Music, and every movement within it, is driven by the politics, fashions and social mores of the time within which it grows. He explains, through this, how the genesis of canonically perfect songs or groups – as we now perceive them to be – is not fated but highly dependent on contingency. He intersperses each of his chapters with personal anecdotes, often told at his own expense – particularly his 2003 headline for the New York Times: “The Solo Beyoncé: She’s no Ashanti ”. Sanneh is adept at imparting knowledge without being patronising, and sharing his love for music without slipping into embarrassing earnestness. Sanneh also uses this chapter to demonstrate how politicised music can become, which feels very pertinent given recent headlines about Ye’s (formerly Kanye West’s) antisemitism. Hip-hop borrows from other genres and mixes them together until the boundaries are no longer clear or even exist, particularly when it comes to sampling, when wildly different songs are intercut, collaged together, and rapped over. This is clearest in the chapter devoted to hip-hop, the longest in the book and in some ways the most complex. In doing so, Sanneh provides the reader with a wealth of information, guiding them through these seven separate movements, whilst also showing how they overlap, sometimes in bizarre ways, resulting in odd musical collaborations. Still, Sanneh is clear about his intentions: as an omnivorous musicophile, he seems to be capable of writing about any genre he wants, but these seven provide a rough history of the development of some of the most mainstream music of the past 80 years. Sanneh focuses solely on America, with some trips across to England, and the timeline within which he operates is not long, roughly 1960 to the present day.

There are some limitations to the book’s structure. Each chapter loops back to the other genres to show their points of divergence, before travelling forward to explore the roads of sub-genres and musical fads.

Kelefa sanneh book