American folk musicians Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, once musical partners, have had careers which are at once conservative and innovative, imbuing the best of folk traditions with their own powerful style. In The Unbroken Circle, Fred Metting challenges the musical labels that often bind artists as he explores the inspirational sources behind these two men. Cooder was influenced by ragtime-blues, bottleneck gospel blues, Norteno music, as well as epic folk ballads. Mahal surrounded himself with Afro-Caribbean music, Chicago blues and Hawaiian music. Both of these artists created a collage from...

Arthel "Doc" Watson, an 82-year-old musician from North Carolina, is one of the two or three most important acoustic guitarists in American musical history. The story of Watson's music is a rich and complex narrative which involves the listener in an exploration of the music of the Scottish settlers in the Appalachian Mountains and the changes in that music as the mountaineers were influenced by the African American music of itinerant laborers in the nineteenth century and by sounds from records and radio early in the twentieth century. Despite Watson's importance to American acoustic music...