Lawrence Gellert has long been a mysterious figure in American folk and blues studies, gaining prominence in the left-wing folk revival of the 1930s for his fieldwork in the U.S. South. A "lean, straggly-haired New Yorker," as Time magazine called him, Gellert was an independent music collector, without formal training, credentials, or affiliation. At a time of institutionalized suppression, he worked to introduce white audiences to a tradition of black musical protest that had been denied and overlooked by prior white collectors. By the folk and blues revival of the 1960s, however, when his work would again seem apt in the context of the civil rights movement, Gellert and his collection of Negro Songs of Protest were a conspicuous absence. A few leading figures in the revival defamed Gellert as a fraud, dismissing his archive of black vernacular protest as a fabrication -- an example of left-wing propaganda and white interference. A Sound History is the story of an individual life, an excavation of African American musical resistance and dominant white historiography, and a cultural history of radical possibility and reversal in the defining middle decades of the U.S. twentieth century.

Originally published in 1968. The author, a well-known contemporary and friend of folklorist Katharine M. Briggs, collected a tremendous store of folk music material over many years and eventually decided to put some of it on permanent record. This book comprises a cross-section of rescued melodies dating back to medieval days and up to the Victorian early ballads. It describes individual folk singers in Somerset in great detail as personal accounts and documents their lyrics and their tunes, which are all together at the end of the volume.

Originally published in 1973. Folk-life and folk-culture, usually the preserve of the scholar, have been brought vividly and entertainingly to life in these recollections and stories of one man's life in the Irish countryside. This book tells the life story of John Maguire, who died in 1975, including over 50 of the songs he sang, with full musical transcriptions. He was a fine singer, firmly within the Irish tradition, and his songs are the record of a people, their history and traditions, their joys and sufferings, their comedies and tragedies. John Maguire's fascinating story, skilfully and unobtrusively collated by Robin Morton, is full of material that will interest singers and students of folksongs. His songs and music will be of value to all those interested in traditional music and song.

Originally published in 1983. Song has always been a natural way to record everyday experiences - an expression of celebration, commiseration, complaint and protest. This innovative book is a study of popular and working-class song combining several approaches to the subject. It is a history of working-class song in Britain which concentrates not simply on the songs and the singers but attempts to locate such song in its cultural context and apply principles of literary criticism to this essentially oral medium. It triggered controversy: some critics castigated its Marxist approach, others enthused that 'such unabashed partisanship amply reveals the outstanding characteristic of Watson's book'. The author discusses the way in which the popular song, from Victorian times onwards, has been forced by the entertainment industry out of its roots in popular culture, to become a blander form of art with minimal critical potential. The book ends by considering the possibilities for a continued flourishing of a genuine popular song culture in an electronic age. It has become a standard title in bibliographies and curricula. Much has changed since 1983, not least in music; but this then innovative book still has a lot to say about popular song in its social and historical context.

Originally published in 1982. The songs on which this study is based were once vibrant in the throats and ears and minds of living people. This book examines the songs and their meanings in relation to the lives of those people, and relates them to the cultural tradition and practice of which they were an integral part. The art of village song represents a sense of cohesiveness and mutual identity around local patterns of kinship, social groupings, territorial orientations and cultural relationships. The actual ways in which songs were part of village life is of course highly problematic, but this book endeavours, most of all, to present an understanding of the place of song in the social life of villagers.

An in-depth study of the Bulgarian harmonic system is long overdue. More than two decades since the Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares choir was awarded a Grammy (1990), there is no scholarly study of the captivating sounds of Bulgarian vertical sonorities. Kalin Kirilov traces the gradual formation of a unique harmonic system that developed in three styles of Bulgarian music: village music from the 1930s to the 1990s, wedding music from the 1970s to 2000, and choral arrangements (obrabotki) - creations of the socialist period (1944-1989), popularized by Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. Kirilov classifies the different approaches to harmony and situates them in their historical and cultural contexts, establishing new systems for analysis. In the process, he introduces a new system for the categorization of scales. Kirilov argues that the ready-made concepts that are frequently forced onto Bulgarian music - 'westernization', 'socialist' or 'Middle Eastern influence', are not only outdated but also too vague to be of use in understanding the sophisticated modal and harmonic systems found in Bulgarian music. As an insider who has performed, composed and arranged this music for 30 years, Kirilov is uniquely qualified to interpret it for an international audience.

A traveling salesman with little formal education, Max Hunter gravitated to song catching and ballad hunting while on business trips in the Ozarks. Hunter recorded nearly 1600 traditional songs by more than 200 singers from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, all the while focused on preserving the music in its unaltered form. Sarah Jane Nelson chronicles Hunter's song collecting adventures alongside portraits of the singers and mentors he met along the way. The guitar-strumming Hunter picked up the recording habit to expand his repertoire but almost immediately embraced the role of song preservationist. Being a local allowed Hunter to merge his native Ozark earthiness with sharp observational skills to connect--often more than once--with his singers. Hunter's own ability to be present added to that sense of connection. Despite his painstaking approach, ballad collecting was also a source of pleasure for Hunter. Ultimately, his dedication to capturing Ozarks song culture in its natural state brought Hunter into contact with people like Vance Randolph, Mary Parler, and non-academic folklorists who shared his values.

Focus: Scottish Traditional Music engages methods from ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural studies, and media studies to explain how complex Scottish identities and culture are constructed in the traditional music and culture of Scotland. This book examines Scottish music through their social and performative contexts, outlining vocal traditions such as lullabies, mining songs, Scottish ballads, herding songs, and protest songs as well as instrumental traditions such as fiddle music, country dances, and informal evening pub sessions. Case studies explore the key ideas in understanding Scotland musically by exploring ethnicity, Britishness, belonging, politics, transmission and performance, positioning the cultural identity of Scotland within the United Kingdom. Visit the author's companion website at http://www.scottishtraditionalmusic.org/ for additional resources.

In the 1970s John Baily conducted extensive ethnomusicological research in Afghanistan, principally in the city of Herat but also in Kabul. Then, with Taraki's coup in 1978, came conflict, war, and the dispersal of many musicians to locations far and wide. This new publication is the culmination of Baily's further research on Afghan music over the 35 years that followed. This took him to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, the USA, Australia and parts of Europe - London, Hamburg and Dublin. Arranged chronologically, the narrative traces the sequence of political events - from 1978, through the Soviet invasion, to the coming of the Taliban and, finally, the aftermath of the US-led invasion in 2001. He examines the effects of the ever-changing situation on the lives and works of Afghan musicians, following individual musicians in fascinating detail. At the heart of his analysis are privileged vignettes of ten musical personalities - some of friends, and some newly discovered. The result is a remarkable personal memoir by an eminent ethnomusicologist known for his deep commitment to Afghanistan, Afghan musicians and Afghan musical culture. John Baily is also an ethnographic filmmaker. Four of his films relating to his research are included on the downloadable resources that accompanies the text.

Originally published in 1980. Song is perhaps the strongest form of traditional culture. Its vigour and energy represent the power of the community from which it springs. This book focuses on traditional singing in two small English villages. It studies in detail an activity which goes to the core of the communal life in any village and demonstrates how song becomes the lifeblood of the traditions of rural life. In many ways traditional singing is highly subversive because its practice is an affirmation of community and a denial of the fragmentation of modern society. The songs sung, those remembered, the singers now dead whose lives are recalled each time an old favourite is performed, all connect the present with the past. The primary aesthetic concern within these singing traditions is that a man should sing, whatever the objective quality of his performance; and a song should tell a good story. The individual singer assumes a special role in performance since he becomes spokesman for a group and gives voice not only to personal but also to social concerns, dynamics and emotions.

Originally published in 1969. Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was thought that England, alone among the European countries, and unlike Scotland and Ireland where collections of ballads and songs had already been published as early as the eighteenth century, had no important native tradition of music. The founding of the (English) Folk-Song Society in 1898, however, and the pioneering work of such collectors as Lucy Broadwood, the Reverend S. Baring-Gould and, later, Cecil Sharp uncovered a still flourishing folk culture. Since then interest in this subject has grown steadily, and the bibliography of publications of actual folk-songs and ballads is now huge. Frank Howes sets out a general and scholarly introduction, first examining in detail the history and origins of folk music and going on to show the nature and vast amount of the material, enforcing his arguments with a wealth of examples from around the world. His discussion of the differences of national idiom leads on to a comparison of British folk music with that of other European countries and America, in which he pays due attention to the Celtic and Norse traditions. Separate sections on balladry, carols, street cries, broadsides, sea shanties, nursery rhymes and instruments illustrate both the variety of folk music and the extent to which it permeates our national heritage.

Originally published in 1994. Filling a gap in the sound recordings of traditional Anglo-American folk music this volume covers both vocal and instrumental material from the 1920s to the 1990s. The listings have also been limited to performers native to the tradition rather than "revival" performers. The album selection is grouped into field recordings and commercial (pre-1942) recordings, with subdivisions into individual recordings or anthologies. The discography not only reflects its author's in-depth knowledge of Anglo-American folk music's historical development but charts a valuable step forward in the evaluation, as well as select lissting, of available sound recordings.

Zoe C. Sherinian shows how Christian Dalits (once known as untouchables or outcastes) in southern India have employed music to protest social oppression and as a vehicle of liberation. Her focus is on the life and theology of a charismatic composer and leader, Reverend J. Theophilus Appavoo, who drew on Tamil folk music to create a distinctive form of indigenized Christian music. Appavoo composed songs and liturgy infused with messages linking Christian theology with critiques of social inequality. Sherinian traces the history of Christian music in India and introduces us to a community of Tamil Dalit Christian villagers, seminary students, activists, and theologians who have been inspired by Appavoo s music to work for social justice. Multimedia components available online include video and audio recordings of musical performances, religious services, and community rituals."

A new approach to the mysterious ballads, and their relationship with the past. Katharine Briggs Award 2018: Runner Up The ballad genre, and its material, are frequently backward-looking in terms of subject and style: it is ideally suited to the reimagining of past events, both real and fictional. This volume addresses the past of the ballad and the past in the ballad. It challenges existing scholarship by embracing discontinuity rather than continuity, seeing the ballad as belonging to a culture of cheap printand imaginative literature rather than the rarefied construct of a mythical "folk". It finds a conscious antiquarianism and medievalism reinterpreting the genre at different stages of its literary history, at the same time as theballad itself is continually adapting to the needs of readers, singers, and audience. Chapters cover the few remaining examples of the medieval ballad, and Thomas Percy's medievalism; David Mallet's "William and Margaret" andthe beginnings of the gothic mode early in the eighteenth century; ballads of "Sir James the Rose" and the culture of cheap print in Scotland from the late eighteenth through to the early twentieth century; shipwreck ballads on the loss of the Ramillies and "Sir Patrick Spens", and the reimagining of the past in the present, with a diversion into Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode"; murder ballads, special providence, and the history of mentalities from earlymodern to Victorian times. DAVID ATKINSON is Honorary Research Fellow at the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen.

Contributions by Tina Bucuvalas, Anna Caraveli, Aydin Chaloupka, Sotirios (Sam) Chianis, Frank Desby, Stavros K. Frangos, Stathis Gauntlett, Joseph G. Graziosi, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Michael G. Kaloyanides, Panayotis League, Roderick Conway Morris, National Endowment for the Arts/National Heritage Fellows, Nick Pappas, Meletios Pouliopoulos, Anthony Shay, David Soffa, Dick Spottswood, Jim Stoynoff, and Anna Lomax Wood Despite a substantial artistic legacy, there has never been a book devoted to Greek music in America until now. Those seeking to learn about this vibrant and exciting music were forced to seek out individual essays, often published in obscure or ephemeral sources. This volume provides a singular platform for understanding the scope, practice, and development of Greek music in America through essays and profiles written by principal scholars in the field. Greece developed a rich variety of traditional, popular, and art music that diasporic Greeks brought with them to America. In Greek American communities, music was and continues to be an essential component of most social activities. Music links the past to the present, the distant to the near, and bonds the community with an embrace of memories and narrative. From 1896 to 1942, more than a thousand Greek recordings in many genres were made in the United States, and thousands more have appeared since then. These encompass not only Greek traditional music from all regions, but also emerging urban genres, stylistic changes, and new songs of social commentary. Greek Music in America includes essays on all of these topics as well as history and genre, places and venues, the recording business, and profiles of individual musicians. This book is required reading for anyone who cares about Greek music in America, whether scholar, fan, or performer.

(Piano Solo Personality). The All Music Guide says that pianist & composer George Winston is "among the earliest and most successful proponents of contemporary instrumental music." Here is the first songbook ever notating his beloved piano pieces. Winston himself chose the songs & cover art, wrote the preface, and approved every note. Features 20 of his most-requested favorites: The Black Stallion * Joy * Longing * Prelude/Carol of the Bells * Thanksgiving * Variations on the Kanon by Pachelbel * and more. Includes a biography, discography, and discussion of chords. First Fully Authorized Songbook Featuring Winston's Esteemed Compositions & Arrangements

When Jimi Hendrix transfixed the crowds of Woodstock with his gripping version of "The Star Spangled Banner," he was building on a foundation reaching back, in part, to the revolutionary guitar playing of Howlin' Wolf and the other great Chicago bluesmen, and to the Delta blues tradition before him. But in its unforgettable introduction, followed by his unaccompanied "talking" guitar passage and inserted calls and responses at key points in the musical narrative, Hendrix's performance of the national anthem also hearkened back to a tradition even older than the blues, a tradition rooted in the rings of dance, drum, and song shared by peoples across Africa.

Bold and original, The Power of Black Music offers a new way of listening to the music of black America, and appreciating its profound contribution to all American music. Striving to break down the barriers that remain between high art and low art, it brilliantly illuminates the centuries-old linkage between the music, myths and rituals of Africa and the continuing evolution and enduring vitality of African-American music. Inspired by the pioneering work of Sterling Stuckey and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author Samuel A. Floyd, Jr, advocates a new critical approach grounded in the forms and traditions of the music itself. He accompanies readers on a fascinating journey from the African ring, through the ring shout's powerful merging of music and dance in the slave culture, to the funeral parade practices of the early new Orleans jazzmen, the bluesmen in the twenties, the beboppers in the forties, and the free jazz, rock, Motown, and concert hall composers of the sixties and beyond. Floyd dismisses the assumption that Africans brought to the United States as slaves took the music of whites in the New World and transformed it through their own performance practices. Instead, he recognizes European influences, while demonstrating how much black music has continued to share with its African counterparts. Floyd maintains that while African Americans may not have direct knowledge of African traditions and myths, they can intuitively recognize links to an authentic African cultural memory. For example, in speaking of his grandfather Omar, who died a slave as a young man, the jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet said, "Inside him he'd got the memory of all the wrong that's been done to my people. That's what the memory is....When a blues is good, that kind of memory just grows up inside it."

Grounding his scholarship and meticulous research in his childhood memories of black folk culture and his own experiences as a musician and listener, Floyd maintains that the memory of Omar and all those who came before and after him remains a driving force in the black music of America, a force with the power to enrich cultures the world over.

.cs7CED571B{text-align: left;text-indent:0pt;padding:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt}.cs5EFED22F{color: #000000;background-color: transparent;font-family: Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; }.csA62DFD6A{color: #000000;background-color: transparent;font-family: Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; }In applying the term folk music to the music they were collecting, early nineteenth-century Swedish folklorists saturated it with the cultural currency of romantic nationalism. These collectors promoted the music as the essence of the rural peasant folk, and thus of the nation; the tradition it represented was ancient, invested with the power of nature itself. Since that time, folk music has retained its symbolic value, while at the same time the national romantic narrative has broken down due to its being politically problematic as well as factually unsustainable. Research that has been done on rural peasant music in the intervening years reveals that it was never particularly ancient nor nationally uniform, nor truly distinguishable from popular or art musics. Swedish Folk Music in the Twenty-First Century: On the Nature of Tradition in a Folkless Nation, by David Kaminsky, examines the struggle of present-day Swedish folk musicians and dancers to maintain the cultural currency of their genre while simultaneously challenging the historical fallacies and ideological agenda upon which that currency was originally based. The notion of Swedish cultural purity once championed by nineteenth-century folklorists has been dismissed by serious scholars and now marks the discourse of the anti-immigrant extreme right, alienating it from the academic-savvy center/left-leaning folk music subculture of today. Kaminsky's study is especially relevant today, given the rise of the anti-immigrant extreme right in Sweden, and their efforts to preserve culturally pure Swedish folk music at the expense of existing multicultural government initiatives.

Taiwan aboriginal song has received extensive media coverage since the launch and settlement of a copyright lawsuit following pop group Enigma's allegedly unauthorized use of Amis voices in the 1996 Olympics hit, Return To Innocence. Taking as her starting point the ripple effects of this case, Shzr Ee Tan explores the relationship of this song culture to contemporary Amis society. She presents Amis song in its multiple manifestations as an ecosystem, symbiotic components of which interact and feed back upon one another in cross-cutting platforms of village life, festival celebration, cultural performance, popular song, art music and Christian hymnody. Tan's investigation hinges upon drawing a conceptual line between ladhiw, the Amis term for 'song' - a word vested with connotations of life-force, tradition, ritual and taboo - and the foreign term of yinyue ('music' - borrowed from Mandarin). This difference forms the basis of how Amis song is (re)constructed through processes of modernization, Christianization and politico-economic change. A single Amis melody, for example, can exist in several guises that are contextually exclusive but functionally mutually-supportive. Thus, a weeding song (ladhiw), which may have lost its traditional context of existence following advancements in farming technology, becomes sustained within a larger ecosystem, finding new life on the interacting platforms of Amis Catholic hymnody, karaoke and tourist shows. The latter genres (collectively, yinyue) may not rely on traditional livelihoods for survival, but thrive on a traditional melody's deeper associations to local memory and idealized Amis identities. While these new and old genres are stylistically separate, they feed into each other and back into themselves - through transforming contexts and cross-referenced memes - in organic and developing cycles of song activity. Drawing from fieldwork conducted from 2000-2010 as well as a background in ethnomusicology and journalism, Tan paints a vivid picture of song culture as an ecosystem in the lives of Amis people.

Based on the author's fieldwork in Ghana with the Asante and Denkyira ntahera trumpeters, this book draws on interviews, field recordings, oral traditions, written accounts, archaeological evidence, transcriptions and linguistic analyses to situate the Asante trumpet tradition in historical culture. There are seven ivory trumpet ensembles in residence at the Asante Manhyia Palace in Kumase, and ivory trumpets are blown at every Akan court. The Asante trumpets, which are made from elephant tusks, are symbols of Asante strength and have an important role in Asante cosmology. Surrogate speech is performed via lipped tones through a tusk in praise of the Asante royal ancestors and the living Asante king. This book contains transcriptions and analyses of surrogate speech texts and their accompanying ensemble songs. When several ensembles play simultaneously as a representation of power, they make staggered entrances, beginning separate songs in order. This results in a simultaneous performance of separate songs. This phenomenon, which Kaminski has termed 'sound-barrage', is an ancient aesthetic, and is performed to protect the kingdom and the ancestors. It is both spiritual and acoustical. This 'sound barrage' is believed to act in the metaphysical world, dispelling evil spirits from court rituals, ancestor venerations, and funerals, for there is a spirit in the sound.

Long an icon of American musical and political life, Pete Seeger has written eloquently in books and for magazines, activist movements, and union newsletters. Although he has never written an autobiography, his life story is nowhere more personally chronicled than in the private writings, documents, and letters stored for decades in his family barn. In "Pete Seeger in His Own Words," we hear directly from Seeger through the widest array of sources letters, notes to himself, published articles, rough drafts, stories, and poetry creating the most intimate picture yet available of Seeger as a musician, an activist, and a family man in his own words and from his own perspective. From letters to his mother written when he was a 13-year-old desiring his first banjo to speculations on the future, this book covers the passions, personalities, and experiences of a lifetime of struggle the pre-WWII labor movement, the Communist Party, Woody Guthrie, the blacklist, the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, the struggle against the war in Vietnam, Bob Dylan, travels around the world, cleaning up the Hudson River, Granny D, Fidel Castro, Bill Clinton, and countless uncelebrated activists with whom Seeger has worked and sung. The portrait that emerges is not a saint, not a martyr, but a flesh-and-blood man, struggling to understand his gift, his time, and his place. Click Here to listen to Pete Seeger's interview on WNYC with Brian Lehrer "Hearing Pete Seeger," Alec Wilkinson's review for "The New Yorker" Culture Desk on Pete Seeger's latest event in Bryant Park. An article by the New Haven Register."

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (1912-67) has had an immense impact on popular culture throughout the world. His folk music brought traditional song from the rural communities of the American southwest to the urban American listener and, through the global influence of American culture, to listeners and musicians alike throughout Europe and the Americas. Similarly, his use of music as a medium of social and political protest has created a new strategy for campaigners in many countries. But Guthrie's music was only one aspect of his multifaceted life. His labour-union activism helped embolden the American working class, and united such distinct groups as the rural poor, the urban proletariat, merchant seamen and military draftees, contributing to the general call for workers' rights during the 1930s and 1940s. As well as penning hundreds of songs (both recorded and unrecorded), Guthrie was also a prolific writer of non-sung prose, writing regularly for the American communist press, producing volumes of autobiographical writings and writing hundreds of letters to family, friends and public figures. Furthermore, beyond music Guthrie also expressed his creative talents through his numerous pen-and-ink sketches, a number of paintings and occasional forays into poetry. This collection provides a rigorous examination of Guthrie's cultural significance and an evaluation of both his contemporary and posthumous impact on American culture and international folk-culture. The volume utilizes the rich resources presented by the Woody Guthrie Foundation.

Bluegrass has found an unlikely home, and avid following, in the Czech Republic. The music's emergence in Central Europe places it within an increasingly global network of communities built around bluegrass activities. Lee Bidgood offers a fascinating study of the Czech bluegrass phenomenon that merges intimate immersion in the music with on-the-ground fieldwork informed by his life as a working musician. Drawing on his own close personal and professional interactions, Bidgood charts how Czech bluegrass put down roots and looks at its performance as a uniquely Czech musical practice. He also reflects on "Americanist" musical projects and the ways Czech musicians use them to construct personal and social identities. Bidgood sees these acts of construction as a response to the Czech Republic's postsocialist environment but also to US cultural prominence within our global mediascape.

Bluegrass has found an unlikely home, and avid following, in the Czech Republic. The music's emergence in Central Europe places it within an increasingly global network of communities built around bluegrass activities. Lee Bidgood offers a fascinating study of the Czech bluegrass phenomenon that merges intimate immersion in the music with on-the-ground fieldwork informed by his life as a working musician. Drawing on his own close personal and professional interactions, Bidgood charts how Czech bluegrass put down roots and looks at its performance as a uniquely Czech musical practice. He also reflects on "Americanist" musical projects and the ways Czech musicians use them to construct personal and social identities. Bidgood sees these acts of construction as a response to the Czech Republic's postsocialist environment but also to US cultural prominence within our global mediascape.

The bata is one of the most important and representative percussion traditions of the people in southwest Nigeria, and is now learnt and performed around the world. In Cuba, their own bata tradition derives from the Yoruba bata from Africa yet has had far more research attention than its African predecessor. Although the bata is one of the oldest known Yoruba drumming traditions, the drum and its unique language are now unfamiliar to many contemporary Yoruba people. Amanda Villepastour provides the first academic study of the bata's communication technology and the elaborate coded spoken language of bata drummers, which they refer to as 'ena bata'. Villepastour explains how the bata drummers' speech encoding method links into universal linguistic properties, unknown to the musicians themselves. The analysis draws the direct links between what is spoken in Yoruba, how Yoruba is transformed in to the coded language (ena), how ena prescribes the drum strokes and, finally, how listeners (and which listeners) extract linguistic meaning from what is drummed. The description and analysis of this unique musical system adds substantially to what is known about bata drumming specifically, Yoruba drumming generally, speech surrogacy in music and coded systems of speaking. This book will appeal not only to ethnomusicologists and anthropologists, but also to linguists, drummers and those interested in African Studies.