Music Books

Roland White's long career has taken him from membership in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys and Lester Flatt's Nashville Grass to success with his own Roland White Band. A master of the mandolin and acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, White has mentored a...

From Afro Sheen to Theaster Gates and from Soul Train to Chance the Rapper, Black Chicago draws sustenance from a culture rooted in self-determination, aspiration, and hustle. In Energy Never Dies, Ayana Contreras embarks on a journey to share the...

In September of 1963, Reverend Lawrence Roberts and the Angelic Choir of the First Baptist Church of Nutley, New Jersey, teamed with rising gospel star James Cleveland to record Peace Be Still. The LP and its haunting title track became a phenomenon...

From Afro Sheen to Theaster Gates and from Soul Train to Chance the Rapper, Black Chicago draws sustenance from a culture rooted in self-determination, aspiration, and hustle. In Energy Never Dies, Ayana Contreras embarks on a journey to share the...

The first of two volumes chronicling the history and role of music in the African-American experience. Explains the historical significance of song and illustrates how music influenced the Civil Rights Movement.

Institutions in Recife, Brazil, have restructured subsidies in favor of encouraging musicians to become more entrepreneurial. Falina Enriquez explores how contemporary and traditional musicians in the fabled musical city have negotiated these intensified...

Institutions in Recife, Brazil, have restructured subsidies in favor of encouraging musicians to become more entrepreneurial. Falina Enriquez explores how contemporary and traditional musicians in the fabled musical city have negotiated these intensified...

From cradle to great, the comprehensive real story of Bill Monroe The Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe was a major star of the Grand Ole Opry for over fifty years; a member of the Country Music, Songwriters, and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame; and a...

Gamelan and American academic institutions have maintained their close association for more than sixty years. Elizabeth A. Clendinning illuminates what it means to devote one's life to world music ensemble education by examining the career and community...

The biography of a giant in the history of blues music. With just forty-one recordings to his credit, Robert Johnson (1911-38) is a giant in the history of blues music. Johnson's vast influence on twentieth-century American music, combined with his...

Where Did Our Love Go? chronicles the rise and fall of Motown Records while emphasizing the role of its dynamic founder, Berry Gordy Jr. First published in 1986, this classic work includes a new preface by Nelson George that identifies Motown's influence...

Exploding the assumption that black women's only important musical contributions have been in folk, jazz, and pop.Helen Walker-Hill's unique study provides a carefully researched examination of the history and scope of musical composition by...

This compilation of essays takes the study of the blues to a welcome new level. Distinguished scholars and well-established writers from such diverse backgrounds as musicology, anthropology, musicianship, and folklore join together to examine blues as...

This collection is the first interdisciplinary volume to examine black women's negotiation of race and gender in African American music. Contributors address black women's activity in musical arenas that pre- and postdate the emergence of the vaudeville...

Together Let Us Sweetly Live offers a rare look at the unique grassroots African American religious institutions called the Singing and Praying Bands. This folksong and ring shout tradition began in Chesapeake Bay country in the early nineteenth century,...

The fruit of four decades of collaboration between bluegrassmusic's premier photographer and premier historian, Bluegrass Odyssey is a satisfying and visually alluring journey into the heart of a truly American music. Combining Neil V. Rosenberg's...

''Tell 'em I'm a farmer with a mandolin and a high tenor voice,'' Bill Monroe said. Known as the Father of Bluegrass Music, Monroe pioneered a whole new category of music and inspired generations of musicians and fans. Yet from his founding of the...

Homegrown Music: Discovering Bluegrass is an introductory primer directed at the newcomer to bluegrass that also provides a novel perspective for those already captivated by the music. It covers the history of the genre's development in a relaxed style,...

Homegrown Music: Discovering Bluegrass is an introductory primer directed at the newcomer to bluegrass that also provides a novel perspective for those already captivated by the music. It covers the history of the genre's development in a relaxed style,...

Combining a high-spirited history of country music's roots with vivid portraits of its principal performers, Don't Get above Your Raisin' examines the close relationship between ''America's truest music'' and the working-class culture that has...

Based on extensive archival research and oral history, Michael Ann Williams's Staging Tradition traces the parallel careers of the creators of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance and the National Folk Festival. Through their devotion to staging of traditional...

Tired of Tannhäuser? Bored with Bohème? Then open your imagination to the unexpected pleasures of American opera. With this generous, accessible overview, Elise K. Kirk provides a lively history of one of America's liveliest arts. A treasure trove of...

This second volume of Music in Black American Life offers research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and Black Music Research Journal, and in two book series published by the University of Illinois Press: Music in...

This first volume of Music in Black American Life collects research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and the Black Music Research Journal, and in the University of Illinois Press's acclaimed book series Music in...

The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines...

Combining a high-spirited history of country music's roots with vivid portraits of its principal performers, Don't Get above Your Raisin' examines the close relationship between ''America's truest music'' and the working-class culture that has...

Popular music culture serves as an arena for debates on English and British national identity in this lively discussion of English popular music of the 1980s and 1990s. Against the background of his own upbringing as a Pakistani Brit, Nabeel Zuberi...

Music in Lubavitcher Life illuminates the world of the Lubavitcher Hasidim, a community of ultra-orthodox Jews centered in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. Drawing primarily on twenty years of close study of the Lubavitcher community,...

A backstage audition led Mark Hembree into a five-year stint (1979-1984) as the bassist for Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. Hembree's journey included playing at the White House and on the acclaimed album Master of Bluegrass. But it also put him on a...

Music cultures today in rural and urban Mongolia and Inner Mongolia emerge from centuries-old pastoralist practices that were reshaped by political movements in the twentieth century. Mongolian Sound Worlds investigates the unique sonic elements, fluid...

In his nearly forty-year career, Johann Scheibe became Leipzig's most renowned organ builder and one of the late Baroque's masters of the craft. Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Kuhnau considered Scheibe a valued colleague. Organists and civic leaders...

These previously unpublished lectures by Elliott Carter date to the summer of 1967, when the acclaimed composer taught at the Contemporary Music Workshop held by the University of Minnesota. Leading an introductory course on orchestra repertoire, Carter...

China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) produced propaganda music that still stirs unease and, at times, evokes nostalgia. Lei X. Ouyang uses selections from revolutionary songbooks to untangle the complex interactions between memory, trauma, and...

An icon of global Punjabi culture, the dhol drum inspires an unbridled love for the instrument far beyond its application to regional vernacular music. Yet the identities of dhol players within their local communities and the broadly conceived Punjabi...

In 1972-73, Barney Childs embarked on an ambitious attempt to survey the landscape of new American concert music. He recorded freewheeling conversations with fellow composers, most of them under forty, all of them important but most not yet famous...

Venerated for his lyrics, Bob Dylan in fact is a songwriting musician with a unique mastery of merging his words with music and performance. Larry Starr cuts through pretention and myth to provide a refreshingly holistic appreciation of Dylan's music...

Acclaimed composer, sought-after conductor, esteemed educator, tireless advocate for the arts--Tania Leon's achievements encompass but also stretch far beyond contemporary classical music. Alejandro L. Madrid draws on oral history, archival work, and...

The local and regional shows staged throughout America use musical theater's inherent power of deception to cultivate worldviews opposed to mainstream ideas. Jake Johnson reveals how musical theater between the coasts inhabits the middle spaces between...

A musical genre forever outside the lines With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward's Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid...

A performance culture of illness and wellness In southern Uganda, ritual healing traditions called kusamira and nswezi rely on music to treat sickness and maintain well-being. Peter J. Hoesing blends ethnomusicological fieldwork with analysis to examine...

From tent revivals to radio and records with a gospel music innovator Homer Rodeheaver merged evangelical hymns and African American spirituals with popular music to create a potent gospel style. Kevin Mungons and Douglas Yeo examine his enormous...

A performance culture of illness and wellness In southern Uganda, ritual healing traditions called kusamira and nswezi rely on music to treat sickness and maintain well-being. Peter J. Hoesing blends ethnomusicological fieldwork with analysis to examine...