Adorno’s Writings and Popular Music Studies

Adorno’s writings are often the starting point for the teaching of popular music studies, usually passing swiftly on, after concluding that he didn’t listen to the right jazz or he was a snob. In this book, using Adorno’s aesthetic theory more generally, a viable philosophical approach to the study of idiomatic, non-standard music is constructed. The links between Adorno’s work and its Kantian roots are explored, and a more general and inclusive aesthetic constructed, using the utopian and implicitly political elements in each.

Intended Audience

This book will be of interest to critical theorists and musicologists wishing to build a more engaged practice without the pitfalls of a by now outdated ‘postmodern’ turn.