£7.99 – £12.99
How the radical music of the 1960s was birthed amid unprecedented upheaval and systemic repression.
Decades since the radical music of the 1960s first hit the airwaves, the anthems of the era continue to resonate with our current times.
Through studying these musicians and the political contexts in which their pioneering songs were birthed; amidst paranoia, psychedelic delusions, desire and civil unrest; Aaron Leonard’s Whole World in an Uproar is an important new critical history of countercultural music from the Summer of Love to the unwelcome arrival of Bob Dylan.
Aaron J. Leonard is a writer and historian with a particular focus on the history of radicalism and state suppression. He is the author of Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists, A Threat of the First Magnitude—FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration: From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union, and The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956. He lives in Los Angeles.
“What happened when HUAC, the FBI, Jim Crow, corporate media outlets, drug warriors, the religious right, and even the Old Left tried to stop a freight train? Drawing on a broad range of sources, including FBI files, Whole World in an Uproar recounts that momentous story.”
“Aaron Leonard integrates an amazing amount of research into a story that ranges from FBI surveillance of the Old Left to the rock scene to the social dissension around the anti-Vietnam War and Black liberation movements. A well-thought through, fascinating documentary about movements and people who were affected by oppressive societal actions.”
“A fascinating counter-history of the 1960s music revolution through the eyes of the persecutors, paranoiacs and culture warriors who tried to stop it.”