"Calypsonians have long been the voice of the people, delivering the complaints, criticisms and even the solutions to political leaders. In its earliest manifestations, calypso music emerged in response to a cultural climate that demanded creative modes of expression that could both resist and record political and historical changes taking place in Trinidad and Tobago. Since the 1920s and 1930s, calypsonians typically have composed songs that chronicle their observations and opinions on current events focusing on specific occurrences, from local scandals to current affairs while also examining broader trends. Not only has calypso served as an unofficial record of historical events, it emerged as a cultural weapon that yielded tremendous sway within the general audiences of the Caribbean region. This collection includes contributions from calypsonians, critics, novelists and poets alike, all engaged in representing Caribbean culture in its myriad forms. It represents an array of convergences across critical perspectives, political and social agendas, generations and national boundaries. The work of numerous calypsonians and other singers are explored, including Sparrow; Kitchener; Chalkdust; Denise Belfon; and writers such as Samuel Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Errol John, Paul Marshall, Earl Lovelace and Lashkmi Persaud. The comparative analyses provide an interdisciplinary approach to Cultural Studies making the volume essential reading for students, scholars and calypso enthusiasts. "

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.

(Waltons Irish Music Books). Twenty famous Irish songs and ballads in easy arrangements for piano, voice and guitar are included in this collection. Songs include: A Bunch of Thyme * Carrickfergus * Cockles and Mussels * Connemara Cradle Song * Danny Boy (Londonderry Air) * I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen * The Last Rose of Summer * Matt Hyland * The Sally Gardens * Slievenamon * Spancil Hill * The Spinning Wheel * The Black Velvet Band * The Jug of Punch * The Lark in the Clear Air * The Mountains of Mourne * The Old Woman from Wexford * The Rising of the Moon * and more.

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

"We have in this book a Rosetta stone for mediating, or translating, African musical behavior and aesthetics."--Andrew Tracey, "African Music"
"John Miller Chernoff, who spent 10 years studying African drumming, has a flair for descriptive writing, and his first-person narratives should be easily understood by any reader, while ringing unmistakably true for the reader who has also been to West Africa."--Roderick Knight, "Washington Post Book World"
"Ethnomusicologists must be proud that their discipline has produced a book that will, beyond doubt, rank as a classic of African studies."--Peter Fryer, "Research in Literatures"
"A marvelous book. . . . Not many scholars will ever be able to achieve the kind of synthesis of 'doing' and 'writing about' their subject matter that Chernoff has achieved, but he has given us an excellent illustration of what is possible."--Chet Creider, "Culture"
"Chernoff develops a brilliant and penetrating musicological essay that is, at the same time, an intensely personal and even touching account of musical and cultural discovery that anyone with an interest in Africa can and should read. . . . No other writing comes close to approaching Chernoff's ability to convey a feeling of how African music 'works'"--James Koetting, "Africana Journal"
"Four stars. One of the few books I know of that talks of the political, social, and spiritual meanings of music. I was moved. It was so nice I read it twice."--David Byrne of "Talking Heads"
The companion cassette tape has 44 examples of the music discussed in the book. It consists of field recordings illustrating cross-rhythms, multiple meters, call and response forms, etc.

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.

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.

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

The song "John Henry," perhaps America's greatest folk ballad, is about an African-American steel driver who raced and beat a steam drill, dying "with his hammer in his hand" from the effort. Most singers and historians believe John Henry was a real person, not a fictitious one, and that his story took place in West Virginia-though other places have been proposed. John Garst argues convincingly that it took place near Dunnavant, Alabama, in 1887. The author's reconstruction, based on contemporaneous evidence and subsequent research, uncovers a fascinating story that supports the Dunnavant location and provides new insights. Beyond John Henry, readers will discover the lives and work of his people: Black and white singers; his "captain," contractor Frederick Dabney; C. C. Spencer, the most credible eyewitness; John Henry's wife; the blind singer W. T. Blankenship, who printed the first broadside of the ballad; and later scholars who studied John Henry. The book includes analyses of the song's numerous iterations, several previously unpublished illustrations and a foreword by folklorist Art Rosenbaum.

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.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of British musicians rediscovered traditional folk ballads, fusing the old melodies with rock, jazz, and blues styles to create a new genre dubbed "electric folk" or "British folk rock." This revival featured groups such as Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, and Pentangle and individual performers like Shirley & Dolly Collins, and Richard Thompson. While making music in multiple styles, they had one thing in common: they were all based on traditional English song and dance material. These new arrangements of an old repertoire created a unique musical voice within the popular mainstream. After reasonable commercial success, peaking with Steeleye Span's Top 10 album All Around My Hat, Electric Folk disappeared from mainstream notice in the late 1970s, yet performers continue to create today.
In Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music, Britta Sweers provides an illuminating history and fascinating analysis of the unique features of the electric folk scene, exploring its musical styles and cultural implications. Drawing on rare historical sources, contemporary music journalism, and first-hand interviews with several of electric folk's most prominent artists, Sweers argues that electric folk is both a result of the American folk revival of the early 1960s and a reaction against the dominance of American pop music abroad. Young British "folk-rockers," such as Richard Thompson and Maddy Prior, turned to traditional musical material as a means of asserting their British cultural identity. Yet, unlike many American and British folk revivalists, they were not as interested in the "purity" of folk ballads as in the music's potential for lively interaction with modern styles, instruments, and media. The book also delves into the impact of the British folk rock movement on mainstream pop, American rock music, and neighboring European countries.
Ultimately, Sweers creates a richly detailed portrait of the electric folk scene--as cultural phenomenon, commercial entity, and performance style.

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.

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

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.

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.

Contemporary klezmer music is a rapidly expanding revival of repertories and styles used by old-time professional musical entertainers in Jewish Eastern Europe. Fiddler on the Move, a volume in the American Musicspheres series edited by Mark Slobin, is an attempt to position klezmer within American music studies, cultural studies, and ethnomusicology. Rather than present a chronology or a comprehensive survey, the author suggests how a variety of methods of research and angles of vision can help make sense of the higly diverse activities found under the klezmer umbrella. This book is accompanied by a CD of recorded examples.