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Exploring American Folk Music
- Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States
- Narrated by: Michael Rene Zuzel
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
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Publisher's summary
Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States reflects the fascinating diversity of regional and grassroots music in the United States. The book covers the diverse strains of American folk music - Latin, Native American, African, French-Canadian, British, and Cajun - and offers a chronology of the development of folk music in the United States. A chapter includes detailed information about the roots of hip hop. Exploring American Folk Music also introduces you to such important figures in American music as Bob Wills, Lydia Mendoza, Bob Dylan, and Muddy Waters, who helped shape what America sounds like in the 21st century.
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Very good book, marred by narration
- By Dru Lattin on 11-04-15
By: Larry Eskridge
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The History of Rock & Roll
- Volume 1: 1920-1963
- By: Ed Ward
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Ed Ward covers the first half of the history of rock & roll in this sweeping and definitive narrative - from the 1920s, when the music of rambling medicine shows mingled with the songs of vaudeville and minstrel acts to create the very early sounds of country and rhythm and blues, to the rise of the first independent record labels post-World War II, and concluding in December 1963, just as an immense change in the airwaves took hold and the Beatles prepared for their first American tour.
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Author's blindspots mar this book
- By Mark Clark on 03-28-17
By: Ed Ward
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King of the Blues
- The Rise and Reign of B.B. King
- By: Daniel De Visé
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age 10, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker and encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark.
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Excellent
- By Sonny Garcia on 01-02-24
By: Daniel De Visé
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Never a Dull Moment
- 1971 - the Year That Rock Exploded
- By: David Hepworth
- Narrated by: David Hepworth
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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On New Year's Eve, 1970, Paul McCartney told his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London, effectively ending The Beatles. You might say this was the last day of the pop era. The following day, which was a Friday, was 1971. You might say this was the first day of the rock era. And within the remaining 364 days of this monumental year, the world would hear Don McLean's "American Pie", The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", The Who's "Baba O'Riley", Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", and more.
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A blast from the past
- By Amazon Customer on 07-30-16
By: David Hepworth
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Your Song Changed My Life
- From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It
- By: Bob Boilen
- Narrated by: Bob Boilen
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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From the beloved host and creator of NPR's All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts comes an essential oral history of modern music, told in the voices of iconic and up-and-coming musicians, including Dave Grohl, Jimmy Page, Michael Stipe, Carrie Brownstein, Smokey Robinson, and Jeff Tweedy, among others - published in association with NPR Music.
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Cool if you know all interviewed artists
- By Farfield on 12-05-16
By: Bob Boilen
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With Amusement for All
- A History of American Popular Culture since 1830
- By: LeRoy Ashby
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 33 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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With Amusement for All is the first comprehensive history of two centuries of mass entertainment in the United States, covering everything from the penny press to Playboy, the NBA to NASCAR, big band to hip hop, and other topics including film, comics, television, sports, and music. Paying careful attention to matters of race, gender, class, economics, and politics, LeRoy Ashby emphasizes the complex ways in which popular culture simultaneously reflects and transforms American culture.
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So Much Fun!
- By Paul on 11-28-13
By: LeRoy Ashby
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Shining Star
- Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire
- By: Philip Bailey, Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman
- Narrated by: Philip Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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With more than 90 million records sold and eight Grammy Awards throughout its 40-year history, Earth, Wind & Fire has staked its claim as one of the most successful, influential, and beloved acts in music history. Now, for the first time, its dynamic lead singer, Philip Bailey, chronicles the group's meteoric rise to stardom and his own professional and spiritual journey. Never before had a musical act crossed multiple styles and genres with a quixotic blend of astrology, universalism, and Egyptology as Earth, Wind & Fire (EWF) did when it exploded into the public's conscience during the 1970s.
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Great book, but needed pro narrator
- By Wayne on 03-23-16
By: Philip Bailey, and others
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Beatles '66
- The Revolutionary Year
- By: Steve Turner
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966 - the year of their last concert and of Revolver, their first album created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner investigates the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives and work during 1966.
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Great listen
- By Tad Davis on 07-28-18
By: Steve Turner
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Country Music
- A History
- By: Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns
- Narrated by: Brian Corrigan, Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The rich and colorful story of America's most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the 20th century - based on the upcoming eight-part film series to air on PBS in September 2019.
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Immersed in country music!
- By Lori Hanson on 09-30-19
By: Dayton Duncan, and others
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Cool Town
- How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture
- By: Grace Elizabeth Hale
- Narrated by: Emily Cauldwell
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1979, the self-titled debut album by the B-52s burst onto the Billboard charts, capturing the imagination of fans and music critics worldwide. The fact that the group had formed in the sleepy southern college town of Athens, Georgia, only increased the fascination. Soon, more Athens bands followed the B-52s into the vanguard of the new American music that would come to be known as "alternative", including R.E.M., who catapulted over the course of the 1980s to the top of the musical mainstream.
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I feel like I was there when it happened
- By Joseph Suciu on 01-11-23
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1965
- The Most Revolutionary Year in Music
- By: Andrew Grant Jackson
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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During 12 unforgettable months in the middle of the turbulent '60s, America saw the rise of innovative new sounds that would change popular music as we knew it. In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, music historian Andrew Grant Jackson (Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers) chronicles a groundbreaking year of creativity fueled by rivalries between musicians and continents, sweeping social changes, and technological breakthroughs.
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Seems like a good overview
- By wylie smith on 01-12-23
What listeners say about Exploring American Folk Music
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- DaveBagdade
- 07-14-22
Very comprehensive but with significant omissions
The author has put significant effort and research into this book. The research is impressive. However, the result is very uneven. The explorations of blues and Hispanic music are quite good, but there is an over a long section on gospel which I think is outside the scope of the text premise. But more fundamentally, how do you discuss Hispanic, Native American and Scandinavian music in great detail without even hardly a mention of Irish traditional music? The author makes multiple references to Go, which he admits is completely foreign to anyone outside the DC Metro, and nothing for Irish trad, which is played in literally every city in this country? It’s supposed to be a book about American traditional music forms. Also, the narrator was OK, but there were a few repeated mispronunciations which got to be annoying after a while. On the whole, this is an extremely impressive work, but it is diminished by its omissions.
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- Robert Franks
- 01-22-15
Outstanding Musical Journey!!!!
Would you listen to Exploring American Folk Music again? Why?
Great narration, along with a good story. So much information, there are chapters, I would like to hear again.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Being a lover of the Blues, I enjoyed learning of the blues roots, and how it has transformed much of America's music. I like Mexican music, as well, and enjoyed gaining a better understanding of how it has evolved.
Which scene was your favorite?
Each chapter has it's highlights. I enjoyed re-living the birth of Bluegrass, and the musicans who put each of their interpretations to it. You just can't beat "Orange Blossom Special" and "Foggy Mountain Breakdown".
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
Folk music is alive and well in America.
Any additional comments?
I really appreciated such an energetic narration about music in a way I had never heard it presented before. Mostly, we hear music that is presented and promoted by mass media. From this book I have learned that there are many musical styles which are regional and specific to groups. For example, in South Carolina there is a style of music called Beach Music with a corresponding dance called the "Shag", that I am familiar with. Each region and ethnic group tends to have particular styles of musical expression they relate with. The interesting thing is how this music blends and evolves between groups and regions. Some of the Caribbean islands favor Country and Western as it's most popular music. In Samoa you may hear Latin Dance night at the club. This has been a real nice journey into music from Folk to pop. Very well done job by the author and narrator. If you are a music fan and want to learn more about American music and it's folk roots - get this book!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Teresa
- 02-16-15
Exploring American Folk Music
I first have to say that this was simply a treat to listen to. This book not only laid out the groundwork for American folk music from it’s very foundation or roots, it put in the cornerstone as well. This was an incredibly detailed look at the origins of our musical culture as it is to this day.
Kip Lornell provided extensive research drawing from numerous examples along with at least three subsequent examples of the origins, styles, and evolution of each genre of American folk music. I was utterly impressed and learned a lot of nifty things about folk music and music in general that I didn’t know before.
There were several musicians who may have easily been put to the back burner and been forgotten about during folk music’s evolution or the Folk Revival. A few of my favorite topics in the book were about the Native-American music and the border stations where Wolfman Jack became a DJ. From hymns, blues, gospel, zydeco, family and community gatherings, military songs, working songs, campfires, and traveling songs; it’s all covered in this great audiobook.
“Exploring American Folk Music” was a wonderful listen and a great audiobook for music lovers, and more specifically American folk music lovers. I think it’s safe to say that American folk music is a melting pot of wonderful and diverse musical influence from all over the world.
Overall, this audiobook was superb. I would definitely recommend listening to this one.
About the narrator: Michael Rene Zuzel did an outstanding job narrating this book. It was just right. Not too fast or too slow. He spoke clearly with a steady pace and he showed interest in the subject with his own upbeat cadence which was suitable for the content. I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook.
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1 person found this helpful
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- bec/audiothing
- 01-29-15
The Ultimate American Folk Music Reference
My Review
This is a long, long listen which I managed to complete by just listening to a chapter at a time.
I must say, it's not as I expected, I thought I might get to hear lots of musical examples, and maybe a few interviews with musicians. This was not to be, it is an academic teaching aid for serious students, albeit, written in an easy to understand way, no academic jargon here thank goodness.
Despite it being a good listen, If I were a music student, I would find it very difficult to learn without hard copy for reference. I need indexes, glossaries and references, this category of audio book is, to my mind, well suited to whyspersync.
To summarise, for the those who simply want to know more about American Folk music, this audiobook is your fully comprehensive guide, you really couldn't wish for more information. For the serious student? In my opinion it is, quite simply, a wonderful companion to the text. However, we are told that everyone has their own preferred learning style, what doesn't suit me may be just perfect for others.
The value of the impeccably researched information contained within the 15+ hours of listening merits nothing less than 5 stars.
Narrator
Michael Renee Zuzel has a pleasant easy to listen to voice, he made this huge task seem effortless. He is brisk enough to hold the listeners attention. To my ear, sound quality and production are excellent.
This audiobook was gifted to me in the hopeful expectation of this review
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3 people found this helpful
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- Lyn
- 06-22-20
dull and pedantic
the paper copy of this might make a good reference bi=ut it is a poor listen NO music, just when I thought I might finally hear some I only got the length of play time....
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