Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music: America changed through music

Released in 1952, The Anthology of American Folk Music was the singular vision of the enigmatic artist, musicologist, and collector Harry Smith (1923-1991). More than just a ground-breaking collection of old recordings, the Anthology was itself a kind of performance on the part of its creator. Over the six decades of its existence, however, it has continued to exert considerable influence on generations of musicians, artists, and writers. It has been credited with inspiring the North American folk revival and with profoundly influencing Bob Dylan. This is the first book devoted to such a vital piece of the large and complex story of American music and its enduring value in American life.

Author: Ross Hair
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 06/11/2018
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.59d
ISBN: 9781138318298

About the Author

Ross Hair is Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the author of Ronald Johnson's Modernist Collage Poetry (2010) and Avant-Folk: Small Press Poetry Networks from 1950 to the Present (2016). His essays on modern American and British poetry have appeared in, among other publications, the Journal of Modern Literature, Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, and Texas Studies in Literature and Language.

Thomas Ruys Smith is Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the author of River of Dreams: Imagining the Mississippi Before Mark Twain (2007), and Southern Queen: New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century (2011). He is also the editor of Blacklegs, Card Sharps and Confidence Men: Nineteenth-Century Mississippi River Gambling Stories (2010), and, with Sarah Churchwell, Must Read: Rediscovering American Bestsellers, from Charlotte Temple to The Kite Runner (2012).