This book begins from the premise that we are living in an age in which the social is in a continuous process of reinvention. The book is also grounded in the assumption that music is a perennial key player in the processes of reinventing the social since music holds the power to stimulate and transport visions of change through its appeal to all human senses. Chapters address the intersection of music and identity politics, the role of music in social movements, music's presence in commodity and tourist culture, music in the context of museum culture, music's presence in literature and the...

This book examines public art practices in three eras of social and political upheaval: the 1920s-1930s, 1960s-1970s, and today. Heydays of artistic innovation and provocation, these periods see the rise of grassroots and avant-garde practices that intervene in the crises of their day by reclaiming public space for community building and social transformation. Artists of various cultural, social, and political movements in these times establish the street and other public spaces as laboratories for redefining the nation, culture, and community-in short, for endowing the world with new...