Author: David Adjmi
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559366753
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
“Nearly everything about David Adjmi’s Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting . . . to the brassy bleat of the dialogue." –Time Out New York This volume of distinctive work includes Stunning, set in an insular Syrian Jewish community, where a teenage bride’s world is disrupted by her intellectual African American housekeeper; Evildoers, about the collapse of two privileged couples; and Elective Affinities, a post-9/11 monologue. David Adjmi’s work has been produced at Lincoln Center Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and the Royal Court in London. He has received numerous commissions and is the recipient of a 2009 Kesselring Fellowship and a Bush Artist Fellowship.
Stunning and Other Plays
Author: David Adjmi
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559366753
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
“Nearly everything about David Adjmi’s Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting . . . to the brassy bleat of the dialogue." –Time Out New York This volume of distinctive work includes Stunning, set in an insular Syrian Jewish community, where a teenage bride’s world is disrupted by her intellectual African American housekeeper; Evildoers, about the collapse of two privileged couples; and Elective Affinities, a post-9/11 monologue. David Adjmi’s work has been produced at Lincoln Center Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and the Royal Court in London. He has received numerous commissions and is the recipient of a 2009 Kesselring Fellowship and a Bush Artist Fellowship.
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559366753
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
“Nearly everything about David Adjmi’s Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting . . . to the brassy bleat of the dialogue." –Time Out New York This volume of distinctive work includes Stunning, set in an insular Syrian Jewish community, where a teenage bride’s world is disrupted by her intellectual African American housekeeper; Evildoers, about the collapse of two privileged couples; and Elective Affinities, a post-9/11 monologue. David Adjmi’s work has been produced at Lincoln Center Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and the Royal Court in London. He has received numerous commissions and is the recipient of a 2009 Kesselring Fellowship and a Bush Artist Fellowship.
Beautiful Senoritas & Other Plays
Author: Dolores Prida
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
ISBN: 9781611920666
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
The breadth and richness of themes and styles in Dolores PridaÕs theater make this collection a reading experience almost as wonderful as seeing the plays themselves. Prida has mapped the urban landscape and covered many of the most important topics of her timeÑfeminism, racism, classism, bilingualism and biculturalismÑquite often tempering their seriousness with humor, pathos and music. This anthology includes: Beautiful Se–oritas (1977), a musical satire of womenÕs roles and images in Hispanic culture; Coser y Cantar (1981), a bilingual one-act play for two women which explores culture clash, especially as it concerns womenÕs roles; Savings (1985), a musical comedy about ÒgentrificationÓ; Pantallas (1986), a ÒblackÓ comedy on the subject of TV soap operas and nuclear disasters; and Bot‡nica (1990), a play about three generations of Puerto Rican women grappling with gaps and discrepancies in time and culture. Dolores Prida is ranked among the most important playwrights of the contemporary Hispanic theater in the United States. She has written for the stage and television and taught play-writing techniques.
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
ISBN: 9781611920666
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
The breadth and richness of themes and styles in Dolores PridaÕs theater make this collection a reading experience almost as wonderful as seeing the plays themselves. Prida has mapped the urban landscape and covered many of the most important topics of her timeÑfeminism, racism, classism, bilingualism and biculturalismÑquite often tempering their seriousness with humor, pathos and music. This anthology includes: Beautiful Se–oritas (1977), a musical satire of womenÕs roles and images in Hispanic culture; Coser y Cantar (1981), a bilingual one-act play for two women which explores culture clash, especially as it concerns womenÕs roles; Savings (1985), a musical comedy about ÒgentrificationÓ; Pantallas (1986), a ÒblackÓ comedy on the subject of TV soap operas and nuclear disasters; and Bot‡nica (1990), a play about three generations of Puerto Rican women grappling with gaps and discrepancies in time and culture. Dolores Prida is ranked among the most important playwrights of the contemporary Hispanic theater in the United States. She has written for the stage and television and taught play-writing techniques.
Beautiful Man & Other Short Plays
Author: Erin Shields
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780369101495
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Book Description
Award-winning playwright Erin Shields has crafted three thought-provoking plays that centre on the inner lives of women, offering space for those who dare to listen.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780369101495
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Book Description
Award-winning playwright Erin Shields has crafted three thought-provoking plays that centre on the inner lives of women, offering space for those who dare to listen.
Stunning
Author: David Adjmi
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 0573697817
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 129
Book Description
"Sixteen-year-old Lily knows nothing beyond the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn where she lives a cloistered life with her much older husband. Soon an unlikely relationship with her enigmatic African-American maid opens Lily's world to new possibilities--but at a huge price."--P. [4] of cover.
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 0573697817
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 129
Book Description
"Sixteen-year-old Lily knows nothing beyond the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn where she lives a cloistered life with her much older husband. Soon an unlikely relationship with her enigmatic African-American maid opens Lily's world to new possibilities--but at a huge price."--P. [4] of cover.
Beautiful Girls and Other Winning Plays from the 1996 Baker's Plays High School Playwriting Contest
Author: Catherine Keyser
Publisher: Baker's Plays
ISBN: 9780874400328
Category : American drama
Languages : en
Pages : 150
Book Description
Publisher: Baker's Plays
ISBN: 9780874400328
Category : American drama
Languages : en
Pages : 150
Book Description
Lot Six
Author: David Adjmi
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062097016
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 427
Book Description
“One of the great American memoirs, a heartbreaking, hilarious story of what it means to make things up, including yourself. A wild tale of lack and lies, galling humiliations and majestic reinventions, this touching, coruscating joy of a book is an answer to that perennial question: how should a person be?” — Olivia Laing, author of Crudo and The Lonely City In a world where everyone is inventing a self, curating a feed and performing a fantasy of life, what does it mean to be a person? In his grandly entertaining debut memoir, award-winning playwright David Adjmi (the playwright behind the most Tony-nominated show of all time and winner of best new play, Stereophonic) explores how human beings create themselves, and how artists make their lives into art. Brooklyn, 1970s. Born into the ruins of a Syrian Jewish family that once had it all, David is painfully displaced. Trapped in an insular religious community that excludes him and a family coming apart at the seams, he is plunged into suicidal depression. Through adolescence, David tries to suppress his homosexual feelings and fit in, but when pushed to the breaking point, he makes the bold decision to cut off his family, erase his past, and leave everything he knows behind. There's only one problem: who should he be? Bouncing between identities he steals from the pages of fashion magazines, tomes of philosophy, sitcoms and foreign films, and practically everyone he meets—from Rastafarians to French preppies—David begins to piece together an entirely new adult self. But is this the foundation for a life, or just a kind of quicksand? Moving from the glamour and dysfunction of 1970s Brooklyn, to the sybaritic materialism of Reagan’s 1980s to post-9/11 New York, Lot Six offers a quintessentially American tale of an outsider striving to reshape himself in the funhouse mirror of American culture. Adjmi’s memoir is a genre bending Künstlerroman in the spirit of Charles Dickens and Alison Bechdel, a portrait of the artist in the throes of a life and death crisis of identity. Raw and lyrical, and written in gleaming prose that veers effortlessly between hilarity and heartbreak, Lot Six charts Adjmi’s search for belonging, identity, and what it takes to be an artist in America.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062097016
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 427
Book Description
“One of the great American memoirs, a heartbreaking, hilarious story of what it means to make things up, including yourself. A wild tale of lack and lies, galling humiliations and majestic reinventions, this touching, coruscating joy of a book is an answer to that perennial question: how should a person be?” — Olivia Laing, author of Crudo and The Lonely City In a world where everyone is inventing a self, curating a feed and performing a fantasy of life, what does it mean to be a person? In his grandly entertaining debut memoir, award-winning playwright David Adjmi (the playwright behind the most Tony-nominated show of all time and winner of best new play, Stereophonic) explores how human beings create themselves, and how artists make their lives into art. Brooklyn, 1970s. Born into the ruins of a Syrian Jewish family that once had it all, David is painfully displaced. Trapped in an insular religious community that excludes him and a family coming apart at the seams, he is plunged into suicidal depression. Through adolescence, David tries to suppress his homosexual feelings and fit in, but when pushed to the breaking point, he makes the bold decision to cut off his family, erase his past, and leave everything he knows behind. There's only one problem: who should he be? Bouncing between identities he steals from the pages of fashion magazines, tomes of philosophy, sitcoms and foreign films, and practically everyone he meets—from Rastafarians to French preppies—David begins to piece together an entirely new adult self. But is this the foundation for a life, or just a kind of quicksand? Moving from the glamour and dysfunction of 1970s Brooklyn, to the sybaritic materialism of Reagan’s 1980s to post-9/11 New York, Lot Six offers a quintessentially American tale of an outsider striving to reshape himself in the funhouse mirror of American culture. Adjmi’s memoir is a genre bending Künstlerroman in the spirit of Charles Dickens and Alison Bechdel, a portrait of the artist in the throes of a life and death crisis of identity. Raw and lyrical, and written in gleaming prose that veers effortlessly between hilarity and heartbreak, Lot Six charts Adjmi’s search for belonging, identity, and what it takes to be an artist in America.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Author: David Hare
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374714096
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 102
Book Description
A stage adaptation of Katherine Boo's National Book Award-winning study of life in a Mumbai slum India is surging with global ambition. But beyond the luxury hotels surrounding Mumbai airport lies a makeshift slum, Annawadi, full of people with plans of their own. Zehrunisa and her son Abdul aim to recycle enough rubbish to fund a proper house. Sunil, twelve and stunted, wants to eat until he's as tall as Kalu the thief. Asha seeks to steal government antipoverty funds to turn herself into a "first-class person," while her daughter Manju intends to become the slum's first female graduate. But their schemes are fragile; global recession threatens the garbage trade, and another slum dweller is about to make an accusation that will destroy herself and shatter the neighborhood. For Behind the Beautiful Forevers, journalist Katherine Boo spent three years in Annawadi recording the lives of its residents. From her uncompromising book, David Hare has fashioned a tumultuous play on an epic scale.
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374714096
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 102
Book Description
A stage adaptation of Katherine Boo's National Book Award-winning study of life in a Mumbai slum India is surging with global ambition. But beyond the luxury hotels surrounding Mumbai airport lies a makeshift slum, Annawadi, full of people with plans of their own. Zehrunisa and her son Abdul aim to recycle enough rubbish to fund a proper house. Sunil, twelve and stunted, wants to eat until he's as tall as Kalu the thief. Asha seeks to steal government antipoverty funds to turn herself into a "first-class person," while her daughter Manju intends to become the slum's first female graduate. But their schemes are fragile; global recession threatens the garbage trade, and another slum dweller is about to make an accusation that will destroy herself and shatter the neighborhood. For Behind the Beautiful Forevers, journalist Katherine Boo spent three years in Annawadi recording the lives of its residents. From her uncompromising book, David Hare has fashioned a tumultuous play on an epic scale.
We All Play
Author: Julie Flett
Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd
ISBN: 177164608X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 47
Book Description
A BEST CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Globe and Mail, Horn Book, and Boston Globe STARRED Reviews in Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, The Horn Book, School Library Journal A 2022 Best Book for Babies From Julie Flett, the beloved author and illustrator of Birdsong, comes a joyous new book about playtime for babies, toddlers, and kids up to age 7. Animals and kids love to play! This wonderful book celebrates playtime and the connection between children and the natural world. Beautiful illustrations show: birds who chase and chirp! bears who wiggle and wobble! whales who swim and squirt! owls who peek and peep! and a diverse group of kids who love to do the same, shouting: We play too! / kimêtawânaw mîna At the end of the book, animals and children gently fall asleep after a fun day of playing outside, making this book a great bedtime story. A beautiful ode to the animals and humans we share our world with, We All Play belongs on every bookshelf. This book also includes: A glossary of Cree words for wild animals in the book A pronunciation guide and link to audio pronunciation recordings
Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd
ISBN: 177164608X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 47
Book Description
A BEST CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Globe and Mail, Horn Book, and Boston Globe STARRED Reviews in Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, The Horn Book, School Library Journal A 2022 Best Book for Babies From Julie Flett, the beloved author and illustrator of Birdsong, comes a joyous new book about playtime for babies, toddlers, and kids up to age 7. Animals and kids love to play! This wonderful book celebrates playtime and the connection between children and the natural world. Beautiful illustrations show: birds who chase and chirp! bears who wiggle and wobble! whales who swim and squirt! owls who peek and peep! and a diverse group of kids who love to do the same, shouting: We play too! / kimêtawânaw mîna At the end of the book, animals and children gently fall asleep after a fun day of playing outside, making this book a great bedtime story. A beautiful ode to the animals and humans we share our world with, We All Play belongs on every bookshelf. This book also includes: A glossary of Cree words for wild animals in the book A pronunciation guide and link to audio pronunciation recordings
The Beautiful Ones
Author: Prince
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473561019
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Times, Sunday Times and Telegraph Book of the Year ______________________________________________ 'A triumph ... a masterclass in the bottling of its subject's seductive essence. His presence in this book is so strong that it's hard to believe he has really left the building' MOJO 'Handsomely presented, visually sumptuous' THE TIMES ______________________________________________ From Prince himself comes the brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time-featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death. Prince was a musical genius, one of the most talented, beloved, accomplished, popular, and acclaimed musicians in pop history. But he wasn't only a musician-he was also a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of his early records to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of Paisley Park. But his greatest creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, the greatest pop star of his era. The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince-a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is composed of the memoir he was writing before his tragic death, pages that brings us into Prince's childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us into Prince's early years as a musician, before his first album released, through a scrapbook of Prince's writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince's evolution through candid images that take us up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book's fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain-the final stage in Prince's self-creation, as he retells the autobiography we've seen in the first three parts as a heroic journey. The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring's riveting and moving introduction about his short but profound collaboration with Prince in his final days-a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he'd so carefully cultivated-and annotations that provide context to each of the book's images. This work is not just a tribute to Prince, but an original and energizing literary work, full of Prince's ideas and vision, his voice and image, his undying gift to the world. ______________________________________________ 'Prince's voice comes through loud and clear; his personality, joie de vivre and single-mindedness jumping off the page throughout.' CLASSIC POP MAGAZINE 'The Beautiful Ones is for everyone. It's not a read, but an experience, an immersion inside the mind of a musical genius. You are steeped in Prince's images, his words, his essence... The book can be a starting point for a Prince fascination, or a continuation of long-standing admiration. Either way, it will deepen the connection of any reader with the musical icon." USA TODAY 'An affirmation of Prince's Blackness and humanity... Prince writes about his childhood with clarity and poetic flair, effortlessly combining humorous anecdotes with deep self-reflection and musical analysis... Prince is one of us - he just worked to manifest dreams that took him from the North Side of Minneapolis to the Super Bowl.' HUFFPOST 'A compelling curiosity that finds its author orbiting around a few touchingly intimate encounters with his sphinx-like subject ... with passages, lyric sheets and photographs from the Purple One himself' TELEGRAPH, Books of the Year 'Both a pleasure and a surprise ... Prince took the project very seriously, and it shows in the work he delivered. ... It shines an intimate and revealing light on the least-known period of his life' VARIETY 'The Beautiful Ones is a book in pieces, fragments of the ground-breaking autobiography Prince had planned. Pieced together after his death in 2016, it collects his handwritten childhood memoires, superb personal photographs and his chosen co-writer Dan Piepenbring's vivid account of their brief collaboration. Yet remarkably despite the central absence, it still catches something of Prince between the gaps - a trace of perfume, a glance to camera, a first kiss' SUNDAY TIMES, Book of the Year 'This is a beautiful book and a must-have for Prince completists' DAILY EXPRESS 'A ghostly memoir of a pop legend' THE i
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473561019
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Times, Sunday Times and Telegraph Book of the Year ______________________________________________ 'A triumph ... a masterclass in the bottling of its subject's seductive essence. His presence in this book is so strong that it's hard to believe he has really left the building' MOJO 'Handsomely presented, visually sumptuous' THE TIMES ______________________________________________ From Prince himself comes the brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time-featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death. Prince was a musical genius, one of the most talented, beloved, accomplished, popular, and acclaimed musicians in pop history. But he wasn't only a musician-he was also a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of his early records to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of Paisley Park. But his greatest creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, the greatest pop star of his era. The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince-a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is composed of the memoir he was writing before his tragic death, pages that brings us into Prince's childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us into Prince's early years as a musician, before his first album released, through a scrapbook of Prince's writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince's evolution through candid images that take us up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book's fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain-the final stage in Prince's self-creation, as he retells the autobiography we've seen in the first three parts as a heroic journey. The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring's riveting and moving introduction about his short but profound collaboration with Prince in his final days-a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he'd so carefully cultivated-and annotations that provide context to each of the book's images. This work is not just a tribute to Prince, but an original and energizing literary work, full of Prince's ideas and vision, his voice and image, his undying gift to the world. ______________________________________________ 'Prince's voice comes through loud and clear; his personality, joie de vivre and single-mindedness jumping off the page throughout.' CLASSIC POP MAGAZINE 'The Beautiful Ones is for everyone. It's not a read, but an experience, an immersion inside the mind of a musical genius. You are steeped in Prince's images, his words, his essence... The book can be a starting point for a Prince fascination, or a continuation of long-standing admiration. Either way, it will deepen the connection of any reader with the musical icon." USA TODAY 'An affirmation of Prince's Blackness and humanity... Prince writes about his childhood with clarity and poetic flair, effortlessly combining humorous anecdotes with deep self-reflection and musical analysis... Prince is one of us - he just worked to manifest dreams that took him from the North Side of Minneapolis to the Super Bowl.' HUFFPOST 'A compelling curiosity that finds its author orbiting around a few touchingly intimate encounters with his sphinx-like subject ... with passages, lyric sheets and photographs from the Purple One himself' TELEGRAPH, Books of the Year 'Both a pleasure and a surprise ... Prince took the project very seriously, and it shows in the work he delivered. ... It shines an intimate and revealing light on the least-known period of his life' VARIETY 'The Beautiful Ones is a book in pieces, fragments of the ground-breaking autobiography Prince had planned. Pieced together after his death in 2016, it collects his handwritten childhood memoires, superb personal photographs and his chosen co-writer Dan Piepenbring's vivid account of their brief collaboration. Yet remarkably despite the central absence, it still catches something of Prince between the gaps - a trace of perfume, a glance to camera, a first kiss' SUNDAY TIMES, Book of the Year 'This is a beautiful book and a must-have for Prince completists' DAILY EXPRESS 'A ghostly memoir of a pop legend' THE i
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.