Across the Great Divide: Popular Music Studies and the Public

This contribution reflects on the historical and present condition of the academic field of popular music studies' relationship to the non-academic public, particularly within the context of increased institutional demands for scholarly ‘public engagement'. I begin by discussing various reasons why a continued, sustained engagement with non-academic voices and communities should remain a central priority of popular music studies. I then move to a discussion of certain vantage points and modes of expertise that popular music scholars can offer to broader musical publics, particularly as relating to the political economy of commercial music media and urgent necessities of historical archiving and preservation. In closing, I argue that a renewed commitment to ‘public engagement' also offers a more robust engagement with our field’s own history, and might serve as a way of honouring its intellectual pioneers, many of whom did foundational work well outside the traditional boundaries of the academy.