Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music
In Heartland Excursions, one of today's foremost ethnomusicologists takes the reader along for a delightful, wide-ranging tour of his workplace. Bruno Nettl provides an insightful, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, always pithy ethnography of midwestern university schools of music from a different perspective in each of four chapters, alternating among ......
Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music
Reading John Wright's book is like sitting around a campfire at a bluegrass festival, listening as the oldtimers weave their yarns far into the night. Told by those who create, produce, stage, love, and virtually live for old-time mountain music, the tales come from the longtime coworkers, sidemen, promoters, friends a neighbor, a scholar who has ......
The complete story of the origins and evolution of the black American blues tradition, drawing extensively on oral history interviews. ''The opening chapters are among the best things ever published on the blues. It's a thoughtful, substantial, solidly constructed, information packed work, and should be in every serious blues enthusiast's library. ......
People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-50
Winner of an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, 1990.''A spirited and scholarly account of the relationship between the U.S. Communist movement and the folk music revival of the 1940s and 1950s.'' -- Paul C. Mishler, Nature, Society, and Thought''Shows the ways in which the folk music revival of the 1960s and the participatory cultures of the civil rights ......
''Milton Brown is one of the great unsung heroes of American music; and one of the true fathers of western swing. Ginell's biography offers a wealth of new information on Brown and his times and paints a marvelously detailed portrait of the rich Texas music scene of the Depression era.'' -- Charles K. Wolfe, Middle Tennessee State University
This fascinating account of how the racial and cultural dynamics of American cities created the music, life, and business that was jazz is the first comprehensive analysis of the role of jazz in its formative years.
''A rich, descriptive account. . . . Shelemay presents extraordinary personal experiences that shaped her research process and make reading this text pleasurable.''-- Library Journal''Highly recommended to generalists in music as well as to specialists interested in Ethiopia. . . . Also makes an excellent case study text for university-level ......
Long a symbol of American culture, the banjo actually originated in Africa and was later adopted by European-Americans. In this book Karen Linn shows how the banjo - despite design innovations and several modernizing agendas - has failed to escape its image as a ''half-barbaric'' instrument symbolic of antimodernism and sentimentalism. Caught in ......
''A big juicy wedge of jazz history. . . . Lots of wonderful stories.'' -- Los Angeles Daily News ''Kansas City was a hub for Jazz bands that crisscrossed the country in the 1930s. . . . The interviews go beyond jazz into the infamous political machinery that made Kansas City a wide-open and corrupt town where jazz could flourish.'' -- Choice ''A ......
