City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950 - Hardcover

Lasser, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580469523 ISBN 13: 9781580469524

Verlag: University of Rochester Press, 2019

Über diesen Titel

Críticas:

City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950 draws on Michael Lasser's lifetime of close and thoughtful listening to some of the most sparkling and enduring works of American creativity. His insights throughout make this a fresh and valuable work, thoroughly researched and well-documented, yet entirely accessible to a wide swath of curious readers and listeners. Literate, authoritative, and engaging. Bravo! --John Edward Hasse, Smithsonian Institution Michael Lasser's City Songs is the most engaging, comprehensive, and provocative examination of the Great American Songbook that I've encountered. No surprise to anyone familiar with his award-winning weekly radio series Fascinatin' Rhythm, Lasser writes with the "dazzling economy" of the best lyrics and lyricists that he elucidates. His book convinced me that the songs of the first half of the twentieth century were indeed "urban creatures" that "sang the city electric" by merging sentiment and wit into a unique amalgam, mingling the "jingle of jazz and the jangle of slang" with "the clang and clamor" of the American metropolis, as Lasser so unforgettably characterizes it! --Kim Kowalke, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester Reading Michael Lasser's City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950 is a surprisingly moving experience. Progressing through the twentieth century, as music and lyrics evolve to reflect our changing national life, Lasser locates the yearning heart in us and in those who came before us - in times of war, prosperity, giddy peace, or economic depression - in all who stir to the syncopated rhythms and conversational syntax, the fine sentiment and matchless wit, of the Great American Songbook. --Jimmy Roberts, composer of the hit musical I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change

Reseña del editor:

Nothing defines the songs of the Great American Songbook more richly and persuasively than their urban sensibility. During the first half of the twentieth century, songwriters flourished in New York City, the home of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Harlem. A lot of them were native New Yorkers, or else they got to Gotham as fast as they could. It was as if they were standing on the East Bank of the Hudson, facing west and describing America to the Americans: not its geography or politics but its heart.

Michael Lasser's introduction to City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950 describes his coming of age in Broadway theaters and jazz clubs around Manhattan in the 1950s. The following chapters look closely at songs, but the book never ceases to give one man's take on the music he has lived with for more than half a century. First, an exploration of the ways in which songs portrayed Broadway and Harlem. Then a chronological look at how the urban sensibility evolved in the early decades of the century, followed by the Twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II.

Michael Lasser, a former teacher and theater critic, is host of the syndicated public-radio show Fascinatin' Rhythm (winner of the Peabody Award) and the author of two previous books.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: University of Rochester Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1580469523
• ISBN 13: 9781580469524
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 318