****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This book is indeed comprehensive about musical life in America. It is thoroughly researched and quite balanced. He covers every type of music from popular, to folk, hymns, spirituals, gospel, minstrelsy, classical, jazz, blues, country, swing, rock and even hip hop. He shows how any particular type of music arose, what influenced it, who practiced or sang it, and what it in turn influenced.Moreover, he explains the business of music. He explains what Tin Pan Alley was and how it worked, and why sheet music was important. He tells you how musicals arrived and evolved and what they mean to Americans. Basically, everything is covered.There are some aspects of music that are given short shrift. There is little or nothing about disco, cuban music of the 1950s (he mentions Tito Puente in passing), theater organ music or the music for silent movies, and movie music. He mentions that various immigrant groups, from Syria, Poland, Russia, Egypt, China, Thailand and so on, usually had their own musical traditions that eventually became Americanized, but doesn't elaborate any further.Because this is so comprehensive and in depth, it's a long haul. Text comes in at 870 pages, and those pages are dense with information. I can only really read two chapters a day (each chapter is about 20 pages), and that's all I can digest. The first several chapters are of little interest to me, such a Native American music and music of the Colonial period, so I just skimmed over those.A book this ambitious will necessarily leave out things. Nonetheless, you will come away with a much greater understanding of all aspects of American music.
