1959: The Year Everything Changed Review

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1959: The Year Everything Changed Review1959 was a pivotal year. And Fred Kaplan surely makes a case on the cultural revolution that really precipitated the changes of the 60s and beyond. All students of 20th Century American Studies should read this volume. That said, Kaplan, who is a jazz blogger, does a terrific job of showing its influence on rock and roll, racial relations and morphing from the accepted forms of art to the less accepted and outside the box concepts of "art". What almost ruins this book is his seeming endless desire to demonstrate his knowledge of musical theory and rhythms that have nothing to do with his premise - both state and demonstrated.
It becomes absurd at points. With John Coltrane "piling chords on top of chords within chords, pushing the harmonic complexity beyond their limit (sic)". The next paragraph leaves an astute reader apoplectic. "As the Black Power movement took off in the sixties, several black musicians took the examples of Coleman, Coltrane . . . as a license to play free as a POLITICAL statement - breaking down chords and rhythms as as symbol for breaking down white authority and power. . . ". While both happened, antecedent an precedent and a casual relationship are highly questionable. It is academic reaching by a terrific writer but one who I would question the credentials, no less research, to make such bold claims. Perhaps they are true. But it surely isn't demonstrated in this writing.
If you are not interested in Jazz or Beat writers, this is not your book, unless you feel the need to better understand the cultural changes of the beginning of the later part of the 20th Century. Perhaps a different name for this book would help. And more on other events, cultural included, than his near obsession with the Beats and the Jazz musicians. Overall, fairly disjointed and off-premise writing.1959: The Year Everything Changed Overview

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