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Icon has snapped up Rebel Sounds, an investigation into music and resistance by Joe Mulhall.
Publisher and editorial director Duncan Heath bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Colwill & Peddle. Icon will publish in September 2024.
“Rebel Sounds will be the story of those who resisted tyranny not with guns and bombs but with trumpets and drums, guitars and microphones,” the synopsis reads.
“Ranging from Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia, from the authoritarian dictatorships in Brazil and Nigeria to institutionalised racism and police violence in America and South Africa, from street violence in Britain, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, to the takeover of parts of West Africa by Islamists, Rebel Sounds will tell the story of how music can provide hope in the darkest times. It will be a social history of the 20th century, but ‘one that takes in the human impulse to create, share and enjoy the one thing that connects cultures and spans generations: music.’”
Heath said: “Having published Joe Mulhall’s landmark book, Drums in the Distance, in 2021, I’m delighted to be able to continue our relationship by commissioning this equally topical and compelling look at the role music has played, and continues to play, in human resistance to oppression. Drums in the Distance warned us of the dangers of the far right encroaching on ‘normal’ politics – something we now see all around us. Rebel Sounds shows us how we can resist with the uniquely human power of music. It’s an inspiring story – and for Joe a very personal one – that we need now more than ever.”
Mulhall is senior researcher at the UK’s largest anti-fascism organisation HOPE Not Hate and a leading expert on far-right extremism. He has written for the Guardian and New Statesman.
“I’m thrilled to be working with Duncan Heath and everyone at Icon on this book,” he said. “Music has provided light in the darkest of times over the course of the 20th century and in Rebel Sounds I will aim to tell the story of those brave people who loved music so much they risked imprisonment or even death just to listen to it. From apartheid South Africa to Jim Crow America; from Fela Kuti in Nigeria to Nazi Germany this is the first global history of how music shapes political resistance.
“I’m so excited to be working with Icon Books on this project. They published Drums in the Distance: Journeys into the global far right brilliantly in 2021 so it’s a pleasure to be working with them and my agent Kay Peddle again.”