The course examines the major debates, concepts and theorizations that are currently being articulated in the interconnected fields of popular music and the music industries. We will consider the critical turning points and continuities in the history of the cultural/music industries, and the new conditions shaped today by the new technologies and the neoliberal economy. Examples of local, national and transnational music scenes will be used to highlight issues related with the global and the local, with processes of musical (de)colonization, commodification and creativity, with social and cultural identity and memory, embodied affective and sensorial regimes, as well as with the specificities of artistic labour in the field of popular music.

Image: Stage diving @ So36 by Libertinus