![Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City [book review]](https://pages.vassar.edu/musicalurbanism/files/2024/09/Book-cover-290x290.jpg "Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City [book review]")
Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City [book review]
In the small riverfront city of Newburgh, NY, gentrification draws upon newcomers’ reflections on their geographical journeys. In an earlier era, they were New Yorkers proud of their abandoned neighborhoods, artistic commitments, and racially diverse environs. Now displaced from the big city by its cost of living, they embrace Newburgh’s “gritty” urbanism as they restore...
![DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas [book review]](https://pages.vassar.edu/musicalurbanism/files/2024/07/DVSMindz-290x290.jpg "DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas [book review]")
DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas [book review]
How might sociologists engage the music biography genre? Biographical works can shed light on an important concern: the career as outcome of life-course sequence, social reproduction patterns, formal and informal status attainment, and larger contexts that enable and constrain advance through social fields.
new publication: the racialized Brooklynization of the Hudson Valley
An article I’ve co-authored with Joshua Simons (from SUNY New Paltz’s Benjamin Center) has just been published in the academic journal City & Community. Titled “Small-City Dualism in the Metro Hinterland: The Racialized ‘Brooklynization’ of New York’s Hudson Valley,” it’s part of the journal’s special issue symposium on small cities. I’m pleased to report...
tuff Marian: sociological fiction and other people’s pictures
One of my most exciting and challenging writing assignments is now available. I was asked to write 150-200 words of text to accompany a photo featured in Other People’s Pictures: Snapshots from the Peter J. Cohen Gift, an exhibit that just opened at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Here’s the picture...
The World Is A Ball and four Martha & the Muffins albums
Today I published a review essay of the reissue of Martha and the Muffins’ sixth album, The World Is A Ball, on the music blog Sound It Out. If you landed here from that blog looking for my list of the four superior albums by the band, they are their debut release and the three...
new publications
I’ve had a couple of articles published in the past month. First, and most relevant to my musical urbanism project, an article about the proto-EU visions traced in the career of Simple Minds, “Sound in 70 Cities: The European Urbanism of Simple Minds,” has been published in a new edited volume: Unsichtbare Landschaften/Invisible Landscapes: Popular...
community food assessment research in Poughkeepsie
In the Fall of 2010 I began serving as primary co-investigator on a community food assessment (CFA) in the city of Poughkeepsie, New York. A remarkable coalition of local groups came together under the title Poughkeepsie Plenty, including the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, Dutchess Outreach, the Dutchess County Dept. of Health, and Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess...
recent publications
Some writings that first appeared on this blog have been published recently. First, the latest print issue of Burning Ambulance comes out today with my essay on Tito Larriva (from the Plugz, Cruzados, Tito & Tarantula, and Robert Rodriguez’s Mexican exploitation films) in it. Burning Ambulance specializes in extended pieces covering musical artists “who deserve...
corriendo la voz: some recent Musical Urbanism appearances in Spanish
Through really no effort on my own part, some of my Musical Urbanism writings have appeared in Spanish lately. An essay I posted here back in June, “The Dull Ubiquity of Placeless Music Festivals,” has been translated for publication in Bifurcaciones, an online journal of urban cultural studies published out of Chile. Thanks to...
pirates at the library door: publisher exploitation of popular music scholarship
This post contains lots of links to exciting new academic research in the field of popular music. But first, a diatribe. One of the perks faculty have at my institution is to identify books for the college library to purchase. Since I co-teach a course about Musical Urbanism, I try to keep the library up...
scaling up in Silverlake (R.I.P. Arthur)
Arthur Magazine is no more. After 31 issues published over 2002-08, and another two years as blog and events promoter, the self-styled countercultural periodical ran out of money and, on March 15, 2001, ceased releasing new writing altogether. Today there is silence from this bold and clever champion of freak folk, psych rock, underground comix,...
shameless self-promotion: “Pursing Quality of Life”
I’m pleased to announce that my new book has finally been published: Pursuing Quality of Life: From the Affluent Society to the Consumer Society. Here’s the official blurb. From anxieties over work-life balance and entangling technologies, to celebrations of cool jobs and great places to live, quality of life frames the ways we enhance our lives...