Music : a subversive history /
Ted Gioia.
- First edition.
- x, 514 pages ; 25 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
The origin of music as a force of creative destruction -- Carnivores at the philharmonic -- In search of a universal music -- Music history as a battle between magic and mathematics -- Bulls and sex toys -- The storyteller -- The invention of the singer -- The shame of music -- Unmanly music -- The devil's songs -- Oppression and musical innovation -- Not all wizards carry wands -- The invention of the audience -- Musicians behaving badly -- The origins of the music business -- Culture wars -- Subversives in wigs -- You say you want a revolution? -- The great flip-flop -- The aesthetics of diaspora -- Black music and the great American lifestyle crisis -- Rebellion goes mainstream -- Funky butt -- The origins of country music in the neolithic era -- Where did our love go? -- The sacrificial ritual -- Rappers and technocrats -- Welcome our new overlords -- Epilogue: this is not a manifesto.
Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress 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. In Music: A Subversive History, historian Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs. Gioia tells a four-thousand-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval. He shows how social outcasts have repeatedly become trailblazers of musical expression: slaves and their descendants, for instance, have repeatedly reinvented music, from ancient times all the way to the jazz, reggae, and hip-hop sounds of the current day.