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America's Musical Life: A History
"A superb, all-encompassing survey of music in America."Kirkus Reviews.
Winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.
When it comes to American music, America's Musical Life is "the best one-volume history yet on the subject for musicians and enthusiasts, professional or amateur" (Kirkus Reviews). "Well-researched and sensitively constructed" (Library Journal) and "a book that welcomes the reader, who is happy to keep returning for more" (Music Library Association Notes), America's Musical Life tells the story of American music making in rich detail.
In chronicling American music's bountiful heritage, this "superb book presents the whole sweep of U.S. cultivated and traditional musicfrom 16th-century Native American music through late 20th-century hip-hop culture." A substantial cultural achievement, "this definitive history of music in the U.S. is sure to delight music aficionados and history buffs alike, and is a must for anyone interested in what music has meant to America and what America has meant to music" (Publishers Weekly). 200 illustrations.
Winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.
When it comes to American music, America's Musical Life is "the best one-volume history yet on the subject for musicians and enthusiasts, professional or amateur" (Kirkus Reviews). "Well-researched and sensitively constructed" (Library Journal) and "a book that welcomes the reader, who is happy to keep returning for more" (Music Library Association Notes), America's Musical Life tells the story of American music making in rich detail.
In chronicling American music's bountiful heritage, this "superb book presents the whole sweep of U.S. cultivated and traditional musicfrom 16th-century Native American music through late 20th-century hip-hop culture." A substantial cultural achievement, "this definitive history of music in the U.S. is sure to delight music aficionados and history buffs alike, and is a must for anyone interested in what music has meant to America and what America has meant to music" (Publishers Weekly). 200 illustrations.
992 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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135 people want to read
About the author
Richard Crawford
89 books7 followersRichard Crawford is an American music historian.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 16, 2021
It's long been my personal opinion that music is the single most important contribution to world culture to have come from America. The dominant component of that music comprises the forms that have come from African-Americans: from field hollers, minstrelsy (at first from whites imitating blacks), gospel songs, and blues, to avant-garde jazz and hip-hop.
Author Richard Crawford does an excellent job of defining the dichotomy between Western classical music in America that came across from Europe (a world I was raised in) and the wholly new music that sprang from enslaved Africans in American colonies, a music radically different in its origins, conception, purpose, method of production, and sound from anything that came from Europe.
In a related concept, Crawford defines the much-overused terms "classical" and "popular" as used with regard to music. I myself stepped back from those terms a long time ago, though I still accept them on occasion for convenience.
Other concepts that the author writes about are "composers music" and "performers music," his own substitutes for the terms "classical" and "popular," an idea that he defends well.
Near the end of the book (with 859 pages of text plus notes, an extensive bibliography, and an index), he introduces the term "The Gap," including the uppercase definite article—apologetically because The Gap is also the name of a well-known manufacturer of casual clothing. Crawford uses the phrase to refer to the gap in the relationship that exists between composers of any type of music and their audiences. Although music of quality is more plentiful than ever today, The Gap remains what Crawford calls our defining neurosis relative to music and its distribution and acceptance.
Today (in 2021), well-informed music listeners agree that jazz is a very great art form. Its finest practitioners are regarded on a level with Beethoven and Stravinsky (or pick your own examples of comparison, except don't pick J. S. Bach because no one who's ever lived can compare on the same level with Bach). Despite the grave historical differences that have existed between the peoples who created what is now the primary music of America, much of it has been permanently absorbed into the nation's consciousness and is much loved by people of most cultures. This in my opinion is a Good Thing and a reason I believe that American music is this nation's greatest contribution to world culture.
Crawford's book stops at the year 2001, the year it was published. Significant changes have taken place in the world of music since then, particularly in its manner of production, especially with the emergence of bedroom composers, some of them insanely good (e.g. Jacob Collier); also in distribution, e.g. streaming both live and recorded performances, a tendency accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 that continues to this writing; and the rise of platforms such as Spotify and YouTube. I would love to see another book on the topic of American music that is even more up to date.
Author Richard Crawford does an excellent job of defining the dichotomy between Western classical music in America that came across from Europe (a world I was raised in) and the wholly new music that sprang from enslaved Africans in American colonies, a music radically different in its origins, conception, purpose, method of production, and sound from anything that came from Europe.
In a related concept, Crawford defines the much-overused terms "classical" and "popular" as used with regard to music. I myself stepped back from those terms a long time ago, though I still accept them on occasion for convenience.
Other concepts that the author writes about are "composers music" and "performers music," his own substitutes for the terms "classical" and "popular," an idea that he defends well.
Near the end of the book (with 859 pages of text plus notes, an extensive bibliography, and an index), he introduces the term "The Gap," including the uppercase definite article—apologetically because The Gap is also the name of a well-known manufacturer of casual clothing. Crawford uses the phrase to refer to the gap in the relationship that exists between composers of any type of music and their audiences. Although music of quality is more plentiful than ever today, The Gap remains what Crawford calls our defining neurosis relative to music and its distribution and acceptance.
Today (in 2021), well-informed music listeners agree that jazz is a very great art form. Its finest practitioners are regarded on a level with Beethoven and Stravinsky (or pick your own examples of comparison, except don't pick J. S. Bach because no one who's ever lived can compare on the same level with Bach). Despite the grave historical differences that have existed between the peoples who created what is now the primary music of America, much of it has been permanently absorbed into the nation's consciousness and is much loved by people of most cultures. This in my opinion is a Good Thing and a reason I believe that American music is this nation's greatest contribution to world culture.
Crawford's book stops at the year 2001, the year it was published. Significant changes have taken place in the world of music since then, particularly in its manner of production, especially with the emergence of bedroom composers, some of them insanely good (e.g. Jacob Collier); also in distribution, e.g. streaming both live and recorded performances, a tendency accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 that continues to this writing; and the rise of platforms such as Spotify and YouTube. I would love to see another book on the topic of American music that is even more up to date.
December 8, 2008
I took a chance and used this book as a course text for an American music course for non-majors. Crawford's writing is engaging and geared toward a more general audience, but informed by top-notch scholarship. His three-sphere model of American music (cultivated, vernacular and traditional spheres) made a useful and multi-dimensional lens through which to trace the development of musical styles and genres. I appreciated the performer-based approach rather than the standard "a history of dead white men" approach so prevalent in the literature. He substantiates this model for American music history in his introduction.
While some of my students, accustomed to "textbooks" may have found the book too verbose for test preparation purposes, I hope that the prose engaged them enough to look beyond the grades and into the rich and diverse musical landscape cultivated in this country.
While some of my students, accustomed to "textbooks" may have found the book too verbose for test preparation purposes, I hope that the prose engaged them enough to look beyond the grades and into the rich and diverse musical landscape cultivated in this country.
April 2, 2025
The context in which I read and am reviewing this book is early Trump II (2025). There is frantic scampering by his footmen to eliminate anything that even faintly suggests Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) from American institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution. Amid the turmoil, I read this on the very first page of this magisterial book: "American diversity carried the key to American experience."
Granted, author Crawford is advancing an idea presented by writer Ralph Ellison, but the manner in which he does so is characteristic of his entire modus operandi in this work: he expressly invokes the words and ideas of individual thinkers -- sometimes at length -- to elucidate the unfolding of how the diversity of American music is understood. In Ellison's case, the idea is that the very diversity of "the American experience" presents a daunting challenge to someone attempting to understand it, but the more we allow ourselves go explore it, the better sense we get of the multitude of connections within the diversity.
Much of the history of American music as presented here is an exploration of those connections, tenuous and occasional and distorted in the early years of continental vastness, but increasingly strong and unavoidable as technological and societal change have produced a current state of hyper-connectivity.
One of the incongruous stories Crawford tells has to do with folk revivalists using these new connections as the jumping-off point for their naive attempts to enter into the psychic reality of the creators -- usually impoverished and prevented from full participation in American life because of race -- of the music being sung and played. Another story has to do with those whose pursuit of musical transcendence has led them not to care about connections at all and who thus (in the realm of "Classical" music) created a "Gap" between their compositions and the audience, which then provoked a reaction among younger composers (Glass, Reich, etc.) to re-assert the importance of making a connection with that audience.
The contemporary voices Crawford employs so well to articulate his story themselves cry out for further explorations, such voices as William Francis Allen -- who in the years after the Civil War first documented the "ring shout" of African-Americans living on the Sea Islands of South Carolina -- and Roger Pryor Dodge -- a professional dancer in New York City whose coming to grips in the 1920s with a still-new art form of jazz produced a trenchant evaluation and valuation of its musical content. What makes these sections so exciting is more than just narrative, for they come with a sense of participation in the discovery of new musical meaning.
Granted, author Crawford is advancing an idea presented by writer Ralph Ellison, but the manner in which he does so is characteristic of his entire modus operandi in this work: he expressly invokes the words and ideas of individual thinkers -- sometimes at length -- to elucidate the unfolding of how the diversity of American music is understood. In Ellison's case, the idea is that the very diversity of "the American experience" presents a daunting challenge to someone attempting to understand it, but the more we allow ourselves go explore it, the better sense we get of the multitude of connections within the diversity.
Much of the history of American music as presented here is an exploration of those connections, tenuous and occasional and distorted in the early years of continental vastness, but increasingly strong and unavoidable as technological and societal change have produced a current state of hyper-connectivity.
One of the incongruous stories Crawford tells has to do with folk revivalists using these new connections as the jumping-off point for their naive attempts to enter into the psychic reality of the creators -- usually impoverished and prevented from full participation in American life because of race -- of the music being sung and played. Another story has to do with those whose pursuit of musical transcendence has led them not to care about connections at all and who thus (in the realm of "Classical" music) created a "Gap" between their compositions and the audience, which then provoked a reaction among younger composers (Glass, Reich, etc.) to re-assert the importance of making a connection with that audience.
The contemporary voices Crawford employs so well to articulate his story themselves cry out for further explorations, such voices as William Francis Allen -- who in the years after the Civil War first documented the "ring shout" of African-Americans living on the Sea Islands of South Carolina -- and Roger Pryor Dodge -- a professional dancer in New York City whose coming to grips in the 1920s with a still-new art form of jazz produced a trenchant evaluation and valuation of its musical content. What makes these sections so exciting is more than just narrative, for they come with a sense of participation in the discovery of new musical meaning.
April 15, 2019
Comprehensive and generally interesting, but very slow in parts.
July 11, 2019
About as exhaustive as one (big) book can be.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews