Events

2023 Lecture

The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Center
Lecture Series
presents

The Possibility Machine:
Music and Myth in Las Vegas
(University of Illinois Press, 2023)

A panel discussion by

Jake Johnson, Assistant Professor of Musicology, University of Oklahoma
Joanna Dee Das, Associate Professor of Dance, Washington University, St. Louis
Brian F. Wright, Assistant Professor of Music History, University of North Texas

November 17, 2023
5:00 p.m.
Harmon Auxiliary Building, UNLV, Room 110
1325 E. Harmon Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89119

Free and open to the public. Parking free in front of H.A.B.

The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Research Center at UNLV hosts authors featured in this collection of essays. The book examines how music-making and soundscapes shape our city. Treating topics ranging from Cher to Cirque du Soleil, the contributors delve into how music and musicians factored in the early development of Vegas’s image; the role of local communities of musicians and Strip mainstays in sustaining tensions between belief and disbelief; the ways aging showroom stars provide a sense of timelessness that inoculates visitors against the outside world; the link connecting fantasies of sexual prowess and democracy with the musical values of Liberace and others; and the echoes and energy generated by the idea of Las Vegas as it travels across the country.

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2022-2023 LECTURE SERIES