The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research

What is rock? If there is such a thing, is it now dead? If so, why should we care? This book assembles a range of accomplished scholars from across disciplines that offer an impressive insight into the ways in which we might care, detailing how rock has been manifested and understood, attesting to the fact that its academic study, at least, is very much alive. In her chapter, Katherine Reed asks "where are we now?", with answers provided across this volume accounting for how rock has been created, recorded, mediated, taught, managed, performed, filmed, photographed, dramatised and historicised. Amongst other things, the question of “what is rock?” is examined in terms of its global reach and an often problematic relationship with issues of gender, race or ethnicity, which illuminate its contested meanings and practices. Here, then, is a repertoire of ideas and tools that will be of use to established scholars while accessible to a wider readership. Readers, like this one, will find much with which to work or productively disagree, suggesting that this is far from an attempt at a definitive repository of knowledge but one seeking to prompt further thinking and research about the cultural importance of its object. Is rock dead then? Well, as this book reminds us, it is more complicated than that. * Paul Long, Professor and Director, Creative and Cultural Industries, Monash University, Australia *
Over the last 40 years or so, rock scholarship has (like rock itself) diversified enormously, incorporating historiography, musicology, creativity studies, sociology, song analysis, production techniques, the music industry, and music pedagogy. Here, for the first time, researchers and music students can read contributions from some of the world’s finest writers in all of these fields, collected in a single volume. The book serves both as an introduction to rock music studies, and as a resource for current and future researchers. * Joe Bennett, Resident Scholar, Berklee College of Music, USA *