Music History: Books @ the MGA Libraries

Maintaining the authority and breadth of coverage that have always defined this classic text, J. Peter Burkholder has meticulously revised and restructured the text to make it more accessible for today's students. This revision places a stronger emphasis on social and historical context and adds substantially expanded pedagogy and striking four-color design.

Prepared for students by renowned professors and noted experts, here are the most extensive and proven study aids available, covering all the major areas of study in college curriculums. Each guide features: up-to-date scholarship; an easy-to-follow narrative outline form; specially designed and formatted pages; and much more.

A history of bluegrass. Winner of the Country Music People Critics' Choice Award for Favorite Country Book of the Year and of the International Bluegrass Music Association Certificate of Merit.

Hailed as a classic in music studies when it was first published in 1977, Early Downhome Blues is a detailed look at traditional country blues artists and their work. Combining musical analysis and cultural history approaches, Titon examines the origins of downhome blues in African American society. He also explores what happened to the art form when the blues were commercially recorded and became part of the larger American culture. From forty-seven musical transcriptions, Titon derives a grammar of early downhome blues melody. His book is enriched with the recollections of blues performers, audience members, and those working in the recording industry. In a new afterword, Titon reflects on the genesis of this book in the blues revival of the 1960s and the politics of tourism in the current revival under way.

From Jubilee to Hip Hop includes 36 reading selections that underscore the breadth and variety of African American musical culture.  Each of these selections relates something notable and interesting about African American musical culture since the Emancipation,  whether it is Marian Anderson's recollection of the legendary 1939 DAR Constitution Hall debacle, or John Chilton's story of the impact of Louis Jordan's song, "Caldonia."

What does the 'country' in country music mean? Most interpret country as a regional or folk music that belongs to people in the hills and in honky-tonks, but Cecelia Tichi argues that it is in fact a national music form, one that belongs to all Americans. In High Lonesome, she shows that country music is strongly linked to our nation's literature and art. Country music, Tichi argues, explores the same themes that have intrigued this country's premier writers and artists over three centuries: the American road, the meaning of home, class struggle, spiritual travail, and the persistent loneliness of the American character. These are obsessions that country music artists like Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Rodney Crowell, Merle Haggard, and Emmylou Harris share with artists not thought of as 'pop'--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Thomas Cole, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O'Keefe. Generously illustrated with photographs of country music artists and images of American art, High Lonesome uses interviews and biographical profiles to provide an insider's look at the schooling, customs, demands, and discipline of country music--an art form that Tichi maintains is emphatically part of mainstream American culture.