Going Underground: The Politics of Free Music around 1968
Author(s):
Timothy Scott Brown
Publication Year:
2020
Type:
journal article
Journal/Book Title
Transposition
Publisher
Editor(s):
Pages:
Volume:
Issue:
Hors-série 2
Abstract:
Going Underground situates the demand for “free music” as part of a broader contestation of the terms of cultural consumption in the radical milieu of the long 1960s. At stake in the mobilizations recounted in the reflections of Action Directe-member Jean-Marc Rouillan was not just access to popular music, but the validity of the subversive meanings ascribed to cultural production under capitalism. Struggling with the system’s ability to co-opt challenges to its hegemony by putting them up for sale, activists insisted that it was they, and not promoters or other financially-interested middle men, who had the right to determine the conditions under which liberatory cultural expression such as rock‘n’roll would be consumed. The insistence that music be “free” embodied a characteristic demand of the radical moment around 1968: that culture actually matter.
Citation (Chicago Author-Date):
Brown, Timothy Scott. 2020. “Going Underground: The Politics of Free Music around 1968.” Transposition, no. Hors-série 2. https://doi.org/10.4000/transposition.4863.