Mortality And Music: Popular Music And The Awareness Of Death (Bloomsbury Studies In Religion And Popular Music)

Mortality and Music is the first book to investigate preoccupation with 'the end' in popular music and youth culture. While western culture seems perennially fascinated by the notion of death and apocalypse in contemporary culture, little research has been carried out into the social and cultural implications of Goth subcultures within popular music, and the significance of these themes for the articulation of the sacred in the modern world. Although popular music plays a greater part in the everyday lives of more people than at any time in the past, it is only recently that important theoretical work is beginning to be produced in relation to religion and the sacred. Millenarian discourse and speculation about 'the end' became particularly prominent around the turn of the millennium, and the notion of death - from personal extinction to the apocalyptic end of history - has of course been a recurrent theme within art, literature, cinema and music - not least popular music. Drawing on religious studies, sociological analysis, and cultural theory, this book is a confluence of Christopher Partridge's renowned work on popular music, contemporary culture, and alternative spiritual and paranormal discourses. Employing theories of liminality, occulture, and transgression, he explores discourses of terminus in popular music, focusing particularly on death, decay, and the grotesque. Exploring the transgressive discourses relating to death and decay in genres including punk, industrial, darkwave, goth, and extreme metal, and how these themes are directly related to areas of spirituality and culture, Mortality and Music will be an important contribution to both religion and popular culture, and popular music studies.

• • Author: Christopher Partridge
• • Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• • Publication Date: Aug 27, 2015
• • Number of Pages: 240 pages
• • Language: English
• • Binding: Hardcover
• • ISBN-10: 1472534514
• • ISBN-13: 9781472534514