Sounds French examines the history of popular music in France between the arrival of rock and roll in 1958 and the collapse of the first wave of punk in 1980, and the connections between musical genres and concepts of community in French society. During this period, scholars have tended to view the social upheavals associated with postwar reconstruction as part of debates concerning national identity in French culture and politics, a tendency that developed from political figures' and intellectuals' concerns with French national identity. In this book, author Jonathyne Briggs reorients the scholarship away from an exclusive focus on national identity and instead towards an investigation of other identities that develop as a result of the increased globalization of culture. Popular music, at once individual and communal, fixed and plastic, offers an illuminating window into such transformations in social structures through the ways in which musicians, musical consumers, and critical intermediaries re-imagined themselves as part of novel cultural communities, whether local, national, or supranational in nature. Briggs argues that national identity was but one of a panoply of identities in flux during the postwar period in France, demonstrating that the development of hybridized forms of popular music provided the French with a method for expressing and understanding that flux. Drawing upon an array of printed and aural sources, including music publications, sound recordings, record sleeves, biographies, and cultural criticism, Sounds French is an essential new look at popular music in postwar France.

About the Author
Jonathyne Briggs is an associate professor of history at Indiana University Northwest, where he teaches on European youth culture and the history of pop music. He has published extensively on French popular music in the 1960s and '70s in journals and collections. He lives in Chicago, still toys with his favorite guitar, and hopes that someday Daft Punk will play at his house.

Reviews
Briggss volume marks an important intervention in the nascent field of French popular music studies ... With its expansive vision of French pop and its attentiveness to musical texts, Sounds French is a foundation upon which future work in French popular music studies may fruitfully build. * Eric Drott, H-France Review *
an excellent and engaging new reading of French popular-musical history that is expertly researched ... Briggs writes knowledgeably, confidently, and always accessibly ... This is a book that should remain useful for both teaching and research purposes for a long time. * David Looseley, Volume! *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199377060
Author Jonathyne Briggs
Format Hardback
Page Count 244
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 163mm * 236mm * 31mm