Protest Music

Beginning with the spirituals of the slaves and the gospel of the black church and continuing through the blues, jazz forms, country, folk, and rock, Rhythm and Resistance presents popular music as part of a continuing effort, over two centuries, to create community values and identity in the face of social transformations. The book refutes the idea that the use of popular music for expression by a "socially marginal" society is new. The author demonstrates that popular music as an expression of community identity is centuries old.

Popular music may be viewed as primary documents of society, and America's Musical Pulse documents the American experience as recorded in popular sound. Whether jazz, blues, swing, country, or rock, the music, the impulse behind it, and the reaction to it reveal the attitudes of an era or generation. Always a major preoccupation of students, music is often ignored by teaching professionals, who might profitably channel this interest to further understandings of American history and society. In this interdisciplinary collection, topics concerning twentieth-century popular music are related to issues of politics, class, economics, race, gender, and the social context. The focus throughout is to encourage investigation of the complex issues behind the music.

Rock and Popular Music examines the relations between the policies and institutions which regulate contemporary popular music and the political debates, contradictions and struggles in which those musics are involved.International in its scope and conception, this innovative collection explores the reasons for and ways in which governments have sought either to support or prohibit popular music in Canada, Australia and Europe as well as the impact of broadcasting policies in forming and shaping different musical communities. Rock and Popular Music is a unique collection suggesting significant new directions for the study of contemporary popular musics.