Music

July 1, 2019

Musician and music historian Gioia (Love Songs) contends that throughout the history of music, the innovations of the rebellious and the subversive have been coopted by the sanctioned and the institutional. This isn't a new idea, but in drawing from fields such as anthropology, psychology, theology, and folklore, the author raises thought-provoking questions in this wide-ranging survey. Chief among these is the notion that the very study of music has been hampered by mechanisms of formal social, cultural, and religious approval, which privilege certain forms of musical expression over others. He cites a range of examples, from the myth of Orpheus as a magical music-maker to the influence of African Americans, who have been subject to centuries of oppression, on American music. Gioia's argument is persuasive and offers a wealth of possibilities for further exploration. VERDICT This fascinating recontextualization will appeal to anyone who ever wondered why "Hound Dog" became a hit only when Elvis Presley covered it.--Genevieve Williams, Pacific Lutheran Univ. Lib., Tacoma

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Starred review from August 12, 2019
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 opens with humans fashioning musical instruments from animal bones, such as a Neanderthal flute made with a bear’s femur, and writes, “When the instruments didn’t come from the dead animal, they evolved from the weapons used to kill it,” such as a hunter’s bow, which became the “earliest stringed instrument.” He then explores the roots of eroticism in music in Sumerian songs and myths, and the divide between the sacred and the vulgar in music. Gioia explains how the early Catholic church elevated the human voice as the only instrument above reproach, since other instruments, drums in particular, were tainted by their pagan associations. In the Middle Ages, passionate secular songs were being performed by roaming troubadours whose new way of singing expressed a deep sensitivity to the inner romantic life. Crisply written with surprising insights, Gioia’s history ranges from Beethoven’s outsider status, due to what was considered to be his mysterious and gloomy music, to the execution and murder ballads in 20th-century folk music, and ending with the rise of rock and roll and hip-hop. Gioia’s richly told narrative provides fresh insights into the history of music.

August 15, 2019
A revisionist history highlights music's connections to violence, disruption, and power. In a sweeping survey that begins in "pre-human natural soundscapes," music historian Gioia (How To Listen to Jazz, 2016, etc.) examines changes and innovation in music, arguing vigorously that the music produced by "peasants and plebeians, slaves and bohemians, renegades and outcasts" reflected and influenced social, cultural, and political life. For the earliest humans, writes the author, music-making was far more important than simply entertainment: Songs "served as a source of transformation and enchantment for individuals and communities," embodying myth and cultural lore. Music also was indelibly connected to violence, from troops' drums and horns to rousing anthems. "Every violent group in history," Gioia notes, "has its motivating songs," evidence that music "is a mighty force" for change. Disruption, however, was not limited to martial music. Once the audience emerged "as the judge of aesthetic merit during the late medieval period and Renaissance," music changed from an art sanctioned by aristocracy and the church to one that pleased "the untutored crowd." Popular musicians presented themselves as dramatic, artistic personalities; when they offered works celebrating "love and glory, the singer emerged as the focal point of the lyrics, the real subject of every song." Gioia aims to overturn long-held images of many composers: Beethoven, for example, was hardly "the ultimate classical music insider, the bedrock of the symphonic tradition," but rather a passionate personality whose "strange, peculiar, arbitrary, bizarre, mysterious, gloomy and laborious" music caused him, early in his career, to be considered "a volatile outsider whose impulses needed to be held in check." With Beethoven, writes the author, "everything gets viewed through a prism of revolution, upheaval, and clashing value systems." That desire to upend the status quo has invigorated music, whether it is jazz, folk music, hip-hop, or electrified bands. Despite efforts to quash innovation, "in the long term, songs tend to prevail over even the most authoritarian leaders." A bold, fresh, and informative chronicle of music's evolution and cultural meaning.

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Starred review from September 1, 2019
Gioia's historical inquiry springs from the question, How does music change people's lives? Jazz pianist and historian Gioia found confirmation of the common wisdom that music soothes and arouses, calms and stimulates, suppresses and incites. Paleolithic artists portrayed hunting, and the acoustic properties of the caves they adorned suggests that they worshipped in them. Classical Greek philosophers debated music's effects, and Pythagoras mathematicized it to allay its emotional power. In short, music has long been subject and instrument of conflict and division. There have been men's and women's musics and the musics of opposing sides, from ancient Sumer and Egypt forward, and alignments of musical development in West and East that support the perception that music is intrinsic to the species. Such evidence upholds the thesis that music is constantly subversive, its changes attesting to rebellion of the margins against the center until the challenging is assimilated, at which point, a new music arises to besiege the new center. Thus, the succession of blues, jazz, country, rock 'n' roll, disco, rap, techno, and EDM since the advent of sound recording. More than on musicology?indeed, in reaction to its strictures?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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)