Introducing American Folk Music PDF Download

Author: Kip Lornell
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
ISBN:
Category : Folk music
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Author: Lawrence J. Epstein
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786456019
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Many American folk singers have tried to leave their world a better place by writing songs of social protest. Musicians like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez sang with fierce moral voices to transform what they saw as an uncaring society. But the personal tales of these guitar-toting idealists were often more tangled than the comparatively pure vision their art would suggest. Many singers produced work in the midst of personal failure and deeply troubled relationships, and under the influence of radical ideas and organizations. This provocative work examines both the long tradition of folk music in its American political context and the lives of those troubadours who wrote its most enduring songs.

Author: Ronald D. Cohen
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469628821
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
While music lovers and music historians alike understand that folk music played an increasingly pivotal role in American labor and politics during the economic and social tumult of the Great Depression, how did this relationship come to be? Ronald D. Cohen sheds new light on the complex cultural history of folk music in America, detailing the musicians, government agencies, and record companies that had a lasting impact during the 1930s and beyond. Covering myriad musical styles and performers, Cohen narrates a singular history that begins in nineteenth-century labor politics and popular music culture, following the rise of unions and Communism to the subsequent Red Scare and increasing power of the Conservative movement in American politics--with American folk and vernacular music centered throughout. Detailing the influence and achievements of such notable musicians as Pete Seeger, Big Bill Broonzy, and Woody Guthrie, Cohen explores the intersections of politics, economics, and race, using the roots of American folk music to explore one of the United States' most troubled times. Becoming entangled with the ascending American left wing, folk music became synonymous with protest and sharing the troubles of real people through song.

Author: David King Dunaway
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199702942
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Intimate, anecdotal, and spell-binding, Singing Out offers a fascinating oral history of the North American folk music revivals and folk music. Culled from more than 150 interviews recorded from 1976 to 2006, this captivating story spans seven decades and cuts across a wide swath of generations and perspectives, shedding light on the musical, political, and social aspects of this movement. The narrators highlight many of the major folk revival figures, including Pete Seeger, Bernice Reagon, Phil Ochs, Mary Travers, Don McLean, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Ry Cooder, and Holly Near. Together they tell the stories of such musical groups as the Composers' Collective, the Almanac Singers, People's Songs, the Weavers, the New Lost City Ramblers, and the Freedom Singers. Folklorists, musicians, musicologists, writers, activists, and aficionados reveal not only what happened during the folk revivals, but what it meant to those personally and passionately involved. For everyone who ever picked up a guitar, fiddle, or banjo, this will be a book to give and cherish. Extensive notes, bibliography, and discography, plus a photo section.

Author: Ellen Harper
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1797201581
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Always a Song is a collection of stories from singer and songwriter Ellen Harper—folk matriarch and mother to the Grammy-winning musician Ben Harper. Harper shares vivid memories of growing up in Los Angeles through the 1960s among famous and small-town musicians, raising Ben, and the historic Folk Music Center. This beautifully written memoir includes stories of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, The New Lost City Ramblers, Doc Watson, and many more. • Harper takes readers on an intimate journey through the folk music revival. • The book spans a transformational time in music, history, and American culture. • Covers historical events from the love-ins, women's rights protests, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the popularization of the sitar and the ukulele. • Includes full-color photo insert. "Growing up, an endless stream of musicians and artists came from across the country to my family's music store. Bess Lomax Hawes, Joan Baez, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGee—all the singers, organizers, guitar and banjo pickers and players, songwriters, painters, dancers, their husbands, wives, and children—we were all in it together. And we believed singing could change the world."—Ellen Harper Music lovers and history buffs will enjoy this rare invitation into a world of stories and song that inspired folk music today. • A must-read for lovers of music, history, and those nostalgic for the acoustic echo of the original folk music that influenced a generation • Harper's parents opened the legendary Folk Music Center in Claremont, California, as well as the revered folk music venue The Golden Ring. • A perfect book for people who are obsessed with folk music, all things 1960s, learning about musical movements, or California history • Great for those who loved Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock by Barney Hoskyns; and Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller.

Author: David Nadal
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 048641700X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 99

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Book Description
Specially transcribed and arranged for beginning and intermediate guitar players, this anthology of 49 classics includes such perennial favorites as Beautiful Dreamer, Amazing Grace, Aura Lee, On Top of Old Smoky, Blue Tail Fly, Camptown Races, Dixie's Land, Yankee Doodle, Sweet Betsy from Pike, John Henry, and many more.

Author: Ray McKinley Lawless
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 792

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Book Description
Biographies of about 225 singers, collections of American ballads, folklore activities, and the history and use of folk-music instruments are among the Handbook's highlights.

Author: Bob Coltman
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810861329
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Paul Clayton and the Folksong Revival is the first biography of the folk singer and song collector Paul Clayton (1931-1967). Preeminently a scholar-balladeer, Clayton is credited with the Top-Ten hit "Gotta Travel On" and single-handedly brought hundreds of obscure folksongs to light for the mid-century radio and recording market. He influenced listeners and friends from Dave Van Ronk to Bob Dylan, who considered Clayton a mentor, "mindguard," and well of folksong.

Author: Aaron Leonard
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1913462013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The first book to document the efforts of the FBI against the most famous American folk singers of the mid-twentieth century, including Woody Guthrie, 'Sis Cunningham, Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Burl Ives. Some of the most prominent folk singers of the twentieth century, including Woody Guthrie, 'Sis Cunningham, Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Burl Ives, etc., were also political activists with various associations with the American Communist Party. As a consequence, the FBI, along with other governmental and right-wing organizations, were monitoring them, keeping meticulous files running many thousands of pages, and making (and carrying out) plans to purge them from the cultural realm. In The Folk Singers and the Bureau, Aaron J Leonard draws on an unprecedented array of declassified documents and never before released files to shed light on the interplay between left-wing folk artists and their relationship with the American Communist Party, and how it put them in the US government's repressive cross hairs. At a time of increasing state surveillance and repression, The Folk Singers and the Bureau shows how the FBI and other governmental agencies have attempted to shape and repress American culture.

Author: Ronald D Cohen
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096428
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
In Roots of the Revival: American and British Folk Music in the 1950s, Ronald D. Cohen and Rachel Clare Donaldson present a transatlantic history of folk's midcentury resurgence that juxtaposes the related but distinct revivals that took place in the United States and Great Britain. After setting the stage with the work of music collectors in the nineteenth century, the authors explore the so-called recovery of folk music practices and performers by Alan Lomax and others, including journeys to and within the British Isles that allowed artists and folk music advocates to absorb native forms and facilitate the music's transatlantic exchange. Cohen and Donaldson place the musical and cultural connections of the twin revivals within the decade's social and musical milieu and grapple with the performers' leftist political agendas and artistic challenges, including the fierce debates over "authenticity" in practice and repertoire that erupted when artists like Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio carried folk into the popular music mainstream. From work songs to skiffle, from the Weavers in Greenwich Village to Burl Ives on the BBC, Roots of the Revival offers a frank and wide-ranging consideration of a time, a movement, and a transformative period in American and British pop culture.