Ewan MacColl is one of the outstanding British singers and songwriters of the mid to late 20th century, and his work has been covered by artists including Roberta Flack, Johnny Cash and the Pogues. He was also a committed political activist. For sixty years he was at the cultural forefront of numerous political struggles, producing plays, songs and radio programmes on subjects ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the Poll Tax. A founder-member of Theatre Workshop, MacColl was the famous company's resident dramatist, and his plays earned the admiration of contemporaries including George Bernard Shaw, Sean O, Casey and Hugh MacDiarmid. MacColl lived an energetic and colourful life. authorisation of his collaborator and widow, Peggy Seeger. It charts MacColl's early years, his involvement in the Communist Party, in radical theatre, his pioneering radio programmes, as well as his extensive work in the British folk-revival. Exhaustively researched and energetically written, this is an illuminating account of a major and controversial twentieth-century political artist.

1887. From the Introduction: In the small volume to which these pages are prefixed, an attempt has been made to present such a collection from the lyric wealth of Ireland as would fulfill two distinct important functions-the furnishing to all readers a fairly adequate opportunity of judging Irish character as it is shown in the most self-revealing of all means of expression; and the providing Irish readers with a book that, in its scope and completeness, might take rank on their shelves with Gavan Duffy's Ballad Poetry and the Spirit of the Nation. This twofold aim, ambitious though it be, has been kept steadily in view; every song, ballad, or lyric is by an Irish writer, upon an Irish theme, and clearly Celtic in thought and feeling. Wherever possible it is one, also, that has actually been popular among the peasantry, who have always been the depository of the song, music, and story, that are now finding securer keeping in printed books.

Corridos are ballads particular to Mexican traditions that are used to analyze or recall a particular political, cultural, and natural event important to the communities where they are performed. As part of the cultural memory, many of the most popular corridos express the immigrant experience: exploitation, surveillance, and dehumanization stemming from racism and classism of the host country. The corrido helps Mexican immigrants in the United States to humanize, dignify, and make sense of their transnational experiences as racial minorities.

"Corridos in Migrant Memory" examines the role of corridos in shaping the cultural memories and identities of transnational Mexican groups. These narrative songs, dating from the earliest colonial times, recount the historical circumstances surrounding a model protagonist whose history embodies the everyday experiences and values of the community.

The everyday experiences and cultural expressions of Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants have not found their way into textbooks in Mexico or in the United States. Martha Chew Snchez's study provides a foundation upon which to build an understanding of the corrido.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The rembetika, songs that were sung in the poor quarters of Smyrna, Istanbul and the ports of Greece in the late nineteenth century, and became the popular bouzouki music of the 1930s to 1950s, have many parallels with American blues. Like the blues, the rembetika were the music of outsiders, who developed their own slang and their own forms of expression. Road to Rembetika was the first book in English to attempt a general survey of the world of the 'rembetes' who smoked hashish and danced the passionate introspective zebekiko to release their emotions. The author Gail Holst, an Australian musician and writer who first came to Greece in 1965 and who has continued to perform and write about Greek music ever since, describes her own initiation into the rembetika, outlines its historical and sociological background, its musical characteristics and instrumentation. The second part of the book is a collection of rembetika songs in Greek with the English translation en face. The text is illustrated with photographs of the period, musical examples and original manuscripts of the songs. Although Road to Rembetika was first published many years ago, this revised edition of this now classic book still remains the most vibrant portrayal of this musical genre.

This definitive story of American folk music focuses on how a minority music genre suddenly became the emergent voice of a generation at the end of the Eisenhower years. The book shows how the social issues of early rural folk music were adapted by young people in the late fifties as college students bought guitars and banjos, attended hootenannies, and marched on the Capital for Civil Rights. From Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley" in 1958 to Bob Dylan's electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, folk influenced American culture and eventually became absorbed into popular music. The author also explores how authentic folk is now experiencing a second revival, taking its place in our contemporary fascination with roots music.The first non-academic text to probe the cultural and musical significance of the folk revival of 1958 to 1965. The only historical text on the American folk revival to examine both traditional and popular performers and to provide a thorough analysis of the era's music.First music history text to present a new reading of the American folk revival's development and provide a reinterpretation of the revival's decline.The only text to offer a compact history that exclusively centres on the music, artists, and social panorama of American folk music between 1958 and 1965.

"Ragging It" takes the reader on a lively, historical journey back to the days of vaudeville, fancy women, amusement parks, lynch mobs, saloons, and cabarets--a time when the upbeat music of ragtime was a craze that permeated our culture.

Author H. Loring White, a former history professor, focuses on the vastly contrasting biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Scott Joplin, while showcasing the uniqueness of ragtime--the first popular syncopated music of the masses. In 1900, times began to move more quickly. With citizens no longer isolated on farms, ragtime was eagerly accepted by the world's first generation of popular culture, which also reveled in cakewalks; coon songs; and animal dances, such as the Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, and Bunny Hug. White recounts true stories about show business, political events, the repression of African-Americans, the world's fairs, and the triumphs of technology.

Although ragtime disappeared abruptly in just a few years with the emergence of jazz, White never lets you forget the vital role that ragtime played in the Progressive Era of American culture. With its new and vital interpretation of the Roosevelt era, he will take you back to a lively time in history when everyone was "Ragging It"

In the summer of 1972, a group of young people in Bloomington, Indiana, began a weekly gathering with the purpose of reviving traditional American old-time music and dance. In time, the group became a kind of accidental utopia, a community bound by celebration and deliberately void of structure and authority. In this joyful and engaging book, John Bealle tells the lively history of the Bloomington Old-Time Music and Dance Group how it was formed, how it evolved its unique culture, and how it grew to shape and influence new waves of traditional music and dance. Broader questions about the folk revival movement, social resistance, counter culture, authenticity, and identity intersect this delightful history. More than a story about the people who forged the group or an extraordinary convergence of talent and creativity, Old-Time Music and Dance follows the threads of American folk culture and the social experience generated by this living tradition of music and dance."

This remarkable book recovers three invaluable perspectives, long thought to have been lost, on the culture and music of the Mississippi Delta.

In 1941 and '42 African American scholars from Fisk University--among them the noted composer and musicologist John W. Work, sociologist Lewis Wade Jones, and graduate student Samuel C. Adams, Jr.--joined folklorist Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress on research trips to Coahoma County, Mississippi. Their mission was to explore the musical habits and history of the black community there and "to document adequately the cultural and social backgrounds for music in the community." Among the fruits of the project were the earliest recordings by the legendary blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. The hallmark of the study was to have been a joint publication of its findings by Fisk and the Library of Congress. However, the field notes and manuscripts by the Fisk researchers became lost in Washington. Lomax's own book drawing on the project's findings, "The Land Where the Blues Began," did not appear until 1993, and although it won a National Book Critics Circle Award, it was flawed by a number of historical inaccuracies.

Recently uncovered by author and filmmaker Robert Gordon, the writings, interviews, notes, and musical transcriptions produced by Work, Jones, and Adams in the Coahoma County study now appear in print for the first time. Their work captures, with compelling immediacy, a place, a people, a way of life, and a set of rich musical traditions as they existed sixty years ago. Until the surfacing of these documents, Lomax's perspective was all that was known of the Coahoma County project and its research. Now, at last, the voices of the other contributors can be heard.

Including essays by Bruce Nemerov and Gordon on the careers and contributions of Work, Jones, and Adams, "Lost Delta Found" will become an indispensable historical resource, as marvelously readable as it is enlightening.

Illustrated with photos and more than 160 musical transcriptions.

Choro is a type of Brazilian popular music similar in background to the celebrated Cuban son of Buena Vista Social Club fame. Choro started in Rio de Janeiro as a fusion of African-based rhythms and structures with European instruments and dance forms. In the 20th century, it came to represent social and racial diversity in Brazil and was integrated into mainstream film, radio, and recordings throughout Latin America and Europe. It formed a basis for Brazilian jazz and influenced the music of Heitor Villa Lobos. Today choro is viewed as a type of popular folk/traditional music in its own right. Its history parallels that of race, class, and nationality in Brazil over the last 100 years.

What did young people do for diversion and socialization in communities that banned most dancing and considered the fiddle to be the devil's instrument? The American play party was the fundamentalist's answer. Here the singing was acapella, the dancers followed proscribed steps, and arm and elbow swings would be the only touching.

The play party was a popular form of American folk entertainment that included songs, dances, and sometimes games. Though based upon European and English antecedents, play parties were truly an American phenomenon, first mentioned in print in 1837. The last play parties were performed in the 1950s. Though documented in rural and frontier areas throughout the United States, they seem to have been most popular and lasted the longest in the rural South and Midwest. "Skip to My Lou" and "Pig in a Parlor" are still sung today but without the movements and games.

This is the first book since the 1930s to study this important and little remembered phenomenon of American folk culture. The author interviewed a large number of older Americans, both black and white, who performed play parties as young adults. Many of our parents and grandparents experienced these events, which hearken back to a time when people created their own forms of entertainment. Today play parties are an important source of song and movement material for elementary-school-age children. A songbook of ninety musical examples and lyrics completes the picture of this vanished tradition.

CONTENTS: The Boyne Water Brian O'Linn By Memory Inspired Charming Mary Neal Colleen Rue The Croppy Boy The Cruiskeen Lawn The Dear and Darling Boy Drimmin Dubh Dheelish Garryowen Hannah Healy, the Pride of Howth The Irish Grandmother The Irishman's Farewell to His Country Irish Molly O Jenny from Ballinasloe Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye The Lamentation of Hugh Reynolds Lanigan's Ball A Lay of the Famine Mackenna's Dream The Maid of Cloghroe Molly Muldoon The Native Irishman Nell Flaherty's Drake Protestant Boys The Rakes of Mallow The Shan Van Vocht Shule Aroon The Sorrowful Lamentation of Callaghan, Greally, and Mullen The Star of Slane Tipperary Recruiting Song Trust to Luck The Wearin' O' the Green Willy Reilly

Words and music, in both English and Welsh; this reprint is of the 1884 edition.

This work consists of a list of references in the New York Public Library with regard to the folk music of the American continents. The compiler endeavored to make the material represented in the Library available to its readers and to offer the student a bibliographical basis for the study of American folk music in its various departments. The departments found within are: Canadian; Cowboy; Creole; Eskimo; Indian, North American, not including Mexican; Indian, Central and South American, including Mexican; Latin American; Negro (North American); Negro (Central and South American); United States; with an appendix on musical instruments.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Light Crust Doughboys are one of the most long-lived and musically versatile bands in America. Formed in the early 1930s under the sponsorship of Burrus Mill and Elevator Company of Fort Worth, Texas, with Bob Wills and Milton Brown (the originator of western swing) at the musical helm and future Texas governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel as band manager and emcee, the Doughboys are still going strong in the twenty-first century. Arguably the quintessential Texas band, the Doughboys have performed all the varieties of music that Texans love, including folk and fiddle tunes, cowboy songs, gospel and hymns, commercial country songs and popular ballads, honky-tonk, ragtime and blues, western swing and jazz, minstrel songs, movie hits, and rock 'n' roll.

In this book, Jean Boyd draws on the memories of Marvin "Smokey" Montgomery and other longtime band members and supporters to tell the Light Crust Doughboys story from the band's founding in 1931 through the year 2000. She follows the band's musical evolution and personnel over seven decades, showing how band members and sponsors responded to changes in Texas culture and musical tastes during the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar years. Boyd concludes that the Doughboys' willingness to change with changing times and to try new sounds and fresh musical approaches is the source of their enduring vitality. Historical photographs of the band, an annotated discography of their pre-World War II work, and histories of some of the band's songs round out the volume.

" It is said that Bascom Lamar Lunsford would "cross hell on a rotten rail to get a folk song" -- his Southern highlands folk-song compilations now constitute one of the largest collections of its kind in the Library of Congress -- but he did much more than acquire songs. He preserved and promoted the Appalachian mountain tradition for generations of people, founding in 1928 the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, an annual event that has shaped America's festival movement. Loyal Jones pens a lively biography of a man considered to be Appalachian music royalty. He also includes a "Lunsford Sampler" of ballads, songs, hymns, tales, and anecdotes, plus a discography of his recordings.

Characterized by fast-paced, highly danceable rhythms, Chutney is a fusion of traditional and contemporary Indian and Caribbean influences. With its roots in the OutsHindi folk songs performed at birth and wedding ceremonies, Chutney has recently emerged in contemporary Indian-Caribbean life and has gone largely unrecognized in the body of scholarly literature.

In this volume Tina K. Ramnarine explores the evolution of Chutney and introduces the emerging Indian-Caribbean genre into the arena of scholarly discourse about music. Through analysis of the music, Ramnarine provides insights into social processes, effects of the diasporic settlements, and ways the music operates as a symbol of Indian-Caribbean identity. Some of the Indian elements in Chutney are not traditional, rather they are new ideas incorporated into the construction of the Indian-Caribbean identity. This introduction of new cultural elements is a common occurrence among people who have been transplanted to an unfamiliar geographical and cultural environment.

From the dance halls to the main stage, from small town Texas to the big cities, musica tejana is rapidly becoming known as a rich and vibrant form of American music. The twentieth century has seen Texas Mexican music balance between the traditional and the modern, remaining rooted in Mexico while taking nourishment from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States.

In Tejano Proud, Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., provides a history of the evolution of musica tejana -- its ups and downs and its importance to Mexican Texas culture in the context of Anglo-Mexican relations. He also discusses the more recent development of the Tejano recording industry and the role women have begun to play in an industry long dominated by men.

White-winged schooners once dominated commerce and culture on the Great Lakes, and songs relieved the hours on board, but that way of life and its music ended when steam-driven mechanical boats swept schooners from the inland seas. Ivan H. Walton, late professor of English in the School of Engineering at the University of Michigan, restored the music once heard on schooners of the Great Lakes in Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors. Edited by Joe Grimm, this book gives a firsthand musical picture of how sailors once lived aboard these ships.

Recognizing in the late 1930s, almost too late, that this rich oral tradition was going to the grave along with the last generation of schoonermen, Walton undertook a quest to save the songs of the Great Lakes sailors. Racing time and its ravages, he searched out ancient mariners in lakefront hospitals, hangouts, and watering holes. Walton reconstructed songs from one of the most colorful periods in American history, discovering melodies and lyrics to more than a hundred songs. These songs lightened sailors' labors, bringing them together while they worked hard on deck and filling their idle hours off watch. They sang as they hoisted sails, pumped out the hold, or tramped around the capstan to weigh anchor. They created songs about food, life aboard the ship, the Old Man, and the girls they left behind. They poked fun at other vessels as well as their own. They sang laments to ghost ships lost in the night or ships torn to pieces in the teeth of a gale.

With its stories, lyrics, musical scores by folksinger/historian Lee Murdock, and accompanying CD, Windjammers ensures that sailing chanteys that have not been heard for over one hundredyears can be heard again and again far into the future.

For the past half century, Ralph Emery's incredibly popular radio and television programs have allowed millions to tune into the newest hits and savor their old favorites. Now Ralph combines his unique perspective with an encyclopedic wealth of country lore as he examines the changing face of the music he loves. From Hank Williams, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, and Johnny Cash to Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks, he chronicles the lives and careers of the stars, many of them his close friends. He shows how country music has changed over the years, but also reveals how its eternal themes and timeless melodies have kept this quintessentially American genre alive and well for fans of all ages.

Based on extensive fieldwork and documentary research in China, this book is a chronicle of the musical history of Lijiang County in China's southern Yunnan Province. It focuses on Dongjing music, repertoire borrowed from China's Han ethnic majority by the indigenous Naxi inhabitants of Lijiang County. Used in Confucian worship as well as in secular entertainment, Dongjing music played a key role the Naxi minority's assimilation of Han culture over the last 200 years. Prized for its complexity and elegance, which set it apart from "rough" or "simpler" indigenous Naxi music, Dongjing played an important role in defining social relationships, since proficiency in the music and membership in the Dongjing associations signified high social status and cultural refinement. In addition, there is a strong political component in its examination of the role of indigenous music in the relation of a socialist state to its ethnic minorities.

Rock it Come Over describes the music and lore of slavery from the early sixteenth century through emancipation in 1838 to the mid twentieth century. Lewin explores the role of music in the lives of the slaves as a method of communication, as a form of resistance and subversion, as a repository of oral history and beliefs, and, ultimately, as a means of survival.

The work is based on decades of research into the music sung and played by the working people of Jamaica. Lewin relates the music to traditions that preserve an African way of life, such as Revivalism and its strong heritage of faith and worship. She has a special interest in the Kumina cult and describes in detail the life and beliefs of Kumina queen, Imogene 'Queenie' Kennedy.

Rock it Come Over is the most extensive study of Jamaican folk music yet published. It is also an examination of the roots of that music and a record of the folk heritage that is, in spite of many efforts, rapidly retreating before the pressures of life today.

Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Cool Water are only a couple of the hundreds of songs created by the Sons of the Pioneers, the most famous singing group in the history of Western music. Charter members Roy Rogers (Len Slye), Bob Nolan, Tim Spencer, and brothers Hugh and Karl Farr (two gifted instrumentalists from Texas) developed a unique style of vocal control and harmony that became the group's trademark. During the 1930s and 1940s, the prolific Nolan, along with other members of the Pioneers, composed hundreds of songs, primarily for film appearances. Although Roy Rogers left the group for movie stardom, the Pioneers appeared with the King of the Cowboys in forty-two films. There were one hundred movies appearances in all, including Rio Grande and The Searchers with John Wayne. Alumni of the Pioneers include Pat Brady, Lloyd Perryman, and Ken Curtis Festus of TV's Gunsmoke), and today the Sons of the Pioneers carry on the long tradition of their group in Branson, Missouri.