ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relations among music, patterns of behavior, and deviance. It focuses on the cultures of people who prefer music that may be quite normal to them, but have been labeled more or less as deviant within the context of the larger group culture in which they live. The chapter discusses the concepts from two theories, Howard Becker's "labeling theory" and Stanley Cohen's theory of "moral panic". It also traces the significance of a number of popular music genres, from blues, jazz, and swing in the early 20th century, to hippie, heavy metal, and rap in the latter half of the century. The chapter then examines the role that social media plays in subcultural music experience and deviant labels. Hip-hop culture, a multibillion dollar global icon in 21st century, emerged out of African-American ghettos of New York in 1970s and has since morphed into a multivalent and multiracial phenomenon with a variety of popular cultural and subcultural forms.
