1st Edition
Soundscapes of Wellbeing in Popular Music
Unearthing the messy and sprawling interrelationships of place, wellbeing, and popular music, this book explores musical soundscapes of health, ranging from activism to international charity, to therapeutic treatments and how wellbeing is sought and attained in contexts of music. Drawing on critical social theories of the production, circulation, and consumption of popular music, the book gathers together diverse insights from geographers and musicologists. Popular music has become increasingly embedded in complex and often contradictory discourses of wellbeing. For instance, some new genres and sub-cultures of popular music are associated with violence, drug-use, and the angst of living, yet simultaneously define the hopes and dreams of millions of young people. At a service level, popular music is increasingly used as a therapeutic modality in holistic medicine, as well as in conventional health care and public health practice. The genre of popular music, then, is fundamental to human wellbeing as an active and central part of people’s emotional lives. By conceptually and empirically foregrounding place, this book demonstrates how - music whether from particular places, about particular places, or played in particular places ” is a crucial component of health and wellbeing.
Biography
Gavin J. Andrews, McMaster University, Canada, Paul Kingsbury, Simon Fraser University, Canada and Robin Kearns, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.
’This is a marvellously eclectic, thoroughly readable and innovative study that enriches both the geographies of health and music while embracing a range of themes from popular culture. It spans a fascinating range of global cases and distils a remarkable amount of interdisciplinary scholarship. The book elegantly traces the ever-changing relationships between place, music and culture - and the complex way in which these combine to make music very much more than merely background - but, literally, a vital force in so many lives.’ John Connell, University of Sydney, Australia 'No-one who grew up tapping, rocking, rapping or simply listening to the sounds of popular music will be able to resist this book. It is a page-turner. Musicologists are drawn into debates on wellbeing, health professionals confronted with the power of music, and geographers charged to pull it altogether. Innovative, challenging, entertaining; maybe therapeutic!' Susan J. Smith, Girton College, Cambridge University, UK 'This eclectic collection of essays explores ways in which wellbeing in everyday life intersects with popular music in an attempt to nudge geographies of health in new directions.' New Zealand Geographer
