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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
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MUSIC
A Subersive History
A preeminent music historian and critic presents a global history of music from the bottom up
The phrase "music history" likely summons up images of long-dead composers, smug men in wigs and waistcoats, and people dancing without touching. In Music: A Subversive History, Gioia responds to the false notions that undergird this tedium. Traditional histories of music, Gioia contends, downplay those elements of music that are considered disreputable or irrational-its deep connections to sexuality, magic, trance and alternative mind states, healing, social control, generational conflict, political unrest, even violence and murder. They suppress the stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. Here, Gioia attempts to reclaim music history for the riffraff, the insurgents, and provocateurs-the real drivers of change and innovation.
In Music, Gioia tells the four-thousand-year history of music as a source of power, change, upheaval, and enchantment. He starts by exploring humanity's first instruments, which were closely linked to the food chain: the first horns were animal horns, our earliest string instrument was a hunter's bow, and our oldest known instrument, the Neanderthal flute, was constructed from a bear femur. He turns to neuroscience to explain why the Celtic love story of Tristan and Iseult echoes the eleventh century Gorgani Persian love epic about Vis and Ramin, or why the troubadours of Europe echo artisan singers of ancient Egypt. He investigates the idea of "song as sin" as Church leaders for the first thousand years of Christianity attempted to control and suppress the songs of the common people. And he explains the shift of music from a social practice to an economic enterprise during the Renaissance. Gioia shows how social outcasts have repeatedly become the great trailblazers of musical expression: slaves and their descendants, for instance, have repeatedly reinvented music in America and elsewhere, from ragtime, blues, jazz, R&B, to bossa nova, soul, and hip hop.
Music: A Subversive History is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of music, from Sappho to the Sex Pistols to Spotify.
Ted Gioia is an award-winning jazz critic, music historian and the author of eleven books, including How to Listen to Jazz which was an Economist Book of the Year. His three previous books on the social history of music -- Work Songs, Healing Songs, and Love Songs -- have all been honored with ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards. Additionally, Delta Blues was named a New York Times Notable Book and an Economist Best Book of the Year and The History of Jazz was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Book of the Year. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, and the Atlantic. He is also one of the founders of Stanford University's jazz studies program and a renowned jazz pianist.
In Music, Gioia tells the four-thousand-year history of music as a source of power, change, upheaval, and enchantment. He starts by exploring humanity's first instruments, which were closely linked to the food chain: the first horns were animal horns, our earliest string instrument was a hunter's bow, and our oldest known instrument, the Neanderthal flute, was constructed from a bear femur. He turns to neuroscience to explain why the Celtic love story of Tristan and Iseult echoes the eleventh century Gorgani Persian love epic about Vis and Ramin, or why the troubadours of Europe echo artisan singers of ancient Egypt. He investigates the idea of "song as sin" as Church leaders for the first thousand years of Christianity attempted to control and suppress the songs of the common people. And he explains the shift of music from a social practice to an economic enterprise during the Renaissance. Gioia shows how social outcasts have repeatedly become the great trailblazers of musical expression: slaves and their descendants, for instance, have repeatedly reinvented music in America and elsewhere, from ragtime, blues, jazz, R&B, to bossa nova, soul, and hip hop.
Music: A Subversive History is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of music, from Sappho to the Sex Pistols to Spotify.
Ted Gioia is an award-winning jazz critic, music historian and the author of eleven books, including How to Listen to Jazz which was an Economist Book of the Year. His three previous books on the social history of music -- Work Songs, Healing Songs, and Love Songs -- have all been honored with ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards. Additionally, Delta Blues was named a New York Times Notable Book and an Economist Best Book of the Year and The History of Jazz was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Book of the Year. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, and the Atlantic. He is also one of the founders of Stanford University's jazz studies program and a renowned jazz pianist.
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Book
Published 2019-10-15 by Basic Books |
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Book
Published 2019-10-15 by Basic Books |