Banding Together

Jennifer C. Lena is visiting assistant professor of sociology at Barnard College.

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2012 "Banding Together is an essential read for fans of popular music, thanks in no small part to Lena's wealth of music knowledge, as the book draws together the studies of music communities and music genres into a coherent whole."--Martin James, Times Literary Supplement "This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the role of music--all music--in culture. Although Lena's focus is on the rise of 20th-century American popular idioms, the questions she asks are appropriate for and applicable to a number of significant canons... A significant contribution to the literature."--Choice "Sociologists of music, as well as musical practitioners and fans, will find in Banding Together an engaging story about the commonalities shared by a variety of musical genres, despite their inherent stylistic differences. Through its wealth of examples, the book puts flesh on the otherwise counterintuitive contention that artistic creativity is a collective endeavor. Yet it goes beyond this well-established sociological observation to demonstrate how these musical art-worlds share a strikingly unified developmental grammar."--Amir Goldberg, American Journal of Sociology "Lena demonstrates a remarkable scope of knowledge in American popular music. Integrating it with a wide research body in cultural sociology, she delivers a delightful reading for sociologists who are popular music fans. The clear analysis, rich examples and insightful observations should make this book a staple in music sociology and indeed in cultural sociology as a whole."--Motti Regev, Sociologica

• Acknowledgments ix Chapter 1: Music Genres 1 What Is a Theory of Sociocultural Classification? 4 What Are Genre Forms and How Are They Identified? 8 Organizations and Money 10 Genre Ideals and Style 15 What Genres Are Not 20 Outline of the Book 22 Chapter 2: Three Musics, Four Genres: Rap, Bluegrass, and Bebop Jazz 27 Avant-garde Genres 28 Scene-based Genres 33 Industry-based Genres 41 Traditionalist Genres 46 After the Tradition 52 Conclusion 55 Chapter 3: Music Trajectories 65 Two Genre Trajectories 69 Scene-based Origins 74 IST Trajectories 76 On Genre Trajectories 84 Inhibiting Factors on Musical Trajectories 86 Absorption into Other Musics, Other Streams 86 Niche Music 91 The Racist Organization of Musical Production 98 Conclusion 109 Chapter 4: The Government-purposed Genre 117 Attributes of Government-purposed Genres 119 China 120 Chile 128 Nigeria 132 Serbia 136 Conclusion 139 Chapter 5: On Classification Systems 145 Classification in Music 146 Toward a Model of Classification Systems 156 On Science, Markets, and Memory 160 The Future of Music 164 In Closing 168 Notes 171 References 205 Index 233