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William S. Burroughs's fiction and essays are legendary, but his influence on music's counterculture has been less well documented—until now. Examining how one of America's most controversial literary figures altered the destinies of many notable and varied musicians, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll reveals the transformations in music history that can be traced to Burroughs.

A heroin addict and a gay man, Burroughs rose to notoriety outside the conventional literary world; his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, was banned on the grounds of obscenity, but its nonlinear structure was just as daring as its content. Casey Rae brings to life Burroughs's parallel rise to fame among daring musicians of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, when it became a rite of passage to hang out with the author or to experiment with his cut-up techniques for producing revolutionary lyrics (as the Beatles and Radiohead did). Whether they tell of him exploring the occult with David Bowie, providing Lou Reed with gritty depictions of street life, or counseling Patti Smith about coping with fame, the stories of Burroughs's backstage impact will transform the way you see America's cultural revolution—and the way you hear its music.

Relying on extensive archival research and on sixty interviews with fiddlers and their families and friends, Cauthen tells the rich, full story of old-time fiddling in Alabama. 

Writing of life in the Alabama Territory in the late 1700s, A. J. Pickett, the state's first historian, noted that the country abounded in fiddlers, of high and low degree. After the defeat of the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1813, the number of fiddlers swelled as settlers from the southern states surrounding Alabama claimed the land. The music they played was based on tunes brought from Ireland, Scotland, and England, but in Alabama they developed their own southern accent as their songs became the music of celebration and relaxation for the state's pioneers. Early in the 20th century such music began to be called "old-time fiddling," to distinguish it from the popular music of the day, and the term is still used to distinguish that style from more modern bluegrass and country fiddle styles.

In With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow, Cauthen focuses on old-time fiddling in Alabama from the settlement of the state through World War II. Cauthen shows the effects of events, inventions, ethnic groups, and individuals upon fiddlers' styles and what they played. Cauthen gives due weight to the "modest masters of fiddle and bow" who were stars only to their families and communities. The fiddlers themselves tell why they play, how they learned without formal instruction and written music, and how they acquired their instruments and repertoires. Cauthen also tells the stories of "brag" fiddlers such as D.Dix Hollis, Y. Z. Hamilton, Charlie Stripling, "Fiddling" Tom Freeman,"Monkey" Brown, and the Johnson Brothers whose reputations spread beyond their communities through commercial recordings and fiddling contests. Described in vivid detail are the old-style square dances, Fourth of July barbeques and other celebrations, and fiddlers' conventions that fiddler shave reigned over throughout the state's history.

But Gaillard examines the South from other angles as well--the religious heritage, for example, that once led Flannery O'Connor to write about a "Christ-haunted" South. We meet Billy Graham, the greatest evangelist of his time, who admitted in the course of interviews with Gaillard that his ministry represented a "very narrow gift." There are profiles here of the Southern Baptist renegade Will Campbell and former President Jimmy Carter, whose commitment to his own understanding of Christianity has sometimes led him into controversy. Gaillard writes also about the revealing power of Southern music--how the great Johnny Cash, for example, became a force for reconciliation in America. In the final section of the book we meet some of the characters Gaillard has covered through the years, including John T. Scopes, whose final public appearance Gaillard wrote about as a young reporter in Nashville.

Across the state and across a wide variety of musical genres, women are making their mark on Texas music. Some have become international superstars, while others are just starting to make their voices heard. But every woman who goes out and plays her music proves that "baring one's heart and soul takes courage, and Texas women artists have a lot of courage," as Lloyd Maines observes in the opening interview of this book. To pay tribute to these dedicated musicians and to capture their unique perspectives on what it means to be a woman in the music business, Kathleen Hudson has spent many years interviewing Texas women musicians for the Texas Heritage Music Foundation.

In Women in Texas Music, Hudson lets us listen in on conversations with thirty-nine musical artists, including Emily Robison, Terri Hendrix, Lee Ann Womack, Rosie Flores, Betty Buckley, Marcia Ball, Lavelle White, and Bobbie Nelson. Hudson encourages and allows the women to tell their own stories as she delves into their life journeys, creative processes, and the importance of writing and performing music, be it blues, rock, country, folk, jazz, or pop. The interviews are warm and open, like good friends sharing the lessons that a life of playing music has taught them.

What emerges from this collection is a solid sense of the strength and integrity that women bring to and gain from Texas music. Everyone who cares about music and culture in Texas will want to join the conversation.

A Grammy and Tony Award–winning conductor, John DeMain has been a fixture of Madison, Wisconsin, for more than three decades, serving as music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Madison Opera. Before and since then, he has been an internationally recognized conductor, equally at home in the worlds of classical music, opera, and Broadway.

In Working with My Heroes, written with the late Greg Hettmansberger, DeMain recounts incredible experiences—from his days studying piano in Youngstown, Ohio, to his years as an undergraduate and graduate student at Julliard, to his early jobs in summer stock productions, to numerous acclaimed productions—without ever losing sight of the wonder and awe he felt as a young musician first learning his way in the world. With warmth and humor, he provides valuable insight into the business of music making, while also sharing behind-the-scenes stories of entertaining situations he found himself in throughout the years—from playing piano at a gangster’s wedding to an unexpected dressing room encounter with a Broadway star to conducting an opera with circus elephants.

DeMain has had many career-defining moments behind the podium, conducting world premieres of Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place, John Adams’s Nixon in China, and Jeanine Tesoro’s Blue, as well as the U.S. premiere of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, among others. He guest-conducted symphonies and operas in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. DeMain cemented his reputation with the 1976 Houston Grand Opera performances of George and Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, establishing its stature as a quintessentially American opera. The singers, musicians, and composers DeMain has worked with over the past six decades are a veritable Who’s Who of American classical music. This memoir places readers by his side, allowing them to experience all the wonders and joy of a life spent making music.

Describing and interpreting many examples of flutes as they are found in mythology, poetry, lyrics, and other narrative and literary sources from around the world, veteran ethnomusicologist Dale Olsen seeks to determine what is singularly distinct or unique about flutes, flute playing, and flute players in a global context. He shows how and why flutes are important for personal, communal, religious, spiritual, and secular expression and even, perhaps, existence. This is a book for students, scholars, and any reader interested in the cultural power of flutes.

Among the signal achievements of African American culture is the style of music known as the blues, an art form evolved from southern black songs of the late nineteenth century. From the field hollers and steel-bodied guitar of its early days to the electric amplification of today's performers, the visceral power of the blues has long been celebrated for its creativity, spontaneity, and ingenuity. It has served as a wellspring for other forms of music, including gospel, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock, and rap, and has exerted an influence on literature and the visual arts as well. 

This book brings together some of the most significant writings about the blues published between 1911 and 1998. Included are selections by folklorists, anthropologists, sociologists, literary artists, musicians, critics, and aficionados. The extraordinary appeal of the blues is reflected in the range of contributors to this volume, among them Howard W. Odum, Alan Lomax, Richard Alan Waterman, Langston Hughes, Paul Oliver, Sam Charters, Janheinz Jahn, James Baldwin, Leroi Jones, Charles Keil, Jeff Todd Titon, Houston Baker, Hazel Carby, and Angela Davis. From these various perspectives emerges a new understanding of the blues: its origins in African aesthetics; the impact of slavery and Reconstruction; its early folk manifestations; and the importance of religion, style, gender, audience, protest, and the record business in its development as an art form. Further context is provided by a comprehensive introduction, section overviews, and an extensive bibliography, discography, and videography of blues materials.

Writing on Water grasps the phenomenon of sound in prayer, that is, a meaning in sounds and soundscapes, and a musical essence in the act of praying.

The impetus for the book arose from the author’s fieldwork among traditional Jews during the era of communism in Budapest and Prague. In that period the Jewish religion and Jewishness in general were supressed and rituals became semi-secret and turned inward. The book is a witness to these communities and their rituals, but it goes beyond documentation. The uniqueness of the sounds of the rituals compelled the author to try to comprehend how melodies and soundscapes became the sustaining/protective environment, as well as the vehicle, for the expression of a world-orientation—in a situation where open discourse was inconceivable.

The book is based on extensive interviews, musical recordings, photographs and scholarly analyses. It is unique in its choice of communities, its wealth of original documents, and its novel interpretation of sound.

Writing on Water is creative non-fiction. The presentation is evocative and poetic, but at the same time it transmits knowledge. The book can aid research and serve in courses in philosophy, religion, music, ethnomusicology, anthropology, aesthetics, Jewish studies, folklore, oral history, and performance studies. It is also a work of art and literature.

During the mid-1960s, a small group of young journalists made it their mission to write about popular music, especially rock, as something worthy of serious intellectual scrutiny. Their efforts not only transformed the perspective on the era's music but revolutionized how Americans have come to think, talk, and write about popular music ever since. 

In Writing the Record, Devon Powers explores this shift by focusing on The Village Voice, a key publication in the rise of rock criticism. Revisiting the work of early pop critics such as Richard Goldstein and Robert Christgau, Powers shows how they stood at the front lines of the mass culture debates, challenging old assumptions and hierarchies and offering pioneering political and social critiques of the music. Part of a college-educated generation of journalists, Voice critics explored connections between rock and contemporary intellectual trends such as postmodernism, identity politics, and critical theory. In so doing, they became important forerunners of the academic study of popular culture that would emerge during the 1970s. 

Drawing on archival materials, interviews, and insights from media and cultural studies, Powers not only narrates a story that has been long overlooked but also argues that pop music criticism has been an important channel for the expression of public intellectualism. This is a history that is particularly relevant today, given the challenges faced by criticism of all stripes in our current media environment. Powers makes the case for the value of well-informed cultural criticism in an age when it is often suggested that “everyone is a critic.”