Origins of the Popular Style

`intriguing new speculative survey ... Chapters devoted to ""the historical background"" cast a wide net and show the author to have intelligently synthesized the literature on developments on both sides of the Atlantic ... Origins of the Popular Style contains a wealth of ingenious speculations ... Anyone interested in exploring the musical syntax of popular genres would do well to take advantage of the insights presented so cogently here' American Music `In a worthy academic work Peter van der Merwe ... guides the student through musical history from antiquity to ragtime, stopping off in the Arab world of the Middle Ages, the Afro-Arab culture, the Blues mode in Britain, and a long spell with ... Gregory Walker ... if detailed musical analysis is your cup of tea, this book is for you.' Weekend Telegraph `This is a ground-breaking book on an enormous, intractable subject.' Musical Times `The ripples this remarkable, perhaps great, book has left on the musicological pool will be spread wide and deep. It remains to add that it has been produced handsomely, with generous, clearly printed musical examples.' Wilfrid Mellers, Times Literary Supplement `richly detailed text, with numerous music examples' The Wire 'It is a very readable study on the subject.' Come-All-Ye, Summer 1993, Vol. 14, No. 2 'This book will have repercussions not only on the study of popular music, but on those debates about cultural identity which are centred on blues and jazz. The range of scholarship here is extraordinary and, in its combination of available materials, unprecedented. Origins of the Popular Style is a major intervention in th study of American popular music, and should be known not only to musicians and musicologists, but to anyone interested in the sociology of American culture.' David Ayrs, University of Kent, Journal of American Studies, 27 (1993)