Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution: Music and Social Change in America

by Dick Weissman

Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution is a comprehensive guide to the relationship between American music and politics. Music expert Dick Weissman opens with the dawn of American history, then moves to the book's key 20th-century music – songs by and about Native Americans, African-Americans, women, Spanish-speaking groups, and more. Unprecedented in its approach, the book offers a multidisciplinary discussion that is broad and diverse, and illuminates how social events impact music as well as how music impacts social events. Weissman delves deep, covering everything from current Native American music to “music of hate” – racist and neo-Nazi music – to the music of the Gulf wars, union songs, patriotic and antiwar songs, and beyond. A powerful tool for professors teaching classes about politics and music and a stimulating, accessible read for all kinds of appreciators, from casual music fans to social science lovers and devout music history buffs.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History

386 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2010

About the author

Dick Weissman is a musician, music historian, performer, composer, and recording artist who has written 18 published books about music, including How to Make a Living in Your Local Music Market. He is an associate professor of music at the University of Colorado at Denver and an adjunct professor at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon, where he lives."

Reviews

[ARK · Rating 1 out of 5]

assigned reading for I class I TA'd. not cute.

[Kanoughn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only reason this gets stars from me is because on page 296 the line "A company called Rebel Records in Crowley, Louisiana used a "well-known country star," whatever that meant, to record songs..." made me laugh out loud.

[Maureen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was assigned reading, essentially the textbook, for one of my university classes. While this book covers some interesting topics, which I think are deserving of more in depth analysis and context than this text reaches, it does not fully accomplish what I think the author set out to do. I'll echo other reviewers that have expressed the book attempts to cover too much content and in doing so misses out on opportunities for more depth. I think a lot of the more egregious issues can be traced back to what seems to be a lack of an editor, or poor editing if there was one. There is not one credited in my copy; typos/grammatical errors, factual errors, lack of citations, and other aspects of the writing itself make me question whether sufficient effort was made to ensure the book was accurate, let alone ready for publication.

edited to add: The more I read this the more issues with race and gender come up. I changed my rating because of this.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent book; it does cover a lot of different types of music from the 1800's to now. While that is all and good, it is also the problem with it. It's nice that there is so many types of music discussed, but since there is so much, each is only discussed in minimal detail. Each section only briefly familiarizes you with the genre or time period and doesn't give you much in way of depth. At best, this is a book that can point you in certain directions if you want to learn about any particular era or type of music.

[Gary Blanchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

All in all I thoght this was a good book. There were parts that I thought could have been more detailed, and some parts were of less interest to me, but the author did pay attention to a lot of music focused on social change.

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could hardly get through this book because of all the grammatical errors. I don't understand how it could have been published this way. I also don't understand why it was chosen to be read in my college course.