Everyone Loves Live Music: A Theory of Performance Institutions

Festival culture has evolved from community gatherings to glamorous pop-culture events, but they are increasingly subsumed by corporate giants. Fabian Holt's book explores the history of live music institutions and the social forces shaping them, revealing how our contemporary enthusiasm for live music is more fraught than we would like to think.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 352 pages
\n Publication date: 06 January 2021
\n Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
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For decades, millions of music fans have flocked to parks and fields every summer to catch their favorite bands at iconic festivals like Lollapalooza, Coachella, and Glastonbury. These and countless other festivals around the globe have transformed into glamorous pop culture events, reshaping our relationship with music, leisure, and public culture. In Everyone Loves Live Music, Fabian Holt delves beyond the marketing hype to explore how these festivals and other institutions of musical performance have evolved in recent decades. He challenges commonly held notions of live music and presents a pioneering theory of performance institutions. Through a comprehensive examination of cases across Europe and the United States, Holt uncovers the fascinating history of clubs and festivals in San Francisco and New York, as well as several European cities. He also delves into the social forces shaping live music as small, independent venues become corporatized and festivals shift to promote mainstream Anglophone culture and its consumerist trappings. The book offers valuable insights into the broader relationship between culture and community in the twenty-first century, making it an engaging read for fans, industry professionals, and scholars alike. It sheds light on the complexities and challenges of our contemporary enthusiasm for live music, revealing a more nuanced and complex landscape than we may initially assume.

\n Weight: 528g\n
Dimension: 354 x 247 x 21 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780226738543\n \n