Why read Harnessing Harmony?

Book cover of Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788–1865

Book description

Following the creation of the United States, profound disagreements remained over how to secure the survival of the republic and unite its diverse population. In this pathbreaking account, Billy Coleman uses the history of American music to illuminate the relationship between elite power and the people from the early national…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Harnessing Harmony as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Mark R. Cheathem

Author

The connection between music and contemporary politics is obvious, but it is easy to forget that before Woody Guthrie, the protest songs of the 1960s, Green Day, and Keke Palmer, music was an integral part of national politics. Coleman unsurprisingly contends that political music in the early U.S. was collective and participatory, but he goes on to argue that elites used it to enforce conformity, an interesting twist on how we traditionally think of political music as challenging the status quo.

From Mark's list on early U.S. presidential campaigning.