Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie examines the cultural and political significance of lyrics by beloved songwriter and activist Woodrow Wilson ""Woody"" Guthrie. The text traces how Guthrie documented the history of America's poor and disadvantaged through lyrics about topics as diverse as the Dust Bowl and the poll tax. Divided into chapters covering specific historical topics such as race relations and lynchings, famous outlaws, the Great Depression, and unions, the book takes an in-depth look at how Guthrie manipulated his lyrics to explore pressing issues and to bring greater political and economic awareness to the common people. Incorporating the best of both historical and literary perspectives, Mark Allan Jackson references primary sources including interviews, recordings, drawings, and writings. He includes a variety of materials from the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, and the Woody Guthrie Archives. Many of these have never before been widely available. The result provides new insights into one of America's most intriguing icons. Prophet Singer offers an analysis of the creative impulse behind and ideals expressed in Guthrie's song lyrics. Details from the artist's personal life as well as his interactions with political and artistic movements from the first half of the twentieth century afford readers the opportunity to understand how Guthrie's deepest beliefs influenced and found voice in the lyrics that are now known and loved by millions.

Victorian Songhunters is a pioneering history of the rediscovery of vernacular song-street songs that have entered oral tradition and have been passed from generation to generation-in England during the late Georgian and Victorian eras. In the nineteenth century there were four main types of vernacular song: ballads, folk lyrics, occupational songs, and national songs. The discovery, collecting, editing, and publishing of all four varieties are examined in the book, and over seventy-five selected examples are given for illustrative purposes. Key concepts, such as traditional balladry, broadside balladry, folksong, and national song, are analyzed, as well as the complicated relationship between print and oral tradition and the different methodological approaches to ballad and song editing. Organized chronologically, Victorian Songhunters sketches the history of English song collecting from its beginnings in the mid-seventeenth century; focuses on the work of important individual collectors and editors, such as William Chappell, Francis J. Child, and John Broadwood; examines the growth of regional collecting in various counties throughout England; and demonstrates the considerable efforts of two important Victorian institutions, the Percy Society and its successor, the Ballad Society. The appendixes contain discussions on interpreting songs, an assessment of relevant secondary sources, and a bibliography and alphabetical song list. Author E. David Gregory provides a solid foundation for the scholarly study of balladry and folksong, and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Victorian intellectual and cultural life.

In Music, Postcolonialism, and Gender, Leith Davis studies the construction of Irish national identity from the early eighteenth until the mid-nineteenth centuries, focusing in particular on how texts concerning Irish music, as well as the social settings within which those texts emerged, contributed to the imagining of Ireland as "the Land of Song." Through her considerations of Irish music collections by the Neals, Edward Bunting, and George Petrie; antiquarian tracts and translations by Joseph Cooper Walker, Charlotte Brooke, and James Hardiman; and lyrics and literary works by Sidney Owenson, Thomas Moore, Samuel Lover, and Dion Boucicault, Davis suggests that music served as an ideal means through which to address the ambiguous and ever-changing terms of the colonial relationship between Ireland and England. Davis also explores the gender issues so closely related to the discourses on both music and national identity during the time, and the influence of print culture and consumer capitalism on the representation of Irish music at home and abroad. She argues that the emergence of a mass market for culture reconfigured the gendered ambiguities already inherent in the discourses on Irish music and identity. Davis's book will appeal to scholars within Irish studies, postcolonial studies, gender studies, print culture, new British history, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century studies, and ethnomusicology.

In Music, Postcolonialism, and Gender, Leith Davis studies the construction of Irish national identity from the early eighteenth until the mid-nineteenth centuries, focusing in particular on how texts concerning Irish music, as well as the social settings within which those texts emerged, contributed to the imagining of Ireland as "the Land of Song." Through her considerations of Irish music collections by the Neals, Edward Bunting, and George Petrie; antiquarian tracts and translations by Joseph Cooper Walker, Charlotte Brooke, and James Hardiman; and lyrics and literary works by Sidney Owenson, Thomas Moore, Samuel Lover, and Dion Boucicault, Davis suggests that music served as an ideal means through which to address the ambiguous and ever-changing terms of the colonial relationship between Ireland and England. Davis also explores the gender issues so closely related to the discourses on both music and national identity during the time, and the influence of print culture and consumer capitalism on the representation of Irish music at home and abroad. She argues that the emergence of a mass market for culture reconfigured the gendered ambiguities already inherent in the discourses on Irish music and identity. Davis's book will appeal to scholars within Irish studies, postcolonial studies, gender studies, print culture, new British history, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century studies, and ethnomusicology.

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."

Edith Fowke (1913-1996) was a renowned Canadian folklorist, folk song collector, researcher, writer, and teacher who during her long career recorded nearly two thousand songs. Awarded the Order of Canada in 1978 and named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1983, Fowke's legacy is recognized by folk singers and scholars alike as the most comprehensive work in its field. Producing radio programs for the CBC throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she was responsible for discovering such eminent singers as LaRena Clark, Tom Brandon, and O. J. Abbott. O. J. Abbott was one of Fowke's most prolific singers, as she collected and recorded over 120 of his songs, 66 of them transcribed for this collection. The songs, mostly of Irish origin, were popular among settlers to the Ottawa valley and in the lumber camps of northern Ontario in the late 1800s. Born in England in 1872, Abbott worked throughout Ontario and Quebec in lumber camps before settling in Hull, Quebec. He recorded numerous records for the Folkways label and performed with such folk heroes as The Travellers, Ian and Sylvia, and Pete Seeger. Songs of the North Woods as sung by O.J. Abbott and collected by Edith Fowke includes a detailed musical analysis that outlines the meter, scale, and range of each song, an index that indicates where each song can be found on the original source tapes, and extensive field notes, interviews, and recording details.

(Limelight). With disciplined lyricism and entirely devoid of technical jargon, Bruce Adolphe's book probes into the heart of such matters as the role of memory and imagination in creative expression, the meaning of inspiration, spirituality in music, the challenge of arts education and how music communicates.

The study of 'Celtic' culture has been locked within modern nationalist paradigms, shaped by contemporary media, tourism, and labor migration. Celtic Modern collects critical essays on the global circulation of Celtic music, and the place of music in the construction of Celtic 'Imaginaries'. It provides detailed case studies of the global dimensions of Celtic music in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Brittany, and amongst Diasporas in Canada, the United States and Australia, with specific reference to pipe bands, traditional music education in Edinburgh, the politics of popular/traditional crossover in Ireland, and the Australian bush band phenomenon. Contributors include performer musicians as well as academic writers. Critique necessitates reflexivity, and all of the contributors, active and in many cases professional musicians as well as writers, reflect in their essays on their own contributions to these kind of encounters. Thus, this resource offers an opportunity to reflect critically on some of the insistent 'othering' that has accompanied much cultural production in and on the Celtic World, and that have prohibited serious critical engagement with what are sometimes described as the 'traditional' and 'folk' music of Europe.

The study of 'Celtic' culture has been locked within modern nationalist paradigms, shaped by contemporary media, tourism, and labor migration. Celtic Modern collects critical essays on the global circulation of Celtic music, and the place of music in the construction of Celtic 'Imaginaries'. It provides detailed case studies of the global dimensions of Celtic music in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Brittany, and amongst Diasporas in Canada, the United States and Australia, with specific reference to pipe bands, traditional music education in Edinburgh, the politics of popular/traditional crossover in Ireland, and the Australian bush band phenomenon. Contributors include performer musicians as well as academic writers. Critique necessitates reflexivity, and all of the contributors, active and in many cases professional musicians as well as writers, reflect in their essays on their own contributions to these kind of encounters. Thus, this resource offers an opportunity to reflect critically on some of the insistent 'othering' that has accompanied much cultural production in and on the Celtic World, and that have prohibited serious critical engagement with what are sometimes described as the 'traditional' and 'folk' music of Europe.

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.

The Appalachian dulcimer is one of America's major contributions to world music and folk art. Homemade and handmade, played by people with no formal knowledge of music, this beautiful instrument arrived in the light of the 20th century with virtually no written record. Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions is a first-hand report to enlarge our knowledge of the dulcimer's history by searching the hills and "hollers" of Appalachia, looking at old instruments, and listening to the tales of old folks. After reviewing the instrument's special musical features, the book describes some related instruments, and reveals little-known facts about the dulcimer's origins on the early Appalachian frontier. The book then describes three major design traditions of the dulcimer, each centered in its own geographical area, and focuses on important makers in each of the three traditions-the Melton family of Galax, Virginia, Charles M. Prichard of Huntington, West Virginia, and "Uncle Ed" Thomas of Kentucky. A final chapter describes four Appalachian makers of the folk revival transition, who began making instruments the old-time way and modernized them to meet the needs of Post-World-War-II urban players. The book concludes with listings of dulcimer recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture of the Library of Congress.

The last quarter of the twentieth-century saw a renewed interest in the hammered dulcimer in the United States at the grassroots level as well as from elements of the Folk Revival. This book offers the reader a discussion of the medieval origins of the dulcimer and its subsequent spread under many different names to other parts of the world. Drawing on articles the author has written in English as well as articles by specialists in their own languages, Gifford explains the history and evolution of the instrument. Special attention is paid to the North American tradition from the early 18th-century to the 1970s revival. Drawing from local histories, news clippings, photographs, and interviews, the book examines the playing of the dulcimer and its associated social meanings.

The 1930s and 1940s represented an era in United States history when large groups of citizens took political action in response to their social and economic circumstances. The vision, attitudes, beliefs and purposes of participants before, during, and after this time period played an important part of American cultural history. Richard and JoAnne Reuss expertly capture the personality of this era and the fascinating chronology of events in American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927-1957, a historical analysis of singers, writers, union members and organizers and their connection to left-wing politics and folk music during this revolutionary time period. While scholarship on folk music, history, and politics is not unique in and of itself, Reuss' approach is noteworthy for its folklorist perspective and its long, encompassing assessment of a broad cross-section of participants and their interactions. An innovative and informative look into one of the most evocative and challenging eras in American history, American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927-1957 stands as a historic milestone in this period's scholarship and evolution.

When Walt Whitman published ""Leaves of Grass"" in 1855, he dreamed of inspiring ""a race of singers"" who would celebrate the working class and realize the promise of American democracy. By examining how singers such as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springstein both embraced and reconfigured Whitman's vision, Bryan Garman shows that Whitman succeeded. In doing so, Garman celebrates the triumphs yet also exposes the limitations of Whitman's legacy. While Whitman's verse propounded notions of sexual freedom and renounced the competitiveness of capitalism, it also safeguarded the interests of the white workingman, often at the expense of women and people of colour. Garman describes how each of Whitman's successors adopted the mantle of the working-class hero while adapting the role to his own generation's concerns: Guthrie condemned racism in the 1930s, Dylan addressed race and war in the 1960s and Springstein explored sexism, racism and homophobia in the 1980s and 1990s. But as Garman points out, even the Boss, like his forebears, tends to represent solidarity in terms of white male bonding and homosocial allegiance. We can hear America singing in the voices of these artists, Garman says, but it is still the song of a white, male America.

Over the past two decades, indigenous peoples in the Pacific region have increasingly used and adapted forms of popular music as an expression of their cultural identity. In Australia, Hawai'i, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia this has resulted in new forms of syncretic or 'fusion' musics, such as Aboriginal Rock or 'Jawaiian' Reggae. This anthology provides the first survey of this cultural phenomenon and analyses the cultural politics of various forms of music and the media contexts in which they circulate.

Puerto Rican music in New York is given center stage in Ruth Glasser's original and lucid study. Exploring the relationship between the social history and forms of cultural expression of Puerto Ricans, she focuses on the years between the two world wars. Her material integrates the experiences of the mostly working-class Puerto Rican musicians who struggled to make a living during this period with those of their compatriots and the other ethnic groups with whom they shared the cultural landscape. Through recorded songs and live performances, Puerto Rican musicians were important representatives for the national consciousness of their compatriots on both sides of the ocean. Yet they also played with African-American and white jazz bands, Filipino or Italian-American orchestras, and with other Latinos. Glasser provides an understanding of the way musical subcultures could exist side by side or even as a part of the mainstream, and she demonstrates the complexities of cultural nationalism and cultural authenticity within the very practical realm of commercial music. Illuminating a neglected epoch of Puerto Rican life in America, Glasser shows how ethnic groups settling in the United States had choices that extended beyond either maintenance of their homeland traditions or assimilation into the dominant culture. Her knowledge of musical styles and performance enriches her analysis, and a discography offers a helpful addition to the text.

Since the 1960s historical studies of European folk and traditional music have had a centre in the 'Study Group on Historical Sources of Folk Music' within the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM). The new political situation in Europe in the 1990s has given this work topical interest, since folk and traditional music is often an important component in ethnic or even national identity. The Study Group held its eleventh conference in Copenhagen at the Danish Folklore archives (Dansk Folkemindesamling) from 24 to 28 April 1995. The local organisers of the meeting were Jens Henrik Koudal and Svend Nielsen. Around 30 participants from 15 countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy/Albania, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania and Sweden) attended the conference, presenting recent results of their research. The meeting concentrated on historical aspects of the following topics: (I) 'Traditional Music Between Urban and Rural Communities', and (II) 'Music and Working'. MAIN HEADINGS: Preface; THEME ONE -- Traditional Music Between Urban and Rural Communities; Central Europe; Balkans; On the Borderlines and Outside Europe. THEME TWO -- Music and Working.

In May 1991 the Richard Reuss Memorial Folk Music Conference, the first of its kind, was held at Indiana University in Bloomington. For two days a stellar gathering of folk music performers, scholars, journalists, and activists discussed their memories of the folk music revival in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. These presentations, now substantially revised and published for the first time, give an exciting overview of the revival from a variety of important and stimulating perspectives. Various key performers and folklorists give personal accounts of the time, while Irwin Sibler (editor of Sing Out!) and Jon Pankake and Barry Hansen (editors of The Little Sandy Review) discuss the development and role of the leading folk music magazines. These essays retain the idiosyncrasies of the original presentations, while giving multiple insights and understandings of the folk music revival, a crucial cultural and musical moment in recent U.S. history, as well as racial, gender, and political differences within the revival, popular versus traditional folk music styles, and much more. Scholars and students of folk music and popular music of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as those interested in American popular culture in general, will benefit from these wide-ranging and stimulating essays. Cloth edition [0-8108-2955-X] previously published in 1995.

"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.

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.

..". 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."

Not so long ago, songs by the Andrews Sisters and Lawrence Welk blasted from phonographs, lilted over the radio, and dazzled television viewers across the country. Lending star quality to the ethnic music of Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Jews, and Scandinavians, luminaries like Frankie Yankovic, the Polka King, and 'Whoopee John' Wilfart became household names to millions of Americans. In this vivid and engaging book, Victor Greene uncovers a wonderful corner of American social history as he traces the popularization of old-time ethnic music from the turn of the century to the 1960s. Drawing on newspaper clippings, private collections, ethnic societies, photographs, recordings, and interviews with musicians and promoters, Greene chronicles the emergence of a new mass culture that drew heavily on the vivid color, music, and dance of ethnic communities. In this story of American ethnic music, with its countless entertainers performing never-forgotten tunes in hundreds of small cities around the country, Greene revises our notion of how many Americans experienced cultural life. In the polka belt, extending from Connecticut to Nebraska and from Texas up to Minnesota and the Dakotas, not only were polkas, laendlers, schottisches, and waltzes a musical passion, but they shone a scintillating new light on the American cultural landscape. Greene follows the fortunes of groups like the Gold Chain Bohemians, illuminating the development of an important segment of American popular music that fed the craze for international dance music. And even though old-time music declined in the 1960s, overtaken by rock and roll, a new Grammy for the polka was initiated in 1986. In its ebullience and vitality, the genre endures.

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.

The first book-length study on Cuban music in the English language. This volume consists of thirteen articles written by nine authors, including four Cuban scholars and five North American ethnomusicologists. The articles by Cuban scholars, translated from largely out-of-print publications, constitute a selection of some of the best Cuban research on their island's music, and present a set of perspectives which complement those of the North American authors. The articles cover such areas as descriptions of the Afro-Haitian derived tumba francesa, the traditional Afro-Cuban rumba, and the rural punto, as cultivated by peasants of Hispanic descent; aspects of the music bureaucracy in contemporary Cuba; the American music industry's dissemination of Cuban-derived salsa in New York City; Afro-Cuban cult music; the history and current status of charanga dance bands; and more.