Noise Uprising

The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution

by Michael Denning

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Pub Date Aug 18 2015 | Archive Date Aug 18 2015

Verso Books (US) | Verso

Entertainment & Pop Culture | Nonfiction (Adult)

Description

A radically new reading of the origins of recorded music

Noise Uprising brings to life the moment and sounds of a cultural revolution. Between the development of electrical recording in 1925 and the outset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the soundscape of modern times unfolded in a series of obscure recording sessions, as hundreds of unknown musicians entered makeshift studios to record the melodies and rhythms of urban streets and dancehalls. The musical styles and idioms etched onto shellac disks reverberated around the globe: among them Havana’s son, Rio’s samba, New Orleans’ jazz, Buenos Aires’ tango, Seville’s flamenco, Cairo’s tarab, Johannesburg’s marabi, Jakarta’s kroncong, and Honolulu’s hula. They triggered the first great battle over popular music and became the soundtrack to decolonization.

Advance Praise

Praise for Michael Denning’s The Cultural Front:

“A truly wonderful piece of history.” —The Progressive

“As fresh a synthesis of the distinctive culture of the 1930s and 1940s as you are likely to find anywhere.” —Times Literary Supplement

“An immense achievement ... the most important book yet written on American culture in the age of the CIO.” —Journal of American History

Praise for Michael Denning’s Mechanic Accents:

“One of the most illuminating, theoretically informed accounts of popular fiction now available.” —Terry Eagleton

“A fresh and methodologically pathbreaking look at popular or mass-cultural narrative and its ideological function in a specific formative period of North American modernity.” —Fredric Jameson

“Abounds with new ways to think about America’s ubiquitous popular culture ... [Denning has] a first-rate intelligence and the generous sensibilities of a cultural modernist and democrat.” —Christine Stansell, Voice Literary Supplement

“An impressive and excellent book ... removes dime novels from the clutches of nostalgia buffs, returns mass fiction to the workers who read it, and convincingly outlines a fresh paradigm for the study of mass culture.” —Labor History