BOOK LAUNCH |‘Grunge: Music and Memory’ ; ‘Route 666: on the road to Nirvana’ & ‘Death and the rock star’ (20 july 2016)

Price: Free.

BOOK ‘Grunge: Music and Memory’, by Catherine Strong
Descrição: Based on author Catherine Strong’s doctoral thesis, the book explores the elements and perspectives of how grunge has been remembered by active participants in 1990s grunge culture, and how the discourses of grunge challenged societal norms in the vigorous power-play between the emergence and co-option of popular culture. Strong compiled data from the media – principally from the UK magazine New Musical Express (NME) – to map journalists’ reactions, from the recognition of grunge to its demise soon after Kurt Cobain’s death, and beyond this in anniversary specials occurring periodically in print media (e.g. Rolling Stone, Record Collector, Mojo, and Spin). The ideals and narratives found here are compared to accounts from a sample of Australian adults who identify as fans of grunge, and it is here that an interesting contrast is identified.

BOOK ‘Route 666: on the road to Nirvana’, by Gina Arnold
Description: This book takes us through the history of punk in the United States, from bands such as the Dead Kennedys, the Hüsker Du, Sonic Youth, as well as underground tracks of grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam and so on). This path is one that crosses the biographic nature of the authors work, in that it focuses on her generation – a generation marked by the musical spectre of Nirvana, in a time when everything had been invented and history had just ended. This book is birthed in the shadow of the band, as its final version was completed just months from Kurt Cobain’s suicide. In terms of punk, the author notes the marks of freedom, violence, discontentment and disenchantment with the social order, the notion of their own alienation which coexisted with a new community of outcasts. In this history of punk rock, the transformation at the end of the century, from the music industry to a new system of financing and rewarding, that is, a new network of individuals associated to artists, entrepeneurs, radio stations, indie music labels and nightclubs driven by another principle than profit – the role of music in all of this is nearly prophetic in bringing about the profound changes which we see in our own society.

BOOK ‘Death and the rock star’, by Catherine Strong and Barbara Lebrun
Description: The various impacts of the deaths of popular musicians are explored in ‘Death and the Rock Star’. Published by Ashgate, the book examines the ways in which the deaths of popular musicians trigger new affective, aesthetic and commercial responses to their life and work. Strong said: “Our book looks at the way fellow musicians, producers, fans and the media react to the deaths of stars as diverse as Elvis Presley, Donna Summer, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, GG Allin, Ian Curtis, Tupac Shakur, André Hazes and Fela Kuti.” Contributions are grouped into four themes: The intersection between the music industry, and notions of death and taboo; Mediating the dead; The labouring dead; and Resurrections. The final section looks at how artists can “live on” after death.

>> Presentation: ANDY BENNETT, School of Humanities, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, KISMIF Project, Australia • CATHERINE STRONG, Music Industry Program – RMIT University, Australia-New Zealand branch of IASPM, Australia • GINA ARNOLD, writter, music critic, and academic (Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and University of San Francisco), United States of America • PAULA GUERRA, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Institute of Sociology, University of Porto, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, KISMIF Project Coordinator, Portugal

20 July 2016, 16h50 | Library, Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto | Curated by Paula Guerra and Tânia Moreira