Folk category: 608 books

An unorthodox musician from the start, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell's style of composing, performing, and of playing (and tuning) the guitar is unique. In the framework of sexual difference and the gendered discourses of rock this immediately begs the questions: are Mitchell's songs specifically...

Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens and Léo Ferré are three emblematic figures of post-war French popular music who have been constantly associated with each other by the public and the media. They have been described as the epitome of chanson, and of 'Frenchness'. But there is more to the trio than...

The similarities between the chanson française and the canzone d'autore have been often noted but never fully explored. Both genres are national forms which involve the figure of the singer-songwriter, both experienced their golden age of production in the post-World War II period and both are...

Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Paul Simon-these familiar figures have written road music for half a century and continue to remain highly-regarded artists. But there is so much more to say about road music. This book fills a glaring hole in scholarship about the...

With Bob Dylan’s receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature, his iconic status as an American musical, cultural, and poetic giant has never been more apparent. Bob Dylan: American Troubadour is the first book to look at Dylan’s career, from his first album to his late masterpiece Tempest. Donald...

This is the first systematic literary study of one of the masterpieces of classical Arabic literature, the fourth/tenth century Kitâb al-aghânî (The Book of Songs) by Abû I-Faraj al-Isbahânî. Until now the twenty-four volume Book of Songs has been regarded as a rather chaotic but priceless mine...

The popular quip, repeated by a number of people, is that "writing about music is like dancing about art"--it's a fun thing to say, but is it true? Is there really no value in writing about music? This collection of reviews begins with an essay describing why music writing is vital to our understanding of what music is and its place within our culture. 

The death of Leonard Cohen in 2016 struck the world a hard blow; he was a fruitful, thoughtful and tragic talent, with his critically-acclaimed You Want it Darker entering the world only three weeks before his death. Cohen's work is now finished and represents and oeuvre of near unparalleled majesty. Everybody...

The Incredible String Band can seem a little, well, strange to the uninitiated listener. Songs that leap from one genre to another in the course of two lines, long mystical poems and schoolboy humour, wayward harmonies and soundscapes beyond the wildest dreams of a synth. You might think it's...

This lovingly-constructed folio presents all the songs from Bob Dylan’s landmark album, Blood On The Tracks. Each song has been carefully arranged with melody line, full lyrics, Guitar chords and strumming or picking patterns for each song. This collection has also been furnished with introduced...

This work by Hermann Löhr was originally published in the early 20th century and we are now republishing it for the modern reader. 'Romany Songs' is a collection of Romany songs complete with lyrics and musical notation.

Classic old-time tunes as played by the New Lost City Ramblers. Hundreds of rare photographs, annotations and discographies.

Despite its isolation on the western edge of Europe, Ireland occupies vast amounts of space on the music maps of the world. Although deeply rooted in time and place, Irish songs, dances and instrumental traditions have a history of global travel that span the centuries. Whether carried by exiles,...

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a steady stream of Scots migrated to Ulster and eventually onward across the Atlantic to resettle in the United States. Many of these Scots-Irish immigrants made their way into the mountains of the southern Appalachian region. They brought with them...