Popular Music Studies

A discipline that grew out of cultural and ethnic studies, mass communications, musicology, and ethnomusicology, popular music studies strives to understand our perception of what makes music popular and unpopular. Originally a forum for studying the neglected practices of rock 'n' roll and pop, it grew to include substantial research on heavy metal, hip hop, urban dance music, and popular music in diverse locations such as Bollywood, the Caribbean, and Thailand.