"Ragging It" takes the reader on a lively, historical journey back to the days of vaudeville, fancy women, amusement parks, lynch mobs, saloons, and cabarets--a time when the upbeat music of ragtime was a craze that permeated our culture.

Author H. Loring White, a former history professor, focuses on the vastly contrasting biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Scott Joplin, while showcasing the uniqueness of ragtime--the first popular syncopated music of the masses. In 1900, times began to move more quickly. With citizens no longer isolated on farms, ragtime was eagerly accepted by the world's first generation of popular culture, which also reveled in cakewalks; coon songs; and animal dances, such as the Grizzly Bear, Turkey Trot, and Bunny Hug. White recounts true stories about show business, political events, the repression of African-Americans, the world's fairs, and the triumphs of technology.

Although ragtime disappeared abruptly in just a few years with the emergence of jazz, White never lets you forget the vital role that ragtime played in the Progressive Era of American culture. With its new and vital interpretation of the Roosevelt era, he will take you back to a lively time in history when everyone was "Ragging It"

In the summer of 1972, a group of young people in Bloomington, Indiana, began a weekly gathering with the purpose of reviving traditional American old-time music and dance. In time, the group became a kind of accidental utopia, a community bound by celebration and deliberately void of structure and authority. In this joyful and engaging book, John Bealle tells the lively history of the Bloomington Old-Time Music and Dance Group how it was formed, how it evolved its unique culture, and how it grew to shape and influence new waves of traditional music and dance. Broader questions about the folk revival movement, social resistance, counter culture, authenticity, and identity intersect this delightful history. More than a story about the people who forged the group or an extraordinary convergence of talent and creativity, Old-Time Music and Dance follows the threads of American folk culture and the social experience generated by this living tradition of music and dance."

This remarkable book recovers three invaluable perspectives, long thought to have been lost, on the culture and music of the Mississippi Delta.

In 1941 and '42 African American scholars from Fisk University--among them the noted composer and musicologist John W. Work, sociologist Lewis Wade Jones, and graduate student Samuel C. Adams, Jr.--joined folklorist Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress on research trips to Coahoma County, Mississippi. Their mission was to explore the musical habits and history of the black community there and "to document adequately the cultural and social backgrounds for music in the community." Among the fruits of the project were the earliest recordings by the legendary blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. The hallmark of the study was to have been a joint publication of its findings by Fisk and the Library of Congress. However, the field notes and manuscripts by the Fisk researchers became lost in Washington. Lomax's own book drawing on the project's findings, "The Land Where the Blues Began," did not appear until 1993, and although it won a National Book Critics Circle Award, it was flawed by a number of historical inaccuracies.

Recently uncovered by author and filmmaker Robert Gordon, the writings, interviews, notes, and musical transcriptions produced by Work, Jones, and Adams in the Coahoma County study now appear in print for the first time. Their work captures, with compelling immediacy, a place, a people, a way of life, and a set of rich musical traditions as they existed sixty years ago. Until the surfacing of these documents, Lomax's perspective was all that was known of the Coahoma County project and its research. Now, at last, the voices of the other contributors can be heard.

Including essays by Bruce Nemerov and Gordon on the careers and contributions of Work, Jones, and Adams, "Lost Delta Found" will become an indispensable historical resource, as marvelously readable as it is enlightening.

Illustrated with photos and more than 160 musical transcriptions.

This definitive story of American folk music focuses on how a minority music genre suddenly became the emergent voice of a generation at the end of the Eisenhower years. The book shows how the social issues of early rural folk music were adapted by young people in the late fifties as college students bought guitars and banjos, attended hootenannies, and marched on the Capital for Civil Rights. From Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley" in 1958 to Bob Dylan's electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, folk influenced American culture and eventually became absorbed into popular music. The author also explores how authentic folk is now experiencing a second revival, taking its place in our contemporary fascination with roots music.The first non-academic text to probe the cultural and musical significance of the folk revival of 1958 to 1965. The only historical text on the American folk revival to examine both traditional and popular performers and to provide a thorough analysis of the era's music.First music history text to present a new reading of the American folk revival's development and provide a reinterpretation of the revival's decline.The only text to offer a compact history that exclusively centres on the music, artists, and social panorama of American folk music between 1958 and 1965.

Choro is a type of Brazilian popular music similar in background to the celebrated Cuban son of Buena Vista Social Club fame. Choro started in Rio de Janeiro as a fusion of African-based rhythms and structures with European instruments and dance forms. In the 20th century, it came to represent social and racial diversity in Brazil and was integrated into mainstream film, radio, and recordings throughout Latin America and Europe. It formed a basis for Brazilian jazz and influenced the music of Heitor Villa Lobos. Today choro is viewed as a type of popular folk/traditional music in its own right. Its history parallels that of race, class, and nationality in Brazil over the last 100 years.

CONTENTS: The Boyne Water Brian O'Linn By Memory Inspired Charming Mary Neal Colleen Rue The Croppy Boy The Cruiskeen Lawn The Dear and Darling Boy Drimmin Dubh Dheelish Garryowen Hannah Healy, the Pride of Howth The Irish Grandmother The Irishman's Farewell to His Country Irish Molly O Jenny from Ballinasloe Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye The Lamentation of Hugh Reynolds Lanigan's Ball A Lay of the Famine Mackenna's Dream The Maid of Cloghroe Molly Muldoon The Native Irishman Nell Flaherty's Drake Protestant Boys The Rakes of Mallow The Shan Van Vocht Shule Aroon The Sorrowful Lamentation of Callaghan, Greally, and Mullen The Star of Slane Tipperary Recruiting Song Trust to Luck The Wearin' O' the Green Willy Reilly

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

What did young people do for diversion and socialization in communities that banned most dancing and considered the fiddle to be the devil's instrument? The American play party was the fundamentalist's answer. Here the singing was acapella, the dancers followed proscribed steps, and arm and elbow swings would be the only touching.

The play party was a popular form of American folk entertainment that included songs, dances, and sometimes games. Though based upon European and English antecedents, play parties were truly an American phenomenon, first mentioned in print in 1837. The last play parties were performed in the 1950s. Though documented in rural and frontier areas throughout the United States, they seem to have been most popular and lasted the longest in the rural South and Midwest. "Skip to My Lou" and "Pig in a Parlor" are still sung today but without the movements and games.

This is the first book since the 1930s to study this important and little remembered phenomenon of American folk culture. The author interviewed a large number of older Americans, both black and white, who performed play parties as young adults. Many of our parents and grandparents experienced these events, which hearken back to a time when people created their own forms of entertainment. Today play parties are an important source of song and movement material for elementary-school-age children. A songbook of ninety musical examples and lyrics completes the picture of this vanished tradition.

This work consists of a list of references in the New York Public Library with regard to the folk music of the American continents. The compiler endeavored to make the material represented in the Library available to its readers and to offer the student a bibliographical basis for the study of American folk music in its various departments. The departments found within are: Canadian; Cowboy; Creole; Eskimo; Indian, North American, not including Mexican; Indian, Central and South American, including Mexican; Latin American; Negro (North American); Negro (Central and South American); United States; with an appendix on musical instruments.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Light Crust Doughboys are one of the most long-lived and musically versatile bands in America. Formed in the early 1930s under the sponsorship of Burrus Mill and Elevator Company of Fort Worth, Texas, with Bob Wills and Milton Brown (the originator of western swing) at the musical helm and future Texas governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel as band manager and emcee, the Doughboys are still going strong in the twenty-first century. Arguably the quintessential Texas band, the Doughboys have performed all the varieties of music that Texans love, including folk and fiddle tunes, cowboy songs, gospel and hymns, commercial country songs and popular ballads, honky-tonk, ragtime and blues, western swing and jazz, minstrel songs, movie hits, and rock 'n' roll.

In this book, Jean Boyd draws on the memories of Marvin "Smokey" Montgomery and other longtime band members and supporters to tell the Light Crust Doughboys story from the band's founding in 1931 through the year 2000. She follows the band's musical evolution and personnel over seven decades, showing how band members and sponsors responded to changes in Texas culture and musical tastes during the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar years. Boyd concludes that the Doughboys' willingness to change with changing times and to try new sounds and fresh musical approaches is the source of their enduring vitality. Historical photographs of the band, an annotated discography of their pre-World War II work, and histories of some of the band's songs round out the volume.

" It is said that Bascom Lamar Lunsford would "cross hell on a rotten rail to get a folk song" -- his Southern highlands folk-song compilations now constitute one of the largest collections of its kind in the Library of Congress -- but he did much more than acquire songs. He preserved and promoted the Appalachian mountain tradition for generations of people, founding in 1928 the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, an annual event that has shaped America's festival movement. Loyal Jones pens a lively biography of a man considered to be Appalachian music royalty. He also includes a "Lunsford Sampler" of ballads, songs, hymns, tales, and anecdotes, plus a discography of his recordings.

Characterized by fast-paced, highly danceable rhythms, Chutney is a fusion of traditional and contemporary Indian and Caribbean influences. With its roots in the OutsHindi folk songs performed at birth and wedding ceremonies, Chutney has recently emerged in contemporary Indian-Caribbean life and has gone largely unrecognized in the body of scholarly literature.

In this volume Tina K. Ramnarine explores the evolution of Chutney and introduces the emerging Indian-Caribbean genre into the arena of scholarly discourse about music. Through analysis of the music, Ramnarine provides insights into social processes, effects of the diasporic settlements, and ways the music operates as a symbol of Indian-Caribbean identity. Some of the Indian elements in Chutney are not traditional, rather they are new ideas incorporated into the construction of the Indian-Caribbean identity. This introduction of new cultural elements is a common occurrence among people who have been transplanted to an unfamiliar geographical and cultural environment.

From the dance halls to the main stage, from small town Texas to the big cities, musica tejana is rapidly becoming known as a rich and vibrant form of American music. The twentieth century has seen Texas Mexican music balance between the traditional and the modern, remaining rooted in Mexico while taking nourishment from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States.

In Tejano Proud, Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., provides a history of the evolution of musica tejana -- its ups and downs and its importance to Mexican Texas culture in the context of Anglo-Mexican relations. He also discusses the more recent development of the Tejano recording industry and the role women have begun to play in an industry long dominated by men.

White-winged schooners once dominated commerce and culture on the Great Lakes, and songs relieved the hours on board, but that way of life and its music ended when steam-driven mechanical boats swept schooners from the inland seas. Ivan H. Walton, late professor of English in the School of Engineering at the University of Michigan, restored the music once heard on schooners of the Great Lakes in Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors. Edited by Joe Grimm, this book gives a firsthand musical picture of how sailors once lived aboard these ships.

Recognizing in the late 1930s, almost too late, that this rich oral tradition was going to the grave along with the last generation of schoonermen, Walton undertook a quest to save the songs of the Great Lakes sailors. Racing time and its ravages, he searched out ancient mariners in lakefront hospitals, hangouts, and watering holes. Walton reconstructed songs from one of the most colorful periods in American history, discovering melodies and lyrics to more than a hundred songs. These songs lightened sailors' labors, bringing them together while they worked hard on deck and filling their idle hours off watch. They sang as they hoisted sails, pumped out the hold, or tramped around the capstan to weigh anchor. They created songs about food, life aboard the ship, the Old Man, and the girls they left behind. They poked fun at other vessels as well as their own. They sang laments to ghost ships lost in the night or ships torn to pieces in the teeth of a gale.

With its stories, lyrics, musical scores by folksinger/historian Lee Murdock, and accompanying CD, Windjammers ensures that sailing chanteys that have not been heard for over one hundredyears can be heard again and again far into the future.

For the past half century, Ralph Emery's incredibly popular radio and television programs have allowed millions to tune into the newest hits and savor their old favorites. Now Ralph combines his unique perspective with an encyclopedic wealth of country lore as he examines the changing face of the music he loves. From Hank Williams, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, and Johnny Cash to Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks, he chronicles the lives and careers of the stars, many of them his close friends. He shows how country music has changed over the years, but also reveals how its eternal themes and timeless melodies have kept this quintessentially American genre alive and well for fans of all ages.

Based on extensive fieldwork and documentary research in China, this book is a chronicle of the musical history of Lijiang County in China's southern Yunnan Province. It focuses on Dongjing music, repertoire borrowed from China's Han ethnic majority by the indigenous Naxi inhabitants of Lijiang County. Used in Confucian worship as well as in secular entertainment, Dongjing music played a key role the Naxi minority's assimilation of Han culture over the last 200 years. Prized for its complexity and elegance, which set it apart from "rough" or "simpler" indigenous Naxi music, Dongjing played an important role in defining social relationships, since proficiency in the music and membership in the Dongjing associations signified high social status and cultural refinement. In addition, there is a strong political component in its examination of the role of indigenous music in the relation of a socialist state to its ethnic minorities.

Rock it Come Over describes the music and lore of slavery from the early sixteenth century through emancipation in 1838 to the mid twentieth century. Lewin explores the role of music in the lives of the slaves as a method of communication, as a form of resistance and subversion, as a repository of oral history and beliefs, and, ultimately, as a means of survival.

The work is based on decades of research into the music sung and played by the working people of Jamaica. Lewin relates the music to traditions that preserve an African way of life, such as Revivalism and its strong heritage of faith and worship. She has a special interest in the Kumina cult and describes in detail the life and beliefs of Kumina queen, Imogene 'Queenie' Kennedy.

Rock it Come Over is the most extensive study of Jamaican folk music yet published. It is also an examination of the roots of that music and a record of the folk heritage that is, in spite of many efforts, rapidly retreating before the pressures of life today.

Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Cool Water are only a couple of the hundreds of songs created by the Sons of the Pioneers, the most famous singing group in the history of Western music. Charter members Roy Rogers (Len Slye), Bob Nolan, Tim Spencer, and brothers Hugh and Karl Farr (two gifted instrumentalists from Texas) developed a unique style of vocal control and harmony that became the group's trademark. During the 1930s and 1940s, the prolific Nolan, along with other members of the Pioneers, composed hundreds of songs, primarily for film appearances. Although Roy Rogers left the group for movie stardom, the Pioneers appeared with the King of the Cowboys in forty-two films. There were one hundred movies appearances in all, including Rio Grande and The Searchers with John Wayne. Alumni of the Pioneers include Pat Brady, Lloyd Perryman, and Ken Curtis Festus of TV's Gunsmoke), and today the Sons of the Pioneers carry on the long tradition of their group in Branson, Missouri.

The Depression brought unprecedented changes for American workers and organized labor. As the economy plummeted, employers cut wages and laid off workers, while simultaneously attempting to wrest more work from those who remained employed. In mills, mines, and factories workers organized and resisted, striking for higher wages, improved working conditions, and the right to bargain collectively. As workers walked the picket line or sat down on the shop floor, they could be heard singing. This book examines the songs they sang at three different strikes- the Gastonia, North Carolina, textile mill strike (1929), Harlan County, Kentucky, coal mining strike (1931-32), and Flint, Michigan, automobile sit-down strike (1936-37). Whether in the Carolina Piedmont, the Kentucky hills, or the streets of Michigan, the workers' songs were decidedly class-conscious. All show the workers' understanding of the necessity of solidarity and collective action. In Flint the strikers sang: The trouble in our homestead Was brought about this way When a dashing corporation Had the audacity to say You must all renounce your union And forswear your liberties, And we'll offer you a chance To live and die in slavery. As a shared experience, the singing of songs not only sent the message of collective action but also provided the very means by which the message was communicated and promoted. Singing was a communal experience, whether on picket lines, at union rallies, or on shop floors. By providing the psychological space for striking workers to speak their minds, singing nurtured a sense of community and class consciousness. When strikers retold the events of their strike, as they did in songs, they spread and preserved their common history and further strengthened the bonds among themselves. In the strike songs the roles of gender were pronounced and vivid. Wives and mothers sang out of their concerns for home, family, and children. Men sang in the name of worker loyalty and brotherhood, championing male solidarity and comaraderie. Informed by the new social history, this critical examination of strike songs from three different industries in three different regions gives voice to a group too often deemed as inarticulate. This study, the only book-length examination of this subject, tells history ""from the bottom up"" and furthers an understanding of worker culture during the tumultuous Depression years. Timothy P. Lynch is an associate professor of history at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has been published in the Michigan Historical Review and the Encyclopedia of American Social History.

Celtic music means many things to many people. To some it recalls the Irish rebel songs of the Clancy Brothers, to others the ensemble playing of the Chieftains or Enya's ethereal vocals. Yet Celtic music is much more than reels, jigs, and sentimental ballads. It is also unaccompanied singing, feverish fiddle tunes, the sweet strains of the Irish uileann pipes. It comes not just from Ireland and Scotland but from Wales, Brittany, the Isle of Man, and Cornwall. It informs the musical roots of Van Morrison and U2, the performances of Riverdance, and the scores for such films as Braveheart and Titanic. Celtic Music explores all aspects of this music-from its roots to the exciting developments on the contemporary scene. Sawyers profiles hundreds of artists, and compiles suggestions for recommended listening as well as the one hundred essential Celtic recordings. Lists of Celtic festivals and publications are also included, together with record outlets, record labels, and music schools, making this book essential for all lovers of the music.

" A legend in the folk music community, John Jacob Niles enjoyed a lengthy career as a balladeer, folk collector, and songwriter. Ever close to his Kentucky roots, he spent much of his adulthood searching for the most well-loved songs of the southern Appalachia. The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles brings together a wealth of songs with the stories that inspired them, arranged by a gifted performer. This new edition includes all of the melodies, text, commentary, and illustrations of the 1961 original and features a new introduction by Ron Pen, director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music at the University of Kentucky."

'Mashindano' - from Kiswahili, Kushindana (to compete) - is a generic term for any organised competitive event. Here it relates to popular entertainment activities within which cultural groups competing for recognition by their communities, as leaders in their fields. Nineteen leading scholars contribute new studies on this little researched area, making a long overdue contribution to musical scholarship in East Africa, with a focus on Tanzania. The authors address key questions: What are the various roles played by competitive pratices in musical contexts? How do music competitions act as mechanisms of innovation? How do music competitions act as mechanisms of innovation? How do they serve their communities in identity formation? And what, specifically, do competitive music practices communicate, and to whom? Local dance contests, choir competitions, popular entertainment, song duels, and sporting events are all described. Work is drawn from ethnomusicology, history, musicology, anthropology, folklore, and literary, post-colonial, and performance studies.

African rhythms are at the heart of contemporary black Brazilian music. Surveying a musical legacy that encompasses over 400 years, Rhythms of Resistance traces the development of this rich cultural heritage. Acclaimed author Peter Fryer describes how slaves, mariners and merchants brought African music from Angola and the ports of East Africa to Latin America. In particular, they brought it to Brazil - today the country with the largest black population of any outside Africa. Fryer examines how the rhythms and beats of Africa were combined with European popular music to create a unique sound and dance tradition. Fryer focuses on the political nature of this musical crossover and the role of an African heritage in the cultural identity of Brazilian blacks today. Rhythms of Resistance is an absorbing account of a theme in global music and is rich in fascinating historical detail.

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.