Books in the Music in American Life series

A study of Bill Monroe's contributions to American and world music. Spanning over 1,000 separate performances, this work presents a chronological list of Bill Monroe's commercially released sound and visual recordings.

Michael D. Doubler is the great grandson of Uncle Dave Macon. His books include Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945 and Civilian in Peace, Soldier in War: The Army National Guard, 1636-2000.

Known as the Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe pioneered a different category of music and inspired generations of musicians and fans. This title offers a tribute to the man and the musician who transformed the traditional music of western Kentucky into an international sensation.

Traces the Zarzuela from its beginnings in 17th century Spain to its awareness via the Internet and its role in defining American urban ethnicity. This is a book on Hispanic art form, bridging classical and popular music. It examines Cuba's role in transmitting the Zarzuela to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Probing the intersection of music and racial politics in California

Examines the regional and national history that shaped Cline's career and the popular culture that she so profoundly influenced with her music.

An important modern exponent of Asian dance, Pandit Chitresh Das brought kathak to the United States in 1970. The North Indian classical dance has since become an important art form within the greater Indian diaspora. Yet its adoption outside of India raises questions about what happens to artistic practices when we separate them from their broader cultural contexts. A Guru's Journey provides an ethnographic study of the dance form in the San Francisco Bay Area community formed by Das. Sarah Morelli, a kathak dancer and one of Das's former students, investigates issues in teaching, learning, and performance that developed around Das during his time in the United States. In modifying kathak's form and teaching for Western students, Das negotiates questions of Indianness and non-Indianness, gender, identity, and race. Morelli lays out these issues for readers with the goal of deepening their knowledge of kathak aesthetics, technique, and theory. She also shares the intricacies of footwork, facial expression in storytelling, and other aspects of kathak while tying them to the cultural issues that inform the dance.

A ground-breaking history of the American folk music revival

Most famous for his military marches, John Philip Sousa led a group of devoted musicians around the world and shaped a new cultural landscape. This book documents almost every aspect of the "March King's" band: its history, its star performers, its appearances on recordings, and the problems the group faced on their 1911 trip around the world.

For nearly a century, Juilliard has trained the artists who compose the elite corps of the performing arts community in the United States. This title affirms the school's artistic legacy of great performances as the one constant amid decades of upheaval and change. It takes us behind the scenes and into its practice rooms, studios, and offices.

A musical genre forever outside the lines With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward¿s Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories that are at the heart of Americana. At base a hybrid of rock and country, Americana is also infused with folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and other types of roots music. Performers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Gram Parsons used these ingredients to create influential music that took well-established genres down exciting new roads. The name Americana was coined in the 1990s to describe similarly inclined artists like Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Wilco. Today, Brandi Carlile and I¿m With Her are among the musicians carrying the genre into the twenty-first century. Essential and engaging, Americanaland chronicles the evolution and resonance of this ever-changing amalgam of American music. Margie Greve¿s hand-embroidered color portraits offer a portfolio of the pioneers and contemporary practitioners of Americana.