Hole in Our Soul : The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music Paperback / softback
by Martha Bayles
Paperback / softback
Description
From Queen Latifah to Count Basie, Madonna to Monk, "Hole in our soul: the loss of beauty and meaning in American popular music" traces popular music back to its roots in jazz, blues, country, and gospel through the rise in rock'n'roll and the emergence of heavy metal, punk, and rap.
Yet despite the vigour and balance of these musical origins, Martha Bayles argues, something has gone seriously wrong, both with the sound of popular music and the sensibility it expresses.
Bayles defended the tough, affirmative spirit of Afro-American music against the strain of artistic modernism she calls"perverse".
She describes how perverse modernism was grafted onto popular music in the late 1960s, and argues that the result has been a cult of brutality and obscenity that is profoundly anti-musical.
Unlike other recent critics of popular music, Bayles does not blame the problem on commerce.
She argues that culture shapes the market and not the other way around.
Finding censorship of popular music "both a practical and a constitutional impossibility", Bayles insists that "an informed shift in public tastes may be our only hope of reversing the current malignant moods".
Information
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Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:461 pages
- Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
- Publication Date:15/05/1996
- Category:
- ISBN:9780226039596
Other Formats
- Hardback from £15.79
Information
-
Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:461 pages
- Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
- Publication Date:15/05/1996
- Category:
- ISBN:9780226039596
