Originally published in 1994. Filling a gap in the sound recordings of traditional Anglo-American folk music this volume covers both vocal and instrumental material from the 1920s to the 1990s. The listings have also been limited to performers native to the tradition rather than "revival" performers. The album selection is grouped into field recordings and commercial (pre-1942) recordings, with subdivisions into individual recordings or anthologies. The discography not only reflects its author’s in-depth knowledge of Anglo-American folk music’s historical development but charts a valuable step forward in the evaluation, as well as select lissting, of available sound recordings.

Originally published in 1995. This book’s collection of key essays presents a coherent overview of touchstone statements and issues in the study of Anglo-American popular ballad traditions and suggests ways this panoramic view affords us a look at Euro-American scholarship’s questions, concerns and methods. The study of ballads in English began early in the eighteenth century with Joseph Addison’s discussions which marked the onset of an aesthetic and scholarly interest in popular traditions. Therefore the collection begins with him and then chronologically includes scholars whose views mark pivotal moments which taken together tell a story that does not emerge through an examination of the ballads themselves. The book addresses debates in tradition, orality, performance and community as well as national genealogies and connections to contexts. Each selected piece is pre-empted by an introductory section on its importance and relevance.

Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States reflects the fascinating diversity of regional and grassroots music in the United States. The book covers the diverse strains of American folk music—Latin, Native American, African, French-Canadian, British, and Cajun—and offers a chronology of the development of folk music in the United States. The book is divided into discrete chapters covering topics as seemingly disparate as sacred harp singing, conjunto music, the folk revival, blues, and ballad singing. It is among the few textbooks in American music that recognizes the importance and contributions of Native Americans as well as those who live, sing, and perform music along our borderlands, from the French-speaking citizens in northern Vermont to the extensive Hispanic population living north of the Rio Grande River, recognizing and reflecting the increasing importance of the varied Latino traditions that have informed our folk music since the founding of the United States. Another chapter includes detailed information about the roots of hip-hop, and this updated edition of the book features a new chapter on urban folk music, exploring traditions in our cities, with a case study focusing on Washington, D.C. Exploring American Folk Music also introduces you to such important figures in American music as Bob Wills, Lydia Mendoza, Bob Dylan, and Muddy Waters, who helped shape what America sounds like in the twenty-first century. It also features new sections at the end of each chapter with up-to-date recommendations for “Suggested Listening,” “Suggested Reading,” and “Suggested Viewing.”

A major three-volume bibliography, including an additional supplement, of an annotated listing of American Studies monographs published between 1900 and 1988.

Folding a River, a collection of elegies, shows a pleasing range of free-verse forms that develop themes sustained throughout: loss, exile, myth, landscape. Kawita Kandpal's poems are explorations of East-West cultures, taking her into an emo-mythic place not to be found on any map. Kandpal's mood in Folding a River is melancholy, articulated with intelligence and grace, and her phrasing can rise to the level of proverb: "This time next year you will have evolved into an idea." In its personal evocations of geographical and linguistic exile from the subcontinent, centered on a lost father, her work recalls that of Li-Young Lee, yet with a feminine perspective often haunting in its own right: "tenderly / taking back the mistakes of men."

This edition brings together representative transcriptions of folk songs and ballads in the British-Irish-American oral tradition that have enjoyed widespread familiarity throughout twentieth-century America. Within are the one hundred folk songs that most frequently occurred in a methodical survey of Roud’s Folk Song Index, catalogues of commercial early country (or "hillbilly") recordings, and relevant archival collections. The editors selected sources for transcriptions in a broad range of singing styles and representing many regions of the United States. The selections attempt to avoid the biases of previous collections and provide a fresh group of examples, many heretofore unseen in print. The sources for the transcriptions are recordings of traditional musicians from the 1920s through the early 1940s drawn from (1) commercial recordings of "hillbilly" musicians, and (2) field recordings in the collection of the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song, now part of the Archive of Folk Culture. Each transcription is accompanied by a brief contextualizing essay discussing the song’s history and influence, recording and performance information (whenever available), and an examination of the tune. The edition begins with a substantive essay about the history of folk song recordings and folk song scholarship, and the nature of traditional vocal music in the United States.

"The richly diverse ethnic heritage of the Lone Star State has brought to the Southwest a remarkable array of rhythms, instruments, and musical styles that have blended here in unique ways and, in turn, have helped shape the music of the nation and the world." "Historian Gary Hartman writes knowingly and lovingly of the Lone Star State's musical traditions. In the first thorough survey of the vast and complex cultural mosaic that has produced what we know today as "Texas music," he paints a broad, panoramic view, offers analysis of the origins of and influences on specific genres, profiles key musicians, and provides guidance to additional sources for further information." "A musician himself, Hartman draws on both academic and non-academic sources to give a more complete understanding of the state's remarkable musical heritage. He combines scholarly training in music history and ethnic community studies with his first-hand knowledge of how important music is as a cultural medium through which human beings communicate information, ideas, emotions, values, and beliefs, and bond together as friends, families, and communities." "The History of Texas Music incorporates a selection of well-chosen photographs of both prominent and less-well-known artists and describes not only the ethnic origins of much of Texas music but also the cross-pollination among various genres. Today, the music of Texas - which includes Native American music, gospel, blues, ragtime, swing, jazz, rhythm and blues, conjunto, Tejano, cajun, zydeco, western swing, honky tonk, polkas, schottisches, rock & roll, rap, hip hop, and more - reflects the unique cultural dynamics of the Southwest."--Jacket

The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song "Shortenin' Bread," the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," the blues "Another Man Done Gone," and the spiritual "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on "the Library's recording machine" in a rendering of "Rock Island Line"; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme "Pullin' the Skiff"; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into "Glory in the Meetinghouse." Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, "amplifying tradition's gifts," Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy. Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s.