To their credit, the essays don't just look at the positive ways that music operates in daily life, they also look at the way it can be used to marginalize and exclude certain groups of people. In a sarcastic, biting piece she takes rock and roll culture to task for systematically trivializing or simply ignoring the contributions of women to the world of rock. There are, of course, dangers in examining popular music as a form of communication. One hazard is exaggerating the power of music to affect significant social change and fight the powers that be. Almost all of the essays in Mapping the Beat fall into this trap at one time or another.
Music certainly can be powerful.
Questions like these are not systematically addressed by the authors and as a result their assessments of the political power of rock tend to be overly optimistic and somewhat naive. The second danger in reading music as communication is the uncritical acceptance of the message in the medium. The essays revel in music's ability to produce new, hybrid forms of community, but all too often they leave the exact nature of these communities unexamined. In an entertaining essay that presents a sophisticated portrait of Detroit's late 60's music scene, Waksman traces the role the MC5 played in the city's rock and roll subculture. But we shouldn't take such a sensual politics at face value and accept it as something desirable and positive, a move that Waksman makes.