The books listed in this column address music as it relates to political expression or focus on power relationships between individual musicians or musical communities and a governing authority. Readers are welcome to submit additional titles to musicandpolitics@umich.edu for possible inclusion in the next issue.
Angelina Gibson is a PhD student in historical musicology at the University of Michigan and has served as the Assistant Editor of Music & Politics since 2023. Additionally, she is an Editorial Assistant for Music of the United States of America and Research Assistant for Rhiannon Giddens’ U-M artistic residency. Her research concerns the history and present state of Asian Americans in classical and contemporary ballet, with a particular focus upon choreomusicological analysis of classical ballets and works by the Asian American Ballet Project.
References
Ayelotan, Clare P. Yoruba Pentecostalism and Child Witchcraft Accusations. University of Rochester Press, 2025.
Barnes, Ash. Sexual and Physical Violence in Australian Punk and Hardcore Music Scenes. Routledge, 2025.
Berish, Andrew S. Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Berner, Elias. Music in Films About the Shoah: Commemoration, Comfort, Provocation. Palgrave MacMillan, 2024.
Braxton, Alim, and Mark Katz. Rap and Redemption on Death Row: Seeking Justice and Finding Purpose Behind Bars. University of North Carolina Press, 2024.
Brodbeck, David. Brahms: Patriotic and Political. University of Rochester Press, 2025.
Caplan, Lucy. Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera. Harvard University Press.
Coddington, Amy. How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race. University of California Press, 2024.
Cormier, Margaret. Rape at the Opera: Staging Sexual Violence. University of Michigan Press, 2024.
Damodaran, Sumangala, and Ari Sitas. Maps of Sorrow: Migration and Music in the Construction of Pre-colonial AfroAsia. Columbia University Press, 2024.
Das, Joanna Dee. Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
DiPiero, Dan. Big Feelings: Queer and Feminist Indie Rock After Riot Grrl. University of Michigan Press, 2025.
Dowsett, Sudiipta, Lucas Marie, Dianne Rodger, and Grant Leigh Saunders, eds. Representing Hip Hop Histories, Politics and Practices in Australia. Routledge, 2024.
Dunkel, Mario, and Melanie Schiller, eds. Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe. Routledge, 2024.
Evans, Jabari M. Hip-Hop Civics: Connected Learning in the Rap Classroom. University of Michigan Press, 2025.
Fava, Maria Cristina. Art Music Activism: Aesthetics and Politics in 1930s New York City. University of Illinois Press, 2024.
Fitzgerald, Robert. Hardcore Punk in the Age of Reagan. University of North Carolina Press, 2025.
Franklin, M.I. Change the Record – Punk Women Music Politics. Columbia University Press, 2024.
Gentic, Tania. Geographies of the Ear: The Cultural Politics of Sound in Contemporary Barcelona. Duke University Press, 2025.
Gregor, Neil. The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Guillard, Séverin, Joseph Palis, and Ola Johansson. New Geographies of Music 2: Music in Urban Tourism, Heritage Politics, and Place-Making. Palgrave MacMillan, 2024.
Henry, Clarence Bernard. Global Popular Music: A Research and Information Guide, Volume 2: Transnational Discourses of Global Popular Music Studies. Routledge, 2024.
Hodgson, Thomas. Journeys of Love: Kashmiris, Music, and the Poetics of Migration. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Hofman, Ana. Socialism Now: Singing Activism After Yugoslavia. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Hoffmann, Annette. Knowing by Ear: Listening to Voice Recordings with African Prisoners of War in German Camps (1915–1918).
Jones, Matthew. How to Make Music in an Epidemic: Popular Music Making During the AIDS Crisis, 1981–1996. Routledge, 2025.
Kaufman, Will. American Song and Struggle from Columbus to World War II: A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Kollectiv, Pil and Galia Kollectiv. Sound Strategies: Music as Ideological Apparatus. MIT Press, 2025.
Kurtz, Esther Viola. A Beautiful Fight: Racial Politics of Capoeira in Backland Bahia. University of Michigan Press, 2025.
Laes, Tuulikki, Gert Biesta, and Heidi Westerlund, eds. The Transformative Politics of Music Education. Routledge, 2025.
Lucas, Olivia R., and Laura Moore Pruett. Teaching Difficult Topics: Reflections from the Undergraduate Music Classroom. University of Michigan Press, 2024.
Mandelbrote, Scott, ed. Music, Politics and Religion in Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge The Peterhouse Partbooks in Context. Boydell Press, 2025.
Madrid, Alejandro L. The Archive and the Aural City: Sound, Knowledge, and the Politics of Listening. Duke University Press, 2025.
Mann, Robert. You Are My Sunshine: Jimmie Davis and the Biography of a Song. LSU Press, 2025.
Martin, Allie. Intersectional Listening: Gentrification and Black Sonic Life in Washington, DC. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Morgan, Bradley. Frank Zappa’s America. LSU Press, 2025.
Morgan, Harry. Music, Politics and Society in Ancient Rome. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Morrison, Matthew D. Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States. University of California Press, 2024.
Olkhovsky, Andrey. Music Under the Soviets: The Agony of an Art. Routledge, 2024.
Palomares-Salas, Claudio. Mexican Canto Nuevo: Music, Politics, and Resistance. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Peck, RaShelle R. Nairobi Hip Hop Flow: Diasporic Blackness and Embodied Performance in the Underground. University of California Press, 2025.
Puri, Michael J., Jason Geary, and Seth Monahan, eds. Music Meaning and Interpretation: Perspectives, Reflections, Critique. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Rabaka, Reiland. The Funk Movement: Music, Culture, and Politics. Routledge, 2024.
Ramstedt, Kim, Susanna Välimäki, Kaj Ahlsved, and Sini Mononen. Music, Research, and Activism: Prospects and Projects in Northern Europe. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Rekret, Paul. Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis. MIT Press, 2024.
Richerme, Lauren K. Popular Music Will Not Save Us: Capitalism and Music Education. Indiana University Press, 2025.
Rijo Lopes da Cunha, Maria M., Jonathan Shannon, Søren Møller Sørensen, and Virginia Danielson. Music and Cultural Diplomacy in the Middle East: Geopolitical Re-Configurations for the 21st Century. Palgrave MacMillan, 2024.
Rosen, Lauren Coyle, and Hannibal Lokumbe. Hannibal Lokumbe: Spiritual Soundscapes of Music, Life, and Liberation. Columbia University Press, 2024.
Salois, Kendra. Values That Pay Complicity, Sincerity, and Hip Hop in Contemporary Moroccan Life. University of California Press, 2025.
Sarath, Edward. Music Studies and Its Moment of Truth: Leading Change Through America’s Black Roots. Routledge, 2025.
Shelleg, Assaf. The State of Afterness: Contemporary Music In and About Israel. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Stacks, Stephen. The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968. University of Illinois Press, 2025.
Stauff, Derek L. Lutheran Music and the Thirty Years War: Confession, Politics, Devotion. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Steen, Andreas, Andrew F. Jones, and Frederick C. Lau, eds. China Sounds Across Borders: Migration, Mobility, and Modernity. Columbia University Press, 2025.
Stone, C.J. Fierce Dancing: Adventures in the Underground. MIT Press, 2025.
Suisman, David. Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers. University of Chicago Press, 2024.
Swift, Rob, and Rasul A. Mowatt. The City of Hip-Hop: New York City, the Bronx, and a Peace Meeting. Routledge, 2025.
Tausig, Benjamin. Bangkok After Dark: Maurice Rocco, Transnational Nightlife, and the Making of Cold War Intimacies. Duke University Press, 2025.
Thompson, Joseph M. Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism. University of North Carolina Press, 2024.
Titus, Joan. Dmitry Shostakovich and Music for Stalinist Cinema (1936–1953). Oxford University Press, 2025.
Ugolotti, Nicola De Martini. Music, Forced Migration and Emplacement: Sounds of Asylum Bristol. Palgrave MacMillan, 2024.
Ulloa, Juanita. The Mariachi Voice. Oxford University Press, 2024.
Vassallo, Mario, and Andre P. DeBattista. The Different Faces of Politics in Literature and Music. Routledge, 2025.
Weber, Cameron M., Ying Zhen, and J.J. Arias. Artists and Markets in Music: The Political Economy of Music During the Covid Era and Beyond. Routledge, 2024.
Wynne, Ben. A Hound Dog Tale: Big Mama, Elvis, and the Song That Changed Everything. LSU Press, 2024.