The Possibility Machine

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Las Vegas has been an important commercial hub for live and recorded music for most of the twentieth century. It is also arguably the most American of America’s cities in that anything and everything seems possible there. Largely, however, the critical attention toward place and music industry has privileged other American commercial centers, namely, Los Angeles and New York City, and little has been written about the role sound and music play in crafting Las Vegas’s insistence that belief matters. Despite Las Vegas’s rich musical entanglements, in fact, a full study of the musical and cultural values of the city has not yet emerged. The Possibility Machine sets out to examine the sonic place-making and musical mythologies surrounding America’s City of Second Chances. This book investigates venues of fantasy and mythmaking during this critical post-truth moment when broader mythos of America have become political and cultural lightning rods. Contributors to this volume consider collectively the values and perspectives of music making in, around, and through Las Vegas. Las Vegas, then, serves as a foil for a much larger mythological value in America, that is, possibility. Presented as both place and idea, Las Vegas in this book centers and invigorates belief for many Americans. Whatever happens in Vegas, this book shows, never simply stays in Vegas.