Listening for the Secret
eBook - PDF

Listening for the Secret

The Grateful Dead and the Politics of Improvisation

  1. 200 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Listening for the Secret

The Grateful Dead and the Politics of Improvisation

About this book

Listening for the Secret is a critical assessment of the Grateful Dead and the distinct culture that grew out of the group’s music, politics, and performance. With roots in popular music traditions, improvisation, and the avant-garde, the Grateful Dead provides a unique lens through which we can better understand the meaning and creation of the counterculture community. Marshaling the critical and aesthetic theories of Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault and others, Ulf Olsson places the music group within discourses of the political, specifically the band’s capacity to create a unique social environment. Analyzing the Grateful Dead’s music as well as the forms of subjectivity and practices that the band generated, Olsson examines the wider significance and impact of its politics of improvisation. Ultimately, Listening for the Secret is about how the Grateful Dead Phenomenon was possible in the first place, what its social and aesthetic conditions of possibility were, and its results.

This is the first book in a new series, Studies in the Grateful Dead.

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Yes, you can access Listening for the Secret by Ulf Olsson in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & 21st Century History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Contents
  3. Series Foreword
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. INTRODUCTION
  6. 1. POPULAR AVANT-GARDE? RENEGOTIATING TRADITION
  7. 2. WAVE THAT FLAG: AN APOLITICAL BAND
  8. 3. CRASHES IN SPACE: ASPECTS OF IMPROVISATION
  9. CODA: LISTENING FOR THE SECRET
  10. Notes
  11. Discography
  12. Bibliography
  13. Index