Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions
by Fabian Holt
University of Chicago Press, 2020 Cloth: 978-0-226-73840-6 | eISBN: 978-0-226-73868-0 | Paper: 978-0-226-73854-3 Library of Congress Classification ML3918.R63H65 2020 Dewey Decimal Classification 780.78
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
For decades, millions of music fans have gathered every summer in parks and fields to hear their favorite bands at festivals such as Lollapalooza, Coachella, and Glastonbury. How did these and countless other festivals across the globe evolve into glamorous pop culture events, and how are they changing our relationship to music, leisure, and public culture? In Everyone Loves Live Music, Fabian Holt looks beyond the marketing hype to show how festivals and other institutions of musical performance have evolved in recent decades, as sites that were once meaningful sources of community and culture are increasingly subsumed by corporate giants.
Examining a diverse range of cases across Europe and the United States, Holt upends commonly-held ideas of live music and introduces a pioneering theory of performance institutions. He explores the fascinating history of the club and the festival in San Francisco and New York, as well as a number of European cities. This book also explores the social forces shaping live music as small, independent venues become corporatized and as festivals transform to promote mainstream Anglophone culture and its consumerist trappings. The book further provides insight into the broader relationship between culture and community in the twenty-first century. An engaging read for fans, industry professionals, and scholars alike, Everyone Loves Live Music reveals how our contemporary enthusiasm for live music is more fraught than we would like to think.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Fabian Holt is associate professor in the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University. He is the author of Genre in Popular Music, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
REVIEWS
”Many of us do indeed love music venues and summer music festivals, and in this book Holt does a terrific job of showing how even such beloved institutions are tied up with excessive commercialisation, dubious policy developments and property speculation. That shouldn’t stop people from enjoyment, but it might help us understand our pleasures better by forestalling naïve assumptions that contemporary musical experience is innocently separate from the nastier elements of our capitalist societies.”
— David Hesmondhalgh, University of Leeds, author of Why Music Matters
“This book is a highly original and quite brilliant approach to the study of musical performance institutions. I know of no other book that has such a broad perspective. Unique in its approach, ground-breaking in its objectives, Everyone Loves Live Music presents some fascinating information about both rock clubs and large rock festivals that make it a milestone and a point of reference for future studies.”
— Anthony Seeger, University of California at Los Angeles
“After half a century of writing about recorded popular music, an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenon of live music is finally available, thanks to this book by Fabian Holt! Everyone Loves Live Music provides original and relevant keys to understanding the extraordinary development of festivals, concerts, and live shows.”
— Gérôme Guibert, Sorbonne Nouvelle University
"Adopting a critical approach, Holt upends commonly-held ideas of live music and introduces a theory of performance institutions. The two central institutions of popular music—the club and the festival—are analyzed within the broader history of music and cultural life in modernity, shedding new light on organized cultural life in capitalism, urban media cultures, and the role of festive events in society. Everyone Loves Live Music argues that while live music provides exciting experiences for many people, it also promotes a new ideology of music in neoliberal capitalism."
— The New Books Network
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Social Study of Musical Performance Institutions
Chapter 2. Conceptualizing Musical Performance Culture
Clubs in Everyday Urban Life
Chapter 3. The Social Study of Music in Cities
Chapter 4. The Commercial Institutionalization of the Rock Club in New York
Chapter 5. How Did the Rock Club Evolve in Europe?
Music Festivals in the Summer Season
Chapter 6. A Worldview History of Music Festivals
Chapter 7. The Evolution of Anglophone Global Culture
Chapter 8. Three Industry Evolutions That Changed Festival Culture
Chapter 9. Festival Video and Social Media
Chapter 10. Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions
by Fabian Holt
University of Chicago Press, 2020 Cloth: 978-0-226-73840-6 eISBN: 978-0-226-73868-0 Paper: 978-0-226-73854-3
For decades, millions of music fans have gathered every summer in parks and fields to hear their favorite bands at festivals such as Lollapalooza, Coachella, and Glastonbury. How did these and countless other festivals across the globe evolve into glamorous pop culture events, and how are they changing our relationship to music, leisure, and public culture? In Everyone Loves Live Music, Fabian Holt looks beyond the marketing hype to show how festivals and other institutions of musical performance have evolved in recent decades, as sites that were once meaningful sources of community and culture are increasingly subsumed by corporate giants.
Examining a diverse range of cases across Europe and the United States, Holt upends commonly-held ideas of live music and introduces a pioneering theory of performance institutions. He explores the fascinating history of the club and the festival in San Francisco and New York, as well as a number of European cities. This book also explores the social forces shaping live music as small, independent venues become corporatized and as festivals transform to promote mainstream Anglophone culture and its consumerist trappings. The book further provides insight into the broader relationship between culture and community in the twenty-first century. An engaging read for fans, industry professionals, and scholars alike, Everyone Loves Live Music reveals how our contemporary enthusiasm for live music is more fraught than we would like to think.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Fabian Holt is associate professor in the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University. He is the author of Genre in Popular Music, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
REVIEWS
”Many of us do indeed love music venues and summer music festivals, and in this book Holt does a terrific job of showing how even such beloved institutions are tied up with excessive commercialisation, dubious policy developments and property speculation. That shouldn’t stop people from enjoyment, but it might help us understand our pleasures better by forestalling naïve assumptions that contemporary musical experience is innocently separate from the nastier elements of our capitalist societies.”
— David Hesmondhalgh, University of Leeds, author of Why Music Matters
“This book is a highly original and quite brilliant approach to the study of musical performance institutions. I know of no other book that has such a broad perspective. Unique in its approach, ground-breaking in its objectives, Everyone Loves Live Music presents some fascinating information about both rock clubs and large rock festivals that make it a milestone and a point of reference for future studies.”
— Anthony Seeger, University of California at Los Angeles
“After half a century of writing about recorded popular music, an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenon of live music is finally available, thanks to this book by Fabian Holt! Everyone Loves Live Music provides original and relevant keys to understanding the extraordinary development of festivals, concerts, and live shows.”
— Gérôme Guibert, Sorbonne Nouvelle University
"Adopting a critical approach, Holt upends commonly-held ideas of live music and introduces a theory of performance institutions. The two central institutions of popular music—the club and the festival—are analyzed within the broader history of music and cultural life in modernity, shedding new light on organized cultural life in capitalism, urban media cultures, and the role of festive events in society. Everyone Loves Live Music argues that while live music provides exciting experiences for many people, it also promotes a new ideology of music in neoliberal capitalism."
— The New Books Network
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Social Study of Musical Performance Institutions
Chapter 2. Conceptualizing Musical Performance Culture
Clubs in Everyday Urban Life
Chapter 3. The Social Study of Music in Cities
Chapter 4. The Commercial Institutionalization of the Rock Club in New York
Chapter 5. How Did the Rock Club Evolve in Europe?
Music Festivals in the Summer Season
Chapter 6. A Worldview History of Music Festivals
Chapter 7. The Evolution of Anglophone Global Culture
Chapter 8. Three Industry Evolutions That Changed Festival Culture
Chapter 9. Festival Video and Social Media
Chapter 10. Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE