Housmans are very excited to be welcoming the brilliant Toby Manning to the shop to discuss his fantastic and all encompassing new tome: Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music.

A radical history of the political and social upheavals of the last 70 years, told through the period’s most popular music.

Mixing Pop and Politics is not a history of political music, but a political history of popular music. Spanning the early 50s to the present, it shows how, from doo-wop to hip-hop, punk to crunk and grunge to grime, music has both reflected and resisted the political events of its era.

Mixing Pop and Politics explores the connections between popular music and political ideology, whether that’s the liberation of rock’n’roll or the containment of girl groups, the refusal of glam or the resignation of soft rock, the solidarity of disco or the individualism of 80s pop.

At a time when reactionary forces are waging political war in the realm of culture, and we’re being told to keep politics out of music, Mixing Pop and Politics is a timely, original and joyful exploration of popular music’s role in our society.

Toby will be joined in conversation by Adam Jones of the Acid Horizon podcast, author of the The New Flesh: Life and Death in the Data Economy and co-author of Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape.

For the first half of the event Toby and Adam will discuss the themes and arguments of Pop and Politics, before this broadens out into an audience Q&A. After this, we encourage milling about and then usually head to the pub.

Feel free to BYOB.

As always, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com, and a free ticket will be made available.

If you choose ‘book + event entry’ or ‘special bundle’, your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier, or arrange for delivery, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com.

Doors Open at 7pm, Event Starts 7:30