- Paperback: 462 pages
- Publisher: University of Chicago Press (31 May 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0226039595
- ISBN-13: 978-0226039596
- Product Dimensions: 2.3 x 1.5 x 0.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
719,212 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #62 in Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Music > Styles > Country & Western
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product 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".
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First Sentence
Hole in Our Soul is not just a history of popular music, although it does, I hope, offer a cogent survey of the major strains form spirituals and ragtime to blues, Jazz, country, and gospel; 1950s rock'n roll to 1960s rock; and from 1970s heavy metal, disco, and punk to MTV and rap today. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Hole in Our Soul is not just a history of popular music, although it does, I hope, offer a cogent survey of the major strains form spirituals and ragtime to blues, Jazz, country, and gospel; 1950s rock'n roll to 1960s rock; and from 1970s heavy metal, disco, and punk to MTV and rap today. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
I expected to loathe this book, but even though I didn't agree with all of Martha Bayles's arguments, she makes a strong - and witty - case for the argument that pop music is in a state of meltdown. Instead of mounting the familiar conservative attack on pop culture and corporate America as the source of all our ills, Bayles traces the problem back to a phenomenon she calls "perverse modernism", a nihilistic corruption of authentic modernism which revels in transgression for its own sake. She takes the reader on a journey from the era of ragtime to jazz, rock and roll, punk and beyond, and even though she covers a huge amount of ground, her droll, aphoristic style makes her a very entertaining guide. Best of all, she is not a lofty academic with an axe to grind, but a true fan who writes with passion about the music she clearly loves.
Format:Paperback
Martha Bayles sees a decline in popular music because much of it has deviated from its vitalising Afro-American roots.She makes some very perceptive comments on various artists.For example: "the young Dylan was more interesting than a lot of 1960s rock stars because he was genuinely torn between the musical tradition he loved and the counterculture that loved him.""Heavy metal offers ritual death, but at the end of the ordeal, there is no rebirth."After commercial success, Nirvana "quickly retreated back into thrash, noise, and an emotional gamut running from A (for angst) to B (for blitzkrieg)." Van Morrison "at his best sounds like exactly what he is: a sorrowful amateur poet who's been dunked in the life-giving waters.""Prince's goatishness is preferable to the icy decadence purveyed by Madonna."And "Springsteen's best songs have a melodic force capable of defying gravity, in effect lifting the dinosaur off the ground and making it fly-albeit heavily, like an overfed pterodactyl."The author's forthright opinions will step on many toes, but it is refreshing to read someone who can write intelligently about popular music.She has a lot of challenging things to say, and she says them well.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have to admit I haven't read the entire book, but if you love to watch MTV (or TV in general) and clutch your chest like Fred Sanford saying "It's the BIG ONE Elizabeth!" then this is the book for you! This book is still pretty interesting; I didn't know about Jamaican DJs as a response to government controlled radio, for example. A glaring omisson is heavy-metal band GWAR (God, What Awful Racket!) They even have a home video titled "Phallus in Wonderland." ALLMUSIC has a good article on them.
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