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Dr Pete Dale joins Theorising the Popular guest speaker series

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The first speaker in the Theorising the Popular series has been confirmed as Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at Manchester Metropolitan University Dr Peter Dale.

Hosted by the Popular Culture Research Group, Dr Dale’s presentation will explore ‘Popular Music and the politics of novelty’. It will consider popular music’s supposed collapse into a ‘retro mania’ which, according to some, has left it in a political and aesthetic rut.

The presentation will challenge a predominant chauvinism for pop’s supposed halcyon days and argues that popular music is still being used to promote political causes, raise funds for the left and express dissent. The presentation asks how politically powerful can popular music be if it lacks aesthetic novelty? 

Dr Dale has played in several indie/punk underground bands, including Pussycat Trash, Red Monkey, and Milky Wimpshake, and set up the cult DIY label/distributor Slampt. His monographs include Anyone Can Do It: Tradition, Empowerment and the Punk Underground (Ashgate, 2012), Popular Music and the Politics of Novelty (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) and Engaging Students with Music Education: DJ Decks, Urban Music and Child-centred Learning (2017). Pete is associate editor of the Punk and Post-Punk journal and a founding member of the Punk Scholars Network.

The Popular Culture Research Group brings together researchers from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Education, and Science and Social Science at Liverpool Hope University, as well as a national and international network of multi and interdisciplinary scholars.

This diversity enables the group to address topics within Popular Culture from a multiplicity of perspectives, and gives the opportunity for creative and collaborative research projects. The group provides a forum in which to demonstrate the intellectual originality, depth and breadth of ‘popular’ disciplines, as well as their academic relationship within ‘traditional’ subjects.

Dr Dale will present ‘Popular Music and the Politics of Novelty’ in AJB059, Hope Park on Tuesday 23rd January at 2pm. All welcome. 


Published on 20/03/2018