Timothy Taylor’s book, “Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture,” was selected as the winner of the 2012 John C. Cawelti Award by the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, a group of scholars and enthusiasts who study popular culture.
The ethnomusicology and musicology professor’s new book, published by the University of Chicago Press, tracks the use of music in American advertising for nearly a century, from variety shows to the rise of the jingle, the postwar rise in consumerism and the more complete fusion of popular music and consumption in the 1980s and after.
The award will be presented at the organization's conference in Washington, D.C., at the Wardman Park Marriott on March 29.
The award is named after John Cawelti, a pioneer in the study of popular and American culture. His numerous works established the basis for the study of the literature and film for popular audiences.
"My first book was about world music," Taylor recalled in a recent interview. "Not long after, I started noticing that there was a lot of fake world music on TV commercials ... often with people singing in a non-recognizable or even fake language. I was intrigued by this and interviewed some people in the advertising music-production business. Nobody from academia had ever talked to them before or taken them seriously."
For more on the book, see this video interview and read this story.
