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‘More than just a music’: conservative Christian anti-rock discourse and the U.S. culture wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2013

Anna Nekola
Anna Nekola*
Affiliation:
Denison University, Departments of Music and Communication, 100 W. College St., Granville, OH 43023, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Scholarship on the moral panics around rock music has long focused on racial fears and anxieties about a youth culture that might escape societal control, but little serious attention has been paid to the conservative Christian anti-rock discourse that surfaced publicly in the United States in the 1960s. This article addresses that gap by situating this construction of rock as an inherently evil corrupting force for 'traditional' religious, family, and national values within a larger cultural context, and arguing that it illuminates the rise of contemporary conservative morality politics in the U.S. Not merely the ravings of a few extremists, this discourse represents a worldview and rhetorical mode that was once widespread within a small religious subculture but has since developed—together with the social and cultural power of that subculture—into one of the central political frames of contemporary American life, helping lay the groundwork for today's culture wars.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , October 2013 , pp. 407 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Discography

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