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In Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip Hop DJ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), Mark Katz explores the scratche(r)s, mixe(r)s, and battle(r)s of hip hop DJ history. The book is full of interviews with musicians explaining their craft and reflecting on the role of the DJ in hip hop, and Katz wrote [...]

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In Victory through Harmony: The BBC and Popular Music in World War II (Oxford 2011), Christina Baade delivers a fascinating account of the BBC’s activities during the Second World War. Victory through Harmony won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2012, and will be out in paperback later this year. It is a worthwhile read, and [...]

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Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum (Wesleyan 2011), takes an intriguing tact to explore the realities of a 19th century invention: the live music fan. Through the words of middle-class, urban men and women, Daniel Cavicchi creates a sort of archival-ethnography, and paints a picture of people who, for the first time, [...]

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In his book The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture, Timothy D. Taylor uncovers the veiled history of music used in advertising in the United States. Beginning with music’s role in early radio broadcasts, Taylor synthesizes musical characteristics of particular eras with ever-evolving approaches to making and using music for the [...]

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Copious research of television station corporate documents, close readings of television programming, and nuanced theorization about the development of music performance during the era of television’s ascendance into mass popularity has resulted in Murray Forman’s One Night on TV Is Worth Weeks at the Paramount: Popular Music on Early Television (Duke University Press, 2012).  As [...]

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