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American Roots Music
American roots music -- blues, country & western, gospel, Cajun, zydeco, Tejano, Native American, and other uniquely American genres of folk music -- originated and was nurtured in small communities and spread across the nation. Eventually, in a new era of radio and recordings, these home-grown music traditions ignited an explosion of American popular music, including rock & roll.
Weaving together a rich tapestry of words and pictures, American Roots Music tells the remarkable story of this creative outpouring, spotlighting the pioneering geniuses who wrote the music and sang the songs; the colorful entrepreneurs and scholars who began to define, value, document, and promote the music to the public; the innovative musicians who cross-pollinated traditional musics; and the contemporary artists who have captivated enormous international audiences with their own interpretations. It includes essays on the major musical genres by experts in each field, first-person narratives from key artists, and historical timelines, illustrated with evocative, and often rare, photographs and art.
American Roots Music is the companion book based on the PBS series of the same name, resulting from three years of research and a unique collaboration between the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Experience Music Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Public Broadcasting Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AT&T, Rolling Stone Press, and Ginger Group Productions.
Weaving together a rich tapestry of words and pictures, American Roots Music tells the remarkable story of this creative outpouring, spotlighting the pioneering geniuses who wrote the music and sang the songs; the colorful entrepreneurs and scholars who began to define, value, document, and promote the music to the public; the innovative musicians who cross-pollinated traditional musics; and the contemporary artists who have captivated enormous international audiences with their own interpretations. It includes essays on the major musical genres by experts in each field, first-person narratives from key artists, and historical timelines, illustrated with evocative, and often rare, photographs and art.
American Roots Music is the companion book based on the PBS series of the same name, resulting from three years of research and a unique collaboration between the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Experience Music Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Public Broadcasting Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AT&T, Rolling Stone Press, and Ginger Group Productions.
242 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2001
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About the author
Robert Santelli
34 books7 followersRobert Santelli (born January 31, 1952) is the executive director of the Grammy Museum and former CEO/artistic director of the Experience Music Project. He is the author of nearly a dozen books and a contributor to magazines such as Rolling Stone.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 24, 2022
Talk to your children. Also, listen to when your children are speaking. This reinforces their effort to communicate and for language. Likely your children will develop a lifelong interest in reading, they’ll do well in school, and they will succeed in adult life. Reading books is one of the most important activities that make children smart….
Also if you can, make music a part of your child’s life – Studies have shown that listening to music will boost memory, attention, motivation and learning. It can also lower stress that is destructive to your child's brain. Learning to play a musical instrument has an effect on the brain’s proportional thinking and spatial temporal reasoning that lay the foundation for abstract math. If possible, start with the piano. After learning to read music and play up to 10 notes at a time, it will be much easier for them to learn any of the other instruments. But starting them with music young--no matter what the instrument--is the important thing…
Also if you can, make music a part of your child’s life – Studies have shown that listening to music will boost memory, attention, motivation and learning. It can also lower stress that is destructive to your child's brain. Learning to play a musical instrument has an effect on the brain’s proportional thinking and spatial temporal reasoning that lay the foundation for abstract math. If possible, start with the piano. After learning to read music and play up to 10 notes at a time, it will be much easier for them to learn any of the other instruments. But starting them with music young--no matter what the instrument--is the important thing…
July 15, 2015
Great source of leads whereby I made my own channel on Pandora using a few of the chapters as the outline . I simply added artists where the option was presented to add variety to an existing channel ; as I already was at my maxim for unpaid channels (100) . Suddenly I feel like a music ethnologist !
September 6, 2014
When I got this from library I thought I was getting the DVD. Wrong. However, the book goes into much more detail than can be done in a DVD. Pretty awesome tracing the roots of American music. Not imported, home grown from the different traditions that have made us one country.
March 4, 2020
The text is basically just a quick overview, an introduction to the various homegrown genres covered (blues, country, tejano, etc.) and the subgenres contained within, but the collection of photographs in this book is amazing.
February 19, 2025
This book was a great way to dive into a bunch of music that shaped what we listen to today. I very much enjoyed playing songs mentioned along while I was reading.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews