Musical Gumbo

This first comprehensive guide to both the music and the hard-living, free-spirited musicians who made--and make--the music of New Orleans includes fascinating trivia on greats Jelly Roll Morton, the Neville Brothers, Fats Domino, Louis Armstrong, Harry Connick, Jr., and others--plus a guide to nightclubs and the New Orleans Jazz Fest. Discography of essential CDs.

Music lovers, researchers, students, librarians, and teachers can trace the personal and artistic influences behind music makers from Elton John to Leontyne Price. Individual entries on over 400 of the world's most renowned and accomplished living performers, composers, conductors, and band leaders in musical genres from opera to hip-hop. Also includes an in-depth Index covering musicians of all eras, so that readers can learn which artists, alive or dead, influenced the work of today's most important figures in the music industry.

Development Drowned and Reborn is a “Blues geography” of New Orleans, one that compels readers to return to the history of the Black freedom struggle there to reckon with its unfinished business. Reading contemporary policies of abandonment against the grain, Clyde Woods explores how Hurricane Katrina brought long-standing structures of domination into view. In so doing, Woods delineates the roots of neoliberalism in the region and a history of resistance. Written in dialogue with social movements, this book offers tools for comprehending the racist dynamics of U.S. culture and economy. Following his landmark study, Development Arrested, Woods turns to organic intellectuals, Blues musicians, and poor and working people to instruct readers in this future-oriented history of struggle. Through this unique optic, Woods delineates a history, methodology, and epistemology to grasp alternative visions of development. Woods contributes to debates about the history and geography of neoliberalism. The book suggests that the prevailing focus on neoliberalism at national and global scales has led to a neglect of the regional scale. Specifically, it observes that theories of neoliberalism have tended to overlook New Orleans as an epicenter where racial, class, gender, and regional hierarchies have persisted for centuries. Through this Blues geography, Woods excavates the struggle for a new society.

The music of Texas and the American Southwest is as diverse and distinctive as the many different groups who have lived in the region over the past several centuries,” writes Gary Hartman in his introduction to this refreshingly different look at various genres of Texas music. Roots of Texas Music celebrates the diverse sources of the music of the Lone Star State by gathering chapters by specialists on each of them—specialists whose views may not have dominated the perception of Texas music to date. Editor Lawrence Clayton conceived this project as one that would not simply repeat the common wisdom about Texas music traditions, but rather would offer new perspectives. He therefore called on contributors whose work had been well-grounded but not necessarily widely published. The result is a lively, captivating, and original look at the musical traditions of Texas Germans and Czechs, black Creoles and Chicanos, and blues and gospel singers. Hartman’s introduction places these repertoires within the larger picture of one of the most fertile musical seedbeds the nation knows. The diverse genres included in the anthology also provide an introduction to the classes, cultures, races, and ethnic groups of Texas and highlight the ways in which the state’s musical wealth has influenced the listening habits of the nation.

Originally published: New York: Doubleday, 1979.

By the author of Eat Dat and Fear Dat, a charmingly irreverent guide to the thriving, world-famous music scene in New Orleans One of the first questions visitors to New Orleans often ask is, “Where can I go to hear music?” A better question might be, “Where can I go and not hear music?” Music is everywhere in this city, but to experience the best of it, you need the right guide. In Hear Dat New Orleans, local expert Michael Murphy brings his signature offbeat sensibility to the Big Easy's largest tourist draw. With in-depth recommendations for the greatest venues, the best musicians, and the must-see festivals, Hear Dat New Orleans is an indispensable companion for anyone who wants to really experience the sounds of New Orleans?live and uncensored.

The book Youth, Identity, and Re-Fashioning Popular Music in Israel. 1950s–1980s aims to refresh the understanding of the relationship between social power relations, youth culture, and popular music in Israel. The authors discuss various perspectives regarding the axis of youth, popular culture, and music and present additional options for the discourse on these topics in Israel. Among its many new findings, the study discusses new insights relating to the increasing openness of Israeli culture to globalization, the decline of the collective culture of the Sabra, the rise of individual culture, liberalism and neoliberalism, the decay of Israeli consensus, and the melting pot idea and practices. In addition, the authors examine various perspectives on how Israeli culture and music have changed over the years and reacted to historical alterations. It reviews the tensions between modernism and postmodernism, localism and globalism, teenagers and their parents’ culture, ethnicity and class, hegemonic negotiations, and marginal subcultures. This book uses historical methodology combined with the assistance of cultural theories, historical surveys, and first-hand documents.

Lonnie Johnson (1894–1970) was a virtuoso guitarist who influenced generations of musicians from Django Reinhardt to Eric Clapton to Bill Wyman and especially B. B. King. Born in New Orleans, he began playing violin and guitar in his father’s band at an early age. When most of his family was wiped out by the 1918 flu epidemic, he and his surviving brother moved to St. Louis, where he won a blues contest that included a recording contract. His career was launched. Johnson can be heard on many Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong records, including the latter’s famous “Savoy Blues” with the Hot Five. He is perhaps best known for his 12-string guitar solos and his ground-breaking recordings with the white guitarist Eddie Lang in the late 1920s. After World War II he began playing rhythm and blues and continued to record and tour until his death. This is the first full-length work on Johnson. Dean Alger answers many biographical mysteries, including how many members of Johnson’s large family were left after the epidemic. It also places Johnson and his musical contemporaries in the context of American race relations and argues for the importance of music in the fight for civil rights. Finally, Alger analyzes Johnson’s major recordings in terms of technique and style. Distribution of an accompanying music CD will be coordinated with the release of this book.