Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)David King Dunaway has immersed himself in "Folk Music" for more than 30 years He has written at least two biographies of "folk music" legend, Pete Seeger. Along the way he made MANY recorded interviews with those involved in "folk music" and these recordings and the transcriptions are now deposited at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
In this easy-to-read book, Dunaway and co-author Molly Beer have culled great quotes from nearly 150 of the interviews to try to present an over view of what "folk music" is and why it saw a "revival" at least three times in the 20th Century. Many of the interviewees have passed on - either because of age (Charles Seeger, who was Dunaway's first interviewee in 1979) or untimely death (Phil Ochs, Mike Seeger) - and this is part of their legacy.
The book is divided into general subjects - the first being "What is Folk Music?", a section that tells us where each of the interviewees is coming from on the subject. Later sections discus the "folk revival of the 1950s", the second revival (Greenwich Village) in the late 1960s and the current singer-songwriter craze.
All the interviewees have something interesting or insightful to say. But, because it was an editorial judgment on Dunaway's and Beer's part to decide what portions to include - and in what order - these interviews may sometimes be taken out of context and should probably not be used as fact, unless the full interview is heard or the transcript read.
Still, as someone who has been a "folk music" fan since the late 1950s (I guess "Tom Dooley" started it off for me), I found the book fun to read and it brought back a lot of memories for me.
Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"
Click Here to see more reviews about: Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals (Oxford Oral History Series)
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