Title: Examining the Vacuum
Product review: Hole in Our Soul brings demanding aesthetic criteria to pop music. Bayles is as critical of mindless nihilism as she is of sentimentality. With sharp historical insight, she tracks the decline of value in popular music and diagnoses its causes in the misappropriation of the African American cultural roots of rock, jazz, soul, and rhythm `n' blues. Her style is very clear, and her argument quite engaging. I especially like her ability to locate pop music in the broader contexts of American history and the philosophy of art. She leaves us wondering where our culture may be headed musically and philosophically, and what it might take to restore quality and value to our art.
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