Music: A Subversive History

Music: A Subversive History
Ted Gioia
Narrated by Jamie Renell
Basic Books, October 15, 2019
$20.76 for Audible members, more for non-members
purchased with an Audible credit

This is a substantial work. The print version is 480 pages, and the audiobook is 17 hours and 55 minutes. But Gioia covers a lot of territory here. He starts with primitive humans in their hunter-gatherer societies and continues up to the present day with YouTube and streaming music.

Gioia explains how music had its origins in hunting and war, and how both musical instruments and musical conventions reflect that. He describes the way in which music was often initially subversive, a product of the poor, slaves, the underclass, and how it was ultimately appropriated by the ruling class for its own purposes. He talks about how women’s voices were suppressed and their creations co-opted. For example The Song of Songs in the Old Testament, clearly an erotic love song, became a poem describing God’s love for His people, or if you are Christian, perhaps Christ’s love for his church. He documents other similar occurrences in the ancient world.

He explains how the composers of the classical music era had their own agendas and how they benefited from their patrons but often when their own way. He is highly critical about the way in which the early documenters of folk music failed to accurately transcribe what they found. Gioia describes how publishers of sheet music catered to the kind of music folks with pianos in their homes wanted to play.

In the modern era Gioia moves from blues to jazz to rock to country in a single chapter and describes their impact on American society. He notes how MTV revolutionized the music industry and how Apple and Google (which purchased YouTube) revolutionized it once again. Throughout, over and over again, he documents how music that is initially intended to be revolutionary ends up becoming mainstream.

The book is ably ready by Jamie Renell, although his occasional mispronunciations of names, particularly in the ancient world, can be jarring. Still Renell reads with cadence and clarity that effectively communicates Gioia’s text.