AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC: A MULTICULTURAL HISTORY provides a sweeping broad-based survey that also tells the story of American popular music from African American, European American, Latino, Asian, and Native American perspectives. With detailed, easy-to-understand explanations of key musical concepts and terms, this text integrates a critical listening approach using "CD Listening exercises" that work in conjunction with the available CD set. It also enables students to compare and contrast the musical, cultural, and societal elements covered, so they easily comprehend the important styles and influential artists that have contributed to the development of American popular music.

Features

• The book focuses on important styles and artists from diverse cultural groups in American society that have made significant contributions to the development of American popular music.
• Chronological chapters that cover diverse genres include church music, opera, parlor songs, minstrelsy, ragtime, blues, jazz, Tin Pan Alley, R&B, Broadway, mambo, bluegrass, rock, salsa, gospel, soul, funk, merengue, hip-hop, reggae, electronica, narcocorridos, heavy metal, turntablism, alternative rock, and many others.
• Each chapter offers both CD listening exercises and Internet listening examples that offer students the opportunity for comparison and contrast of musical and cultural elements raised in the text. The songs discussed in the listening exercises are available on the 2-CD Set.
• Multicultural Notes boxes in each chapter encourage students to investigate the complex issues of culture and power which are reflected in American popular music.
• A critical listening approach throughout helps students develop their music listening skills as a form of critical reflection.
• Historical timelines at the beginning of each chapter provide students with a practical chronological framework that helps them interpret and integrate musical, cultural and historic events.
• Music industry note boxes highlights interesting aspects of the business-side of music, such as the invention of sound recording, and the invention of the synthesizer.

1. The Language of Music: New Perspectives For Listening.

Part I: AFRICAN AMERICAN ROOTS--THE EMERGENCE OF THE DOMINANT CULTURE OF AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC.

2. African Origins and Influences.
3. From Minstrelsy to the Blues.
4. Early Jazz: From Ragtime to Swing.

Part II: EUROPEAN AMERICAN TRADITIONS AND INFLUENCES.

5. From Hymns to Wind Bands.
6. The Golden Age of American Popular Song.
7. Country Music.

Part III: LATIN MUSICS IN AMERICA FORM A NEW BLEND.

8. America's Afro-Caribbean and Latin Musical Heritage.
9. Chicano and Mexican Popular Music in America.

Part IV: NATIVE AMERICAN AND ASIAN INFLUENCES.

10. Native American Popular Music.
11. Asian and Pacific American Popular Musics.

Part V: FROM MODERN JAZZ TO HIP HOP--60 YEARS OF EVOLVING TRADITIONS.

12. From Bebop to Acid Jazz.
13. Early R&B and Rock: The Late 40s and the 50s.
14. Girl Groups, Surf Music, and Soul.
15. Folk-Rock, the British Invasion, and Psychedelia.
16. R&B and Its Descendents After the 60s.
17. Rock After the 60s.