Results by title
75 books match the query 'Folk & Traditional' and 4 start with a
A Florida Fiddler
The Life and Times of Richard SeamanGregory Hansen
University of Alabama Press, 2007
Exploring Florida's cultural landscape through the life of a legendary fiddler.
This biography of 97-year-old Richard Seaman, who grew up in Kissimmee Park, Florida, relies on oral history and folklore research to define the place of musicianship and storytelling in the state's history from one artist's perspective. Gregory Hansen presents Seaman’s assessment of Florida’s changing cultural landscape through his tall tales, personal experience narratives, legends, fiddle tune repertory, and descriptions of daily life.
Seaman’s childhood memories of fiddling performances and rural dances explain the role such gatherings played in building and maintaining social order within the community. As an adult, Seaman moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he worked as a machinist and performed with his family band. The evolution of his musical repertory from the early 1920s through the 1950s provides a resource for reconstructing social life in the rural south and for understanding how changes in musical style reflect the state's increasingly urban social structure. Hansen includes a set of Seaman's fiddle tunes, transcribed for the benefit of performer and researcher alike. The thirty tall tales included in the volume constitute a representative sample of Florida’s oral tradition in the early years of the 20th century.
A Texas-Mexican Cancionero
Folksongs of the Lower BorderBy Américo Paredes
University of Texas Press, 1995
The folksongs of Texas's Mexican population pulsate with the lives of folk heroes, gringos, smugglers, generals, jailbirds, and beautiful women. In his cancionero, or songbook, Américo Paredes presents sixty-six of these songs in bilingual text—along with their music, notes on tempo and performance, and discography. Manuel Peña's new foreword situates these songs within the main currents of Mexican American music.
Air Split Open
Odetta, Joan Baez, and the American Folk MovementMahmassani, Addie
University of Iowa Press, 2026
Nearly a decade ago, Bob Dylan fan Addie Mahmassani took a look at her large collection of books on the 1960s folk revival and asked what was missing. The answer was obvious: There was scarce feminist analysis of the scene. Air Split Open takes an important step in filling this gap.
Deploying her background in cultural history, gender, sexuality, and performance studies, Mahmassani tracks the interwoven careers of Odetta and Joan Baez, creating a new story of the folk revival that is at once incisive and entertaining, while also grappling with broader questions of the way male-centered historical narratives take shape in the context of American popular culture. A feminist take on the music scene that defined an era, Air Split Open is fueled by deep respect for the American folk tradition and all those, known and unknown, who have carried it forward.
All They Will Call You
Tim Z. Hernandez
University of Arizona Press, 2017
All They Will Call You is the harrowing account of “the worst airplane disaster in California’s history,” which claimed the lives of thirty-two passengers, including twenty-eight Mexican citizens—farmworkers who were being deported by the U.S. government. Outraged that media reports omitted only the names of the Mexican passengers, American folk icon Woody Guthrie penned a poem that went on to become one of the most important protest songs of the twentieth century, “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee).” It was an attempt to restore the dignity of the anonymous lives whose unidentified remains were buried in an unmarked mass grave in California’s Central Valley. For nearly seven decades, the song’s message would be carried on by the greatest artists of our time, including Pete Seeger, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez, yet the question posed in Guthrie’s lyrics, “Who are these friends all scattered like dry leaves?” would remain unanswered—until now.
Combining years of painstaking investigative research and masterful storytelling, award-winning author Tim Z. Hernandez weaves a captivating narrative from testimony, historical records, and eyewitness accounts, reconstructing the incident and the lives behind the legendary song. This singularly original account pushes narrative boundaries, while challenging perceptions of what it means to be an immigrant in America, but more importantly, it renders intimate portraits of the individual souls who, despite social status, race, or nationality, shared a common fate one frigid morning in January 1948.