This new edition of "Journeyman," Ewan MacColl's vivid and entertaining autobiography, has been re-edited from the original manuscript, and includes a new introduction by Peggy Seeger, for whom he wrote the unforgettable "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." MacColl, a singer, songwriter, actor, playwright and broadcaster, begins this fascinating account with his working class Salford childhood, traces the founding and life of Theatre Workshop, one of Britain's most innovative theatre companies, then moves on to his work with folksingers, the Radio Ballads and his ascent into old age. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger were among the main leaders of the UK folksong revival. "Journeyman" documents their struggle to secure the integrity of that revival as the popular media appropriated and re-created traditional music for commercial gain. An entertaining and thought-provoking slice of British history, it will appeal to those interested in the histories of folk music, theatre, radio, left-wing politics and the Manchester area.

This study of Polish folk music is especially enlightening as it reveals both the history and practice of a musical tradition and offers an illuminating view of a culture and its social activities. Within her study, Anna Czekanowska analyses the vocal and instrumental traditions of Polish folk music, tracing the background history, the influences of geography and politics, and the practice, often within contemporary society, of such social events as the harvest, the solstice and weddings. The function of folk culture within contemporary life, for both Polish and non-Polish inhabitants of the country, is also examined. Professor Czekanowska also discusses the birth of Polish ethno- musicology as a discipline and details some methodological aspects for research. This study contributes to a greater understanding and appreciation of Polish music and, in a wider aspect, of Slavonic culture. The book contains numerous illustrations of instruments and cultural events, music examples, maps, a discography and bibliography.

The tradition of Persian art music embodies twelve modal systems, known as dastgahs. Each dastgah represents a complex of skeletal melodic models on the basis of which a performer produces extemporised pieces. The dastgahs revolve around unspecified central nuclear melodies which the individual musician comes to know through experience and absorption. It is a personal and elusive tradition of great subtlety and depth. Through extensive research, including interviews with leading musicians and recording over one hundred hours of music, Hormoz Farhat has unravelled the art of the dastgah. In his study Professor Farhat analyses the intervallic structure, melodic patterns, modulations, and improvisations within each dastgah, and examines the composed pieces which have become a part of the classical repertoire in recent times.

At the height of the blues revival, Marina Bokelman and David Evans, young graduate students from California, made two trips to Louisiana and Mississippi and short trips in their home state to do fieldwork for their studies at UCLA. While there, they made recordings and interviews and took extensive field notes and photographs of blues musicians and their families. Going Up the Country: Adventures in Blues Fieldwork in the 1960s presents their experiences in vivid detail through the field notes, the photographs, and the retrospective views of these two passionate researchers. The book includes historical material as well as contemporary reflections by Bokelman and Evans on the times and the people they met during their southern journeys. Their notes and photographs take the reader into the midst of memorable encounters with many obscure but no less important musicians, as well as blues legends, including Robert Pete Williams, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Al Wilson (cofounder of Canned Heat), Babe Stovall, Reverend Ruben Lacy, and Jack Owens. This volume is not only an adventure story, but also a scholarly discussion of fieldwork in folklore and ethnomusicology. Including retrospective context and commentary, the field note chapters describe searches for musicians, recording situations, social and family dynamics of musicians, and race relations and the racial environment, as well as the practical, ethical, and logistical problems of doing fieldwork. The book features over one hundred documentary photographs that depict the field recording sessions and the activities, lives, and living conditions of the artists and their families. These photographs serve as a visual counterpart equivalent to the field notes. The remaining chapters explain the authors' methodology, planning, and motivations, as well as their personal backgrounds prior to going into the field, their careers afterwards, and their thoughts about fieldwork and folklore research in general. In this enlightening book, Bokelman and Evans provide an exciting and honest portrayal of blues field research in the 1960s.

ADGE CUTLER died on his way home from a gig in 1974, at a time when a major TV breakthrough was within his grasp but before his group the Wurzels reached the top of the charts. In 2012 the Wurzels continue to pack venues all over the West Country and beyond, with Adge's band-mates Tommy Banner and Pete Budd still flourishing - but what of the man who set the whole Scrumpy and Western scene under way? This, the long-overdue first Adge Cutler biography, brings him vividly back to life, not only in his eight crazy Wurzels years but from early days in his beloved Nailsea to the lively camaraderie of Portishead B power station's labourers, the thriving Bristol jazz and folk scenes of the Fifties and Sixties and his spell as Acker Bilk's 'worst roadie in the world'. All played their part in moulding his unique talent. JOHN HUDSON is the author, compiler or editor of more than thirty books of social history, regional interest and biography.

David Schiller's study of the Jewish music of Bloch, Schoenberg, and Bernstein reveals how, in the mid-twentieth century, the problem of assimilation was acutely felt as the unfinished business of European Jewry, at a time when American Jewry was creating its own distinctive culture (albeit with European roots). He shows how the business of 'assimilating Jewish music' is as much a process audiences themselves engage in when they listen to Jewish music as it is something critics and musicologists do when they write about it. He reveals how this process of assimilation is performed by the music itself - that Jewish music assimilates into the Western tradition of art music when it appears in the form of concert genres like the oratorio, cantata, and symphony. This incisive study sheds new light on an important aspect of the cultural and aesthetic achievements of these seminal Jewish composers.

This collection of poems rooted in the wild and beautiful lands that lie between England and Scotland describes a traditionally lawless area whose inhabitants owed allegiance first to kin and laird and then to the authorities in London or Edinburgh. Recording a violent, clannish world of fierce hatreds and passionate loyalties, the ballads tell vivid tales of raids, feuds and betrayals, romances and acts of revenge.

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). Grammy Award winner for Album of the Year This unique songbook features piano/vocal arrangements of 11 selections from the critically-acclaimed Coen brothers film. The traditional songs for this film were selected by T-Bone Burnett to capture the sound of the early-'30s South, and the movie soundtrack has done much to rekindle interest in the folk/blues/bluegrass/gospel genres. Songs include: Big Rock Candy Mountain (Harry McClintock) * You Are My Sunshine (Norman Blake) * I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow (The Soggy Bottom Boys/Norman Blake) * Keep on the Sunny Side (The Whites) * I'll Fly Away (Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch) * and more. Includes great photos from the film. Also available: 00313182 Guitar Tab/Melody/Lyrics/Chords Edition $14.95

This is a full biography of the talented American woman composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. She was a prominent member of the American avant-garde composers in the 1920s, then married Charles Seeger and became very involved in the American folk song movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which also included Seeger's son Peter and John Lomax. The book also discusses the dilemma of a creative woman who was caught in domestic life and thus could never fully realize her musical potential.

Since the 18th century, Western scholars and musicians have been fascinated by the music of India. Whether in the realms of musicological enquiry, or as an exotic flavour on the stage, or in popular songs, Indian music has been part of the West's consciousness for over two hundred years. Indian Music and the West traces the fascinating history of this complex cultural and musical encounter.

Carnival, charivari, mumming plays, peasant festivals, and even early versions of the Santa Claus myth--all of these forms of entertainment influenced and shaped blackface minstrelsy in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his fascinating study Demons of Disorder, musicologist Dale Cockrell studies issues of race and class by analyzing their cultural expressions, and investigates the roots of still-remembered songs such as "Jim Crow," "Zip Coon," and "Dan Tucker." The first book on the blackface tradition written by a leading musicologist, Demons of Disorder is an important achievement in music history and culture.

A moving portrait of the contemporary experiences of migrant Moroccan men. Umbria is known to most Americans for its picturesque rolling hills and medieval villages, but to the many migrant Moroccan men who travel there, Umbria is better known for the tobacco fields, construction sites, small industries, and the outdoor weekly markets where they work. Marginalized and far from their homes, these men turn to Moroccan traditions of music and poetry that evoke the countryside they have left- l-'arubiya, or the rural. In this book, Alessandra Ciucci takes us inside the lives of Moroccan workers, unpacking the way they share a particular musical style of the rural to create a sense of home and belonging in a foreign and inhospitable nation. Along the way, she uncovers how this culture of belonging is not just the product of the struggles of migration, but also tied to the reclamation of a noble and virtuous masculine identity that is inaccessible to Moroccan migrants in Italy. The Voice of the Rural allows us to understand the contemporary experiences of migrant Moroccan men by examining their imagined relationship to the rural through sound, shedding new light on the urgent issues of migration and belonging.

This is an exploration of the region's music - its forms and innovations, musicians, festivals, and dance halls, its fans - and traces its African, Asian and European roots.

Bold and original, The Power of Black Music offers a new way of listening to the music of black America, and appreciating its profound contribution to all American music.

A social history of the music of the Jewish community in Palestine from the beginnings of Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1880 to the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948.

After describing the processes of history at work on ordinary people (i.e. Bill's immediate ancestors) in Glimpses of Far Off Things, the second volume finds Bill settling in at Topic Records and collaborating with Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd, the architects of the folk revival. It is set in the period of the Cold War, 'Ban the Bomb' and lingering austerity. Yet the small pond of UK folk is about to be stirred by breezes blowing from the USA. The folk revival was more advanced over there, and the influx of US visitors, the craving for diversity generated by the Stateside Hi-Fi craze, the irresistible rise of Lonnie Donegan and skiffle, all cleared the path for the UK folk revival proper. It becomes clear with Horizons For Some that the author's mission is to return its cultural inheritance to a nation that has somehow mislaid it, and may indeed be running the other way in hot denial. It also shows how tradition is not set in stone, but infinitely adaptable. The present volume anatomises how the folk demotic was influenced by the so-called special relationship. In his quiet way, Bill was central to these developments. Sounding the Century is rich in character studies of the remarkable people Bill (and the author) encounter, and wonderfully conveys the joy and absurdity of it all.

A series of little books of short carefully graded folk tunes beginning with the simplest passages and progressing to more difficult leaps, rhythms, chromatics, and modulations. The later books introduce two-part sight singing.

A true American original is brought to life in this rich and lively portrait of Pete Seeger, who, with his musical grace and inextinguishable passion for social justice, transformed folk singing into a high form of peaceful protest in the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on his extensive talks with Seeger, "New Yorker" writer Alec Wilkinson lets us experience the man's unique blend of independence and commitment, charm, courage, energy, and belief in human equality and American democracy.
We see Seeger instilled with a love of music by his parents, both classically trained musicians; as a teenager, hearing real folk music for the first time; and as a young man, singing with Woody Guthrie and with the Weavers. We learn of his harassment by the government for his political beliefs and his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1949. And we follow his engagement with civil rights, the peace movement, and the environment--especially his work saving the Hudson River and building the ship "Clearwater." He talks ardently about his own music and that of others, and about the power of music to connect people and bind them to a cause. Finally, we meet Toshi, his wife of nearly sixty years, and members of his family, at the house he built on a mountainside in upstate New York.
"The Protest Singer" is as spirited and captivating as its subject--an American icon, celebrating his ninetieth birthday.

"From the Hardcover edition."

From the oldest surviving Japanese manuscripts in tablature (ninth- fourteenth-centuries) the book provides transcripts into staff-notation of (largely) entertainment-music, played at banquets at the Chinese Court in the Tang period, borrowed by the Japanese not later than 841. The music has never been transcribed before and has not been heard for 800 years or more, so drastically has it been transformed in Japanese performance. The history of each piece of music, as given in Chinese and Japanese historical sources, is investigated. The music itself is subjected to formal analysis, revealing its structure, its modal dynamics, and the methods of composition. For much of the music, ballet-scores survive from the mid-thirteenth century, and it is hoped that these may be associated fascicles with the music as transcribed in future fascicles. Fascicle 5 offers one immense suite, the origins of which lie in sixth-century China: 'The King of the Grave-Mound' (Ryo-o), together with single-stave versions and analyses of upwards of twenty items from previous fascicles and a summary essay restating views on the nature of 'Tang Music' (Togaku).

The workers who migrate from Lesotho to the mines and cities of neighboring South Africa have developed a rich genre of sung oral poetry--word music--that focuses on the experiences of migrant life. This music provides a culturally reflexive and consciously artistic account of what it is to be a migrant or part of a migrant's life. It reveals the relationship between these Basotho workers and the local and South African powers that be, the "cannibals" who live off of the workers' labor. David Coplan presents a moving collection of material that for the first time reveals the expressive genius of these tenacious but disenfranchised people.
Coplan discusses every aspect of the Basotho musical literature, taking into account historical conditions, political dynamics, and social forces as well as the styles, artistry, and occasions of performance. He engages the postmodern challenge to decolonize our representation of the ethnographic subject and demonstrates how performance formulates local knowledge and communicates its shared understandings.
Complete with transcriptions of full male and female performances, this book develops a theoretical and methodological framework crucial to anyone seeking to understand the relationship between orality and literacy in the context of performance. This work is an important contribution to South African studies, to ethnomusicology and anthropology, and to performance studies in general.

Taking Grainger's views as his starting point and heading each chapter with a quotation from Grainger's writings, John Blacking restates and reflects upon observations and attitudes relevant to contemporary problems of ethnomusicology and music education. Professor Blacking discusses these issues in the light of his own research, musical experience and convictions.

During the two centuries before 841, the Japanese Court borrowed a large amount of secular entertainment music from China, chiefly music of the Sui and Tang Courts. This music, known as 'Tang Music' is preserved in manuscripts written between the eighth and thirteenth centuries and to be seen today in the library of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and in other Japanese libraries. Fourteen items, from the second scroll of pieces belonging to the Ichikotsu-cho mode-key group (Mixolydian on D), are offered in this fourth fascicle of Music from the Tang Court. With the exception of two items, each consisting of Prelude and Broaching, all are single movements. The first piece, in two movements, is overtly linked with Sogdiana, the Central Asian State which exerted so great an influence on the entertainment-music of the Tang Court. That some of the Togaku repertory had its roots in popular music is plainly shown by the title of this piece: 'Sogdians Drinking Wine'.