Sound Tracks is the first comprehensive book on the new geography of popular music, examining the complex links between places, music and cultural identities. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective on local, national and global scenes, from the 'Mersey' and 'Icelandic' sounds to 'world music', and explores the diverse meanings of music in a range of regional contexts. Sound Tracks charts a dual process of embodiment and mobility in music. It examines the ways in which music has informed complex globalisations, the role of companies and technology in diffusion, innovation and commercialisation and the wider significance of cultural industries. It links migration and mobility to new musical practices, whether in 'developing' countries or metropolitan centres, and traces the recent rise of 'music tourism'. It examines issues of authenticity and credibility, and the quest for roots within different musical genres, from buskers to brass bands, and from rap to rai. Sound Tracks emphasises music's contributions to the contradictions, illusions and celebrations of contemporary life.
It situates music within spatial theories of globalisation and local change: fixity and fluidity combined. In a world of intensified globalisation, links between space, music and identity are increasingly tenuous, yet places give credibility to music, not least in the 'country', and music is commonly linked to place, as a stake to originality, a claim to tradition and as a marketing device. This book develops new perspectives on these relationships and how they are situated within cultural and geographical thought.
