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The ‘one-man band’ and entrepreneurial selfhood in neoliberal culture

2013; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0261143013000317

1474-0095

Dale Chapman,

Cultural Industries and Urban Development

Abstract This article proposes that the recent history of the live solo multi-instrumentalist, more conventionally known as the ‘one-man band’, might serve as a useful window onto broader transformations in postmodern culture. If the one-person band has historically been understood as a humorous, culturally devalued phenomenon, with its practitioners occupying marginal race and class positions, the recent visibility of solo multi-instrumentalism in indie and experimental rock attests to its altered status in contemporary culture. The present discussion situates the shifting fortunes of the one-person band in relation to the contemporary hegemony of neoliberal conceptions of subjectivity. In their performance of nimble, flexible and omni-competent self-reliance, artists such as Theresa Andersson, Robert Fripp and Andrew Bird model some of the key qualities idealised by theorists of a free-market ‘entrepreneurial selfhood’.