Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is an essential book that deserves ten stars!
I've been studying and thinking and listening and playing and writing about music that can be called country for about forty years. Yet, when I had read a few chapters of this book, I wrote Diane Pecknold to tell her that I felt that I was uneducated and would remain uneducated until I finished reading and assimilating this book. It is simply not possible to feel educated about Country music and the American culture business itself without reading this book. There is almost nothing in this book about the music itself. Nevertheless, it discusses aspects of Country no one else has put together.
Pecknold studies the development of Country music as a business and how that has related to the concept of Country Music in American and world culture. In passing, this book gives a very good picture of the history of commercial radio, especially the programming of local radio stations. It also gives a major slice of the 20th Century history of the music publishing industry, particularly the wars between ASCAP and BMI.
Most importantly, the book provides a serious discussion of the images that Country and Hillbilly music have held in general cultural discussion in society and the relationship of those concepts to politics and the demography of this country. Given my particular interest in traditional music, I found her critical analysis of early folklorists' abhorrence of commercial music and the music industry to be useful and gratifying.
What also impressed me was the to-the-point, fact-oriented and clear language here. Often books written by academics aimed not only at a popular market but also at the academic disciplines can be overwhelmed by abstruse and incomprehensible academic rhetoric. Such writing can be excessively concerned with creating "new theory" that explanation of what happened and why can remain a mystery. This is not the case with this book. No matter how much you think you know about Country music, you will know much more about its place in our economy, our society, our culture, and our politics than you did before you read this book. It belongs in every home!
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry (Refiguring American Music)
0 comments:
Post a Comment