Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis – New book by Paul Rekret

Paul Rekret has recently published a new book with MIT Press. Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis Connects contemporary changes in work and the economy to tendencies in popular music. Rekret shows how song-form has both reflected developments in contemporary capitalism while also intimating a horizon beyond it. From online streaming and the extension of the working day to gentrification, unemployment and the emergence of trap rap, from ecological crisis and field recording to automation and trends in dance music, by exploring the intersections of work and song in the current era, not only do we gain a new understanding of contemporary musical culture, we also see how music might gesture towards a horizon beyond the alienating experience of work in capitalism itself.