The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and Londons underground crisis

• Grant number: 19/12456-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2019
• End date: July 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: José Adriano Fenerick
• Grantee: José Cesar Fernandes Gomes
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Released in November 1970, the album The Man Who Sold The World, from the British musician, David Bowie, was situated in a context where the hippie utopia of the "summer of love" was already undergoing a process of declining, and the rock as a form of expression that included several musical aspects and linked to the counterculture, was also deeply incorporated into the mass culture. Therefore, the objective of this project is to bring the discussion in which way Bowie's music refers and contests the elements of the underground music scene of the 1960s, while dealing with issues from the 1970s. As a result, the discussion is made from the analysis of David Bowie's conduct in his musical experimentation and arguments with the contemporary music practices and releasing of his album The Man Who Sold the World, using the concept of mediation developed by the sociologist Raymond Williams in Marxism and Literature, released in 1971.