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Rocking in the Free World
Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America
Author: Nicholas Tochka
Narrator: Derek Dysart
Unabridged: 9 hr 36 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 08/22/2023
Categories: Nonfiction, Music, Rock, Political Science, World Politics
Synopsis
Progressive and libertarian, anti-Communist and revolutionary, Democratic and Republican, quintessentially American but simultaneously universal. By the late 1980s, rock music had acquired a dizzying array of political labels. These claims about its political significance shared one common thread: that the music could set you free.
Rocking in the Free World explains how Americans came to believe they had learned the truth about rock 'n' roll, a truth shaped by the Cold War anxieties of the fifties, the countercultural revolutions (and counter-revolutions) of the sixties and seventies, and the end-of-history triumphalism of the eighties. How did rock 'n' roll become enmeshed with so many different competing ideas about freedom? And what does that story reveal about the promise-and the limits-of rock music as a political force in postwar America?
Rocking in the Free World explains how Americans came to believe they had learned the truth about rock 'n' roll, a truth shaped by the Cold War anxieties of the fifties, the countercultural revolutions (and counter-revolutions) of the sixties and seventies, and the end-of-history triumphalism of the eighties. How did rock 'n' roll become enmeshed with so many different competing ideas about freedom? And what does that story reveal about the promise-and the limits-of rock music as a political force in postwar America?