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Music

A Subversive History

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Music

By: Ted Gioia
Narrated by: Jamie Renell
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Buy for $35.09

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"A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched" (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions.

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, 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 outcasts, immigrants, slaves, and others at the margins of society have repeatedly served as trailblazers of musical expression, reinventing our most cherished songs from ancient times all the way to the jazz, reggae, and hip-hop sounds of the current day.

Music: A Subversive History is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of music, from Sappho to the Sex Pistols to Spotify. Great Britain Greece History & Criticism Music Ancient Europe

Critic reviews

"A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched labor of cultural provocation."—Robert Christgau, Los Angeles Times
"[A] sweeping study...The author aims to subvert our ideas about music history-essentially, Western classical tradition and its contemporary and popular offshoots-in part by removing its pedestals...Gioia challenges notions of progress based solely on aesthetic or stylistic innovation...characteriz[ing] music history as a cyclical power struggle with shifting battle lines."—Larry Blumenfeld, Wall Street Journal
"Music: A Subversive History is by some distance the most wide-ranging and provocative thing he's [Gioia's] come up with... In terms of scope, well, put it this way: it starts out talking about a bear's thighbone that Neanderthal hunters apparently turned into a primitive flute somewhere between 43,000 and 82,000 years ago and ends up, 450 pages later, discussing K-pop and EDM."—Guardian
"Gioia's great strength as a writer is his sensitivity to the vast range of all the world's music, and his impressive grasp of the literature on world music, jazz and pop, as well as classical music... This book feels like the summation of a lifetime's avid musical exploration and reading. It has an epic sweep and passionate engagement with the topic that carries one along irresistibly."—Telegraph
"In this excellent history, music critic Gioia (How to Listen to Jazz) dazzles with tales of how music grew out of violence, sex, and rebellion... Gioia's richly told narrative provides fresh insights into the history of music."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Gioia draws on social science research into the past and present to forge a sweeping and enthralling account of music as an agency of human change."—Booklist, starred review
"I can't speak highly enough about Music: A Subversive History...[Gioia] is always fun to read...I suspect that academic scholars will pooh-pooh aspects of Music. That's as it should be...Gioia remains something of an outsider critic, convinced that the passion for destruction can be a creative passion."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
"Scintillating... Gioia is writing about evolution and magic-this is a music history that synthesizes both Darwin and Frazer, and, at least in terms of writing for a general audience, is the first to do so. We need this story."—Brooklyn Rail
"Gioia's argument is persuasive and offers a wealth of possibilities for further exploration. This fascinating recontextualization will appeal to anyone who ever wondered why "Hound Dog" became a hit only when Elvis Presley covered it."—Library Journal
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Mr. Joia navigates this expansive topic like only a professional musician with extensive studies in philosophy, history, and music theory could: all the way. The journey takes us to places I never imagined by deeply examining human (and animal) factors, like violence, religion, hunting, herding, sexuality, crime, ego, temptation/restraint, and technology, in music’s history and development. While this gets quite dense throughout the book, he injects plenty of humor to keep it light.
The narration is fantastic - inspiring and engaging voice and delivery that helps digest this dense information.
Highly recommended!

Impressive depth and rigor

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Fun, lots of interesting facts and ideas. If you've read Howard Zinn's People'a History of the US, they've being made here (successfully, if less seriously) will be familiar.

Interesting and thought-provoking

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Bravo! This is a magically potent walk through the history and present of music. Thank you!

Has expanded my mind!

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Although I’d read and reread at least 4 of Gioia’s books on music, I was a little skeptical that the “subversive” conceit could plausibly be sustained for a whole book. I was wrong! This is a tour de force — a book he’s no doubt been training himself to write almost non-stop since childhood.

The book is well read. But you will have to figure out how not to cringe as Renell mangles every single French word or name.

Tour de force

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Easily the important book on music and its history that I have ever read

Groundbreaking Analysis

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