Making Music in Los Angeles: Transforming the Popular. By Catherine Parsons Smith. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. ISBN: 978-0- 520-25139-7. pp. xiv, 376. Hardcover. $34.95.


In her first chapter, Catherine Parsons Smith explicitly states that this book has multiple functions. First, it is a social history, focusing on the careers and interactions of "music makers," a term Smith uses to encompass performers and composers as well as listeners, patrons, teachers, students, and entrepreneurs. In addition, it is a regional study that takes as its complicated subject the city of Los Angeles from the 1880s to about 1940. And finally, it is an account of the transformations that occurred in the American musical soundscape during and just after the turn of the twentieth century. Smith also points out what this book is not, saying that "it rarely deals directly with the notes or the sounds" of the music discussed therein. At times this was a disappointing exclusion, but understandable in light of the book's wide-ranging scope and its challenging, circular foci.