Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA

Rockin' Out offers a comprehensive social history of popular music in the United States that takes the reader from the invention of the phonograph to the promise of the Internet, from the heyday of Tin Pan Alley to the present day sounds of singer-songwriters, pop country crossovers, rock, and contemporary hip hop. It offers an analysis and critique of the music itself as well as how it is produced and marketed, including such recent phenomena as the rise of television idols, the introduction of reggaeton, and the return of protest music. 

Accessibly written, this text is organized chronologically and thematically around particular genres/styles of music and addresses such dimensions as race, class, gender, ethnicity, technology, copyright and the structure of the music industry as they affect the development of the music.

From the production of benefit concerts to the study of music as a social indicator, Reebee Garofalo has promoted the use of music as a community resource and an educational tool. Since 1978, Garofalo has taught at UMass Boston, where he is affiliated with the College of Public and Community Service and the American Studies Program. As the former Associate Dean of CPCS, Garofalo has been in the forefront of introducing information technology to the college and is the founder of the college’s degree program in Community Media and Technology.

Garofalo’s most recent book is Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the USA, 4th Edition (Prentice-Hall, 2008). He is also co-editor of Policing Pop (Temple University Press, 2003), editor of Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements (South End Press, 1992), and co-author of Rock `n’ Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry (Nelson-Hall, 1977). In addition, he has written numerous articles on copyright and digital downloading, racism, censorship, the political uses of music, and the globalization of the music industry for popular as well as scholarly publications and has lectured internationally on a broad range of subjects relating to the operations of the music industry.

Garofalo has also made his Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music available on the World Wide Web and has created a number of multi-media tools for teaching popular music. His presentations and consultancies have included Farm Aid, the Experience Music Project, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, as well as numerous academic and community-based conferences and organizations. Garofalo has been active in promoting popular music studies internationally, as a member of the Executive Committee and past Chairperson of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US, and an editor for several popular music journals, including the Journal of Popular Music Studies. He also sits on the National Advisory Board of the Archives of African American Music and Culture and serves as a member of the Living Histories Committee of the Grammy Foundation.

At the local level, Garofalo was a co-founder and past President of Massachusetts Rock Against Racism. He has served on the boards of Boston’s public access cable facility (BNN-TV), Somerville Community Access Television (SCAT), and ZUMIX, Inc, a community-based project in East Boston dedicated to youth empowerment through music. He is also a member of the organizing committee for the HONK! Festival, an annual gathering of activist street bands in Somerville. For relaxation, he enjoys drumming and singing with the Blue Suede Boppers, a fifties rock `n’ roll band, and marching with the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, a New Orleans-style street band.