Theft! A History of Music

Theft! A History of Music is a graphic novel by James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins and the late Keith Aoki. It’s about musical borrowing and the laws that have attempted to regulate musical borrowing and inter-mixing over the past 2000 years.

The history in this book runs from Plato to Blurred Lines and beyond. You will read about the Holy Roman Empire’s attempts to standardize religious music with the first great musical technology (notation) and the inevitable backfire of that attempt. You will read about troubadours and church composers, swapping tunes (and remarkably profane lyrics), changing both religion and music in the process. You will see diatribes against jazz for corrupting musical culture, against rock and roll for breaching the color-line. You will learn about the lawsuits that, surprisingly, shaped rap. You will read the story of some of music’s iconoclasts—from Handel and Beethoven to Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ray Charles, the British Invasion and Public Enemy.

Theft! is informative and quite fun. I enjoyed it a lot. You can buy a paperback or get a free download. Here’s one page:
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