Major labels : a history of popular music in seven genres / Kelefa Sanneh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sanneh, Kelefa, author.

Contributor:

EBSCOhost.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Popular music--History and criticism.

Popular music.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New York : Penguin Press, 2021.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities, shape-shifting across the years, giving us a way to track larger forces and controversies. Music is also, of course, a perfectly fine concern in itself, especially in the hands of a writer this brilliant and polyamorous. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career's worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a grand reckoning with popular music--as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. As Sanneh unspools the stories of the genres that have defined popular music, the connections build, and big themes accrue momentum: the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there's always been a Black audience and a white audience, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there is Black music and white music, though it's not always easy to tell them apart. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn't transcendent. It expresses our grudges as well as our hopes, and it is motivated by greed as well as inspiration; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. The book will shock and awe every music nerd, even as it is a heady gateway drug for the uninitiated. The opposite of a modest proposal, Major Labels takes on the whole extraordinary range of popular music over the past half century, and it pays in full.

Contents:

Rock

R&B

Country

Punk

Hip-hop

Dance Music

Pop.

Notes:

Includes index.

Electronic reproduction. Ipswich, MA Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on October 26, 2021).

Other Format:

Print version: Sanneh, Kelefa. Major labels

ISBN:

9781838855956

1838855955

9780525559603

0525559604

Publisher Number:

40030786084

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.