MUSIC

Folded, appropriately enough, accordion style, a panoramic survey of noteworthy music and music makers from bone flutes to Beyoncé.

With an international outlook and an eye for music that incorporates disparate styles and traditions, the authors and Taylor closely fill both sides of a nearly 8-foot-long strip of sturdy stock with hundreds of human figures—broadly diverse in skin color and period or national dress—and musical instruments, all paired to blocks of pithy but lucid commentary. Following an opening world map of prehistoric highlights on every inhabited continent, the contents take a chronological drift with biographical entries running along the top, cultural notes in the middle, and technological advances highlighted at the bottom. Select milestones in opera, orchestral music, and rock-’n’-roll get fair shares of attention (the Beatles even rate an entire page), but so do the histories of Indigenous American, Asian, and African music; son Cubano and Caribbean styles; Australian bush music; and other music linked to particular cultures or regions. Likewise, the nods to lesser-known figures or milestones—composers such as Amy Beach, performers from kunqu opera founder Wei Liangfu to punk ranter Poly Styrene, and tools such as the online music platform Chinabot—can’t help but give young audiences an expansive view of what music is and can be.

Unfolds a world of music for casual as well as serious listeners.