Simon Frith
From Free net encyclopedia
Simon Frith is a former rock critic and a sociologist who specializes in popular music culture. He read PPE at Oxford and did a doctorate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. He taught in the Sociology Department at Warwick University and the English Studies Department at Strathclyde University before coming to University of Stirling as Professor of Film and Media in August 1999. He is the author of many books including his first, The Sociology of Rock, ISBN 0094602204. He has chaired the judges of the Mercury Music Prize since it began in 1992. On January 1 2006 he took up the Tovey Chair of Music at Edinburgh University.
The Sociology of Rock
In The Sociology of Rock (1978) Frith examines the consumption, production, and ideology of rock music. He explores rock as leisure, as youth culture, as a force for liberation or oppression, and as background music. He argues that rock music is a mass cultural form which derives its meaning and relevance from being a mass medium. He discusses the differences in perception and use of rock between the music industry and music consumers, as well as differences within those groups: "The industry may or may not keep control of rock's use, but it will not be able to determine all its meanings - the problems of capitalist community and leisure are not so easily resolved."