The drum kit has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. Kick It, a provocative social history of the instrument, looks closely at key innovators in the development of the drum kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, author Matt Brennan makes the case for the drum kit's role as one of the most transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Kick It shows how the drum kit and drummers helped change modern music--and society as a whole--from the bottom up.

A groundbreaking social history of the drum kit, Matt Brennan's Kick It makes a compelling case for the instrument as one of most important and transformative musical inventions of the modern era.

With a winning mix of erudition and enthusiasm Brennan argues convincingly that drummers are the dynamic core of music history. And in offering an exemplary case study of the drum kit, Brennan shows that musical instrument research should be the dynamic core of music scholarship. Kick It is an enthralling read.