively, challenging, accessible and eclectic collection of essays spanning diverse aspects of the pop music festival: its history, politics, and cultural meaning; its muddy, sweaty, dancing bodies, its mythology and racial tensions, the euphoric (and sometimes tragic) crush of the crowd. I warmly recommend The Pop Festival to anyone interested in the politics of festivals across music and media studies, cultural history and event management.

Chris Gibson

The festival has long been an essential facet of the popular music experience. In this wonderful book, McKay assembles a series of masterful essays that take us on a thought provoking journey through the history, politics and aesthetic qualities of the pop festival.

Andy Bennett