Overview

In Performance and Technological Mediation in Popular Music, the relationship between performance, technological mediation, and the sense of live presence is investigated through a series of case studies related to popular music products. Alessandro Bratus explores technological mediation as a process of authentication that involves a chain of interconnected instances that have their roots in the cultural context in which the media products are designed to be marketed, and that also shape its recording technique and post-production. The book analyzes posthumous records, a peculiar case of the organization of recorded tracks made in absentia of their original performers that puts forward the possibility of an “otherworldly” collaboration between the living and the dead. Bratus also argues that the crucial significance of live performance for the construction of a personal, intimate relationship between performers and audiences reverberates in the audiovisual construction of the filmed concert, in which the spectator is put in the position of a witness rather than an active participant.

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9781498556323

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Reviews

Bratus' book provides a worthwhile contribution to the growing body of research on mediatized uses of music in the popular domain. This book is theoretically strong and well-argued throughout, extending our understanding of several uniquely contemporary phenomena with reference to current theory on musicology, sound studies, media studies, and cultural studies. Bratus is well informed about the issues he discusses, bearing on questions of performance, technology, gender and the body, temporality, authenticity, and other key areas of concern. Anyone interested in delving deeper into current thinking on mediatized performances of popular music in the present historical moment would be advised to read this book. -- John Richardson, University of Turku

Author Information

Alessandro Bratus is senior lecturer in the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage at the University of Pavia.

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