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A review by pascalthehoff
The History of Jazz (2nd ed.) by Ted Gioia
5.0
Phew, what a read! This one is best digested slowly while listening along with the music the author talks about. In fact, it took me a few months of on-and-off reading to get through this, but – wow – has this been worth it.
Listening along with the music enhances the experience to an almost magical degree. (Spotify has a few user-made playlists with most of the tracks and albums from the book, in order of appearance.) Especially the early chapters about music from the early 20th century (with even a few tracks from the late 1800s sprinkled in), are mind-blowing. You lean back in your chair and listen to those scratchy records with really shoddy, monaural audio that somehow found their way onto your streaming service in 2021, and the book tells you about the songs' history and cultural relevance... It's hard to grasp the scope of the musical journey you are about to dive further into.
The author manages to tackle each major era, artistic movement or standout artist to exactly the right degree between detailed biographies and the broad picture of the art form. You don't have to know anything about music theory to enjoy this. While there are some sentences about scales and harmonies here and there, this is definitely for the culturally-interested reader, more than the musically interested one.
Listening along with the music enhances the experience to an almost magical degree. (Spotify has a few user-made playlists with most of the tracks and albums from the book, in order of appearance.) Especially the early chapters about music from the early 20th century (with even a few tracks from the late 1800s sprinkled in), are mind-blowing. You lean back in your chair and listen to those scratchy records with really shoddy, monaural audio that somehow found their way onto your streaming service in 2021, and the book tells you about the songs' history and cultural relevance... It's hard to grasp the scope of the musical journey you are about to dive further into.
The author manages to tackle each major era, artistic movement or standout artist to exactly the right degree between detailed biographies and the broad picture of the art form. You don't have to know anything about music theory to enjoy this. While there are some sentences about scales and harmonies here and there, this is definitely for the culturally-interested reader, more than the musically interested one.