Policing Pop

by Cloonan, Martin; Garofalo, Reebee

• ISBN13: 9781566399906
• ISBN10: 1566399904
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr

Summary

Fans and detractors of popular music tend to agree on one thing: popular music is a bellwether of an individual's political and cultural values. In the United States, for example, one cannot think of the counterculture apart from its music. For that reason, in virtually every country in the world, some group identifies popular music as a source of potential danger and wants to regulate it. Policing Pop looks into the many ways in which popular music and artists around the world are subjected to censorship, ranging from state control and repression to the efforts of special interest or religious groups to limit expression.The essays collected here focus on the forms of censorship as well as specific instances of how the state and other agencies have attempted to restrict the types of music produced, recorded and performed within a culture. Several show how even unsuccessful attempts to exert the power of the state can cause artists to self-censor. Others point to material that taxes even the most liberal defenders of free speech. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that censoring agents target popular music all over the world, and they raise questions about how artists and the public can resist the narrowing of cultural expression. Author note: Martin Cloonan teaches Popular Music Culture at the University of Glasgow and is the author of Banned! Censorship of Popular Music in Britain, 1967-1992.Reebee Garofalo is Professor at the College of Public and Community Service and is affiliated with the American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; his most recent book is Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(12)
Part I. Defining Issues and Themes
Call That Censorship? Problems of Definition	13	(17)
Martin Cloonan
I Want My MP3: Who Owns Internet Music?	30	(16)
Reebee Garofalo
Twenty Years of Music Censorship Around the World	46	(19)
Vanessa Bastian
Dave Laing
Remote Control: Legal Censorship of the Creative Process	65	(16)
Steve Greenfield
Guy Osborn
Part II. Controlling the Artistic Process
Death Metal and the Limits of Musical Expression	81	(19)
Keith Kahn-Harris
Marxists in the Marketplace	100	(13)
Mike Jones
Argh Fuck Kill---Canadian Hardcore Goes on Trial: The Case of the Dayglo Abortions	113	(27)
Rob Bowman
Strelnikoff: Censorship in Contemporary Slovenia	140	(13)
David Parvo
Part III. Up Against the State
Music in the Struggle to End Apartheid: South Africa	153	(13)
Michael Drewett
Confusing Confucius: Rock in Contemporary China	166	(20)
Jeroen de Kloet
German Nazi Bands: Between Provocation and Repression	186	(19)
Alenka Barber-Kersovan
Popular Music and Policing in Brazil	205	(16)
Jose Roberto Zan
Challenging Music as Expression in the United States	221	(18)
Paul D. Fischer
About the Contributors	239