Strange Sounds: Music, Technology & Culture

by Timothy D. Taylor

In Strange Sounds, Timothy D. Taylor explains the wonder and anxiety provoked by a technological revolution that began in the 1940s and gathers steam daily. Taylor discusses the cultural role of technology, its use in making music, and the inevitable concerns about "authenticity" that arise from electronic music. Informative and highly entertaining for both music fans and scholars, Strange Sounds is a provocative look at how we perform, listen to, and understand music today.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Academic, Anthropology

292 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2001

Reviews

[Pierre-Alexandre PG]

There are definitely interesting parts here and there.

But for me, the ideas that the author tries to formulate and elaborate are far from well-defined. It seems that at each chapter, the reader has to go through a good deal of bla-bla and sociological name-dropping before getting some sort of thesis.

I would not know which other book to recommend but there are definitely a lot of others, music-related, that I would recommmend before this one. Ok let’s drop one:
Dialectique de la pop, de Agnès Gayraud

[Jehnie]

Read specifically for the chapter entitled Technostalgia.
A heady but worthwhile way of pulling together anthropological research into music and sound.