Noise Uprising

Noise Uprising:The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution

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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.

Reviews

  • An instant classic. It utterly revises the history and geography of modern music.

    Vijay Prashad
  • “I suspect it will be the most important book released on music this year.”

    Jonathon Kyle SturgeonFlavorwire
  • An ambitious record of a revolution in sound in the late 1920s that erupted in port towns everywhere, from Cape Town to Shanghai—local guilds operating autonomously but in global unison like a cosmic fugue.

    Timothy Brennan, author of Secular Devotion: Afro-Latin Music and Imperial Jazz