Silenced by Sound: The Music Meritocracy Myth

Popular culture has woven itself into the social fabric of our lives, penetrating people’s homes and haunting their psyches through images and earworms. Justice, at most levels, is something the average citizen may have little influence upon, leaving us feeling helpless and complacent. But pop music is a neglected arena where concrete change can occur—by exercising active and thoughtful choices to reject the low-hanging, omnipresent corporate fruit, we begin to rebalance the world, one engaged listener at a time. In Silenced by Sound, Ian Brennan delves into his personal story to address the inequity of distribution in the arts and demonstrates that there are millions of talented people around the world more gifted than the superstars for whom billions of dollars are spent to promote the delusion that they have been blessed with unique genius. Silenced by Sound is defined by muscular, terse, and poetic verse, and a nonlinear format rife with how-to tips and anecdotes. The narrative is driven by the author’s ongoing field-recording chronicles, his memoir-like reveries, and the striking photographs that accompany these projects. After reading it, you’ll never hear quite the same again.