Groove
An Aesthetic of Measured Time
Description
What is the relationship between music and time? How does musical rhythm express our social experience of time? In Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time, Mark Abel explains the rise to prominence in Western music of a new way of organizing rhythm groove. He provides a historical account of its emergence around the turn of the twentieth century, and analyses the musical components that make it work.
Drawing on materialist interpretations of art and culture, Mark Abel engages with aesthetic arguments, challenging in particular Adorno's critique of popular music. He concludes that groove does not simply reflect the temporality of contemporary society, but, by incorporating abstract time into its very structure, is capable of effecting a critique of it.
Author Bios
Mark Abel teaches on the humanities program at the University of Brighton, UK. He has also worked extensively as music lecturer and jazz educator and is a performing saxophonist and pianist.
More Info
Publication date: February 9, 2016
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Meaning of Musical Time
Chapter 1: What is ‘groove’
Chapter 2: Is groove African
Chapter 3: Bergsonism and unmeasurable time
Chapter 4: Schutz’s ‘vivid present’ and the social time of music
Chapter 5: Adorno and reified time
Chapter 6: Meter, groove and the times of capitalism
Chapter 7: History, modernism, and the time of music
Bibliography
Index
