Rating: 
Summary:
Summary of praise already given this book...
Review:
«There's no dog in the prose of Martha Bayles. She writes clearly and superbly of the darkness that has overtaken popular music, and understands well the defeatist techniques that would-be radical pop entertainers inherit from misbegotten fine art.» - Stanley Crouch, author of The All-American Skin Game, or, Decoy of Race
«By drawing out the theme of perverse modernism, dhe has revealed how intellectually derivative much of contemporary pop mythology is.» - Edward Rothstein, New York Times
«Hole in Our Soul is engaging, provocative, always suggestive, sometimes annoying, and often incisive in a language that is free of post-modern jargon and deconstructive cant... Whether you agree or disagree with all her thesis, one is struck with the grace and humanity animating it all.» - Gerald Early, author of Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture
«Essential reading... Instead of preading helplessness before the supposedly mighty monolith of the entertainment industry, [Bayles] traces the story to it's real roots in the clashing ideas, emotions, and musical sounds of the twentieth century.» - Dr. Billy Taylor
«An illuminating look at where American culture is today, and how it got there. Brilliant.» - Sonny Rollins
Rating:
Summary:
Summary of praise already given this book...
Review:
«There's no dog in the prose of Martha Bayles. She writes clearly and superbly of the darkness that has overtaken popular music, and understands well the defeatist techniques that would-be radical pop entertainers inherit from misbegotten fine art.» - Stanley Crouch, author of The All-American Skin Game, or, Decoy of Race
«By drawing out the theme of perverse modernism, dhe has revealed how intellectually derivative much of contemporary pop mythology is.» - Edward Rothstein, New York Times
«Hole in Our Soul is engaging, provocative, always suggestive, sometimes annoying, and often incisive in a language that is free of post-modern jargon and deconstructive cant... Whether you agree or disagree with all her thesis, one is struck with the grace and humanity animating it all.» - Gerald Early, author of Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture
«Essential reading... Instead of preading helplessness before the supposedly mighty monolith of the entertainment industry, [Bayles] traces the story to it's real roots in the clashing ideas, emotions, and musical sounds of the twentieth century.» - Dr. Billy Taylor
«An illuminating look at where American culture is today, and how it got there. Brilliant.» - Sonny Rollins
Rating: 
Summary: Randy Gelling misses the point of the book entirely.
Review: Did Randy Gelling read the same book I did? He's taking Martha Bayles to task for rejecting in a "reactionary" manner "anything that may express true dissatifaction with the status quo." Bayles seems to consider the blues one of the two highest forms of American music (the other being jazz), and so much of the blues is trenchant social criticism ' as she makes clear many times in her book.She certainly is no apologist for Springsteen; she states more than once in her short (less than a full page) passage on him that she considers his musical abilities "limited." What must have annoyed Gelling was Bayles' acknowledgment that many, many people enjoy Springsteen's music. I agree with the point she somewhat obliquely makes in that acknowledgment: if he's been pleasing both a loyal fan base and new, young ears for three decades, that's good enough, as far as such things go. Why the heck do we need to read a "lowdown" on the political implications of his discography? I haven't listened to enough BoyzIIMen to see if Bayles might be right in that they're a cut above New Kids on the Block or other vapid boy bands. Gelling's exclamation point after the band's name seems to say, "What a ridiculous idea! They're a popular, mass-culture group, so OBVIOUSLY they must suck." Which is just the attitude that Bayles tried to combat by writing "Hole in our Soul": that if your music pleases the ear and you treat your audience with respect, you're a "sell-out;" and that the uglier and more inaccessible your sound is to the average person, the more "sophisticated" it is, and behaving obnoxiously on- and offstage only adds to your "mystique." In my opinion, it's a GOOD thing Bayles is "no Adorno." Popular music has most definitely suffered from all the tone-deaf and talentless people who took it up in the recently departed century because they had a "point" to make, usually a left-wing one but often, and especially in the case of Brit art-school types who fancied themselves "bad" boys and girls, an aggressively anti-social one. Not to mention that crowd's compulsion to "deconstruct" everything and anything, especially things that are "too" popular and "insufficiently" radical ' an attitude that's poisoned the atmosphere of U.S. college campuses for at least the last decade. Sure, Bayles quotes conservative social critics like Stanley Crouch and Allan Bloom, and sure, she decries the hate, violence, and mechanical sex that characterize lyrics in much of punk and rap. But what she decries the most is violence done to music itself. The central point of "Hole in Our Soul" is that the most important thing about music is how it *sounds*: whether it moves people to laugh, cry, dance, or sing along... and it's a point Gelling seems to have missed entirely. I'm only giving "Hole in Our Soul" four stars, however, because there is a bit of tunnel vision in it. Bayles seems to think that a "funky" sound -- polyrhythms and other musical elements integral to the blues -- is the only source of magic and wonder in music, especially American music. Sure, a bluesy sound is a terrific thing and tremendously important to the nation's music, but there are certainly musical traditions in this country that stem more from Europe than Africa, and they're as vital and lively as anything that came out of the Mississippi Delta or Chicago's South Side. Traditional English and Celtic music has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years on the coattails of the folk resurgence, and it's as much a part of this country as it is of the United Kingdom, given how many of our forefathers and -mothers came from the British Isles. While so much of "Celtic" music is indeed overly precious -- "airy-fairy," as the more hard-bitten pub players might put it -- a virtuoso blazing away on the fiddle has no trouble bringing an audience to its feet. Then there's Mexican and Mexican-influenced music. While Tex-Mex is part country, and country owes a huge debt to the blues, I don't hear that big of an African-American influence in it. And the further south you go into Mexico, of course, the truer that is. Then there Jewish influences that aren't particular admixed with black ones. And polkas brought over by Central and Eastern Europeans. And so on, and so forth. Perhaps Bayles merely categorizes these genres under "world music," but it's a world within our borders, not without.
Rating:
Summary: Examining the Vacuum
Review: Hole in Our Soul brings demanding aesthetic criteria to pop music. Bayles is as critical of mindless nihilism as she is of sentimentality. With sharp historical insight, she tracks the decline of value in popular music and diagnoses its causes in the misappropriation of the African American cultural roots of rock, jazz, soul, and rhythm 'n' blues. Her style is very clear, and her argument quite engaging. I especially like her ability to locate pop music in the broader contexts of American history and the philosophy of art. She leaves us wondering where our culture may be headed musically and philosophically, and what it might take to restore quality and value to our art.
Rating: 
Summary: How'd they miss GWAR?!?
Review: I have to admit I haven't read the entire book, but if you love to watch MTV (or TV in general) and clutch your chest like Fred Sanford saying "It's the BIG ONE Elizabeth!" then this is the book for you! This book is still pretty interesting; I didn't know about Jamaican DJs as a response to government controlled radio, for example. A glaring omisson is heavy-metal band GWAR (God, What Awful Racket!) They even have a home video titled "Phallus in Wonderland." ALLMUSIC has a good article on them.
Rating:
Summary: I love this book.
Review: I love this book. Reading it was a series of epiphanies for me. As a "classical" composer who has always had a love of jazz and popular music, I have long puzzled over the extreme gulf between classical music and jazz, folk, and popular music that is peculiar to the 20th century. I have also been eternally frustrated by the overwhelming weight that is given to weirdness for weirdness' sake by music and other art critics, as well as by their general dismissal of art that has overt beauty as one of its priorities. Bayles's explanation of modernism and its various branches is priceless, and it, among many other aspects of the book, helped me to solve some of these puzzles, as well as to take a more activist attitude about my own artistic aesthetics.
Rating:
Summary: I love this book.
Review: I love this book. Reading it was a series of epiphanies for me. As a "classical" composer who has always had a love of jazz and popular music, I have long puzzled over the extreme gulf between classical music and jazz, folk, and popular music that is peculiar to the 20th century. I have also been eternally frustrated by the overwhelming weight that is given to weirdness for weirdness' sake by music and other art critics, as well as by their general dismissal of art that has overt beauty as one of its priorities. Bayles's explanation of modernism and its various branches is priceless, and it, among many other aspects of the book, helped me to solve some of these puzzles, as well as to take a more activist attitude about my own artistic aesthetics.
Rating:
Summary: Fresh Air
Review: In our Age of SuperHype, it's difficult to find insightful criticism about our popular culture. "Hole in Our Soul" is therefore a most welcome book. Whether one agrees or not with all of Martha Bayles's conclusions is beside the point. The point *is* that her intelligence and tough-mindedness are truly refreshing, and her book is essential reading for anyone interested in American popular music.
Rating:
Summary: Fresh Air
Review: In our Age of SuperHype, it's difficult to find insightful criticism about our popular culture. "Hole in Our Soul" is therefore a most welcome book. Whether one agrees or not with all of Martha Bayles's conclusions is beside the point. The point *is* that her intelligence and tough-mindedness are truly refreshing, and her book is essential reading for anyone interested in American popular music.
Rating:
Summary: Intelligence Tempers Emotion
Review: It's great to see such critical intelligence brought to a subject that's all too often treated only with emotion. Bayles knows her subject and enlightens her readers, unlike many other writers on the subject who pepper their monographs with paens to jazz greats and their music or who stoop condescendingly to their readers with pretentiousness. The author obvioulsy loves the music but maintains a keen perspective throughout.
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