Staff Picks
Music and Culture
- Sarah C.
- Friday, February 22, 2019
Collection
It's no secret that music both reflects and creates culture. Check out these great reads to explore that fascinating connection!
Can't Stop, Won't Stop
A History of the Hip-hop Generation
Published in 2005
A history of hip-hop cites its origins in the post-civil rights Bronx and Jamaica, drawing on interviews with performers, activists, gang members, DJs, and others to document how the movement has influenced politics and culture.
Strange Stars
David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-fi Exploded
Published in 2018
Looks at developments in science fiction and pop music in the 1970s, delving into the ways that the work of many influential performers of the time was heavily informed by science fiction and space exploration.
Country Soul
Making Music and Making Race in the American South
Published in 2015
In the sound of the 1960s and 1970s, nothing symbolized the rift between black and white America better than the seemingly divided genres of country and soul. Yet the music emerged from the same songwriters, musicians, and producers in the recording studios of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama--what Charles L. Hughes calls the "country-soul triangle." In legendary studios like Stax and FAME, integrated groups of musicians like Booker T. and the MGs and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section produced music that both challenged and reconfirmed racial divisions in the United States. Working with artists from Aretha Franklin to Willie Nelson, these musicians became crucial contributors to the era's popular music and internationally recognized symbols of American racial politics in the turbulent years of civil rights protests, Black Power, and white backlash. Hughes offers a provocative reinterpretation of this key moment in American popular music and challenges the conventional wisdom about the racial politics of southern studios and the music that emerged from them. Drawing on interviews and rarely used archives, Hughes brings to life the daily world of session musicians, producers, and songwriters at the heart of the country and soul scenes. In doing so, he shows how the country-soul triangle gave birth to new ways of thinking about music, race, labor, and the South in this pivotal period.
The Republic of Rock
Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture
Published in 2013
Michael Kramer draws on new archival sources and interviews to explore sixties music and politics through the lens of these two generation-changing places--San Francisco and Vietnam. From the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters to hippie disc jockeys on strike, the military's use of rock music to "boost morale" in Vietnam, and the forgotten tale of a South Vietnamese rock band, The Republic of Rock shows how the musical connections between the City of the Summer of Love and war-torn Southeast Asia were crucial to the making of the sixties counterculture. The book also illustrates how and why the legacy of rock music in the sixties continues to matter to the meaning of citizenship in a global society today. --from publisher description
You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me
Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes
Published in 2013
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Essays
Published in 2017
"In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others--along with original, previously unreleased essays-- Abdurraquib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ouselves, and in doing so proves himself a bellwether for out times." -- Page 4 of cover.