Recording Resistance - by Josh MacPhee (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Expanded edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, documenting the global soundtrack of social movements, solidarity, and revolutionary culture.

Recording Resistance: An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels is a groundbreaking exploration of the parallel rise of social movements and the vinyl record as the dominant form of music distribution in the second half of the twentieth century. Focusing on vinyl records and the labels that released them, this expanded edition is the definitive illustrated history of the infrastructure of recorded sound that carried global social movements and emblematized the vinyl record as an enduring form of music distribution on an international scale.

Just as the Civil Rights Movement leaps onto mainstream headlines in the early 1960s, the 33rpm "Long Player" and 45rpm single invade people's stereos. All the major Civil Rights organizations release vinyl records of speeches, movement songs, and field recordings--setting the pace for the intertwining of social movements and easily distributed sound recordings. This relationship continues through the end of the twentieth century, which marked both the end of apartheid in South Africa and the dominance of the vinyl format.

Recording Resistance is a compelling panorama of political sound and action, including over 1500 record labels from over two dozen countries and territories as well as a myriad of musical styles and forms. Arranged alphabetically from A-Disc--the record label of the Swedish labor movement--to Zulu Records, founded by free jazz pioneer Phil Choran, each entry includes the label's history, logo, and key contributions to political music and cultural production. Together, they form an unprecedented archive of the artists, organizers, and institutions that transformed music into a vehicle for education, organizing, and collective liberation.

Richly illustrated and international in scope, Recording Resistance is an indispensable reference for music lovers, collectors, scholars, librarians, DJs, archivists, and anyone interested in the history of social movements and the sounds that helped shape them.

Review Quotes

"MacPhee's resource presents a personal tribute to a global musical movement for the dedicated collector."--Booklist

"It is works like this one that provide a refreshingly different lens through which to view cultural production in its vinyl form."--Mediated Signals

"To open Josh MacPhee's compendium of political record labels is to be blasted by a hurricane of compassionate creativity [that provides] potent fuel for today's struggles. The book's message is clear: go and do likewise!"--Mark Andersen, author of Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capitol

"This book is a delight. It's a book full of hope, of daring, of community, and kinship. It's a book full of enthusiasm and passion. And most of all, it's a book full of inspiration -- for anyone flicking through the logos and headings, a book to make you think, 'I could do that.'"--Boff Whalley, Chumbawamba

"Above all, Encyclopedia is testimony to the vastness and variety of music devoted to humanity's liberation."--Mat Callahan, musician and author of The Explosion of Deferred Dreams and The Trouble with Music

"Josh MacPhee has done a great service for all of us interested in the intersection of independent records and radical politics. Encompassing as it does such a wide variety of political voices in the international underground of record making, the encyclopedia paradoxically almost shrinks the world by fostering a vision of a community working without borders in varied strains of solidarity even if not always in full view or knowledge of each other. Every entry opens a window onto a different story of creativity and resistance and I couldn't stop hopscotching around from page to page, each one sparking off vectors for further thought and exploration. A totally mind-blowing accomplishment."--Guy Picciotto, Fugazi

About the Author

Josh MacPhee is a designer, artist, and archivist. He is a founding member of both the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative and Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements based in Brooklyn, NY. MacPhee is the author and editor of numerous publications, including Graphic Liberation: Image Making and Political Movements, Strike While the Needle Is Hot (with Kennedy Block), Barricade Sounds: Music and May '68, Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now and Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. He has organized the Celebrate People's History poster series since 1998 and has been designing book covers for Common Notions for the past decade.