In the dawn of civilization towards the modern-day music scene, this breathtaking global history reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions.

Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who all created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who all borrowed enhancements, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive Background, historian Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs.

Gioia tells a four-thousand-year history of music while a global source of power, switch, and upheaval. He displays how social outcasts have frequently become trailblazers of musical manifestation: slaves and their descendants, for instance, have frequently reinvented music, from historic times all the way towards the jazz, reggae, and hip-hop sounds of the current day.

Music: A Subversive Background is essential reading for anybody interested in this is of music, from Sappho towards the Sex Pistols to Spotify.