Banjo music possesses a unique power to evoke a bucolic, simpler past. The artisans who build banjos for old-time music stand at an unusual crossroads "asked to meet the modern musician's needs while retaining the nostalgic qualities so fundamental to the banjo's sound and mystique. Richard Jones-Bamman ventures into workshops and old-time music communities to explore how banjo builders practice their art. His interviews and long-time personal immersion in the musical culture shed light on long-overlooked aspects of banjo making. What is the banjo builder's role in the creation of a specific musical community? What techniques go into the styles of instruments they create? Jones-Bamman explores these questions and many others while sharing the ways an inescapable sense of the past undergirds the performance and enjoyment of old-time music. Along the way he reveals how antimodernism remains integral to the music's appeal and its making.

Klezmer is a continually evolving musical tradition that grows out of Eastern European Jewish culture, and its changes reflect Jews' interaction with other groups as well as their shifting relations to their own history. But what happens when, in the klezmer spirit, the performances that go into the making of Jewishness come into contact with those that build different forms of cultural identity? Jonathan Freedman argues that key terms central to the Jewish experience in America, notions like "the immigrant," the "ethnic," and even the "model minority," have worked and continue to intertwine the Jewish-American with the experiences, histories, and imaginative productions of other groups: Latinos, Asians, African Americans, and gays and lesbians, among others.

Freedman traces the twists and turns taken by these various relationships in a number of imaginative arenas: the white-black crossover between jazz and klezmer and its unexpected consequences in Philip Roth's "The Human Stain"; the relationship between Jewishness and queer identity in Tony Kushner's "Angels in America"; contemporary fictions about crypto-Jews in Cuba and the Mexican-American borderland; the connection between Jews and Christian apocalyptic narratives, especially the best-selling "Left Behind" series; the centuries-old cross-referencing of Jewish and Asian American identities; the stories of "new immigrants" spun by contemporary writers like Bharathi Mukherjee, Gish Jen, Lan Samantha Chang, and Gary Shteyngart; and the revisionary relation of these authors to classic Jewish American immigrant narratives by the likes of Henry Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Saul Bellow. By interrogating the fraught andmultidimensional uses to which Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness have been put in shaping the nature and properties of other categories of identity and experience, Freedman offers a richer understanding of racial, ethnic, and sexual categories in America and of the ethnoracial complexities facing the United States in the twenty-first century.

(Music Sales America). Enjoy the stunning evocative melodies of the rich Irish tradition with this special set of classical guitar solos, featuring many traditional harp melodies and dance tunes. The book boasts no less than 27 pieces, many of which are suitable for elementary guitar students. However, also featured are several compositions by the 17th century harpist/composer O'Carolan, which are ideal for more advanced guitarists. An accompanying CD of demonstrations perfectly illustrates the music, providing listeners with a useful guide to Irish phrasing and performance.

In 2015 University Press of Mississippi published Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s by Harry Bolick and Stephen T. Austin to critical acclaim and commercial success. Roughly half of Mississippi's rich, old-time fiddle tradition was documented in that volume and Harry Bolick has spent the intervening years working on this book, its sequel. Beginning with Tony Russell's original mid-1970s fieldwork as a reference, and later working with Russell, Bolick located and transcribed all of the Mississippi 78 rpm string band recordings. Some of the recording artists like the Leake County Revelers, Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers, and Narmour & Smith had been well known in the state. Others, like the Collier Trio, were obscure. This collecting work was followed by many field trips to Mississippi searching for and locating the children and grandchildren of the musicians. Previously unheard recordings and stories, unseen photographs and discoveries of nearly unknown local fiddlers, such as Jabe Dillon, John Gatwood, Claude Kennedy, and Homer Grice, followed. The results are now available in this second, companion volume, Fiddle Tunes from Mississippi: Commercial and Informal Recordings, 1920-2018. Two hundred and seventy musical examples supplement the biographies and photographs of the thirty-five artists documented here. Music comes from commercial recordings and small pressings of 78 rpm, 45 rpm, and LP records; collectors' field recordings; and the musicians' own home tape and disc recordings. Taken together, these two volumes represent a delightfully comprehensive survey of Mississippi's fiddle tunes.

This stellar collection contains banjo tab arrangements of 12 bluegrass/folk songs from this Grammy-winning Album of the Year. Includes: Angel Band * The Big Rock Candy Mountain * Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby * Down to the River to Pray * I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow * I Am Weary (Let Me Rest) * I'll Fly Away * In the Highways (I'll Be Somewhere Working for My Lord) * In the Jailhouse Now * Keep on the Sunny Side * and You Are My Sunshine, plus lyrics and a banjo notation legend.

American folk musicians Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, once musical partners, have had careers which are at once conservative and innovative, imbuing the best of folk traditions with their own powerful style. In The Unbroken Circle, Fred Metting challenges the musical labels that often bind artists as he explores the inspirational sources behind these two men. Cooder was influenced by ragtime-blues, bottleneck gospel blues, Norteno music, as well as epic folk ballads. Mahal surrounded himself with Afro-Caribbean music, Chicago blues and Hawaiian music. Both of these artists created a collage from these sources, resisting categories and always driving for the emotional center of the musical experience. Metting traces the parallels between the two, in their careers and their musical backgrounds. He demonstrates how American music transcends classification, finding definition in its very fluidity. The result of a study such as this is not only a respect for the earlier musical sources, but also a desire to continue the tradition of adaptation and change. The Unbroken Circle is a book well-suited for music students, American folklorists, and fans of the musicians profiled.

A new edition of a work equally useful to the student of music and the lover of music.

Other people locked themselves away and hid from their demons. Townes flung open his door and said 'Come on in.' So writes Harold Eggers Townes Van Zandt's longtime road manager and producer in EMy Years with Townes Van Zandt: Music Genius and RageE a a gripping memoir revealing the inner core of an enigmatic troubadour whose deeply poetic music was a source of inspiration and healing for millions but was for himself a torment struggling for dominance among myriad personal demons.THTownes Van Zandt often stated that his main musical mission was to write the perfect song that would save someone's life. However his life was a work in progress he was constantly struggling to shape and comprehend. Eggers says of his close friend and business partner that like the master song craftsman he was he was never truly satisfied with the final product but always kept giving it one more shot one extra tweak one last effort. THA vivid firsthand account exploring the source of the singer's prodigious talent widespread influence and relentless path toward self-destruction EMy Years with Townes Van ZandtE presents the truth of that all-consuming artistic journey told by a close friend watching it unfold.

Klezmer is a continually evolving musical tradition that grows out of Eastern European Jewish culture, and its changes reflect Jews' interaction with other groups as well as their shifting relations to their own history. But what happens when, in the klezmer spirit, the performances that go into the making of Jewishness come into contact with those that build different forms of cultural identity?

Jonathan Freedman argues that terms central to the Jewish experience in America, notions like "the immigrant," the "ethnic," and even the "model minority," have worked and continue to intertwine the Jewish-American with the experiences, histories, and imaginative productions of Latinos, Asians, African Americans, and gays and lesbians, among others. He traces these relationships in a number of arenas: the crossover between jazz and klezmer and its consequences in Philip Roth's "The Human Stain"; the relationship between Jewishness and queer identity in Tony Kushner's "Angels in America"; fictions concerning crypto-Jews in Cuba and the Mexican-American borderland; the connection between Jews and Christian apocalyptic narratives; stories of "new immigrants" by Bharathi Mukherjee, Gish Jen, Lan Samantha Chang, and Gary Shteyngart; and the revisionary relation of these authors to the classic Jewish American immigrant narratives of Henry Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Saul Bellow. By interrogating the fraught and multidimensional uses of Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness, Freedman deepens our understanding of ethnoracial complexities.

Attended by tens of thousands of people each August, it's the longest continually running folk festival in America. These pages capture 55 years of its beloved, creatively charged atmosphere. Over 800 photos from 1962 to today feature the more than 825 performers and bands who have taken the stage, including Jackson Browne, Roseanne Cash, Judy Collins, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Arlo Guthrie, Janis Ian, Odetta, the Tuva Throat Singers, and Doc Watson. Enjoy stories of how the festival began, and the unusual and unique experiences that seem to transpire only at Festival. Revisit traditions like the creatively-constructed campground compounds, the Dulcimer Grove hammocks and kids' activities, and the origins of the "Smiling Banjo" logo. Whether you are a regular or haven't visited yet, learn why so many say of the Fest, "This is my home."

Despite its isolation on the western edge of Europe, Ireland occupies vast amounts of space on the music maps of the world. Although deeply rooted in time and place, Irish songs, dances and instrumental traditions have a history of global travel that span the centuries. Whether carried by exiles, or distributed by commercial networks, Irish traditional music is one of the most popular World Music genres, while Clare, on Ireland's Atlantic seaboard, enjoys unrivaled status as a "Home of the Music," a mecca for tourists and aficionados eager to enjoy the authentic sounds of Ireland. For the first time, this remarkable soundscape is explored by an insider-a fourth generation Clare concertina player, uilleann piper and an internationally recognized authority on Irish traditional music. Entrusted with the testimonies, tune lore, and historic field recordings of Clare performers, Gearoid O hAllmhurain reveals why this ancient place is a site of musical pilgrimage and how it absorbed the impact of global cultural flows for centuries. These flows brought musical change inwards, while simultaneously facilitating outflows of musical change to the world beyond - in more recent times, through the music of Clare stars like Martin Hayes and the Kilfenora Ceili Band. Placing the testimony of music and music makers at the center of Irish cultural history and working from a palette of disciplines, Flowing Tides explores an Irish soundscape undergoing radical change in the period from the Napoleonic Wars to the Great Famine, from the birth of the nation state to the meteoric rise-and fall-of the Celtic Tiger. It is essential reading for all interested in Irish/Celtic music and culture.

'Shirley is a time traveller, a conduit for essential human aches, one of the greatest artists who ever lived' Stewart Lee 'Without doubt one of England's greatest cultural treasures' Billy Bragg In America Over the Water, celebrated English folksinger Shirley Collins offers an affecting account of her year-long stint as assistant to legendary musical historian and folklorist Alan Lomax. Together, they travelled to Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Georgia, discovering Mississippi Fred McDowell and many others, in their tireless work to uncover the traditional music of America's heartland. Blending the personal story of Shirley Collins' relationship with Lomax and offering a unique first-hand account of a country on the brink of the civil rights era, America Over the Water cuts right to the heart of the blues in a fascinating account of Collins' and Lomax's ground-breaking journey across the southern states of the USA to record the music that started it all. Originally published over fifteen years ago, this definitive edition includes a new introduction by Shirley Collins.

World-class luthier and renowned guitarist Wayne Henderson calls Albert Hash "a real folk hero." A virtuoso fiddler from the Blue Ridge, Hash built more than 300 fiddles in his lifetime, recorded numerous times with a variety of bands and inspired countless instrument makers and musicians in the mountains of rural Southwest Virginia near the North Carolina border. His biography is the story of a resourceful, humble man who dedicated his life to his art, community and Appalachian musical heritage.

Patrick 'Paddy' Reilly is an Irish folk singer and guitarist. Born in Rathcoole, County Dublin, he is one of Ireland's most famous balladeers and is best known for his renditions of "The Fields of Athenry", "Rose of Allendale" and "The Town I Loved So Well". Reilly released his version of "The Fields of Athenry" as a single in 1983; it was the most successful version of this song, remaining in the Irish charts for 72 weeks. After years a solo performer, he joined The Dubliners in 1996 as a replacement for long-time member Ronnie Drew. He played with the group for nine years before leaving for New York City. In this memoir, Paddy is gracious and generous about sharing his memories, good and bad, with the readers who have helped make him Ireland's best loved balladeer for almost 60 years.

A musical genre forever outside the lines With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward's Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories that are at the heart of Americana. At base a hybrid of rock and country, Americana is also infused with folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and other types of roots music. Performers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Gram Parsons used these ingredients to create influential music that took well-established genres down exciting new roads. The name Americana was coined in the 1990s to describe similarly inclined artists like Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Wilco. Today, Brandi Carlile and I'm With Her are among the musicians carrying the genre into the twenty-first century. Essential and engaging, Americanaland chronicles the evolution and resonance of this ever-changing amalgam of American music. Margie Greve's hand-embroidered color portraits offer a portfolio of the pioneers and contemporary practitioners of Americana.

This definitive work on the contribution of the Gypsies to the development of flamenco traces their influences on music from their long migration from India, through Iran, Turkey, Greece, and Hungary, to their persecution in Spain. This new updated edition provides fuller explanations of some of the technical terms and an invaluable biographical dictionary of 200 of the foremost Gypsy flamenco artists from its origins to the present day, as well as a discography and videography.

From the plaintive tunes of woe sung by exiled kings and queens of Africa to the spirited worksongs and "shouts" of freedmen, enslaved people created expansive forms of music from the United States to the West Indies and South America. Dena J. Epstein's classic work traces the course of early black folk music in all its guises. Anchored by groundbreaking scholarship, it redefined the study of black music in the slavery era by presenting the little-known development of black folk music in the United States. Her findings include the use of drums, the banjo, and other instruments originating in Africa; a wealth of eyewitness accounts and illustrations; in-depth look at a wide range of topics; and a collection of musical examples. This edition offers an author's preface that looks back on the twenty-five years of changes in scholarship that followed the book's original publication.

The classical music of India, its history, instruments, musicians, and theory are thoroughly discussed in this copiously illustrated reference.

Pipers takes the reader inside the world of the performer community of Scottish piping, introducing the instrument itself and the various different repertories. It also discusses piping techniques as well as information on some of the great piping dynasties and individual pipers. Dr Willie Donaldson shows how 'traditional music', often assumed to be the anonymous product of a dim and distant past, is the creation of gifted individuals operating in a sophisticated and vigorously ongoing enterprise. Since pipers have often been skilled also on the fiddle, keyboards and small-pipes, or as singers or dancers, their story offers fascinating insights into the whole traditional music and song repertoire of Scotland. Pipers is a well-informed and highly readable account by a prize-winning author who is a piper and composer of pipe music as well as an internationally recognised historian of Scottish tradition.