Fiction. Based loosely on a tragic real-life incident in 2014, ONE KIND FAVOR explores the consequences of the lynching of a young black man in rural North Carolina. After the lynching of Lincoln Lennox is discovered and subsequently covered up in the small fictional community of Cord, North Carolina, the ghosts who frequent the all-in-one bar and consignment shop take on the responsibility of unearthing the truth and acting as the memory for the town that longs to forget and continues to hate. A reimagined Kathy Acker, the groundbreaking literary icon, engages Lincoln in a love triangle and brings a transgressive post-punk esthetic to the mission. The down-the-rabbit-hole satirical storytelling of ONE KIND FAVOR, Kevin McIlvoy's sixth novel, echoes Appalachian ghost stories in which haunting presences will, at last, have their way. "In ONE KIND FAVOR, Kevin McIlvoy crafts a novel we haven't seen before: a rare book about race and place that offers a nuanced take on the world we live in. This book feels vital for our times."--Nina McConigley "I describe Cord as 'spirit-haunted,' but is any place in America not haunted by ancestral misdeeds?"--Rion Scott Amilcar
Now available with online audio, this classic book is the perfect introduction to fingerstyle solo guitar. It features 21 popular country-blues and ragtime songs set by Stefan Grossman, Happy Traum, Dave Van Ronk and John Fahey in entry-level fingerpicking arrangements. Includes: Delia * Death Comes Creepin' * John Henry * St. James Infirmary * Silent Night * Just a Closer Walk with Thee and more. In standard notation and tablature.
Listen to the Blues! Exploring A Musical Genre provides an overview of this distinctly American musical genre for fans of the blues and curious readers alike, with a focus on 50 must-hear artists, albums, and subgenres. Unlike other books on the blues, which tend to focus on musician biographies, Listen to the Blues! devotes time to the compositions, recordings, and musical legacies of blues musicians from the early 20th century to the present. Although the author references musical structure, harmony, form, and other musical concepts, the volume avoids technical language; therefore, it is a volume that should be of interest to the casual blues fan, to students of blues music and its history, and to more serious blues fans. The chapters on the impact of the blues on popular culture and the legacy of the blues also put the genre in a broader historical context than what is found in many books on the blues. The book opens with a background chapter that provides an overview of the history and structure of blues music. A substantial, encyclopedic chapter that focuses on 50 must-hear blues musicians follows, as does a chapter that explores the impact on popular culture of blues music and musicians and a chapter that focuses on the legacy of the genre. A bibliography rounds out the work.
The greatest albums of all time . . . and how they happened. Organised chronologically and spanning seven decades, The MOJO Collection presents an authoritative and engaging guide to the history of the pop album via hundreds of long-playing masterpieces, from the much-loved to the little known. From The Beatles to The Verve, from Duke Ellington to King Tubby and from Peggy Lee to Sly Stone, hundreds of albums are covered in detail with chart histories, full track and personnel listings and further listening suggestions. There's also exhaustive coverage of the soundtrack and hit collections that every home should have. Like all collections, there are records you listen to constantly, albums you've forgotten, albums you hardly play, albums you love guiltily and albums you thought you were alone in treasuring, proving The MOJO Collection to be an essential purchase for those who love and live music.
One-of-a Kind Handmade Weddings is filled with ideas to inspire today's bride-to-be. The book is filled with extra-special touches that will quickly and easily personalize any event—whether it's in a ballroom or at the beach. Centerpieces in bloom, candlelit walkways, perfect accessories for flower girls and groom, a memory scrapbook, table lanterns, a fishbowl of wishes, and save-the-dates—these are just a few of the many decorative details. There are a wide range of projects and additional design ideas for the planning, ceremony, and celebration. Readers can choose from among the easy step-by-step projects—or look for inspiration in the photo gallery of design ideas to create their own signature style.
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE A beautiful, comprehensive volume of Dylan’s lyrics, from the beginning of his career through the present day—with the songwriter’s edits to dozens of songs, appearing here for the first time. Bob Dylan is one of the most important songwriters of our time, responsible for modern classics such as “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” The Lyrics is a comprehensive and definitive collection of Dylan’s most recent writing as well as the early works that are such an essential part of the canon. Well known for changing the lyrics to even his best-loved songs, Dylan has edited dozens of songs for this volume, making The Lyrics a must-read for everyone from fanatics to casual fans.
In African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story, scholar and musician Bruce Conforth tells the story of one of the most unusual collections of African American folk music ever amassed—and the remarkable story of the man who produced it: Lawrence Gellert. Compiled between the World Wars, Gellert's recordings were immediately adopted by the American Left as the voice of the true American proletariat, with the songs—largely variants of traditional work songs or blues—dubbed by the Left as "songs of protest." As both the songs and Gellert’s standing itself turned into propaganda weapons of left-wing agitators, Gellert experienced a meteoric rise within the circles of left-wing organizations and the American Communist party. But such success proved ephemeral, with Gellert contributing to his own neglect by steadfastly refusing to release information about where and from whom he had collected his recordings. Later scholars, as a result, would skip over his closely held, largely inaccessible research, with some asserting Gellert’s work had been doctored for political purposes. And to a certain extent they were correct. Conforth reveals how Gellert at least "assisted" in the creation of some of his more political material. But hidden behind the few protest songs that Gellert allowed to become public was a vast body of legitimate African America folksongs—enough to rival the work of any of his contemporary collectors. Had Gellert granted access to all his material, scholars would have quickly seen that it comprised an incredibly complete and diverse collection of all African American song genres: work songs, blues, chants, spirituals, as well as the largest body of African American folktales about Irish Americans (what were referred to as "One Time I'shman" tales). It also included vast swaths of African American oral literature collected by Gellert as part of the Federal Writers' Project. In African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics, Conforth brings to light for the first time the entire body of work collected by Lawrence Gellert, establishing his place, and the place for the material he collected, within the pages of American folk song scholarship. In addition to shedding new light on the concept of "protest music" within African American folk music, Conforth discusses the unique relationship of the American Left to this music and how personal psychology and the demands of the American Communist party would come to ruin Gellert’s life. African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of American social and political history, African American studies, the history of American folk music, and ethnomusicology.
The Song Index features over 150,000 citations that lead users to over 2,100 song books spanning more than a century, from the 1880s to the 1990s. The songs cited represent a multitude of musical practices, cultures, and traditions, ranging from ehtnic to regional, from foreign to American, representing every type of song: popular, folk, children's, political, comic, advertising, protest, patriotic, military, and classical, as well as hymns, spirituals, ballads, arias, choral symphonies, and other larger works. This comprehensive volume also includes a bibliography of the books indexed; an index of sources from which the songs originated; and an alphabetical composer index.
