Stereo

French, British and American research into popular music has coexisted - with considerable cross-fertilization - for many years, but the barriers of language and different academic traditions have made it hard for French and anglophone researchers to fully appreciate the ways in which popular music has developed in their respective countries. This volume provides a comparative and contrastive perspective on popular music and its study in France and the UK.

Hugh Dauncey is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Newcastle University, UK and associate member of the CNRS/Paris 1 Sorbonne University Georges Friedmann research laboratory. He teaches and researches French and francophone popular culture - particularly music and sport - and has edited a number of studies, such as (with S. Cannon) Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno: Culture, Identity, Society (Ashgate, 2003), (with G. Hare) The Tour de France, 1903-2003: A Century of Sporting Structures, Meanings and Values (2003) and French Popular Culture (2003). He is currently working on a monograph study of cycling in France as leisure and sport and various studies of French sporting and musical culture. In 2003 he was decorated by the French state with the order of the Palmes Académiques, in recognition of 'services to French Culture'. Philippe Le Guern is Professor of Sociology of Culture at the University of Avignon, member of the Centre Norbert Elias research laboratory (CNRS-EHESS-UAPV), France, and associate member of the Georges Friedmann research laboratory (Paris 1-CNRS). He has edited a number of studies on popular culture including Les cultes médiatiques. Oeuvres cultes et culture fan (2002) and (with J. Migozzi) Production(s) du Populaire (2004). He has worked to encourage dialogue between French and British researchers studying popular music through ventures such as the special number (Vol. 25, 141-42, 2007) of the French journal Réseaux (co-edited with S. Frith) available on-line at http://reseaux.revuesonline.com, and the recent creation of the webjournal Cultures sonores (www.culturessonores.org). Current work covers music and everyday life, the impact of digital technologies on work practices in the music and film industries and trends towards considering popular music as 'heritage'. He is principal investigator in a French national research council project on the effects of digital technologies on work in cultural industries.

1: Top of the Pops, or Gilbert and Maritie Carpentier? Ways of Doing and Thinking Popular Music in Britain and France; 2: Writing the History of Popular Music; 3: Charting the History of Amplified Musics in France; 4: Popular Music Policy in the UK; 5: Cultural Policies and Popular/Contemporary/Amplified Musics in France; 6: The UK Music Economy; 7: The Economics of Music in France; 8: Mediation of Popular Music in the UK; 9: Music and the Media in France: The Sociological Viewpoint; 10: Genres and the Aesthetics of Popular Music in the UK; 11: The Issue of Musical Genres in France; 12: Mapping British Music Audiences: Subcultural, Everyday and Mediated Approaches; 13: Music Audiences, Cultural Hierarchies and State Interventionism: A Typically French Model?; 14: Is it Different for Girls? Unpacking Sheffield's 'Scene'; 15: Local Music Scenes in France: Definitions, Stakes, Particularities