Rethinking American Music

Tara Browner is a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her books include Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance in the Northern Pow-Wow. Thomas L. Riis is Professor of Music Emeritus and former director of the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of Frank Loesser.

"The editors identify four overarching issues in the book: performance, patronage, identity, and ethnography. Each theme encompasses three or four essays. Such an ambitious endeavor is laudable." --American Music "Rethinking American Music succeeds by honoring forebears, emphasizing areas of strength, reconfiguring some foundational narratives, and proffering some new scholarly directions." --Journal of Folklore Research "A marvelous compendium of scholarship in American music, this book illustrates the wondrous diversity of American musical culture from the eighteenth century to today. Essays on classical, sacred, popular, jazz, hip hop, and theatrical styles deal with performance, patronage, identity, and ethnography and illustrate wonderfully the breadth of Crawford's enormous legacy in the field of Americanist music studies."--Katherine K. Preston, author of Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late Nineteenth-Century America "Stimulating and enjoyable to read. . . . A considerable contribution to studies of American music, not only for the presentation of original research but potentially more significantly for its reflections on research methodology and hermeneutics."--Deane L. Root, Editor in Chief, Grove Music Online "Rethinking American Music demonstrates the diversity of current scholarship on American music culture. . . . Recommended." --Choice "Rethinking American Music is engaging and the articles are thorough." --Western Folklore