African American Music
Folk Music and Song in the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives
Between 1937 and 1940 fieldworkers in the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project interviewed around 3,500 formerly enslaved people in North America, resulting in roughly 20,000 pages ...
The Life and Music of Booker "Bukka" White
Booker “Bukka” White (1905–1977) was one of the most important blues musicians of the twentieth century. The twelve songs he recorded in Chicago in 1940 are considered to be among the finest in ...
The Purple One
Contributions by Cassandra D. Chaney, Shannon M. Cochran, Samuel P. Fitzpatrick, Judson L. Jeffries, Zada Johnson, Tony Kiene, Aaron J. Kimble, Jerod Lockhart, Molly Reinhoudt, Paul N. Reinsch, Laurel ...
Wichita Blues
In conversations on regional blues, the traditions of the Mississippi Delta, the Carolina Piedmont, Chicago, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are frequently lauded. But until now, little ...
In with the In Crowd
Most studies of 1960s jazz underscore the sounds of famous avant-garde musicians like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Albert Ayler. Conspicuously absent from these narratives are the more popular ...
Same Old Song
Popular music and its listeners are strongly associated with newness and youth. Young people can stay up late dancing to the latest hits and use cutting-edge technology for listening to and sharing fresh ...
Jazz in the Hill
From the 1920s through the 1960s, Pittsburgh’s Hill District was the heart of the city’s Black cultural life and home to a vibrant jazz scene. In Jazz in the Hill: Nightlife and Narratives of a Pittsburgh ...
A Trumpet around the Corner
Samuel Charters has been studying and writing about New Orleans music for more than fifty years. A Trumpet around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz is the first book to tell the entire story of ...
Poor Gal
Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane chronicles the origins and evolution of a folk tune beloved by millions worldwide. Dan Gutstein delves into the trajectory of the “Liza Jane” family ...
Vibe
Where exactly does the South begin and end? Current maps are too rigid to account for the ways Black people have built the South while being simultaneously excluded from it. Drawing from the different ...