Download or read book The Conscience of the Folk Revival written by Izzy Young and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Israel G. "Izzy" Young was the proprietor of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The literal center of the New York folk music scene, the Center not only sold records, books, and guitar strings but served as a concert hall, meeting spot, and information kiosk for all folk scene events. Among Young's first customers was Harry Belafonte; among his regular visitors were Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger. Shortly after his arrival in New York City in 1961, an unknown Bob Dyan banged away at songs on Young's typewriter. Young would also stage Dylan's first concert, as well as shows by Joni Mitchell, the Fugs, Emmylou Harris, and Tim Buckley, Doc Watson, Son House, and Mississippi John Hurt. The Conscience of the Folk Revival: The Writings of Israel "Izzy" Young collects Young's writing, from his regular column "Frets and Frails" for Sing Out Magazine (1959-1969) to his commentaries on such contentious issues as copyright and commercialism. Also including his personal recollections of seminal figures, from Bob Dylan and Alan Lomax to Harry Smith and Woody Guthrie, this collection removes the rose tinting of past memoirs by offering Young's detailed, day-by-day accounts. A key collection of primary sources on the American countercultural scene in New York City, this work will interest not only folk music fans, but students and scholars of American social and cultural history.
Download or read book Folk City written by Stephen Petrus and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Washington Square Park and the Gaslight Café to WNYC Radio and Folkways Records, New York City's cultural, artistic, and commercial assets helped to shape a distinctively urban breeding ground for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 60s. Folk City explores New York's central role in fueling the nationwide craze for folk music in postwar America. It involves the efforts of record company producers and executives, club owners, concert promoters, festival organizers, musicologists, agents and managers, editors and writers - and, of course, musicians and audiences. In Folk City, authors Stephen Petrus and Ron Cohen capture the exuberance of the times and introduce readers to a host of characters who brought a new style to the biggest audience in the history of popular music. Among the savvy New York entrepreneurs committed to promoting folk music were Izzy Young of the Folklore Center, Mike Porco of Gerde's Folk City, and John Hammond of Columbia Records. While these and other businessmen developed commercial networks for musicians, the performance venues provided the artists space to test their mettle. The authors portray Village coffee houses not simply as lively venues but as incubators of a burgeoning counterculture, where artists from diverse backgrounds honed their performance techniques and challenged social conventions. Accessible and engaging, fresh and provocative, rich in anecdotes and primary sources, Folk City is lavishly illustrated with images collected for the accompanying major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York in 2015.
Download or read book Roots of the Revival written by Ronald D Cohen and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Singer Songwriter written by Katherine Ann Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion explores the historical and theoretical contexts of the singer-songwriter tradition, and includes case studies of singer-songwriters from Thomas d'Urfey through to Kanye West.
Download or read book A New History of American and Canadian Folk Music written by Dick Weissman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building on his 2006 book, Which Side Are You On?, Dick Weissman's A New History of American and Canadian Folk Music presents a provocative discussion of the history, evolution, and current status of folk music in the United States and Canada. North American folk music achieved a high level of popular acceptance in the late 1950s. When it was replaced by various forms of rock music, it became a more specialized musical niche, fragmenting into a proliferation of musical styles. In the pop-folk revival of the 1960s, artists were celebrated or rejected for popularizing the music to a mass audience. In particular the music seemed to embrace a quest for authenticity, which has led to endless explorations of what is or is not faithful to the original concept of traditional music. This book examines the history of folk music into the 21st century and how it evolved from an agrarian style as it became increasingly urbanized. Scholar-performer Dick Weissman, himself a veteran of the popularization wars, is uniquely qualified to examine the many controversies and musical evolutions of the music, including a detailed discussion of the quest for authenticity, and how various musicians, critics, and fans have defined that pursuit.
Download or read book Say No to the Devil written by Ian Zack and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Finally, the biography that Rev. Davis deserves. Ian Zack takes ‘Blind Gary’ out of the footnotes and into the footlights of the history of American music.” —Steve Katz, cofounder of Blood, Sweat & Tears Bob Dylan called Gary Davis “one of the wizards of modern music.” Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead—who took lessons with Davis—claimed his musical ability “transcended any common notion of a bluesman.” And the folklorist Alan Lomax called him “one of the really great geniuses of American instrumental music.” But you won’t find Davis alongside blues legends Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The first biography of Davis, Say No to the Devil restores “the Rev’s” remarkable story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with many of Davis’s former students, Ian Zack takes readers through Davis’s difficult beginning as the blind son of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South to his decision to become an ordained Baptist minister and his move to New York in the early 1940s, where he scraped out a living singing and preaching on street corners and in storefront churches in Harlem. There, he gained entry into a circle of musicians that included, among many others, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Dave Van Ronk. But in spite of his tremendous musical achievements, Davis never gained broad recognition from an American public that wasn’t sure what to make of his trademark blend of gospel, ragtime, street preaching, and the blues. His personal life was also fraught, troubled by struggles with alcohol, women, and deteriorating health. Zack chronicles this remarkable figure in American music, helping us to understand how he taught and influenced a generation of musicians.
Download or read book Selling Folk Music written by Ronald D. Cohen and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2017-11-29 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selling Folk Music: An Illustrated History highlights commercial sources that reveal how folk music has been packaged and sold to a broad, shifting audience in the United States. Folk music has a varied and complex scope and lineage, including the blues, minstrel tunes, Victorian parlor songs, spirituals and gospel tunes, country and western songs, sea shanties, labor and political songs, calypsos, pop folk, folk-rock, ethnic, bluegrass, and more. The genre is of major importance in the broader spectrum of American music, and it is easy to understand why folk music has been marketed as America's music. Selling Folk Music presents the public face of folk music in the United States via its commercial promotion and presentation throughout the twentieth century. Included are concert flyers; sheet music; book, songbook, magazine, and album covers; concert posters and flyers; and movie lobby cards and posters, all in their original colors. The 1964 hootenanny craze, for example, spawned such items as a candy bar, pinball machine, bath powder, paper dolls, Halloween costumes, and beach towels. The almost five hundred images in Selling Folk Music present a new way to catalog the history of folk music while highlighting the transformative nature of the genre. Following the detailed introduction on the history of folk music, illustrations from commercial products make up the bulk of the work, presenting a colorful, complex history.
Download or read book Bill Clifton written by Bill C Malone and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most atypical of bluegrass artists, Bill Clifton has enjoyed a long career as a recording artist, performer, and champion of old-time music. Bill C. Malone pens the story of Clifton's eclectic life and influential career. Born into a prominent Maryland family, Clifton connected with old-time music as a boy. Clifton made records around earning a Master's degree, fifteen years in the British folk scene, and stints in the Peace Corps and Marines. Yet that was just the beginning. Closely allied with the Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Mike Seeger, and others, Clifton altered our very perceptions of the music--organizing one of the first outdoor bluegrass festivals, publishing a book of folk and gospel standards that became a cornerstone of the folk revival, and introducing both traditional and progressive bluegrass around the world. As Malone shows, Clifton clothed the music of working-class people in the vestments of romance, celebrating the log cabin as a refuge from modernism that rang with the timeless music of Appalachia. An entertaining account by an eminent music historian, Bill Clifton clarifies the myths and illuminates the paradoxes of an amazing musical life.
Download or read book The Southern Register written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics written by Bruce M. Conforth and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story, scholar and musician Bruce Conforth tells the story of one of the most unusual collections of African American folk music ever amassed—and the remarkable story of the man who produced it: Lawrence Gellert. Compiled between the World Wars, Gellert's recordings were immediately adopted by the American Left as the voice of the true American proletariat, with the songs—largely variants of traditional work songs or blues—dubbed by the Left as "songs of protest." As both the songs and Gellert’s standing itself turned into propaganda weapons of left-wing agitators, Gellert experienced a meteoric rise within the circles of left-wing organizations and the American Communist party. But such success proved ephemeral, with Gellert contributing to his own neglect by steadfastly refusing to release information about where and from whom he had collected his recordings. Later scholars, as a result, would skip over his closely held, largely inaccessible research, with some asserting Gellert’s work had been doctored for political purposes. And to a certain extent they were correct. Conforth reveals how Gellert at least "assisted" in the creation of some of his more political material. But hidden behind the few protest songs that Gellert allowed to become public was a vast body of legitimate African America folksongs—enough to rival the work of any of his contemporary collectors. Had Gellert granted access to all his material, scholars would have quickly seen that it comprised an incredibly complete and diverse collection of all African American song genres: work songs, blues, chants, spirituals, as well as the largest body of African American folktales about Irish Americans (what were referred to as "One Time I'shman" tales). It also included vast swaths of African American oral literature collected by Gellert as part of the Federal Writers' Project. In African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics, Conforth brings to light for the first time the entire body of work collected by Lawrence Gellert, establishing his place, and the place for the material he collected, within the pages of American folk song scholarship. In addition to shedding new light on the concept of "protest music" within African American folk music, Conforth discusses the unique relationship of the American Left to this music and how personal psychology and the demands of the American Communist party would come to ruin Gellert’s life. African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of American social and political history, African American studies, the history of American folk music, and ethnomusicology.
Download or read book Curating Culture written by Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Print magazines were the original niche medium, creating communities long before the internet allowed audiences to find specialized content and interact with like-minded readers. Consumer magazines provided information, inspiration, empathy and advocacy for readers with specific goals and concerns. The targeted advertising business model of magazines was an early precursor of contemporary algorithms and metrics behind social media marketing. The cultural niches 20th century consumer magazines created and covered were powerful social influences on a wide variety of readers, from farmers to feminists, and covered everything from big ideas to political ideologies. With missions to serve specific readers and editors who were champions of their interests, even the most practical magazines were cultural influences well beyond their pages. This book is a curated collection of case studies that collectively shed light on the cultural niches that American consumer magazines of the 20th century covered and created. The chapters examine how cultural niches were cultivated, how they changed over time, and how they influenced broader cultural conversations. This sweeping view of 20th-century American magazines illuminates how this particular media form created, cultivated, and served specific communities, laying the groundwork for contemporary media forms to continue that role today.
Download or read book When Music Mattered written by James Wierzbicki and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-27 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the American Sixties, and how that period’s socio-political essence was reflected and refracted in certain forms of the period’s music. Its five main chapters bear the names of familiar musical categories: ’Folk,’ ‘Rock,’ ‘Jazz,’ ‘Avant-Garde,’ ‘Classical.’ But the book’s real subject matter—treated at length in the Prologue and the Epilogue but spread throughout all that comes between—is the Sixties’ tangled mess of hopes and frustrations, of hungers as much for self-identity as for self-indulgence, of crises of conscience that bothered Americans of almost all ages and regardless of political persuasion.
Download or read book Whole World in an Uproar written by Aaron Leonard and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2023-01-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the radical music of the 1960s was birthed amid unprecedented upheaval and systemic repression. Seventy years since the radical music of the 1960s first hit the airwaves, the anthems of the era continue to resonate with our current times. Through studying these musicians and the political contexts in which their pioneering songs were birthed; amidst paranoia, psychedelic delusions, desire and civil unrest; Aaron Leonard’s Whole World in an Uproar is an important new critical history of countercultural music from the Summer of Love to the unwelcome arrival of Bob Dylan.
Download or read book Mix Tape Memories written by Anders Høg Hansen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-09-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book ‘plays up’ stories of mostly unknown figures and their journeys through a life affected by movement, and a search for home. It engages with individuals and groups whose passions have carried the subjects through ‘uncharted’ or unhomely territories, here told in a series of ‘tracks’ depicting their roles in community memories and histories. Side A engages with individual journeys, such as Lewis, the American black literature book seller; the civil rights activist, Izzy, an American-Swedish folklorist; Eugene, a black classical pianist; and Pi, the Jew transported to Sweden during WWII. Side B focuses on communal histories and alternative educational and artistic spaces, addressing life writing and memory in German comic books; alternative educational spaces in Israel-Palestine and Africa, and ‘small press passions’ of zines/newsletter culture. Tellers and their interpreters are mediating identities where nationality, race, and class (and other markers of identity) have influenced selfhood and collective belonging - revealing how individuals and outsider cultures have the power to influence dominant cultures and inspire societal change.
Download or read book Ruth Crawford Seeger s Worlds written by Ray Allen and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers fresh perspectives on the life and pioneering musical activities of American composer and folk music activist Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-53). This book presents a collection of studies that reveals how innovation and tradition intertwined in surprising ways to shape the cultural landscape of twentieth-century America.
Download or read book Singing for Peace written by Ronald D Cohen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wars have dominated the history of the United States since its founding, but there has also been a long history of antiwar activity. Peace songs have emerged out of every military conflict involving the United States. "Singing for Peace" vividly portrays this rich antiwar history, beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing into the twenty-first.Most of the twentieth-century output was dominated by folk groups and acoustic singer-songwriters. The Vietnam War saw the increased dovetailing of folk and rock music, so that rock and folk-rock took on an ever-larger share of protest activity, then punk, metal, hip-hop, and rap. The authors draw upon a wide range of primary and secondary sources, while quoting many popular and lesser-known song lyrics, and including a range of photos and illustrations. These songs have long served to both shape and reveal the feelings of citizens opposed to America s wars."
Download or read book The World of Bob Dylan written by Sean Latham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-06 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bob Dylan has helped transform music, literature, pop culture, and even politics. The World of Bob Dylan chronicles a lifetime of creative invention that has made a global impact. Leading rock and pop critics and music scholars address themes and topics central to Dylan's life and work: the Blues, his religious faith, Civil Rights, Gender, Race, and American and World literature. Incorporating a rich array of new archival material from never before accessed archives, The World of Bob Dylan offers a comprehensive, uniquely informed and wholly fresh account of the songwriter, artist, filmmaker, and Nobel Laureate whose unique voice has permanently reshaped our cultural landscape.
