Struggling to define a nation : American music and the twentieth century

Description

Identifying music as a vital site of cultural debate, Struggling to Define a Nation captures the dynamic, contested nature of musical life in the United States. In an engaging blend of music analysis and cultural critique, Charles Hiroshi Garrett examines a dazzling array of genres--including art music, jazz, popular song, ragtime, and Hawaiian music--and numerous well-known musicians, such as Charles Ives, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Irving Berlin. Garrett argues that rather than a single, unified vision, an exploration of the past century reveals a contested array of musical perspectives on the nation, each one advancing a different facet of American identity through sound.  Read more... Charles Ives's Four ragtime dances and true American music -- Jelly Roll Morton and the Spanish tinge -- Louis Armstrong and the great migration -- Chinatown, whose Chinatown? Defining America's borders with musical orientalism -- Sounds of paradise: Hawai'i and the American musical imagination -- Conclusion: American music at the turn of a new century.