PercussionPercussion is an attemptin the authors wordsto make sense of "senseless beating," to grasp how rhythm makes sense in music and society. Both a scholar and a former professional drummer, John Mowitt forges a striking encounter between cultural studies and new musicology that seeks to lay out the "percussive field" through which beatingspecifically the backbeat that defines early rock and rollcomes to matter for raced, urban subjects. For Mowitt,