Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations

Author(s): Greil Marcus

Music

Greil Marcus has been one of the most distinctive voices in American music criticism for over forty years. His books, including "Mystery Train "and "The Shape of Things to Come, " traverse soundscapes of folk and blues, rock and punk, attuning readers to the surprising, often hidden affinities between the music and broader streams of American politics and culture. Drawn from Marcus s 2013 Massey Lectures at Harvard, his new work delves into three episodes in the history of American commonplace song: Bascom Lamar Lunsford s 1928 I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground, Geeshie Wiley s 1930 Last Kind Words Blues, and Bob Dylan s 1964 Ballad of Hollis Brown. How each of these songs manages to convey the uncanny sense that it was written by no one illuminates different aspects of the commonplace song tradition. Some songs truly did come together over time without an identifiable author. Others draw melodies and motifs from obscure sources but, in the hands of a particular artist, take a final, indelible shape. And, as in the case of Dylan s Hollis Brown, there are songs that were written by a single author but that communicate as anonymous productions, as if they were folk songs passed down over many generations. In three songs that seem to be written by no one, Marcus shows, we discover not only three different ways of talking about the United States but three different nations within its formal boundaries."


Product Information

Greil Marcus walks a fine line between grand, romantic, almost dreamy poetic prose and analysis. The enterprise could easily have turned purple, but he does it with consummate skill: distinctive and readable, capturing the sense of a nation haunted by its songs. And the notion that the ultimate accolade might be an artist's work acquiring anonymity is all the more resonant in an age of cheap fame.--Steven Carroll"Sydney Morning Herald" (10/17/2015)

General Fields

  • : 9780674187085
  • : Harvard University Press
  • : Harvard University Press
  • : 0.227
  • : October 2015
  • : 180mm X 119mm X 18mm
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Greil Marcus
  • : Hardback
  • : 1
  • : 782.42162009
  • : 176
  • : illustrations