This is the first complete publication of the late composer and scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger's major work on American folksongs. It preserves them as well as demonstrates how they should be played so that they remain a living partof the American musical tradition. This is the first publication of an annotated monograph by the noted composer and folksong scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger. Originally written as a foreword for the 1940 book Our Singing Country, it was considered too longand was replaced by a much shorter version. According to her stepson, Pete Seeger, when the original was not included "Ruth suffered one of the biggest disappointments of the last ten years of her life. It just killed her . . .She was trying to analyze the whole style and problem of performing this music." Along with her children Mike and Peggy Seeger, he has long desired to see this work in print as it was meant to be read. The manuscript hasbeen edited from several varying sources by Larry Polansky, with the assistance of Seeger's biographer Judith Tick. It is divided into two sections: I. "A Note on Transcription" and II. "Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing." Seeger examines all aspects of the relationship between singer, song, notation, the eventual performer, and the transcriber. In Section I, Seeger develops a complex and well-organized system of notation for these songs which is meant to be both descritive [transcription as cultural preservation] and prescriptive [she intended that others would be able to perform these songs]. In Section II, she provides an interpretive theory for performance of this music, and suggests how performers might make the songs "their own" through a deep knowledge of the original styles. Ruth Crawford Seeger considered this work to be both a major accomplishment and a central statement of herownideas on the topic. Larry Polansky is Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, and a well-known composer and theorist on American music. Judith Tick is Professor of Music at Northeastern University and author of the first major biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger.

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

Since the 1980s, musicians and audiences in Athens have been rediscovering musical traditions associated with the Ottoman period of Greek history. The result of this revivalist movement has been the urban musical style of 'paradosiaka' ('traditional'). Drawing from a varied repertoire that includes Turkish art music and folk and popular musics of Greece and Turkey, and identified by the use of instruments which previously had little or no performing tradition in Greece, paradosiaka has had to define itself by negotiating contrastive tendencies towards differentiation and a certain degree of overlapping in relation to a range of indigenous Greek musics. This monograph explores paradosiaka as a musical style and as a field of discourse, seeking to understand the relation between sound and meanings constructed through sound. It draws on interviews, commercial recordings, written musical discourse, and the author's own experience as a practising paradosiaka musician. Some main themes discussed in the book are the migration of instruments from Turkey to Greece; the process of 'indigenization' whereby paradosiaka was imbued with local meanings and aesthetic value; the accommodation of the style within official and popular discourses of 'Greekness'; its prophetic role in the rapprochement of Greek culture with modern Turkey and with suppressed aspects of the Greek Ottoman legacy; as well as the varied worldviews and current musical dilemmas of individual practitioners in the context of professionalization, commercialization, and the intensification of cross-cultural contact. The text is richly illustrated with transcriptions, illustrations and includes downloadable resources. The book makes a valuable contribution to ethnomusicology, cultural studies, as well as to the study of the Balkans and the Mediterranean.

This unique volume is the only book solely about antebellum American fiddling. It includes more than 250 easy-to-read and clearly notated fiddle tunes alongside biographies of fiddlers and careful analysis of their personal tune collections. The reader learns what the tunes of the day were, what the fiddlers' lives were like, and as much as can be discovered about how fiddling sounded then. Personal histories and tunes' biographies offer an accessible window on a fascinating period, on decades of growth and change, and on rich cultural history made audible. In the decades before the Civil War, American fiddling thrived mostly in oral tradition, but some fiddlers also wrote down versions of their tunes. This overlap between oral and written traditions reveals much about the sounds and social contexts of fiddling at that time. In the early 1800s, aspiring young violinists maintained manuscript collections of tunes they intended to learn. These books contained notations of oral-tradition dance tunes - many of them melodies that predated and would survive this era - plus plenty of song melodies and marches. Chris Goertzen takes us into the lives and repertoires of two such young men, Arthur McArthur and Philander Seward. Later, in the 1830s to 1850s, music publications grew in size and shrunk in cost, so fewer musicians kept personal manuscript collections. But a pair of energetic musicians did. Goertzen tells the stories of two remarkable violinist/fiddlers who wrote down many hundreds of tunes and whose notations of those tunes are wonderfully detailed, Charles M. Cobb and William Sidney Mount. Goertzen closes by examining particularly problematic collections. He takes a fresh look at George Knauff's Virginia Reels and presents and analyzes an amateur musician's own questionable but valuable transcriptions of his grandfather's fiddling, which reaches back to antebellum western Virginia.

Building on his 2006 book, Which Side Are You On?, Dick Weissman's A New History of American and Canadian Folk Music presents a provocative discussion of the history, evolution, and current status of folk music in the United States and Canada. North American folk music achieved a high level of popular acceptance in the late 1950s. When it was replaced by various forms of rock music, it became a more specialized musical niche, fragmenting into a proliferation of musical styles. In the pop-folk revival of the 1960s, artists were celebrated or rejected for popularizing the music to a mass audience. In particular the music seemed to embrace a quest for authenticity, which has led to endless explorations of what is or is not faithful to the original concept of traditional music. This book examines the history of folk music into the 21st century and how it evolved from an agrarian style as it became increasingly urbanized. Scholar-performer Dick Weissman, himself a veteran of the popularization wars, is uniquely qualified to examine the many controversies and musical evolutions of the music, including a detailed discussion of the quest for authenticity, and how various musicians, critics, and fans have defined that pursuit.

This book contains not only more than 400 sea shanties but as much of their history as Stan Hugill could collect in his extraordinary career as sailor, scholar, author, artist, and inspiration to new generations of sea-music enthusiasts and performers.

for SATBarBarB unaccompanied Chilcott's arrangement of the popular American folksong Shenandoah is atmospheric and expressive, with the traditional melody moving seamlessly between voice parts and resting on a cushion of rich harmonies. Shenandoah has been recorded by The King's Singers on the album GOLD (Signum, SIGCD500).

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

Named one of New York Times Top-20 Cookbooks of 2006. Have you ever wanted to host a full evening of Indian food, culture, and music? How about preparing a traditional Balinese banquet? Or take a trip to Cairo and enjoy an Egyptian feast? The Ethnomusicologists' Cookbook takes you around the world on a culinary journey that is also a cultural and social odyssey. Many cookbooks offer a snapshot of individual recipes from different parts of the world, but do nothing to tell the reader how different foods are presented together, or how to relate these foods to other cultural practices. For years, ethnomusicologists have visited the four corners of the earth to collect the music and culture of native peoples, from Africa to the Azores, from Zanzibar to New Zealand. Along the way, they've observed how music is an integral part of social interaction, particularly when it's time for a lavish banquet or celebration. Foodways and cultural expression are not separate; this book emphasizes this connection through offering over thirty-five complete meals, from appetizers to entrees to side dishes to desserts and drinks. A list of recommended CDs fills out the culinary experience, along with hints on how to present each dish and to organize the overall meal. The Ethnomusicologists' Cookbook combines scholarship with a unique and fun approach to the study of the world's foods, musics, and cultures. More than just a cookbook, it is an excellent companion for anyone embarking on a cultural-culinary journey.

Identifying the roots of African American spirituals and other religious folk music has intrigued academics, hymnologists and song leaders since this genre came to the public eye in 1867. The conversation on origins has waned and waxed for over eighty years, sometimes polemical, sometimes compromising. They Bear Acquaintance looks at this discussion through the output of various well-regarded researchers from the twentieth century. The effects of cultural distinctions, immigration patterns and class structure have all left their imprint on the anatomy of the music. No one living has ever heard a spiritual performed in an authentic setting, so misconceptions abound. Pre-dating the American Civil War and achieving global attention in the Civil Rights movement, the spirituals soften the edges of difficult situations, and speak gently, yet poignantly, to human struggles. The book also pinpoints new material from a wide range of sources in the twenty-first century that will preserve and affirm this music for many years to come.

Cuban music is recognized unanimously as a major historical force behind Latin American popular music, and as an important player in the development of US popular music and jazz. However, the music produced on the island after the Revolution in 1959 has been largely overlooked and overshadowed by the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon. The Revolution created the conditions for the birth of a type of highly sophisticated popular music, which has grown relatively free from market pressures. These conditions premised the new importance attained by Afro-Cuban dance music during the 1990s, when the island entered a period of deep economic and social crisis that has shaken Revolutionary institutions from their foundations. Vincenzo Perna investigates the role of black popular music in post-Revolutionary Cuba, and in the 1990s in particular. The emergence of timba is analysed as a distinctively new style of Afro-Cuban dance music. The controversial role of Afro-Cuban working class culture is highlighted, showing how this has resisted co-optation into a unified, pacified vision of national culture, and built musical bridges with the transnational black diaspora. Musically, timba represents an innovative fusion of previous popular and folkloric Afro-Cuban styles with elements of hip-hop and other African-American styles like jazz, funk and salsa. Timba articulates a black urban youth subculture with distinctive visual and choreographic codes. With its abrasive commentaries on issues such as race, consumer culture, tourism, prostitution and its connections to the underworld, timba demonstrates at the 'street level' many of the contradictions of contemporary Cuban society. After repeatedly colliding with official discourses, timba has eventually met with institutional repression. This book will appeal not only to ethnomusicologists and those working on popular music studies, but also to those working in the areas of cultural and Black studies, anthropology, Latin American studies, Cuban studies and Caribbean studies.

Alan Lomax is a legendary figure in American folk music circles. Although he published many books, hundreds of recordings and dozens of films, his contributions to popular and academic journals have never been collected. This collection of writings, introduced by Lomax's daughter Anna, reintroduces these essential writings. Drawing on the Lomax Archives in New York, this book brings together articles from the 30s onwards. It is divided into four sections, each capturing a distinct period in the development of Lomax's life and career: the original years as a collector and promoter; the period from 1950-58 when Lomax was recording thorughout Europe; the folk music revival years; and finally his work in academia.

This book presents 60 of the very best madrigals for SATB, chosen from the many hundreds of possible candidates. The major composers of the genre are each represented by several madrigals and the lesser figures by one or more.

A third collection of 50 carols, mostly for SATB, some unaccompanied, and some having accompaniments for piano or organ or orchestra. The carols reflect a diversity of styles and periods, while remaining within the capacity of an average group of amateur performers. Includes compositions and arrangements by Britten, Holst, Howells, Hurford, Vaughan Williams, and Walton.
Orchestral and brass accompaniments for many of the items are available on hire.

During the 1990s, Asian pop artists began entering the mainstream of the British music industry for the first time. Bands such as Black Star Liner, Cornershop, Fun Da Mental and Voodoo Queens, led those within and without the industry to start asking questions such as what did it mean to be Asian? How did the bands' Asian background affect their music? What did their music say about Asians in Britain? In this book, Rehan Hyder draws on in-depth interviews with musicians from these bands and with critics and record producers, to examine the pressures associated with making music as a young Asian in today's multi-ethnic Britain. As the book reveals, these musicians wish to convey an authentic sense of creativity in their music, while at the same time wanting to assert a positive ethnic identity. Hyder explores these two impulses against the backdrop of a music industry and a society at large that hold a range of confining stereotypes about what it means to be Asian. The experiences of these bands add considerably to the wider debate about the nature of identity in the contemporary world.

In 1968, the 19 year-old Nick Drake had everything to live for. The product of a loving, creative family and a privileged background, he was not only a handsome and popular Cambridge undergraduate, but also a new signing to the UK's hippest record label, Island. Three years later, however - having made three well-reviewed but low-selling albums - he had been overwhelmed by a mysterious mental illness. Based back in his family home in rural Warwickshire as of 1971, he largely withdrew from life and died in obscurity and despair in 1974. In the decades since he has become the subject of ever-growing fascination and speculation. Combined sales of his records now stand in the millions, his songs are frequently heard on TV and in films, and it is no exaggeration to call him one of the most widely known and best loved singer-songwriters of his generation. Nick Drake: The Authorised Biography will be the only life of Nick to be written with the approval and involvement of his estate. Drawing on copious original research, new interviews with close family friends, schoolfellows and musical contemporaries and collaborators, as well as deeply personal archive material unavailable to previous biographers - including his father's diaries, his Cambridge essays and letters home from school, university and elsewhere - this book is the most comprehensive and authoritative account possible of this beloved figure's short and enigmatic life.

Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee is an epic history of a little-known African American instrumental music form. John M. Shaw follows the music from its roots in West Africa and early American militia drumming to its prominence in African American communities during the time of Reconstruction, both as a rallying tool for political militancy and a community music for funerals, picnics, parades, and dances. Carefully documenting the music's early uses for commercial advertising and sports promotion, Shaw follows the strands of the music through the nadir of African American history during post-Reconstruction up to the form's rediscovery by musicologists and music researchers during the blues and folk revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although these researchers documented the music, and there were a handful of public performances of the music at festivals, the story has a sad conclusion. Fife and drum music ultimately died out in Tennessee during the early 1980s. Newspaper articles from the period and interviews with music researchers and participants reawaken this lost expression, and specific band leaders receive the spotlight they so long deserved. Following the Drums is a journey through African American history and Tennessee history, with a fascinating form of music powering the story.

Ballads are a fascinating subject of study not least because of their endless variety. It is quite remarkable that ballads taken down or recorded from singers separated by centuries in time and by hundreds of kilometres in distance, should be both different and yet recognizably the same. In The English Traditional Ballad, David Atkinson examines the ways in which the body of ballads known in England make reference both to ballads from elsewhere and to other English folk songs. The book outlines current theoretical directions in ballad scholarship: structuralism, traditional referentiality, genre and context, print and oral transmission, and the theory of tradition and revival. These are combined to offer readers a method of approaching the central issue in ballad studies - the creation of meaning(s) out of ballad texts. Atkinson focuses on some of the most interesting problems in ballad studies: the 'wit-combat' in versions of The Unquiet Grave; variable perspectives in comic ballads about marriage; incest as a ballad theme; problems of feminine motivation in ballads like The Outlandish Knight and The Broomfield Hill; murder ballads and murder in other instances of early popular literature. Through discussion of these issues and themes in ballad texts, the book outlines a way of tracing tradition(s) in English balladry, while recognizing that ballad tradition is far from being simply chronological and linear.

With just four record companies controlling nearly 80 per cent of the world market in popular music, issues of globalization are evidently significant to our understanding of how and why popular music is made and distributed. As transnational industries seek to open up increasingly larger markets, the question of how local and regional music cultures can be sustained is a pressing one. To what extent does the global music market offer opportunities for the worldwide dissemination of local music within and beyond the major industry? The essays in this volume examine the structure and strategies of the transnational music industry, with its deployment of mass communication technologies including sound carriers, satellite broadcasting and the Internet. The book also explores local and individual experience of global music and this music's dissemination through migration and communities of interest, as well as the ideological and political use of different kinds of music. In contrast to recent arguments which posit an American imperialist dominance of popular music, the contributors to this volume find that the global repertoire of the major labels no longer represents the culture of a certain country but is fed by different sources. The essays here discuss how we can characterize this vast de-centered industry, and offer perspectives on the so-called 'international repertoire' that calls for a melodic structure, ballad forms, unaccented vocalisation and an image that has global recognition.

Merle Haggard enjoyed numerous artistic and professional triumphs, including more than a hundred country hits (thirty-eight at number one), dozens of studio and live album releases, upwards of ten thousand concerts, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and songs covered by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. In The Running Kind, a new edition that expands on his earlier analysis and covers Haggard's death and afterlife as an icon of both old-school and modern country music, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard's music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music: songs that helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including "Okie from Muskogee," "Sing Me Back Home," "Mama Tried," and "Working Man Blues," among many more), Cantwell explores the fascinating contradictions-most of all, the desire for freedom in the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed-that define not only Haggard's music and public persona but the very heart of American culture.

Despite being the sixth largest island in the world and home to an estimated 44 million Indonesians, Sumatra's musical arts and cultures have not been the subject of a book-length study until now. Documenting and explaining the ethnographic, cultural, and historical contexts of Sumatra's performing arts, Musical Journeys in Sumatra also traces the changes in their style, content, and reception from the early 1970s onward. Having dedicated thirty years of scholarship to exploring the rich and varied music of Sumatran provinces, Margaret Kartomi provides a fascinating ethnographic record of vanishing musical genres, traditions, and practices that have become deeply compromised by the pressures of urbanization, rural poverty, and government policy in. This unique collection showcases the complex diversity of Indonesian music and includes field observations from five different provinces: Aceh, North Sumatra, Riau, West Sumatra, and South Sumatra. Featuring unique photographs and original drawings from Kartomi's field observations of instruments and performances, Musical Journeys in Sumatra provides a comprehensive musical introduction to this neglected, very large island, with its hundreds of ethno-linguistic-musical groups.

This book focuses on how Latin American people and cultural practices have moved from one continent to another, and specifically to London. How do Latin Americans experience such a process and what part do different people play in the re-making of Latin identities in the neighbourhoods, parks, bars and dance clubs of London? Through a critical engagement with theories of globalization, the geography of power, cultural identity and the transformation of places, the book explores how the formation of Latin identities is directly related to wider social, economic and political processes. Drawing on the voices of migrant peoples, community activists, shop owners, sports organizers, club owners, dancers, dance teachers, musicians and disc jockeys, the book argues that the micro movements of people - through a shopping mall or across a dance floor in a club - are directly connected to global processes involving the regulated movement of citizens, sounds and images across national boundaries and through cities.

Sonic ethnography makes a compelling argument for taking sound seriously as a crucial component of social life and as an ethnographic form of representation. This volume explores the role of sound-making and listening practices in the formation of local identities in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. With an approach that cuts across sensory anthropology, sound studies and ethnomusicology, Sonic ethnography demonstrates how acoustic tradition is made and disrupted and acoustic communities are brought together in shared temporality and space. Based extensive research, this volume provides an innovative take on soundful cultural performances such as tree rituals, carnivals, pilgrimages and more informal musical performances, with particular attention to the interactions between classic ethnographic scholarship from the past century and the local politics of heritage. Featuring stunning colour photographs and more than an hour of sound recordings, Sonic ethnography uses a unique combination of media to investigate distinctive ways of knowing, beyond more traditional ethnographic forms of representation. Two methodological chapters, respectively on music-making as creative research practice and on photo-ethnography, make the book an essential contribution for those interested in the production of sounds and still images as relational and interactive approaches to fieldwork. The pioneering anthropologist of sound, Steven Feld, collaborated to some of the research and contributed to the book an afterword and a soundscape composition. -- .

Artists have often provided the earliest demonstrations of conscience and ethical examination in response to political events. The political shifts that took place in the 1960s were addressed by a revival of folk music as an expression of protest, hope and the courage to imagine a better world. This work explores the relationship between the cultural and political ideologies of the 1960s and the growing folk music movement, with a focus on musicians Phil Ochs; Joan Baez; Peter, Paul and Mary; Carolyn Hester and Bob Dylan.