Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West

by Mark Slobin

A fascinating study of subcultural musics and their cultural identities.

The study of subcultural musics, what Mark Slobin calls "small musics in big systems," is characterized by a tremendously expanding search for cultural identity within multiethnic societies that are increasingly caught up in global cultural flow. Subcultural Sounds is the first critical attempt to explore the dynamics of this process in Europe and America, the heartland of music production and bellwether for global culture. By combining interpretation with concrete analysis, Slobin works toward a comparative approach for understanding the "micromusics" of Euro-America. Includes a new preface that was added to the second printing in 2000.

Genres: Music

139 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1993

About the author

Mark Slobin was a professor at Wesleyan University for 45 years in its renowned ethnomusicology program.
He wrote books on music in Afghanistan and Central Asia, the Eastern European Jews (immigrants, cantors, klezmer), 2 of which won the prestigious ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, global film music, and folk music.
A native Detroiter, he has written the first-ever survey of a major American city's musics, from the European, Appalachian, and African American immigrants to the worlds of classical music, the auto industry, the unions, the counterculture, and the media. His own memoirs and his family's music set the tone for the writing of "Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back," published by Oxford University Press in November, 2018.

Reviews

[Hayden Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not it dog

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal study that predates the internet but has only become more relevant on account of it.

[dv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice effort to study (in an ethnological manner) the complex system of relationship between different musics all around the world, thanks to the very useful notions of superculture, subculture, interculture.