Author: David Hajdu
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374710503
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
A personal, idiosyncratic history of popular music that also may well be definitive, from the revered music critic From the age of song sheets in the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary era of digital streaming, pop music has been our most influential laboratory for social and aesthetic experimentation, changing the world three minutes at a time. In Love for Sale, David Hajdu—one of the most respected critics and music historians of our time—draws on a lifetime of listening, playing, and writing about music to show how pop has done much more than peddle fantasies of love and sex to teenagers. From vaudeville singer Eva Tanguay, the “I Don’t Care Girl” who upended Victorian conceptions of feminine propriety to become one of the biggest stars of her day to the scandal of Blondie playing disco at CBGB, Hajdu presents an incisive and idiosyncratic history of a form that has repeatedly upset social and cultural expectations. Exhaustively researched and rich with fresh insights, Love for Sale is unbound by the usual tropes of pop music history. Hajdu, for instance, gives a star turn to Bessie Smith and the “blues queens” of the 1920s, who brought wildly transgressive sexuality to American audience decades before rock and roll. And there is Jimmie Rodgers, a former blackface minstrel performer, who created country music from the songs of rural white and blacks . . . entwined with the sound of the Swiss yodel. And then there are today’s practitioners of Electronic Dance Music, who Hajdu celebrates for carrying the pop revolution to heretofore unimaginable frontiers. At every turn, Hajdu surprises and challenges readers to think about our most familiar art in unexpected ways. Masterly and impassioned, authoritative and at times deeply personal, Love for Sale is a book of critical history informed by its writer's own unique history as a besotted fan and lifelong student of pop.
Love for Sale
Author: David Hajdu
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374710503
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
A personal, idiosyncratic history of popular music that also may well be definitive, from the revered music critic From the age of song sheets in the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary era of digital streaming, pop music has been our most influential laboratory for social and aesthetic experimentation, changing the world three minutes at a time. In Love for Sale, David Hajdu—one of the most respected critics and music historians of our time—draws on a lifetime of listening, playing, and writing about music to show how pop has done much more than peddle fantasies of love and sex to teenagers. From vaudeville singer Eva Tanguay, the “I Don’t Care Girl” who upended Victorian conceptions of feminine propriety to become one of the biggest stars of her day to the scandal of Blondie playing disco at CBGB, Hajdu presents an incisive and idiosyncratic history of a form that has repeatedly upset social and cultural expectations. Exhaustively researched and rich with fresh insights, Love for Sale is unbound by the usual tropes of pop music history. Hajdu, for instance, gives a star turn to Bessie Smith and the “blues queens” of the 1920s, who brought wildly transgressive sexuality to American audience decades before rock and roll. And there is Jimmie Rodgers, a former blackface minstrel performer, who created country music from the songs of rural white and blacks . . . entwined with the sound of the Swiss yodel. And then there are today’s practitioners of Electronic Dance Music, who Hajdu celebrates for carrying the pop revolution to heretofore unimaginable frontiers. At every turn, Hajdu surprises and challenges readers to think about our most familiar art in unexpected ways. Masterly and impassioned, authoritative and at times deeply personal, Love for Sale is a book of critical history informed by its writer's own unique history as a besotted fan and lifelong student of pop.
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374710503
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
A personal, idiosyncratic history of popular music that also may well be definitive, from the revered music critic From the age of song sheets in the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary era of digital streaming, pop music has been our most influential laboratory for social and aesthetic experimentation, changing the world three minutes at a time. In Love for Sale, David Hajdu—one of the most respected critics and music historians of our time—draws on a lifetime of listening, playing, and writing about music to show how pop has done much more than peddle fantasies of love and sex to teenagers. From vaudeville singer Eva Tanguay, the “I Don’t Care Girl” who upended Victorian conceptions of feminine propriety to become one of the biggest stars of her day to the scandal of Blondie playing disco at CBGB, Hajdu presents an incisive and idiosyncratic history of a form that has repeatedly upset social and cultural expectations. Exhaustively researched and rich with fresh insights, Love for Sale is unbound by the usual tropes of pop music history. Hajdu, for instance, gives a star turn to Bessie Smith and the “blues queens” of the 1920s, who brought wildly transgressive sexuality to American audience decades before rock and roll. And there is Jimmie Rodgers, a former blackface minstrel performer, who created country music from the songs of rural white and blacks . . . entwined with the sound of the Swiss yodel. And then there are today’s practitioners of Electronic Dance Music, who Hajdu celebrates for carrying the pop revolution to heretofore unimaginable frontiers. At every turn, Hajdu surprises and challenges readers to think about our most familiar art in unexpected ways. Masterly and impassioned, authoritative and at times deeply personal, Love for Sale is a book of critical history informed by its writer's own unique history as a besotted fan and lifelong student of pop.
Black Popular Music in America
Author: Arnold Shaw
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description
As Shaw correctly states, no single volume covers the history of black popular music in its entirety, and most studies have focused on the white mainstream. American pop music is in fact a blend of black and white musical influences that can be better understood if explored from a black perspective. Shaw examines five key black stylesminstrelsy, spirituals, ragtime, jazz, and bluesanalyzing the origins and developments of each, profiling important artists and songs, and exploring the "white synthesis." Often the "synthesis" has amounted to little more than a soulless white imitation of inspired black stylistic innovations.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 416
Book Description
As Shaw correctly states, no single volume covers the history of black popular music in its entirety, and most studies have focused on the white mainstream. American pop music is in fact a blend of black and white musical influences that can be better understood if explored from a black perspective. Shaw examines five key black stylesminstrelsy, spirituals, ragtime, jazz, and bluesanalyzing the origins and developments of each, profiling important artists and songs, and exploring the "white synthesis." Often the "synthesis" has amounted to little more than a soulless white imitation of inspired black stylistic innovations.
American Popular Music
Author: Glenn Appell
Publisher: Schirmer Books
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
Appell (jazz studies, Diablo Valley College) and Hemphill (graduate studies, research, and development, San Francisco State University) offer a textbook for popular music, humanities, or cultural studies courses, organized by the musical influences of particular cultural groups--African American, European American, Latin, Native American and Asian--rather than a strict chronological approach. This is followed by a section tracing modern jazz to hip hop. They survey a broad range of styles, from minstrelsy, blues, hymns, and wind bands to Chicano music, Afro-Caribbean music, bebop, acid jazz, girl groups, folk-rock, the British invasion, R&B, and rock.
Publisher: Schirmer Books
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
Appell (jazz studies, Diablo Valley College) and Hemphill (graduate studies, research, and development, San Francisco State University) offer a textbook for popular music, humanities, or cultural studies courses, organized by the musical influences of particular cultural groups--African American, European American, Latin, Native American and Asian--rather than a strict chronological approach. This is followed by a section tracing modern jazz to hip hop. They survey a broad range of styles, from minstrelsy, blues, hymns, and wind bands to Chicano music, Afro-Caribbean music, bebop, acid jazz, girl groups, folk-rock, the British invasion, R&B, and rock.
I Hear America Singing
Author: David Kastin
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
The first edition of American Popular Music introduces the history and influence of American music within the broader context of American culture. It reveals how the history of American music connects to contemporary popular music through specific examples showing how past styles and performers have influenced current musical styles. Presents a balanced, accurate, and comprehensive portrayal of American popular music within a narrative, conversational style while discussing various musical styles and performers in a larger social and historical context that provides a larger perspective on American cultural history. The book relates the development of each musical genre to its historical period and places individual performers and styles within their larger social or artistic context. It includes numerous excerpts from literary works that reveal the tremendous influence popular music has had on American culture. It also presents over 300 photos and illustrations, including album covers, posters, sheet music illustrations, and song lyrics. An important reference for any reader interested in the history of American popular music.
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
The first edition of American Popular Music introduces the history and influence of American music within the broader context of American culture. It reveals how the history of American music connects to contemporary popular music through specific examples showing how past styles and performers have influenced current musical styles. Presents a balanced, accurate, and comprehensive portrayal of American popular music within a narrative, conversational style while discussing various musical styles and performers in a larger social and historical context that provides a larger perspective on American cultural history. The book relates the development of each musical genre to its historical period and places individual performers and styles within their larger social or artistic context. It includes numerous excerpts from literary works that reveal the tremendous influence popular music has had on American culture. It also presents over 300 photos and illustrations, including album covers, posters, sheet music illustrations, and song lyrics. An important reference for any reader interested in the history of American popular music.
Switched on Pop
Author: Nate Sloan
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190056657
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Based on the critically acclaimed podcast that has broken down hundreds of Top 40 songs, Switched On Pop dives in into eighteen hit songs drawn from pop of the last twenty years--ranging from Britney to Beyoncé, Kelly Clarkson to Kendrick Lamar--uncovering the musical explanations for why and how certain tracks climb to the top of the charts. In the process, authors Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan reveal the timeless techniques that animate music across time and space.
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190056657
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Based on the critically acclaimed podcast that has broken down hundreds of Top 40 songs, Switched On Pop dives in into eighteen hit songs drawn from pop of the last twenty years--ranging from Britney to Beyoncé, Kelly Clarkson to Kendrick Lamar--uncovering the musical explanations for why and how certain tracks climb to the top of the charts. In the process, authors Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan reveal the timeless techniques that animate music across time and space.
Music in America
Author: Adelaida Reyes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 154
Book Description
Music in America is one of several case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present. America's music is a perennial work in progress. Music in America looks at both the roots of American musical identity and its many manifestations, seeking to answer the complex question: "What does American music sound like?" Focusing on three themes--identity, diversity, and unity--it explores where America's music comes from, who makes it, and for what purpose. Rather than chronologically tracing America's musical history, author Adelaida Reyes considers how musical culture is shaped by space and time, by geography and history, by social, economic, and political factors, and by people who use music to express themselves within a community. Introducing the diversity that dominates the contemporary American musical landscape, Reyes draws on a dazzling range of musical styles--from ethnic and popular music idioms to contemporary art music--to highlight the ways in which sounds from various cultural origins come to share a national identity. Packaged with a 65-minute CD containing examples of the music discussed in the book, Music in America features guided listening and hands-on activities that allow readers to become active participants in the music.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 154
Book Description
Music in America is one of several case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present. America's music is a perennial work in progress. Music in America looks at both the roots of American musical identity and its many manifestations, seeking to answer the complex question: "What does American music sound like?" Focusing on three themes--identity, diversity, and unity--it explores where America's music comes from, who makes it, and for what purpose. Rather than chronologically tracing America's musical history, author Adelaida Reyes considers how musical culture is shaped by space and time, by geography and history, by social, economic, and political factors, and by people who use music to express themselves within a community. Introducing the diversity that dominates the contemporary American musical landscape, Reyes draws on a dazzling range of musical styles--from ethnic and popular music idioms to contemporary art music--to highlight the ways in which sounds from various cultural origins come to share a national identity. Packaged with a 65-minute CD containing examples of the music discussed in the book, Music in America features guided listening and hands-on activities that allow readers to become active participants in the music.
Political Rock
Author: Kristine Weglarz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317078705
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
Political Rock features luminary figures in rock music that have stood out not only for their performances, but also for their politics. The book opens with a comparative, cultural history of artists who have played important roles in social movements. Individual chapters are devoted to The Clash and Fugazi, Billy Bragg, Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, Sinead O'Connor, Peter Gabriel, Ani DiFranco, Bruce Cockburn, Steve Earle and Kim Gordon. These artists have been chosen for their status as rock musicians and connections to political moments, movements, and art. The artists and authors show that rock retains a critical strain, continuing a tradition of rock politics that matters to fans, activists, and movements alike.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317078705
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
Political Rock features luminary figures in rock music that have stood out not only for their performances, but also for their politics. The book opens with a comparative, cultural history of artists who have played important roles in social movements. Individual chapters are devoted to The Clash and Fugazi, Billy Bragg, Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, Sinead O'Connor, Peter Gabriel, Ani DiFranco, Bruce Cockburn, Steve Earle and Kim Gordon. These artists have been chosen for their status as rock musicians and connections to political moments, movements, and art. The artists and authors show that rock retains a critical strain, continuing a tradition of rock politics that matters to fans, activists, and movements alike.
Songs of America
Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593132963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw “Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics but also by our music—by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones. From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take readers on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw reflects on them as an artist and performer. Their perspectives combine to create a unique view of the role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation. Beginning with the battle hymns of the revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the fight for women’s suffrage, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations, and the cultural and political climates that produced them. Readers will discover the power of music in the lives of figures such as Harriet Tubman, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and will learn more about some of our most beloved musicians and performers, including Marian Anderson, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, and more. Songs of America explores both famous songs and lesser-known ones, expanding our understanding of the scope of American music and lending deeper meaning to the historical context of such songs as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Over There,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” As Quincy Jones says, Meacham and McGraw have “convened a concert in Songs of America,” one that reminds us of who we are, where we’ve been, and what we, at our best, can be.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593132963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw “Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics but also by our music—by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones. From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take readers on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw reflects on them as an artist and performer. Their perspectives combine to create a unique view of the role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation. Beginning with the battle hymns of the revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the fight for women’s suffrage, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations, and the cultural and political climates that produced them. Readers will discover the power of music in the lives of figures such as Harriet Tubman, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and will learn more about some of our most beloved musicians and performers, including Marian Anderson, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, and more. Songs of America explores both famous songs and lesser-known ones, expanding our understanding of the scope of American music and lending deeper meaning to the historical context of such songs as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Over There,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” As Quincy Jones says, Meacham and McGraw have “convened a concert in Songs of America,” one that reminds us of who we are, where we’ve been, and what we, at our best, can be.
Crossing Traditions
Author: Babacar M'Baye
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810888289
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
In Crossing Traditions: American Popular Music in Local and Global Contexts, a wide range of scholarly contributions on the local and global significance of American popular music examines the connections between selected American blues, rock and roll, and hip-hop music and their equivalents from Senegal, Nigeria, England, India, and Mexico. Contributors show how American popular music promotes local and global awareness of such key issues as economic inequality and social marginalization while inspiring cross-cultural and interethnic influences among regional and transnational communities. Specifically, Crossing Traditions highlights the impact of American popular music on the spread of sounds, rhythms, styles, and ideas about freedom, justice, love, and sexuality among local and global communities, all of which share the same desires, hopes, and concerns despite geographic differences. Contributors look at the local contexts of Chicago blues, early rock and roll, white Christian rap, and Frank Zappa alongside the global influence of Mahalia Jackson on Senegalese blues, the transatlantic character of the British Invasion’s relationship to African American rock, and the impact of Latin house music, global hip-hop, and Bhangra in cross-cultural settings. Essays also draw on a broad range of disciplines in their analyses: American studies, popular culture studies, transnational studies, history, musicology, ethnic studies, literature and media studies, and critical theory. Crossing Traditions will appeal to a wide range of readers, including college and university professors, undergraduate and graduate students, and music scholars in general.
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810888289
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
In Crossing Traditions: American Popular Music in Local and Global Contexts, a wide range of scholarly contributions on the local and global significance of American popular music examines the connections between selected American blues, rock and roll, and hip-hop music and their equivalents from Senegal, Nigeria, England, India, and Mexico. Contributors show how American popular music promotes local and global awareness of such key issues as economic inequality and social marginalization while inspiring cross-cultural and interethnic influences among regional and transnational communities. Specifically, Crossing Traditions highlights the impact of American popular music on the spread of sounds, rhythms, styles, and ideas about freedom, justice, love, and sexuality among local and global communities, all of which share the same desires, hopes, and concerns despite geographic differences. Contributors look at the local contexts of Chicago blues, early rock and roll, white Christian rap, and Frank Zappa alongside the global influence of Mahalia Jackson on Senegalese blues, the transatlantic character of the British Invasion’s relationship to African American rock, and the impact of Latin house music, global hip-hop, and Bhangra in cross-cultural settings. Essays also draw on a broad range of disciplines in their analyses: American studies, popular culture studies, transnational studies, history, musicology, ethnic studies, literature and media studies, and critical theory. Crossing Traditions will appeal to a wide range of readers, including college and university professors, undergraduate and graduate students, and music scholars in general.
The Beautiful Music All Around Us
Author: Stephen Wade
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025209400X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 505
Book Description
The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song "Shortenin' Bread," the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," the blues "Another Man Done Gone," and the spiritual "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on "the Library's recording machine" in a rendering of "Rock Island Line"; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme "Pullin' the Skiff"; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into "Glory in the Meetinghouse." Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, "amplifying tradition's gifts," Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy. Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025209400X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 505
Book Description
The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song "Shortenin' Bread," the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," the blues "Another Man Done Gone," and the spiritual "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on "the Library's recording machine" in a rendering of "Rock Island Line"; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme "Pullin' the Skiff"; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into "Glory in the Meetinghouse." Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, "amplifying tradition's gifts," Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy. Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s.