Customer Reviews

Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (American Crossroads)

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This is a superb example of what I would call the "new American Studies," written from a self-conscious, self-reflective Jewish position that branches out to engage and include other identities, cultures, and milieus in a fundamentally new way of looking at America, as an "audiotopia" as yet unfulfilled. It takes seriously the notion that black and latin musics are the lingua franca of a new universal community in America. What distinguishes this book is its superb and unpredictable readings of several key personalities in American Culture. The chapter on Jean Michel Basquiat and his relation to '80s music is worth the price of the book alone. Another is his profound examination of James Baldwin's relationship to the blues, Bessie Smith, and how both allowed Baldwin to explore his black and gay self in new and profound ways. Kun's discussion of rock en espanol shows how musical border crossings may be the most active challenges to the hyper nationalism in 21st century United States and Mexico. Rather than tendentious, the writing is some of the most exciting academic writing I have read in years. This is a rewarding explanation of why music remains an "audiotopia" for so many Americans.

*Audiotopia* takes on a difficult question: if we tell the history of America through its popular music, what does the country look like (or, should we say, sound like)? Kun's answer is that music is one of the most multicultural parts of American culture, able to evoke 'audiotopias' through the clash and fusion of different musical idioms. The audiotopia of Ozomatli, for instance, suggests that the various communities that produced salsa, ranchera, reggae, ska, and funk might not be so far apart in the end -- a hopeful vision that contrasts with the real-life segregation of communities in America.

While some parts of the book (e.g., the section on James Baldwin) do have a more academic ring, the sections on music are written with verve and a canny sense of the *sound* of the music. For my money, Kun is more alive to the beautiful strangeness of Roland Kirk's music than anyone else I've read on the saxophonist. And his affectionate reconsideration of the career of Mickey Katz -- a clarinetist who mixed Spike Jones absurdities, klezmer tunes, and Catskills-like Jewish humor -- is wonderful too.

On a final note, I would add that I teach the history of popular music on the college level and have recommended the book to undergraduates doing research papers on various kinds of contemporary music. In several cases, the students have told me that the book helped them think in new ways about the special cultural space that music can create -- that it helped them understand why they felt so attached to some kinds of music and the worlds they felt invited into.

Kun's "Audiotopia" is incredibly dense and mostly mundane. Its ideas are buried in academic blather and pseudo-technical vocabulary like "audioracial" and "univocality." Suitable for graduate students in dire need of quotations for middle-of-the-road American Studies papers.

The closing line of "Audiotopia" sums up the chaos of the book's thesis:

"There were no 'open mouths,' no 'strong melodious songs,' no symphonies and no orchestras, just a house full of strangers huddled beneath a sky still ringing with sound."

Indeed, this book is a house full of strange, obvious ideas.