The phrase music history likely summons up images of long-dead composers smug men in wigs and
waistcoats and people dancing without touching. In Music: A Subversive History Gioia responds
to the false notions that undergird this tedium. Traditional histories of music Gioia contents
downplay those elements of music that are considered disreputable or irrational-its deep
connections to sexuality magic trance and alternative mind states healing social control
generational conflict political unrest even violence and murder. They suppress the 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. Here
Gioia attempts to reclaim music history for the riffraff the insurgents and provocateurs-the
real drivers of change and innovation. In Music Gioia tells the four-thousand-year history of
music as a source of power change upheaval and enchantment. He shows how social outcasts
have repeatedly become the great trailblazers of musical expression: slaves and their
descendants for instance have repeatedly reinvented music in America and elsewhere from
ragtime blues jazz R&B to bossa nova soul and hip hop. A revolutionary and revisionist
account Music: A Subversive History is essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning
of music.
