Kick It

Abstract

Abstract The drum kit—the combination of kick drum, snare drum, and cymbals—has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. This book is a provocative social history of the instrument that looks closely at key innovators in the development of the kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Addressing a seeming contradiction – the centrality of the drum kit on the one hand, and the general disparagement of drummers on the other—this book makes the case for the drum kit’s role as one of the most important and transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Going beyond its purely musical history, it uses the instrument to replay the wider history of the United States and to chart the rise of the drum kit’s global economic and cultural influence. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, it shows how the drum kit, drummers, and drumming helped change modern music—and society as a whole—from the bottom up.

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