None More Black

Humans have made music with chordophones — which produce sound through the vibration of a plucked string — for thousands of years. Much has changed since the thirteenth century BCE, when the Hittites carved a figure playing a lute into stone, but through all the incarnations of what would one day become the guitar, no evolution has been so radical as the dawn of the pointy guitar. Now a defining symbol of rock, the instrument was first considered by many to be downright absurd.

In Battle Axes, the Juno-nominated musician Sean Kelly charts the history of these weapons of sonic destruction (and creation) with an archivist’s care, an aficionado’s zeal, and bubbly, irrepressible glee. Kelly — who founded the Canadian glam rock outfit Crash Kelly, performed with Helix, and played in Nelly Furtado’s globe-trotting road band — teaches music with the Toronto Catholic District School Board. His pedagogical pedigree and insider’s industry knowledge are on full...