Pop Music, Media and Youth Cultures

Overview

In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the singer and songwriter Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." This suggests how important pop music is in the contemporary society, and highlights how blurred are traditional boundaries across all forms of art. Pop music is strictly connected to mass media, mass culture, the youth universe, and its languages. Pop/rock music is the bearer of new trends, while getting influenced by social and cultural events. Rock reflects the world of youth, its rituals and legends, and it represents an important tool to socialize and get together. Popular culture is the turf where change happens. Starting from the main theories about the sociology of music, the aim of this book is to investigate social changes, youth cultures, media, and pop music. It is a journey from the Beat Revolution to the Bit Generation, which is all about digital technologies and software culture.

Reviews

"I am very grateful that, in his wide-ranging readings, Savonardo managed to find an observation by McLuhan that I had either forgotten, or actually never read before, but struck me as worth expanding: 'McLuhan points out: stereophonic sound is a sound "all around" or "enveloping." Earlier, sound emanated from a single point, in accordance with the preconception of visual culture in favor of a fixed point of view. Stereophony is sound in depth, as TV is vision in depth.'" —Derrick de Kerckhove

Author Biography

is Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto, Canada. Lello Savonardo is associate professor of “Theories and Techniques of Communication” and “Communication and Youth Cultures” at the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Naples Federico II. He is the scientific coordinator of the “Osservatorio Giovani” and of “F2 Radio Lab,” the University Federico II web radio. He has been the General Secretary of the Italian Association of Sociology (AIS). is an Italian singer-songwriter, film director and writer.