Musicians, as Karl Marx might have said, make their own music, but they do not make it under conditions of their own choosing. Bob W. White and Charles Hersch both examine the ways in which social and political structures influence musical forms and, to a lesser extent, the ways in which those forms impact the social and political. Despite addressing two ostensibly different genres—Congolese dance music and American jazz—there are considerable areas of overlap and intersection in the methods employed and insights offered by the two studies. Both eschew simple content analysis and situate their claims within a detailed understanding of the music's historical context, and both identify the ways in which the agonistic relationship between social constraint and individual creativity spurs artistic production. Such similarities suggest, perhaps, the fundamental validity of their respective conclusions. Neither book is without its flaws, but the overwhelming impression is of texts that make a significant contribution to our understanding of the long-standing—but understudied—relationship between music and politics. As Plato observed in The Republic (424c), “Never are the ways of music moved without the greatest political laws being moved.”

Beginning with what he calls an “Opening Riff” (p. 1) on Jelly Roll Morton's performance of John Philip Sousa's “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” Hersch foreshadows the themes of his next five chapters: place, reaction, musicians, music, and dissemination. He argues that Morton, an Afro-French Creole from New Orleans, transforms the song using African-based musical devices, setting up “a multilayered musical conversation with his country” that helped to change the nation (p. 2). Situating himself in opposition to previous histories of jazz that depicted it as either an expression of racial essence—an argument made by both black and white critics—or the product of an ethnic melting pot, Hersch aligns himself with the more recent creolist perspective that stresses the dynamism of the music and the ongoing interactions between races. He nevertheless offers a corrective to what he perceives to be creolism's excessive focus on openness. “There is,” he notes, “something creative and open about creolization, but the openness is bounded by power relationships” (p. 9).

Building on a detailed history of the development of jazz in New Orleans, Hersch argues that jazz—which, he suggests, ultimately helped to break down racial barriers in the United States—emerged from social and political regulation aimed at enforcing racial purity. It is, he suggests, no coincidence that jazz emerged during the nadir of postbellum racial oppression. Racial separation, he argues, precipitated both the development of several distinctly different styles of music and a creatively productive agonistic relationship among them. The latter was facilitated by a complex economy of social transgression in which black often passed as white or Creole; Creole as white and black; white as Creole; and, in one case, child as midget. As the last example suggests, the transgressions were not all racial. Hersch also pays close attention to the boundaries between sacred and secular, across classes and between genders. In addition, he also identifies the important role that Jewish and Sicilian performers played in the development of the genre.

For a book offering compelling accounts of the problems of categorization, boundary crossing, and performance, Subversive Sounds offers very little by way of extended theoretical discussion. Nevertheless, there are occasions on which a more developed discussion of theory might have proved useful. For example, Hersch repeatedly invokes Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of “carnival” (pp. 5, 29, 47, 163, 167, 169) to describe the circumstances under which jazz developed and the ways in which it affected racial categories. His argument implies a subversive and transfiguring understanding of carnival, but for some, carnival is escapism that simply reinforces existing power structures. Noting this alternative reading might complicate the author's account of the development of jazz in productive ways, just as, in the final chapter, his discussion of Louis Armstrong's use of racial stereotypes complicates his discussion of the political effects of minstrelsy. Overall, however, his argument is convincing, his writing engaging, and his musical analyses compelling and seductive: Easy access to iTunes meant that this reviewer was considerably poorer after reading the book than before it.

Bob White saves his readers from such expense with an innovative strategy aimed at overcoming one of the inherent limitations of such writing: the absence of music. At judiciously chosen moments in the text, White references a Website where the reader can listen to audio or watch videos of many of the musical performances he discusses. It is a wonderful innovation, and for those unfamiliar with the genre, a very useful device. Building on a detailed ethnography of the music scene in Zaire during the latter stages of Sese Seko Mobutu's 32-year rule, White argues that social and political conditions played a significant role in shaping musical forms. First, he suggests, deliberately engineered social and economic inequalities forced musicians to alter the structure of their songs. Facing declining record sales resulting from generalized poverty, musicians were forced to rely upon live performance to make their living. Consequently, he argues, songs developed a unique two-part structure—a slow lyrical section, followed by a fast-paced dance sequence—that engaged their audiences and assured the performers of a regular clientele. A second consequence of this social deprivation was the growth of libanga, a practice in which wealthy patrons and public figures offered money to musicians in exchange for being cited or sung by name. Libanga, argues White, became a tool of Mobutu's social control: generating support for his policies through the words and praise of musicians who were reliant upon the state for financial support. In effect, he suggests, Mobutu privatized propaganda. Central to this propaganda was authenticité, a policy claiming that economic development could be achieved only by drawing on Zaire's vast reserve of cultural traditions including, of course, music. Popular dancing and patriotic songs—part of what became known as animation politique et culturelle—became a key and obligatory cultural practice: reinforcing authoritarian rule by making the dispossessed dance in a manner not dissimilar, perhaps, to plantation slaves in the American South.

Although White's ethnography might offer a little too much thick description for those schooled in the disciplinary demands of political science, he is a charming narrator: His account of his efforts to master Congolese rhythms on insecticide-can maracas is simultaneously entertaining and instructive about the intricacies of the music. Disciplinary differences become more significant, however, when, in the final two chapters of the book, he tries to draw a causal connection between Mobutu's style of leadership and a more general problem of leadership in Zaire. Drawing on the literature of “micropolitics” (p. 196), White argues that Mobutu exhibited a domineering, irresponsible, and narcissistic form of leadership that affected all levels of society. This might be true, but the author's use of band organization to prove his point seems dangerously close to reasoning by analogy. He argues, for example, that the tendency of bands to splinter into different groups over status conflicts reflects Mobutu's own irresponsible leadership. Similarly, he connects this leadership to “the tendency of musicians to appropriate official symbols of political power (as opposed to projecting an image of power as a ‘gangster’ or a ‘rebel’),” which, he suggests, “may be unique to the Congo” (p. 233). Michael Jackson's self-proclaimed status as “King of Pop,” and Aretha Franklin's jealously guarded status as “The Queen of Soul” both suggest, however, that imperiousness comes with musical success, regardless of the political system. Similarly, White's suggestion that conflicts over leadership in Congolese bands reflected the bad example of leadership under authoritarianism seems to ignore the similar splinterings of bands under democratic systems. Few would, perhaps, blame Harold Wilson for the breakup of the Beatles.

If from a political science perspective, however, some of White's causal claims about the impact of economics and politics on musical formations require more rigorous argumentation, some of the weaknesses implicit in his arguments about the reverse relationship might be forgiven. Seeking to identify the ways in which cultural formations affect politics is, as Marx noted, considerably more complex than the other way around. It is, perhaps, for this reason that both books are much stronger when they focus on the former rather than the latter relationship: Hersch simply suggests, rather than demonstrates, that jazz undermined racial categories in the United States (p. 206), and his claim that jazz rhythms undermined conceptions of time under capitalism remains plausible but necessarily impressionistic (p. 45).

“Writing about music,” it was once said in a comment often attributed to Elvis Costello, “is like dancing about architecture.” The statement is meant to suggest the futility of the exercise. Both of these books belie the claim, not only offering penetrating insight and analysis but also providing a firm foundation for future study.