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Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series

About the Book Series

Popular musicology embraces the field of musicological study that engages with popular forms of music, especially music associated with commerce, entertainment and leisure activities. The Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series aims to present the best research in this field. Authors are concerned with criticism and analysis of the music itself, as well as locating musical practices, values and meanings in cultural context. The focus of the series is on popular music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a remit to encompass the entirety of the world’s popular music.

Critical and analytical tools employed in the study of popular music are being continually developed and refined in the twenty-first century. Perspectives on the transcultural and intercultural uses of popular music have enriched understanding of social context, reception and subject position. Popular genres as distinct as reggae, township, bhangra, and flamenco are features of a shrinking, transnational world. The series recognizes and addresses the emergence of mixed genres and new global fusions, and utilizes a wide range of theoretical models drawn from anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, media studies, semiotics, postcolonial studies, feminism, gender studies and queer studies.

133 Series Titles


Where Music Helps: Community Music Therapy in Action and Reflection

Where Music Helps: Community Music Therapy in Action and Reflection

1st Edition

By Brynjulf Stige, Gary Ansdell, Mercédès Pavlicevic
March 15, 2016

This book explores how people may use music in ways that are helpful for them, especially in relation to a sense of wellbeing, belonging and participation. The central premise for the study is that help is not a decontextualized effect that music produces. The book contributes to the current ...

Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy

Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy

1st Edition

By Lucy Green
March 03, 2016

This pioneering book reveals how the music classroom can draw upon the world of popular musicians' informal learning practices, so as to recognize and foster a range of musical skills and knowledge that have long been overlooked within music education. It investigates how far informal learning ...

Punk Rock Warlord: the Life and Work of Joe Strummer

Punk Rock Warlord: the Life and Work of Joe Strummer

1st Edition

By Barry J. Faulk, Brady Harrison
February 19, 2016

Punk Rock Warlord explores the relevance of Joe Strummer within the continuing legacies of both punk rock and progressive politics. It is aimed at scholars and general readers interested in The Clash, punk culture, and the intersections between pop music and politics, on both sides of the Atlantic...

Traditional Music and Irish Society: Historical Perspectives

Traditional Music and Irish Society: Historical Perspectives

1st Edition

By Martin Dowling
February 19, 2016

Written from the perspective of a scholar and performer, Traditional Music and Irish Society investigates the relation of traditional music to Irish modernity. The opening chapter integrates a thorough survey of the early sources of Irish music with recent work on Irish social history in the ...

Ubiquitous Musics The Everyday Sounds That We Don't Always Notice

Ubiquitous Musics: The Everyday Sounds That We Don't Always Notice

1st Edition

Edited By Marta García Quiñones, Anahid Kassabian, Elena Boschi
February 19, 2016

Ubiquitous Musics offers a multidisciplinary approach to the pervasive presence of music in everyday life. The essays address a variety of situations in which music is present alongside other activities and does not demand focused attention from (sometimes involuntary) listeners. The contributors ...

Wax Trash and Vinyl Treasures: Record Collecting as a Social Practice

Wax Trash and Vinyl Treasures: Record Collecting as a Social Practice

1st Edition

By Roy Shuker
February 19, 2016

The term 'record collecting' is shorthand for a variety of related practices. Foremost is the collection of sound recordings in various formats - although often with a marked preference for vinyl - by individuals, and it is this dimension of record collecting that is the focus of this book. Record ...

The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain During the First World War

The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain During the First World War

1st Edition

By John Mullen
August 14, 2015

Using a collection of over one thousand popular songs from the war years, as well as around 150 soldiers’ songs, John Mullen provides a fascinating insight into the world of popular entertainment during the First World War. Mullen considers the position of songs of this time within the history of ...

Black British Jazz Routes, Ownership and Performance

Black British Jazz: Routes, Ownership and Performance

1st Edition

By Jason Toynbee, Catherine Tackley
September 08, 2014

Black British musicians have been making jazz since around 1920 when the genre first arrived in Britain. This groundbreaking book reveals their hidden history and major contribution to the development of jazz in the UK. More than this, though, the chapters show the importance of black British jazz ...

Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record

Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record

1st Edition

By Richard Osborne
June 30, 2014

Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record is the first in-depth study of the vinyl record. Richard Osborne traces the evolution of the recording format from its roots in the first sound recording experiments to its survival in the world of digital technologies. This book addresses the record's ...

Prince: The Making of a Pop Music Phenomenon

Prince: The Making of a Pop Music Phenomenon

1st Edition

By Stan Hawkins, Sarah Niblock
August 29, 2013

The career of the prolific pop artist Prince has become inextricably intertwined with the history of popular music since the late 1970s. This multi-instrumental icon, who remains one of the highest-grossing live performers in America, has been called a genius for his musicianship, composition and ...

Popular Music and Human Rights 2 volume set

Popular Music and Human Rights: 2 volume set

1st Edition

Edited By Ian Peddie
November 30, 2012

Popular music has long understood that human rights, if attainable at all, involve a struggle without end. The right to imagine an individual will, the right to some form of self-determination and the right to self-legislation have long been at the forefront of popular music's approach to human ...

Popular Music and Human Rights Volume I: World Music

Popular Music and Human Rights: Volume I: World Music

1st Edition

Edited By Ian Peddie
November 21, 2012

Popular music has long understood that human rights, if attainable at all, involve a struggle without end. The right to imagine an individual will, the right to some form of self-determination and the right to self-legislation have long been at the forefront of popular music's approach to human ...

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