Major Labels

<p>From his own adolescence when his allegiance was to punk rock to his work as one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture at the <i>New York Times</i> and the <i>New Yorker</i> Kelefa Sanneh has made a deep study of how our popular music unites and divides us. Distilling a career's worth of knowledge Sanneh explores the tribes music forms and how its genres shape-shifting across the years give us a way to track larger forces and concerns.<br><br>He debunks cherished myths reappraises beloved heroes and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness arguing that sometimes the best popular music isn't transcendent: it expresses our grudges as well as our hopes and is motivated by greed as well as inspiration. Throughout race is a powerful touchstone: just as there's always been a 'Black' audience and a 'white' audience (with some overlap) there is Black music and white music and a whole lot of expropriation.<br><br>This is a book to shock and awe the deepest music nerd and at the same time to work as a heady gateway drug for the uninitiated.</p>