Since its original publication, Composing a World by Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman has become the definitive work on the prolific California composer Lou Harrison, often cited as one of America's most original and influential figures. Composing a World presents a compelling and deeply human portrait of an exceptionally beloved pioneer in American music. This paperback edition is an updated version of the highly acclaimed Lou Harrison: Composing a World . The product of extensive research, as well as seventy-five interviews with the composer and those associated with him over half a...

Serves as a history of rap music. This book traces the genre's history from its roots in West African bardic traditions, the Jamaican dancehall tradition, and African American vernacular expressions to its permeation of the cultural mainstream as a major tenet of hip-hop lifestyle and culture.

The inside story on the Father of Bluegrass from one of his original Blue Grass Boys.

A history of bluegrass. Winner of the Country Music People Critics' Choice Award for Favorite Country Book of the Year and of the International Bluegrass Music Association Certificate of Merit.

In Race, Rock, and Elvis, Michael T. Bertrand contends that popular music, specifically Elvis Presley's brand of rock 'n' roll, helped revise racial attitudes after World War II. Observing that youthful fans of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, and other black-inspired music seemed more inclined than their segregationist elders to ignore the color line, Bertrand links popular music with a more general relaxation, led by white youths, of the historical denigration of blacks in the South. The tradition of southern racism, successfully communicated to previous generations, failed for the first...

A collection of musical portraits which pays tribute to such beloved and legendary figures as Benny Goodman, Bill Evans, Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Alec Wilder, Mary Lou Williams, and others.

The first in-depth history of the involvement of African Americans in the early recording industry, this book examines the first three decades of sound recording in the United States, charting the vigorous and varied roles black artists played in the period leading up to the Jazz Age. Applying more than thirty years of scholarship, Tim Brooks identifies key black artists who recorded commercially in a wide range of genres and provides illuminating biographies of some forty of these audio pioneers. Brooks assesses the careers and impacts, as well as analyzing the recordings, of figures...

Through revealing portraits of selected local artists and slice-of-life vignettes drawn from the city's pubs and lounges, Chicago Blues encapsulates the sound and spirit of the blues as it is lived today. As a committed participant in the Chicago blues scene for more than a quarter century, David Whiteis draws on years of his observations and extensive interviews to paint a full picture of the Chicago blues world, both on and off the stage. In addition to portraits of blues artists he has personally known and worked with, Whiteis takes readers on a tour of venues like East of Ryan and the...

Based on extensive archival research and oral history, Michael Ann Williams's Staging Tradition traces the parallel careers of the creators of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance and the National Folk Festival. Through their devotion to staging of traditional culture, including folk, country, and bluegrass music, John Lair (1894-1985) and Sarah Gertrude Knott (1895-1984) became two of the mid-twentieth century's most notable producers. Lair and Knott's discovery of new development in theater and entertainment during the 1920s led them to the producing careers that fed their own needs to be center...

Like rock 'n' roll, bluegrass exploded out of a post-World War II atmosphere in which more Americans opened their ears to more different kinds of music than ever before. All around the country, musicians were searching for new sounds and approaches: country blues went fully electric in Chicago, bebop boiled over as jazz hit the hippest notes yet, and country music followed Hank Williams into newer, sexier, harder-hitting territory. The developments in bluegrass proved every bit as galvanic. In The Bluegrass Reader, Thomas Goldsmith joins his insights as a journalist with a lifetime of...