Trans-Atlantic Music

Wynn, Neil A., ed.
Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe
Mississippi: The University Press, 2007
A unique collection of essays, Cross the Water Blues is a volume of conference proceedings that examine the influence of African American music on European audiences from the late 19th century to the present. Although the contributors range vastly across [...]

Bebop: Evolution or Revolution?

DeVeaux, Scott
The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History
Berkely, CA. University of California Press, 1997
Is bebop a result of stylistic evolution in music, or a rebellion against social and political constructs? According to jazz historian, musician, and scholar Scott DeVeaux, Bebop is not only a movement in jazz, but is the backbone of jazz [...]

Music From the Inside Out: An Intimate Portrait

Anker, Daniel.
Music From the Inside Out
New York: Docurama, 2007
As a musician and teacher, I am constantly searching for resources that capture the essence of music and art-making in an accessible manner. Of the music-related documentaries that I have seen, only Music From the Inside Out manages to carefully reveal what it means to create, perform, [...]

I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone

Simone, Nina.
I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone
New York: Da Capo Press. 1991
While there have been countless celebrated and extroadinary divas, something about the style, sound, and mere presence of Nina Simone remains unique. Perhaps a result of her turbulent life, her uncompromising personality, her distinctive voice and musical genius, or [...]

“The Music. The Music, this is our history”

Jones, LeRoi
Blues People: Negro Music in White America
New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1963
As a saxophonist who has spent the last 15 years devoted to the history, practice, tradition, and evolution of jazz and blues music, I began reading this book with the assumption that its content would be familiar, perhaps like that of a jazz [...]

The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible

Booth, Eric.
The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Are you an educator searching for a means to revitalize the minds of your students, while providing them with the tools to be fully engaged, creative, reflective, and aware in their own lived lives? Are you a musician who craves a [...]

Baddest of the Bad

Jackson, Buzzy
A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them
New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2005.
It was Ma Rainey’s piano player, Thomas Dorsey, who said, “The blues is a good woman feeling bad” (xiii). Author Buzzy Jackson, however, explores the blues through an entirely different lens, one which sheds light [...]

In Praise of The Four and the One

Rounds, David
The Four and The One: In Praise of String Quartets
Fort Bragg, California: Lost Coast Press, 1999
Are you searching for a means to spark your students’ interest in chamber music? Five-time author and lifelong string aficionado David Rounds offers a fascinating, well researched, and passionately-written introduction to the string quartet. Spotlighting the women of British [...]

The Road Trip Remix

Corcoran, Michael
All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005
Did you know that Lubbock’s own Buddy Holly and the Crickets was the first self-contained and independent rock combo to write, produce, perform, and arrange their own records? Were you aware that The Beatles’s name was created in homage to [...]