ABSTRACT
This book’s first approach to music and urban geography will concern representation, not because the study will end there, but precisely because of the need, at some point, to transcend the limits of representation as a problematic and see it, instead, as part of a totality enveloping other aspects of social life. The urban change outlined in the Introduction will turn out not just to frame the aspects of representation described as the “urban ethos,” but also to form a necessary continuity with them. Some selected slices of musical history will help to elucidate just how the changing face of popular music may prove a powerful symptom of basic social conditions.
