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Klezmer is Yiddish music, the music of the Jews of Europe and America, a music of laughter and tears, of weddings and festivals, of dancing and prayer. Born in the Middle Ages, it came of age in the shtetl (the Eastern European Jewish country town), where "a wedding without klezmer is worse than a funeral without tears." Most of the European klezmorim (klezmer players) were murdered in the Holocaust; in the last 25 years, however, klezmer has been reborn, with dozens of groups, often mixing klezmer with jazz or rock, gaining large followings throughout the world. The Book of Klezmer traces the music's entire history, making use of extensive documentary material; interviews with forgotten klezmorim as well as luminaries such as Theodore Bikel, Leonard Nimoy, Joel Grey, Andy Statman, and John Zorn; and dozens of illuminating, stirring, and previously unpublished photographs.
Have records, compact discs, and other sound reproduction equipment merely provided American listeners with pleasant diversions, or have more important historical and cultural influences flowed through them? Do recording machines simply capture what's already out there, or is the music somehow transformed in the dual process of documentation and dissemination? How would our lives be different without these machines? Such are the questions that arise when we stop taking for granted the phenomenon of recorded music and the phonograph itself. Now comes an in-depth cultural history of the phonograph in the United States from 1890 to 1945. William Howland Kenney offers a full account of what he c...
Caroline Bithell explores the history and significance of the natural voice movement and its culture of open-access community choirs, weekend workshops, and summer camps. Founded on the premise that 'everyone can sing', the movement is distinguished from other choral movements by its emphasis on oral transmission and its eclectic repertoire of songs from across the globe.
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First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
CD contains musical excerpts referenced in the text.
Although Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie and Ed Cray's Ramblin' Man capture Woody Guthrie's freewheeling personality and his empathy for the poor and downtrodden, Kaufman is the first to portray in detail Guthrie's commitment to political radicalism, especially communism. Drawing on previously unseen letters, song lyrics, essays, and interviews with family and friends, Kaufman traces Guthrie's involvement in the workers' movement and his development of protest songs. He portrays Guthrie as a committed and flawed human immersed in political complexity and harrowing personal struggle. Since most of the stories in Kaufman's appreciative portrait will be familiar to readers interested in Guthrie, it is best for those who know little about the singer to read first his autobiography, Bound for Glory, or as a next read after American Radical.