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Soundscapes of Wellbeing in Popular Music . Edited by Gavin J. Andrews , Paul Kingsbury and Robin Kearns . Farnham : Ashgate , 2014. 304 pp. ISBN 978-1-4094-4359-9
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By drawing on the many music industry-led international health and wellbeing initiatives and the corresponding ubiquity of communicative health, social and environmental messages tied to the lyrical content of musical outpourings spanning the previous four decades, the reader is immediately invited to consider the centrality of popular music in human welfare at a global level. Capitalising upon on such instances further serves as a reminder of the everyday use of popular music in health and wellbeing and the crucial importance of the various interactions of place, culture and music, with reference to the vast array of contexts in which music is now experienced. In doing so, the editors lay bare the catalyst for this collection of essays. For what permeates the Foreword to this text are routine references that call for greater acknowledgement of the power of popular music in health and wellbeing and the pressing need to empirically contextualise and elucidate the inextricable links between music, health and place, in light of the many technological advancements brought forth by the digital revolution.
To this end, the reader is promptly encouraged to dispel the often commonplace, negative connotations of 'popular music' and often narrow focus on specific genres bound to particular cultures, via the inaugural provision of a broader and more inclusive definition. This marks a key elementary contribution of this text, the result of which is an expansive and eclectic mix of contributions from scholars from a variety of fields (e.g. geography, political science, ethnomusicology and media culture) distributed across three intertwining themes.
In Part 1 ('Circulation'), six chapters seek to explore the subjective...