Ranging from Los Angeles to Havana to the Bronx to the US-Mexico border and from klezmer to hip hop to Latin rock, this book injects popular music into contemporary debates over American identity. It covers a range of music and listeners to evoke the ways that popular sounds have expanded our idea of American culture and American identity.
"With Audiotopia, Kun emerges as a pre-eminent analyst, interpreter, and theorist of inter-ethnic dialogue in US music, literature, and visual art. This book is a guide to how scholarship will look in the future-the first fully realized product of a new generation of scholars thrown forth by tumultuous social ferment and eager to talk about the world that they see emerging around them."-George Lipsitz, author of Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture
"The range and depth of Audiotopia is thrilling. It's not only that Josh Kun knows so much-it's that he knows what to make of what he knows."-Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century
"The way Josh Kun writes about what he hears, the way he unravels word, sound, and power is breathtaking, provocative, and original. A bold, expansive, and lyrical book, Audiotopia is a record of crossings, textures, tangents, and ideas you will want to play again and again."-Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
