Ulf Olsson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520286641
- eISBN:
- 9780520961760
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520286641.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
During their thirty years of existence, the Grateful Dead produced a musical as well as a cultural heritage that invites and rewards exploration and evaluation. This book engages critical theory in ...
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During their thirty years of existence, the Grateful Dead produced a musical as well as a cultural heritage that invites and rewards exploration and evaluation. This book engages critical theory in order to understand the band’s status and achievement, and what the cultural and political significance of the music as well as the wider phenomenon was, and is. The band and its music are studied in the tension between culture industry and self-organization. The first chapter looks at the dialectic of avant-garde and tradition in the mass cultural phenomenon that the Grateful Dead became. The second chapter builds on that analysis by directly engaging the political importance and legacy of a self-declared ”apolitical” band, assessing what ”politics” could mean in both the practices of the band and its audience as well as in the way mainstream America and law enforcement saw the band. The third and final chapter listens to the Grateful Dead improvising, presenting improvisation as the key element for any understanding both of the band’s music as well as its socio-political profile. A short coda summarizes the argument in a discussion of the band as an example of ”charismatic authority.”Less
During their thirty years of existence, the Grateful Dead produced a musical as well as a cultural heritage that invites and rewards exploration and evaluation. This book engages critical theory in order to understand the band’s status and achievement, and what the cultural and political significance of the music as well as the wider phenomenon was, and is. The band and its music are studied in the tension between culture industry and self-organization. The first chapter looks at the dialectic of avant-garde and tradition in the mass cultural phenomenon that the Grateful Dead became. The second chapter builds on that analysis by directly engaging the political importance and legacy of a self-declared ”apolitical” band, assessing what ”politics” could mean in both the practices of the band and its audience as well as in the way mainstream America and law enforcement saw the band. The third and final chapter listens to the Grateful Dead improvising, presenting improvisation as the key element for any understanding both of the band’s music as well as its socio-political profile. A short coda summarizes the argument in a discussion of the band as an example of ”charismatic authority.”
Mike Mattison and Ernest Suarez
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781496837271
- eISBN:
- 9781496837325
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496837271.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter examines how in the sixties the fantastic was used—with varying degrees of success—to invigorate language and sound in poetic song verse. The chapter discusses how surrealism primarily ...
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This chapter examines how in the sixties the fantastic was used—with varying degrees of success—to invigorate language and sound in poetic song verse. The chapter discusses how surrealism primarily entered American poetry through the work of French and Spanish language artists, including Arthur Rimbaud, Cesar Vallejo, and Fredrico Garcia Lorca, and how surrealistic imagery came to the blues through African and Western mysticism. Both manifestations of the fantastic melded in rock during the mid-to-late 60s and played a vital role in the development of poetic song verse. Drawing on Lewis Hyde’s conception of “the trickster,” the chapter examines how Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Grateful Dead, and others cunningly reanimated our cultural narrative against a backdrop of sixties culture.Less
This chapter examines how in the sixties the fantastic was used—with varying degrees of success—to invigorate language and sound in poetic song verse. The chapter discusses how surrealism primarily entered American poetry through the work of French and Spanish language artists, including Arthur Rimbaud, Cesar Vallejo, and Fredrico Garcia Lorca, and how surrealistic imagery came to the blues through African and Western mysticism. Both manifestations of the fantastic melded in rock during the mid-to-late 60s and played a vital role in the development of poetic song verse. Drawing on Lewis Hyde’s conception of “the trickster,” the chapter examines how Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Grateful Dead, and others cunningly reanimated our cultural narrative against a backdrop of sixties culture.
