»A superb, all-encompassing survey of music in America.« —Kirkus Reviews 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 music—from 16th-century Native American music through late 20th-century hiphop 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).
Basically, what this extremely learned, intelligent, well-organized, readable (and mercifully free of musicologist jargon) book does is to help us understand America from the perspective of music (i.e., what music meant to America), and also to understand American music from the perspective of its social, cultural, economic, political, racial, geographic, and technological history (i.e., what America meant to music). As Crawford states in his introduction, his goal is to undertake a study from a »broader scope [which] might illuminate parallels and intertwinings that give the country's music … its distinctive identity.« Crawford accomplishes this, and more, starting from American music's early origins (Native American, Early Christian, »Old, Simple Ditties,« and New England Psalmody), moving on to 19th century music (devotional music, minstrels, parlor songs, patriotic and war songs, classical music, etc.) to the folk, jazz, blues, pop, theatrical, and rock music of the 20th century. Throughout, Crawford makes it clear: 1) that there IS such a thing as »American« music; 2) that this music is extremely diverse, both in its expression and its origins; and 3) that to fully understand America, one needs to understand its music, and vice versa.
In sum, this book represents an obvious labor of love by an extremely well qualified author. I highly recommend it, whether or not you are a Foreign Service candidate!
In the epilogue to the book, Crawford states that the historian is motivated by a disagreement with received ideas – »the gut-level feeling that says, 'It wasn't like that.\'« In 40 chapters covering the entire history of music in America chronologically, from pre-historical to modern times, Crawford tells us how it really was. One tribute to the quality of this book is that the chapters on music in which I thought I had no interest (e.g., 18th century psalmody or 19th century minstrel shows) I found to be every bit as engaging as those on music that I love and cherish.
Crawford establishes his theoretical basis in a section titled »Notation, the Great Divide, and American Musical Categories« (p. 227). Previous historians (notably Charles Hamm and H. Wiley Hitchcock) have proposed a binary opposition in American music between Classical and Popular, or Cultivated and Vernacular. In place of this dualism, Crawford proposes a richer three-tiered categorization: Composers' music, which aims for TRANSCENDENCE (i.e. lasting value); Performers' music, which values ACCESSIBILITY; and Traditional music, ruled by CONTINUITY. The first two are notated traditions, the last is transmitted orally. These categories arise initially from considering the classical, popular, and folk traditions respectively.
Crawford later develops his thesis to show that considerable overlap and bleeding between categories has been characteristic of American music, especially in the 20th century. A chapter on the Beatles (No. 38, which otherwise seems glaringly out of place here – why an entire chapter on a British group?) makes the point that popular music since the 1960s has achieved transcendence. At about the same time, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and other composers in the Classical sphere were aiming for accessibility in preference to transcendence. Similarly, jazz arose from popular roots but achieved transcendence, primarily through recordings rather than notation, however.
Crawford's democratic approach gives equal time to the most widely varied styles and genres of music. He treats everything, from hymns to hip-hop and beyond, with scholarly attention that is balanced, scrupulous, and passionate. In the Epilogue, he admits to a grounding in the Classical sphere (and relays a charming story about travelling to a small town to hear his wife Penelope Crawford perform as piano soloist with a community orchestra), but he obviously has a passionate interest in jazz and a respectful attitude towards all types of music. You might want to turn to Hitchcock's *Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction* for a shorter treatment of the subject, or Hamm's *Music in the New World* for a more argumentative approach, but I feel that Crawford's book in time will take its place as the most thoughtful and the most comprehensive of all surveys of American music.
Some of the individual chapters are, in my opinion, among the strongest essays available on their particular topics. Due to my own lack of previous knowledge in these fields I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the beginnings of organized music making in America, through the church. In particular, the split between the Methodist ideal of polished musical performance and literacy, and the more fundamentalist view that music in worship was direct communication with God, communication hindered by too much technical knowledge--this is a schism whose echoes are still apparent today.
Later on, the chapter on Ives takes a very small corner of the composer's output--six songs--to give a lucid and comprehensive survey of his style, a ingenious solution to the problem of how to give an accurate picture of an enormous, heterogenous body of work in a limited space.
Occasionally during the course of such an enormous work Crawford struggles with his task. At times one has the impression that topics and personages are being included and examined out of a sense of duty rather than real conviction about their significance; one can also quarrel with the choice of emphasis as Crawford approaches the present day. Nor do I think his surprising conclusion, which examines an actual, recent concert performance in which he was personally involved, succeeds in his goal of synthesizing his overall points by looking at them in microcosm, as it were. Still, he hits the the mark at enough points in this sweeping chronology to make it one of the finest works yet to appear on this topic.