Rhythms of Labour

By Marek Korczynski, Michael Pickering, Emma Robertson

Book cover of Rhythms of Labour: Music at Work in Britain

Book description

Whether for weavers at the handloom, labourers at the plough or factory workers on the assembly line, music has often been a key texture in people's working lives. This book is the first to explore the rich history of music at work in Britain and charts the journey from the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Rhythms of Labour as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sometimes, the analytical frame of a book completely changes one’s understanding of a phenomenon, and that was the case with this history of work song.

By showing that singing and music-making at work were silenced in the latter half of the 19th century by the noise of machines and the discipline of factory bosses, Korczynski et. al. provided me with a wholly new way to understand the function of music in an industrialized capitalist society: in terms of the segregation of labor and leisure.

From Paul's list on popular music and capitalism.

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