Music: A Subversive History (Paperback or Softback)

A four-thousand-year history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions. 

“A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched labor of cultural provocation.” ―Los Angeles Times 

Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs.

Gioia tells a four-thousand-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval. He shows how outcasts, immigrants, slaves, and others at the margins of society have repeatedly served as trailblazers of musical expression, reinventing our most cherished songs from ancient times all the way to the jazz, reggae, and hip-hop sounds of the current day.

Music: A Subversive History is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of music, from Sappho to the Sex Pistols to Spotify.

Ted Gioia is a music historian and the author of twelve books, including How to Listen to Jazz. His three previous books on the social history of music―Work Songs, Healing Songs, and Love Songs―have each been honored with the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.