Popular music is increasingly visible in government strategies and policies. While much has been written about the expanding flow of music products and music creativity in emphasising the global nature of popular music, little attention has been paid to the flow of ideas about policy formation and debates between regions and nations. This book examines specific regional and national histories, and the different cultural values placed on popular music. The state emerges as a key site of tension between high and low culture, music as art versus music as commerce, public versus private interests, the right to make noisy art versus the right to a good night’s sleep. The political economy of urban popular music is a strong focus, examining attempts to combine and complement arts and cultural policies with ‘creative city’ and ‘creative industries’ strategies. The Anglophone case studies of policy contexts within in Canada, Britain, the US and Australia reveal how the everyday influence and use of popular music is also about questions of aesthetics, funding and power. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Cultural Policy.

While attention has been paid to various aspects of music education in China, to date no single publication has systematically addressed the complex interplay of sociopolitical transformations underlying the development of popular music and music education in the multilevel culture of China. Before the implementation of the new curriculum reforms in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there was neither Chinese nor Western popular music in textbook materials. Popular culture had long been prohibited in school music education by China’s strong revolutionary orientation, which feared ‘spiritual pollution’ by Western cultures. However, since the early twenty-first century, education reform has attempted to help students deal with experiences in their daily lives and has officially included learning the canon of popular music in the music curriculum. In relation to this topic, this book analyses how social transformation and cultural politics have affected community relations and the transmission of popular music through school music education. Ho presents music and music education as sociopolitical constructions of nationalism and globalization. Moreover, how popular music is received in national and global contexts and how it affects the construction of social and musical meanings in school music education, as well as the reformation of music education in mainland China, is discussed. Based on the perspectives of school music teachers and students, the findings of the empirical studies in this book address the power and potential use of popular music in school music education as a producer and reproducer of cultural politics in the music curriculum in the mainland.

Rock and Popular Music examines the relations between the policies and institutions which regulate contemporary popular music and the political debates, contradictions and struggles in which those musics are involved. International in its scope and conception, this innovative collection explores the reasons for and ways in which governments have sought either to support or prohibit popular music in Canada, Australia and Europe as well as the impact of broadcasting policies in forming and shaping different musical communities. Rock and Popular Music is a unique collection suggesting significant new directions for the study of contemporary popular musics.

David Bell and Kate Oakley survey the major debates emerging in cultural policy research, adopting an approach based on spatial scale to explore cultural policy in cities, nations and internationally. They contextualise these discussions with an exploration of what both ‘culture’ and ‘policy’ mean when they are joined together as cultural policy. Drawing on topical examples and contemporary research, as well as their own experience in both academia and in consultancy, Bell and Oakley urge readers to think critically about the project of cultural policy as it is currently being played out around the world. Cultural Policy is a comprehensive and readable book that provides a lively, up-to-date overview of key debates in cultural policy, making it ideal for students of media and cultural studies, creative and cultural industries, and arts management.

This book provides a critical academic evaluation of the ‘music city’ as a form of urban cultural policy that has been keenly adopted in policy circles across the globe, but which as yet has only been subject to limited empirical and conceptual interrogation. With a particular focus on heritage, planning, tourism and regulatory measures, this book explores how local geographical, social and economic contexts and particularities shape the nature of music city policies (or lack thereof) in particular cities. The book broadens academic interrogation of music cities to include cities as diverse as San Francisco, Liverpool, Chennai, Havana, San Juan, Birmingham and Southampton. Contributors include both academic and professional practitioners and, consequently, this book represents one of the most diverse attempts yet to critically engage with music cities as a global cultural policy concept.

Cultural policy intersects with political, economic, and socio-cultural dynamics at all levels of society, placing high and often contradictory expectations on the capabilities and capacities of the media, the fine, performing, and folk arts, and cultural heritage. These expectations are articulated, mobilised and contested at – and across – a global scale. As a result, the study of cultural policy has firmly established itself as a field that cuts across a range of academic disciplines, including sociology, cultural and media studies, economics, anthropology, area studies, languages, geography, and law. This Routledge Handbook of Global Cultural Policy sets out to broaden the field’s consideration to recognise the necessity for international and global perspectives. The book explores how cultural policy has become a global phenomenon. It brings together a diverse range of researchers whose work reveals how cultural policy expresses and realises common global concerns, dominant narratives, and geopolitical economic and social inequalities. The sections of the book address cultural policy’s relation to core academic disciplines and core questions, of regulations, rights, development, practice, and global issues. With a cross-section of country-by-country case studies, this comprehensive volume is a map for academics and students seeking to become more globally orientated cultural policy scholars.

In an era of the rise of the free market and economic globalization, Martin Cloonan examines why politicians and policymakers in the UK have sought to intervene in popular music - a field that has often been held up as the epitome of the free market form. Cloonan traces the development of government attitudes and policies towards popular music from the 1950s to the present, discovering the prominence of two overlapping concerns: public order and the political economy of music. Since the music industry began to lobby politicians, particularly on the issue of copyright in relation to the internet, an inherent tension has become apparent with economic rationale on one side, and Romantic notions of 'the artist' on the other. Cloonan examines the development of policy under New Labour; numerous reports which have charted the economics of the industry; the New Deal for Musicians scheme and the impact of devolution on music policy in Scotland. He makes the case for the inherently political nature of popular music and asserts that the development of popular music policies can only be understood in the context of an increasingly close working relationship between government and the cultural industries. In addition he argues that a rather myopic view of the music industries has meant that policy initiatives have lacked cohesion and have generally served the interests of multinational corporations rather than struggling musicians.