In this day of digital delivery, more and more popular music arrives to its listeners in downloadable bits, giving away very little about where the songs come from or who is behind them. At the same time contemporary popular culture, with its ancestry-excavating Web sites and television shows, reveals that people are craving answers to those very same questions about themselves.

Right by Her Roots is a book for this moment, a thorough and thoughtful exploration of the bodies of work of eight groundbreaking artists who acknowledge, in their songs and in their lives, their...