Live Music In America

When the Swedish concert singer Jenny Lind toured the U.S. in 1850, she became the prototype for the modern pop star. Meanwhile, her manager, P.T. Barnum, became the prototype for another figure of enduring significance: the pop culture impresario. Starting with Lind's fabled U.S. tour and winding all the way into the twenty-first century, Live Music in America surveys the ongoing impact and changing conditions of live music performance in the U.S. It covers a range of historic performances, from the Fisk Jubilee Singers expanding the sphere of African American music in the 1870s, to Benny Goodman bringing swing to Carnegie Hall in 1938, to 1952's Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland - arguably the first rock and roll concert - to Beyoncé's boundary-shattering performance at the 2018 Coachella festival. More than that, the book details the roles played by performers, audiences, media commentators, and a variety of live music producers (promoters, agents, sound and stage technicians) in shaping what live music means and how it has evolved. Live Music in America connects what occurs behind the scenes to what takes place on stage to highlight the ways in which live music is very deliberately produced and does not just spontaneously materialize. Along the way, author Steve Waksman uses previously unstudied archival materials to shed new light on the origins of jazz, the emergence of rock 'n' roll, and the rise of the modern music festival.

Millions of Americans cherish childhood memories of family trips to Branson to see performances by the Baldknobbers or the Presleys. Now they take their own children to see how new generations of those same entertaining families continue to split sides and tug heartstrings. Go backstage with Arline Chandler in places like Silver Dollar City and the Shepherd of the Hills. Reminisce in the stories of the people who made Branson into the showbiz marvel that it is today while holding on to the values of hard work and family at the town's cultural foundation. And learn about the emergence of newer acts like the Duttons, the Hughes Brothers and Shoji Tabuchi in a place where Broadway and the backwoods shake hands and SIX voices is all that is needed to produce a full orchestra.

As if recovering from a raucous dream of the 1960s, Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek arrived on 1970s American radio with a sound that echoed disenchanted hearts of young people everywhere. The three American boys had named their band after a country they’d watched and dreamt of from their London childhood Air Force base homes. What was this country? This new band? Classic and timeless, America embodied the dreams of a nation desperate to emerge from the desert and finally give their horse a name. Celebrating the band’s fiftieth anniversary, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell share stories of growing up, growing together, and growing older. Journalist Jude Warne weaves original interviews with Beckley, Bunnell, and many others into a dynamic cultural history of America, the band, and America, the nation. Reliving hits like “Ventura Highway,” “Tin Man,” and of course, “A Horse with No Name” from their 19 studio albums and incomparable live recordings, this book offers readers a new appreciation of what makes some music unforgettable and timeless. As America’s music stays in rhythm with the heartbeats of its millions of fans, new fans feel the draw of a familiar emotion. They’ve felt it before in their hearts and thanks to America, they can now hear it, share it, and sing along.

A fascinating exploration of the relationship between American culture and music as defined by musicians, scholars, and critics from around the world. Music has been the cornerstone of popular culture in the United States since the beginning of our nation's history. From early immigrants sharing the sounds of their native lands to contemporary artists performing benefit concerts for social causes, our country's musical expressions reflect where we, as a people, have been, as well as our hope for the future. This four-volume encyclopedia examines music's influence on contemporary American life, tracing historical connections over time. Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between this art form and our society. Entries include singers, composers, lyricists, songs, musical genres, places, instruments, technologies, music in films, music in political realms, and music shows on television.

The social history of music in Britain since 1950 has long been the subject of nostalgic articles in newspapers and magazines, nostalgic programmes on radio and television and collective memories on music websites, but to date there has been no proper scholarly study. The three volumes of The History of Live Music in Britain address this gap, and do so from the unique perspective of the music promoter: the key theme is the changing nature of the live music industry. The books are focused upon popular music but cover all musical genres and the authors offer new insights into a variety of issues, including changes in musical fashions and tastes; the impact of developing technologies; the balance of power between live and recorded music businesses; the role of the state as regulator and promoter; the effects of demographic and other social changes on music culture; and the continuing importance of do-it-yourself enthusiasts. Drawing on archival research, a wide range of academic and non-academic secondary sources, participant observation and industry interviews, the books are likely to become landmark works within Popular Music Studies and broader cultural history.

"During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department's Cultural Presentations program. Using archival documents and newly collected oral histories, this study illuminates the reception of these musical events, for the practice of musical diplomacy on the ground sometimes differed substantially from what the department's planners envisioned. Performances of music in many styles--classical, rock 'n' roll, folk, blues, and jazz--were meant to compete with traveling Soviet and Chinese artists, enhancing the reputation of American culture. These concerts offered large audiences evidence of America's improving race relations, excellent musicianship, and generosity toward other peoples. Most important, these performances also built meaningful connections with people in other lands. Through personal contacts and the media, musical diplomacy created subtle musical, social, and political relationships on a global scale. Although these tours were sometimes conceived as propaganda ventures, their most important function was the building of imagined and real relationships, which constitute the essence of soft power"--Provided by publisher.

An award-winning scholar and leading authority on American symphonic culture argues that classical music in the United States is peculiarly performance-driven, and he traces a musical trajectory rising to its peak at the close of the 19th century and receding after World War I.

Excerpt from Early Concert-Life in America (1731-1800) With this book I attempt to lay the historical foundations of one important side of our country's musical life. Intended as a source-book, it is addressed to those seriously interested in musical history and it is cast in a form peculiar to source-books, which necessarily resemble mosaics and - mosaics are not to everybody's taste. While I have taken pains to leave as little dust as possible on these pages, I fear that they lack that literary brilliancy which makes, at first reading, even a poor book attractive. Those sterner critics who will take issue with me on that score I beg to remember how very difficult a task it is to turn a virgin-forest into a garden. On the other hand, as this work is addressed to the student more than to the amateur, his familiarity with the history of music in Europe was taken for granted. Therefore European conditions were discussed only where I disagreed with current doctrines, where a European background was necessary for the proper historical perspective, or, where danger-signals might be helpful. References to early opera in America were kept as brief as possible because I hope to complete a comprehensive essay on this subject before long. For the same reason, other topics, bearing indirectly on our early concert life, were kept in the background. Similarly, biographical and bibliographical data were included in so far only as they seemed called for or affected the biographical notes given in the index to my Bibliography of Early Secular American Music. In order to preserve as much of the eighteenth century flavor as possible, names have been spelled as they appeared in my sources and only, when it would have been cruel to let the reader wrestle with the printer's devil, have I adopted the form now commonly used. Probably it will also prevent confusion if I remark that, as a rule and for obvious reasons, not the earliest announcements but those nearest to the date fixed for the concert have been quoted. The data on concerts given in our country until 1750 have been published in form of a separate article in the New Music Review, 1906. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.