Steve Waksman Smith College, USA

Steve Waksman is Professor of Music and American Studies at Smith College, Massachusetts, USA. His works include the books Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Harvard University Press, 1999), and This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk (University of California Press, 2009), the latter of which was awarded the 2010 Woody Guthrie Award for best scholarly book on popular music by the US chapter of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. With Reebee Garofalo he co-authored the sixth edition of Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the U.S.A. (Pearson, 2013). His essays have appeared in Guitar Cultures, The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop, and Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music Around the World. Currently he is researching a book on the cultural history of live music and performance in the US, tentatively titled Live Music in America: A History, 1850–2000.