This is the first study to explore fully the myth of America as reflected in the nation's popular music. Beginning with the songs of the Pilgrims and continuing through more than two centuries of history and music, "Born in the U.S.A." shows the emerging American myth and gives a close reading of the compositions of songwriters as diverse as William Billings, Henry Clay Work, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen.

So that the full and diverse narrative of this complex nation might be recorded, this insightful study is focused both upon the national myth and upon the songwriters and performers representing subcultures and alternative viewpoints that are the text of America's story. Through hymnlike paeans and through discordant lamentations protesting the realities of the contemporary workaday world, popular music is an astonishing mirror of American history.

Beginning with the emergence of commercial American music in the nineteenth century, Volume 1 includes essays on the major performers, composers, media, and movements that shaped our musical culture before rock and roll. Articles explore the theoretical dimensions of popular music studies; the music of the nineteenth century; and the role of black Americans in the evolution of popular music. Also included--the music of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, swing, the blues, the influences of W. S. Gilbert and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and changes in lyric writing styles from the nineteenth century to the rock era.

Beginning with the emergence of commercial American music in the nineteenth century, Volume 1 includes essays on the major performers, composers, media, and movements that shaped our musical culture before rock and roll. Articles explore the theoretical dimensions of popular music studies; the music of the nineteenth century; and the role of black Americans in the evolution of popular music. Also included--the music of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, swing, the blues, the influences of W. S. Gilbert and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and changes in lyric writing styles from the nineteenth century to the rock era.

This work studies the conventions of music scoring in major film genres (e.g., science fiction, hardboiled detective, horror, historical romance, western), focusing on the artistic and technical methods that modern composers employ to underscore and accompany the visual events. Each chapter begins with an analysis of the major narrative and scoring conventions of a particular genre and concludes with an in-depth analysis of two film examples from different time periods. Several photographic stills and sheet music excerpts are included throughout the work, along with a select bibliography and discography.