Sound system


The political power of music


David Randall, Pluto Press, 224 pages, £12.99)

It’s perhaps unusual for someone at the top of the music industry to mount a rigorous exploration of the relationship and tensions between music and politics. As author David Randall, a successful guitarist, producer and musician puts it, personal questions of wealth “are not those that spin around my head ... There is no doubt that music matters to people, but what is its impact on society?”


Best known for his work as guitarist with Faithless and for his own band Slovo, UK-based Randall’s playing credits also include Sinead O’Connor and Dido. 


In Sound system, he cites examples of music as a force for social change as well as something that has been used to keep people in their place throughout history. 


From the Glastonbury Festival to the Arab Spring, the TV Pop Idol competition to Trinidadian Carnival, Randall finds political inspiration across the musical spectrum and poses the question: how can we make music serve the interests of the many, rather than the few? 


Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. 


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