Major Labels - Kelefa Sanneh

 

This is an ambitious work aiming to offer a history of popular music in seven genres. The seven genres being rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance and pop. Whilst it doesn’t really achieve that because it doesn’t go back far enough to really examine the genesis and full development of popular music it’s an impressive body of work. I think what struck me is that age and location play a big part in an individual response to music. This writer describes music from the time that he became aware of popular music. For somebody like myself, who is considerably older and living in the UK, the overall view of music  and its genres is probably quite different. I also felt that in some ways the book was overlong  and therefore might present as more of a niche read than a mainstream book. I also thought that the attention given to each genre was not as well balanced as it might have been. The section on hip-hop was probably the longest and it may be sour grapes on my part because it’s not a genre I particularly enjoy although the writer is passionate about it! And the book seems to be very much his view of popular music in his native USA. Somebody undertaking a similar project in the UK would come out with a very different book I feel. But whatever criticisms I may have overall are completely outweighed by the completed experience of reading this book. It’s intellectual, the research is impeccable and it comes across as very thorough. And that’s no small achievement given the breadth of the subject. I learnt a lot particularly about different types of dance music. And there’s a lot of history here that interesting. I used the term history but much of it was happening in my lifetime!

Music is a unifying experience whatever the genre. It’s also a very subjective thing. People find it hard to be objective. If you have a favourite musician you can seldom stand to hear them criticised particularly at the adolescent stage of life. 😉 So for anyone with a passing interest in music there’s plenty in this book to interest and challenge your thinking. But at the end of the day it is one persons view which brings me back to music being subjective. I’m glad I read it and I’m sure I will return to it from time to time just to check on something here, something there.

My thanks to Canongate books for sending me a copy.