Music, Memory and Memoir

Description

Music, Memory and Memoir provides a unique look at the contemporary cultural phenomenon of the music memoir and, leading from this, the way that music is used to construct memory. Via analyses of memoirs that consider punk and pop, indie and dance, this text examines the nature of memory for musicians and the function of music in creating personal and cultural narratives. This book includes innovative and multidisciplinary approaches from a range of contributors consisting of academics, critics and musicians, evaluating this phenomenon from multiple academic and creative practices, and examines the contemporary music memoir in its cultural and literary contexts.

Robert Edgar is Associate Professor in the York Centre for Writing at York St. John University, UK. His publications include Screenwriting (2009), The Language of Film (2015), The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (co-editor, 2013) and The Arena Concert (co-editor, 2015). Fraser Mann is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at York St. John University, UK. He is a specialist in war literature and memoir with particular interests in testimony, gender and trauma. Helen Pleasance is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at York St. John University, UK. Her research interests include contemporary fiction and creative non-fiction in all its forms, especially memoir, biography, true crime and hybrid forms.

Whether you are a fan of Patti Smith, enjoy reading memoirs or you just miss shopping in record stores, the mix of cultural history, memoir criticism and personal reflections in Music, Memory and Memoir explain why music is still so important to so many of us, and how its stories connect to our own. * Julie Rak, Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Canada, and author of Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market (2013) * Music, Memory and Memoir is a collection of invaluable reckonings with the nexus between fandom and intellectual retrospection. It brings much-needed attention to the form of the music memoir and how it shapes our personal and historical narratives of why this music matters. There are so few books that approach these issues with such great breadth and passion that I could easily envision fashioning a course out of its crucial insights. * Erich Hertz, Professor of English and Film Studies, Siena College, USA, and co-editor of Write in Tune: Contemporary Music in Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2014) * Music, Memory and Memoir panoramically explores the phenomenon of the music memoir, a much-overlooked area of contemporary popular music studies. The book deftly weaves analysis of music, written memoir and memory together to define models that underpin the ways in which music and memory are so closely linked. The way that artists, writers and indeed all of us construct our past through fragments of musical experience is so keenly expressed here, it is a brilliantly incisive collection that prompts both curiosity and deep reflection. * Kirsty Fairclough, Director of International and Senior Lecturer in Media and Performance in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, UK *