Books
Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in The U.S.A.
An easy-to-read, jargon-free book that gives the reader a comprehensive social history of popular music in the United States from the heyday of Tin Pan Alley to the current sounds of electronic dance music and teen pop, from the invention of the phonograph to the promise of the Internet. The text focuses on analysis and critique of the music itself and the conditions of its production and consumption. It also explores the different social issues that affect and are affected by music, such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, technology, and copyright. For anyone who is interested in a comprehensive and detailed history and analysis of popular music in America.
Policing Pop
Fans and detractors of popular music tend to agree on one thing: popular music is a bellwether of an individual’s political and cultural values. In the United States, for example, one cannot think of the counterculture apart from its music. For that reason, in virtually every country in the world, some group identifies popular music as a source of potential danger and wants to regulate it. Policing Pop looks into the many ways in which popular music and artists around the world are subjected to censorship, ranging from state control and repression to the efforts of special interest or religious groups to limit expression.
The essays collected here focus on the forms of censorship as well as specific instances of how the state and other agencies have attempted to restrict the types of music produced, recorded and performed within a culture. Several show how even unsuccessful attempts to exert the power of the state can cause artists to self-censor. Others point to material that taxes even the most liberal defenders of free speech. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that censoring agents target popular music all over the world, and they raise questions about how artists and the public can resist the narrowing of cultural expression.
Rockin’ the Boat : Mass Music & Mass Movements
Rockin’ the Boat is about the relationship between mass-mediated popular musics…and political struggles around the world.”
– from the introduction.
“Rockin’ the Boat shows how powerful music is in effecting political change.”
– Queen Latifah
“Popular music, for all its contradictions, lets us feel the pulses of grassroots social awareness…Rockin’ provides excellent, detailed documentation of a wide variety of social stirrings. It’s a source of hope.”
– Dick Flacks, UC Santa Barbara
Rock n’ Roll is Here to Pay
‘Rock n’ Roll is Here to Pay’ is divided into roughly two parts. The first deals with the history and the economics of the music industry — why its popularity grew and how the different business elements evolved. The second part profiles the social and political character of the business – how the industry has related to blacks and women, what prejudices prevail, and who benefit or suffers as a result of prejudices and exploitation.
As spontaneous as rock n’ roll music may seem to be, after reading this book, few will harbor any illusions about its altruistic purpose. ‘Rock n’ Roll Is Here To Pay’ is a source book, a polemic, an original muckraking analysis of what really goes on behind the glamorous facade of the rock n’ roll world.
