Videos by American Songwriter
By Tony Fletcher
(W.W. NORTON)
[Rating: 4.5 stars]
This casually readable but well-researched and documented portrait of the successive music genres, styles and characters that rose up in New York City through the height of the mass music era reveals much about the ties between scenes not previously linked. It delivers the particulars to put to rest the long dubious notion that a sense of place may be crucial for recognized “rootsy” music derived from the countryside or small towns, but not for sounds of the Big City. The demonstrated common thread in the rise of bebop, doo wop, hip hop, and Brill Building pop, mambo, folk revival, disco and punk is the evolving population, politics and economics of New York. This includes successive genres, with individuals tied to previous history setting the spark in some home base neighborhood club, a critical mass of people on hand to build on it, the development of a recording label emerging to spread the attitude, the tunes, and the dress and dance styles. Fletcher provides colorful story details of how the process worked in each scene; he’s particularly good with the birth of punk and old-school hip hop, where you suspect his heart lies in particular.
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