Global Music History Books and YouTube Channels

April 14, 2020 10:26 PM

What books should I read and YouTube channels should I look at to study global music history? I learn best when things are really structured, so if I need to go order an old music history textbook from eBay I will at your recommendation. No podcasts or For Dummies style texts, however, please.
posted by Kitchen Witch to Education (2 answers total)

This seems like an open-ended question. Maybe start by looking at the Wikipedia article on "World Music" (presuming that Global Music = World Music = international music, ?)

It soon gets complex, there are many different genres in World Music which are distinct from each other (even though they tend to get put together on some Radio playlist formats).
posted by ovvl at 6:25 PM on April 15, 2020

I'm not quite sure whether you're looking for a history of world music, or a wide survey of all kinds of music, but if it's the latter, I recommend you take a look at Piero Scaruffi's music history website. He has (huge, extensive) sections on rock, jazz, pop, avant garde, and classical music. If it's more world music you're after, he talks about world music in The History of Rock Music 1976-1989, and there's A brief summary of African popular music and A brief summary of Latin-American popular music as well.

A recent Metafilter post featured an enthusiastic acclamation of the site (which also mentions the New York Times calling it The Greatest Website of All Time).

Note that much of this material has been turned into a book (or books?), so it should hopefully meet your needs for structured content.
posted by kristi at 5:20 PM on April 16, 2020