Music, Memory and Memoir

Whether you are a fan of Patti Smith, enjoy reading memoirs or you just miss shopping in record stores, the mix of cultural history, memoir criticism and personal reflections in Music, Memory and Memoir explain why music is still so important to so many of us, and how its stories connect to our own. * Julie Rak, Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Canada, and author of Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market (2013) *
Music, Memory and Memoir is a collection of invaluable reckonings with the nexus between fandom and intellectual retrospection. It brings much-needed attention to the form of the music memoir and how it shapes our personal and historical narratives of why this music matters. There are so few books that approach these issues with such great breadth and passion that I could easily envision fashioning a course out of its crucial insights. * Erich Hertz, Professor of English and Film Studies, Siena College, USA, and co-editor of Write in Tune: Contemporary Music in Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2014) *
Music, Memory and Memoir panoramically explores the phenomenon of the music memoir, a much-overlooked area of contemporary popular music studies. The book deftly weaves analysis of music, written memoir and memory together to define models that underpin the ways in which music and memory are so closely linked. The way that artists, writers and indeed all of us construct our past through fragments of musical experience is so keenly expressed here, it is a brilliantly incisive collection that prompts both curiosity and deep reflection. * Kirsty Fairclough, Director of International and Senior Lecturer in Media and Performance in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, UK *