The drum kit has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. Kick It, a provocative social history of the instrument, looks closely at key innovators in the development of the drum kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, author Matt Brennan makes the case for the drum kit's role as one of the most transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Kick It shows how the drum kit and drummers helped change modern music--and society as a whole--from the bottom up.

Matt Brennan is Reader in Popular Music at the University of Glasgow. He has served as Chair of the UK and Ireland branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) and published several books in the field of popular music studies. His previous monograph, When Genres Collide, was named as one of Pitchfork's "Favourite Music Books of 2017."

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Hanging around with musicians

Chapter 1: Clever drummers, primitivism, entrepreneurialism, and the invention of the trap drummer's outfit
? The transatlantic slave trade
? The snare drum, bass drum, and cymbals come together
? The birth of highbrow and lowbrow music
? Being a drummer in nineteenth century America
? Tinkerers, inventors, and entrepreneurs
? The trap drummer's outfit

Chapter 2: Noisy drummers, ragtime, jazz, and the avant-garde
? Ragged time
? "Instruments of a lower order"
? Trap drummers, sound effects, and moving pictures
? Noisy women, immigrant cultures, and Tin Pan Alley
? The birth of jazz
? Quiet in the studio!
? Drums and noise conquer the classical world

Chapter 3: Studious drummers, selling drum outfits, standardization, and stardom
? Fakers versus readers
? Selling the drum kit
? The drum outfit travels the world
? Cymbal making and the invention of the hi-hat
? Swing bands and star drummers
? Slingerland and the standardization of the drum outfit

Chapter 4: Creative drummers, artistry, virtuosity, and playing time
? Prodigies and showmen
? Bebop and the melody of the drum kit
? Drummers and drum makers in dialogue
? The rise of the backbeat
? The drum kit in Britain and the birth of beat groups
? The recruitment of Ringo
? Theorizing creativity on the drum kit

Chapter 5: Working drummers, musical labour, role playing, and authorship
? The job of a session drummer
? The job of a rock star drummer
? The globalization of drum kit production
? Credit where credit is due
? Song authorship and getting paid

Chapter 6: Indispensable drummers, drum machines, and record production
? The drum kit on record
? The multi-track recording studio
? Diasporic drumming practices and dance records
? Rise of the machines
? From the margins to the centre of the mix
? Drummers as producers
? Augmenting the drum kit and drumming without drummers

Conclusion: The tyranny of the snare drum

Endnotes

References

Index