(Waltons Irish Music Books). For over 20 years, Waltons classic ballad books have consistently outsold all others. When they first appeared in 1981, Dan Cohen of Dublin's Evening Herald newspaper wrote: "There are so many fine points to these books that they almost bear indexing." Each volume in this beautifully produced four-volume series is packed with 50 old favorites and modern classics, including songs made famous throughout the world by Mary Black, Christy Moore, The Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers, Paddy Reilly and a host of others. Each book includes charming, hand-tinted period photographs, depicting scenes of Ireland's bygone days. Includes: The Rare Ould Times * Raglan Road * Spancil Hill * Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair * My Cavan Girl * A Bunch of Thyme * The Mountains of Mourne * Easy and Slow * The Irish Rover * Four Green Fields * The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee * Lanigan's Ball * The Rose of Tralee * Teddy O'Neill * I Know My Love * Carrigdhoun * Come Back Paddy Reilly * Easy and Slow * The Sally Gardens * The Rose of Mooncoin * Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore * The Last Rose of Summer * The West's Awake * Boolavogue * Alice Benbolt * and many more.

Hard Rain ranges over thirty years of Bob Dylan's recordings, films, and concerts to deliver astute insights into-and sometimes heretical judgements of-his prodigious corpus of work. This updated edition includes a new epilogue that examines Dylan's thirtieth anniversary celebration in 1992; his albums Good As I Been to You, World Gone Wrong, and Time Out of Mind; his 1997 performance before the Pope; and his 1998 Grammy Award comeback. The result is unparalleled rock criticism.

Texas-Mexican music, or musica tejana, is not one single music but several musical and musico-literary genres, ensembles, and their styles, encompassing the corrido, cancion, and what author Manuel Pena calls the cancion-corrido. Musica tejana also includes two major regional ensembles and their styles-the conjunto and the Texas-Mexican version of the orquesta. A more recent crop of synthesizer-driven ensembles and their styles, known since the mid-eighties as "Tejano," is another representative of musica tejana. Despite their diversity, these various ensembles, genres, and styles share two fundamental characteristics: they are all homegrown, and they all speak after their own fashion to fundamental social processes shaping Texas-Mexican society. As Pena persuasively argues, they represent a transforming cultural economy and its effects on Texas-Mexicans. Pena traces the history of musica tejana from the fandangos and bailes of the nineteenth century through the cancion ranchera and the politically informed corrido to the most recent forms of Tejano music. In the beginning, he argues, musicmaking was a function of "use-value"-its symbolic power linked to the social processes of which it was an organic part. As musica tejana was swept into the commercial market, it added a second, less culturally grounded dimension-"exchange-value"-whereby it came under the culturally weakening influence of the commercial market. Since the 1940s, the music has oscillated between the extremes of use- and exchange-value, though it has never lost its power to speak to issues of identity, difference, and social change. Musica Tejana thus gives not only a detailed overview of musica tejana but also analyzes the social and economic implications of the music. The breadth, depth, and clarity with which Pena has treated this subject make this a most useful text for those interested in ethnomusicology, folklore, ethnic studies, and Mexican American culture. Manuel Pena, who received his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and folklore from the University of Texas, has been a professor of anthropology and music at the University of Texas at Austin and California State University, Fresno. He is the author of The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: History of a Working-Class Music and The Mexican American Orquesta: Music, Culture, and the Dialectic of Conflict.

Samba is Brazil's ""national rhythm"", the symbol of its culture and nationhood. It symbolizes the racial and cultural mixture that, since the 1930s, most Brazilians have come to believe defines their unique national identity. But how did Brazil become ""the Kingdom of Samba"" only a few decades after abolishing slavery in 1888? The author of this book shows that the nationalization of samba actually rested on a long history of relations between different social groups, often working at cross-purposes to one another.

"Winner of the North Carolina Society of Historians Award Jane Hicks Gentry lived her entire life in the remote, mountainous northwest corner of North Carolina and was descended from old Appalachian families in which singing and storytelling were part of everyday life. Gentry took this tradition to heart, and her legacy includes ballads, songs, stories, and riddles. Smith provides a full biography of this vibrant woman and the tradition into which she was born, presenting seventy of Gentry's songs and fifteen of the "Jack" tales she learned from her grandfather. When Englishman Cecil Sharp traveled through the South gathering material for his famous English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, his most generous informant was Jane Hicks Gentry. But despite her importance in Sharp's collection, Gentry has remained only a name on his pages. Now Betty Smith, herself a folksinger, brings to life this remarkable artist and her songs and tales.

From Kumina to Mento, Ska to Rocksteady, Reggae to Dancehall, Roots to Ragga - this is the authentic story of Jamaican popular music, told for the first time by Jamaicans. In Jamaica, Reggae is more than music - it is the nation's main collective emotional outlet and its chief cultural contribution to the world. Reggae Routes examines the ways in which this uniquely popular music expresses the dreams, desires and realities of the Jamaican people, capturing the `glad to be alive' spirit which makes Jamaican music so popular worldwide. Jamaican music can be roughly divided into four eras, each with a distinctive beat - ska, rocksteady, reggae and dancehall. Ska dates from about 1960 to mid-1966, rocksteady from 1966 to 1968, while from 1969 to 1983 reggae was the popular beat. The reggae era had two phases, `early reggae' up to 1974 and `roots reggae' up to 1983. Since 1983, dancehall has been the prevalent sound. The authors describe each stage in the development of the music, identifying the most popular songs and artists, highlighting the significant social, political and economic issues as they affected the musical scene. While they write from a Jamaican perspective, the intended audience is `any person, local or foreign, interested in a intelligent discussion of reggae music and Jamaica.' A unique feature of this book is the inclusion of historical radio charts from 1960 to 1966 and a provocative reggae all-time top 100 chart. Copiously illustrated with period photos, record jackets and a variety of music memorabilia, this is the best book ever written on reggae.

Last Night’s Fun is a sparkling celebration of music and life that is itself a literary performance of the highest order. Ciaran Carson’s inspired jumble of recording history, poetry, tall tales, and polemic captures the sound and vigor of a ruthlessly unsentimental music. Last Night’s Fun is remarkable for its liveliness, honesty, scholarship, and spontaneous joy; certainly there has never been a book about Irish music like this one, and few books ever written anywhere about the experience of music can compare with it..

"I am immensely impressed by the scholarship and painstakingly detailed analysis." George Jellinek

Song by song, this comprehensive study addresses the works of Faure, Chausson, Duparc, and Debussy, four composers who brought to the magnificent poetry of their contemporaries the delicacy, sensitivity, and voluptuousness that characterize French music from 1865 to 1914."

Winner of the Belmont University Prize for Best Book on Country Western Music. Alan Munde and Joe Carr are the best known as superb bluegrass musicians. In this book they demonstrate that they are also good historians, and that they understand the full range of styles generally associated with country music. And better than anyone else so far, they have described and explained the vital contributions made by West Texas musicians to the music of America and the world. Ever since the Amarillo fiddler Eck Robertson inaugurated country music's commercial history with his first recordings in 1922, West Texas musicians have played major innovative roles in the shaping and popularization of the nation's popular music forms. The Beatles emerged from the gritty industrial world of Liverpool, but their musical roots run directly to Buddy Holly and the Texas plains. People who have wondered how such remarkable music talent could emerge from the vast seemingly empty landscape of West Texas need look no farther than this important and compelling book. --Bill C. Malone West Texas music, like the West Texas wind, is hard to describe, but once it blows by, it's hard to forget. This book is a powerful historical documentation of that music and the musicians who brought it to life. I love it --Sonny Curtis It's a wonderful book, and the title says it all. When you grow up with country music, you never stray far from it because a Texan is a Texan is a Texan. --Waylon Jennings. Picker/teachers Joe Carr and Alan Munde have written a wholly delightful, informative book.... --Billboard Magazine

This volume provides coverage of musical styles from around the world, from Havana, Port-au-Prince, Kingston, Budapest, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles to Tokyo. It explores the fusion of immigrant and mainstream cultures displayed in world music, including: rap, jazz, reggae, zouk, bhangra, juju, swamp pop and Puerto Rican Bugalu and Chicano punk.

Duncan McLean traveled from Orkney, Scotland, to Texas in search of the extraordinary mix of jazz, blues, country, and mariachi that is Western Swing. This account of his travels takes in barbed-wire museums, onion festivals, hoe-downs, ghost towns, dead dogs, and ten thousand miles of driving through the Lone Star State. A constant soundtrack of vintage music from bands like the Texas Top Hands, The Lightcrust Doughboys, and the Modern Mountaineers cheers McLean as he tries, with great difficulty, to track down any trace of his greatest heroes: Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

This collection of German songs contains two strains of tradition: the political song and the folk song. It is not always clear where the distinction between the two can be drawn, since many political songs become folk songs due to their popularity, and many folk songs have a clear, emancipatory - and thus political - dimension. But the main criterion for inclusion in this anthology is the popularity a song has enjoyed, either down through the centuries or more recently, in German-speaking or non-German-speaking countries. The addition of scores is another plus, offering an opportunity to recognize the songs musically.

Clinton Heylin has devoted his career to Bob Dylan's work and presents here a comprehensive study of all of Dylan's recording sessions. "A must for rabid fans".--"Seattle Times". photos.

A casebook of interpretations of the ballad The Walled-Up Wife. Some contributors offer competing nationalistic claims concerning the ballad's origins, Ruth Mandel examines gender and power issues in the ballad, and Lyubomira Parpulova-Gribble presents a structuralist interpretation.

"Among the Indians, music envelopes like an atmosphere every religious, tribal, and social ceremony as well as every personal experience. There is not a phase of life that does not find expression in song," wrote Alice C. Fletcher. The famous anthropologist published "A Study of Omaha Indian Music in 1893." With the single exception of an 1882 dissertation, it was the first serious study ever made of American Indian music. And it was the largest collection of non-Occidental music published to date, ninety-two songs, all from a single tribe.

Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, her Omaha coworker and adopted son, divided the songs into three categories: religious ones, to be sung by a certain class either through initiation or inheritance; social ones, involving dances and games, always sung by a group; and ones to be sung singly, including dream songs, love songs, captive songs, prayer songs, death songs, sweat lodge songs, and songs of thanks. John Comfort Fillmore, a professional musician, added a "Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music."

Those interested in a vital aspect of Indian culture will want to own this book, which contains the musical scores as well as the native-language words for the songs.

One day Alice C. Fletcher realized that "unlike my Indian friends, I was an alien, a stranger in my native land." But while living with the Indians and pursuing her ethnological studies she felt that "the plants, the trees, the clouds and all things had become vocal with human hopes, fears, and supplications." This famous statement comes directly from the preface of this book and was later etched on her tombstone. "I have arranged these dances and games with native songs in order that our young people may recognize, enjoy and share in the spirit of the olden life upon this continent," she wrote.
"Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs" is a collection that conveys the pleasure and meaning of music and play and rhythmic movement for American Indians. Many of the activities here described are adapted from ceremonials and sports. Included is a "drama in five dances" celebrating the life of corn. "Calling the Flowers" is an appeal to spirits dwelling underground to join the dancers. Still another dramatic dance, with accompanying songs, petitions clouds to leave the sky. The Festival of Joy, an ancient Omaha ceremony, is centered on a sacred tree. In the second part Indian ball games and games of hazard and guessing are set forth, as well as the popular hoop and javelin game. Fletcher closes with a section on Indian names.

"Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?" presents an oral, musical, and photographic record of the venerable Gullah culture in modern times. With roots stretching back to their slave forebears, the Johns Islanders and their folk traditions are a vital link between black Americans and their African and Caribbean ancestors.

When first published in 1966, this book conveyed islanders' trepidation and jubilation upon the arrival of the civil rights movement to their isolated home. In this edition, which is updated through the late 1980s, the stories and songs of an older day blend with the voices of an empowered younger generation determined to fight the overdevelopment of their land by resort builders.

'The Poetic Genius of my Country...bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of my natal Soil, in my native tongue.' Many of the poems and songs of Robert Burns (1759-96) are familiar to readers the world over: lyrical, acerbic, comic, bawdy, democratic. They include 'To a Mouse', 'John Anderson my Jo', 'A red red Rose', 'Auld lang syne', 'Tam o 'Shanter' and many more, whose vernacular energy and simple beauty have ensured lasting popularity. This generous new selection offers Burns's work as it was first encountered by contemporary readers, presenting the texts in the contexts in which they were originally published. It reproduces the whole of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect published at Kilmarnock in 1786, the volume which made Burns famous; and it reunites a generous selection of songs from The Scots Musical Museum and A Select Collection of Scottish Airs with their full scores. Comprehensive notes describe the circumstances in which other poems and songs found their way into print, both before and after the poet's death. The edition also includes some important letters, and a full glossary to explain Scots words. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, nation building and identity construction in the post-socialist region have been the subject of extensive academic research. The majority of these studies have taken a 'top-down' approach - focusing on the variety of ways in which governments have sought to define the nascent nation states - and in the process have often oversimplified the complex and overlapping processes at play across the region. Drawing on research on the Balkans, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, this book focuses instead on the role of non-traditional, non-politicised and non-elite actors in the construction of identity. Across topics as diverse as school textbooks, turbofolk and home decoration, contributors - each an academic with extensive on-the-ground experience - identify and analyse the ways that individuals living across the post-socialist region redefine identity on a daily basis, often by manipulating and adapting state policy.In the process, Nation Building in the Post-Socialist Region demonstrates the necessity of holistic, trans-national and inter-disciplinary approaches to national identity construction rather than studies limited to a single-state territory. This is important reading for all scholars and policymakers working on the post-socialist region.

Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song is a critical study of MPB (m sica popular brasileira), a term that refers to varieties of urban popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, incorporating samba, Bossa Nova, and new materials.

Twenty-eight folk songs have been recorded in this unique collection of rounds, canons, marching songs, sea chanteys, satirical tunes and love ballads. The book contains historical notes, French lyrics and English Translations.

..". provides a valuable service of not only gathering and presenting from 5,000 song texts a wide variety of ballads with full translation but also placing them all in a succinct historical context extending from the Mexican War to the present." Journal of American Ethnic History

..". a] stunning achievement, not only because it is an intelligent and comprehensive study of Mexican immigrant ballads, but because analysis gives way to, steps aside respectfully for, a multitude of immigrants who sing their experiences of crossing the border into the U.S. with astonishing clarity and historical perspicacity." Western Folklore

"Herrera-Sobek s folk-song collection is impressive, as are her English translations crisp and unstilted." MultiCultural Review

" Herrera-Sobek s] well-written book provides historians, ethnomusicologists, sociologists, and other scholars with a case study that demonstrates how valuable song lyrics can be in their studies. Strongly recommended to humanists and social scientists." Choice

"Supported with photographs, full documentation and other scholarly devices, this is a solid work on an unusual topic." Sing Out

Northward Bound traces Mexican emigration to the United States from 1848 to 1991 through the lyrics of Mexican ballads (corridos) and contemporary popular songs (canciones). These autobiographical songs reflect the relationship between individual experience and the history-making process."

A valuable collection of folk music and lore from the Gullah culture, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands preserves the rich traditions of slave descendants on the barrier islands of Georgia by interweaving their music with descriptions of their language, religious and social customs, and material culture. Collected over a period of nearly twenty-five years by Lydia Parrish, the sixty folk songs and attendant lore included in this book are evidence of antebellum traditions kept alive in the relatively isolated coastal regions of Georgia. Over the years, Parrish won the confidence of many of the African-American singers, not only collecting their songs but also discovering other elements of traditional culture that formed the context of those songs. When it was first published in 1942, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands contained much material that had not previously appeared in print. The songs are grouped in categories, including African survival songs; shout songs; ring-play, dance, and fiddle songs; and religious and work songs. In additions to the lyrics and melodies, Slave Songs includes Lydia Parrish's explanatory notes, character sketches of her informants, anecdotes, and a striking portfolio of photographs. Reproduced in its original oversized format, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands will inform and delight students and scholars of African-American culture and folklore as well as folk music enthusiasts.

This is the story of one of the most important female recording artist of the last 50 years. Joni Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan before busking in the streets and nightclubs of Toronto, Ontario. In 1965, she moved to the U.S. and began touring. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell, with popular songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock," helped define an era and a generation. Mitchell's fifth album, For the Roses, was released in 1972. She then switched labels and began exploring more jazz-influenced melodic ideas, by way of lush pop textures, on 1974's Court and Spark, which featured the radio hits "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris" and became her best-selling album. With roots in visual art, Mitchell has designed most of her own album covers. She describes herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance."

For this collection, Alton Morris selected 243 folksongs gathered in the late 1930s from more than a hundred singers in 49 of Florida's 67 counties. Headnotes identify each song's source and its historical or social context. Among the distinctions of Morris' book are the large proportion of texts attached to transcriptions of the tune to which they were sung and the unusually unbiased nature of his selection procedure. The result is a collection that more truly than most reflects the complete singing traditions of a regional cultural group, in this case Floridians primarily of Anglo-American extraction.