This is a detailed work placing bluegrass music into a historical, as well as musicological, cultural, and imaginative context. Robert Cantwell has taught at Kenyon College, the University of Iowa, Georgetown University, and the University of North Carolina. "Bluegrass Breakdown" is his first book, and it won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and the Ambassador of Honour Book Award.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
ADVANCE PRAISE "Bluegrass Breakdown is a seminal work in its field... Robert Cantwell has had the foresight, the initiative, and the intellectual creativity to create a model for explaining a major force in southern and, indeed, American culture." -- The Journal of Southern History "A thoroughly researched and often brilliant attempt to place bluegrass music into a historical, as well as musicological, cultural, and imaginative context. Bluegrass Breakdown is, without a doubt, the most thought-provoking work on bluegrass -- and its father, Bill Monroe -- I have ever read." -- Jon Hartley Fox, Bluegrass Unlimited
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Robert Cantwell has taught at Kenyon College, the University of Iowa, Georgetown University, and the University of North Carolina. Bluegrass Breakdown is his first book, and it won the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award and the Ambassador of Honor Book Award.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Academic psycho-drivel"??,
By
This review is from: Bluegrass Breakdown (Paperback)
I get the impression from several of the reviews I've read here that the posters frown on the academic study of bluegrass. This book certainly isn't for everyone. No book HAS to please an audience, nor does every book HAVE to be interesting from cover to cover. Cantwell does have a tendency to ramble at some points, but the information contained in this book is still worth the read.Bluegrass Breakdown is a book for those interested in bluegrass from an ethnomusicological standpoint. Cantwell advances interesting theories regarding the African contribution to bluegrass to how bluegrass is identifiable through its use of the characteristic "high lonesome wail". Cantwell's goal here is clearly to explore cultural attributes and effects of bluegrass, and this is something I believe he does well. If you're looking for a book that's an easy to read, tail-wagging history of bluegrass, go for Cantwell's colleague Neil Rosenberg. Cantwell isn't your man. Cantwell's writing is purely academic, again a style of writing that isn't for everyone. I don't believe Cantwell goes out of his way to discuss his bluegrass performance merits or intellect here. I found Cantwell's inquiries mostly unbiased and thorough, including those dealing with Bill Monroe. I don't believe Cantwell went out of his way to point out Monroe's 'hypocrisies' on any level, rather he constructed his writing to portray Monroe as a paradox, a 'mystery' man who's very hard to explain in the space of a few pages. For all his interesting theories, Cantwell loses a star for stereotyping. His description of "Appalachian folk" at the Grand Ole Opry as "plain", "overweight" and "lacking in proper dental hygiene" (the book was published in '86) is annoying. This may be a part of Cantwell's research experience, however it's a cheap shot at a blanket statement about an entire culture of people. I thought good researchers were trained to avoid this kind of writing. Other than that, this book is something definitely worth the read ... particularly if you're up for the challenge.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Critical Theory Comes to Bluegrass,
By Tribe (Toledo, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bluegrass Breakdown (Paperback)
If you hate the dense, sometimes rambling, style of critical theorists, pass up on this. But, if you do enjoy bluegrass, as well as crit lit, this book is an enjoyable analysis of the style. Cantwell can write long, winding paragraphs, but he knows his subject. His analysis parses the style deep into its African roots, while at the same time giving the reader some thorough critical background into old-timey Southern rural music and African-American styles. The negatives from other reviewers are right on, but I happen to like Cantwell's style and have found this book to be an invaluable reference to bluegrass, and a source of inspiration on how to view, not to mention listen to what has been described as "folk music on overdrive."
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dense but thought provoking,
By A Customer
This review is from: Bluegrass Breakdown (Paperback)
For all its dense prose, Bluegrass Breakdown is _not_ typical academic-ese. Bob Cantwell cares about writing and he cares about bluegrass. He is, in fact, a bluegrass banjoist as well as a college professor. Some readers may find his style too involved for their tastes; others will, as they follow his arguments, come to see in bluegrass much more than they might ever have imagined. I think this is one of the best books written in the past 20 years on the culture of American popular music.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Whoever has seen Bill Monroe up close, on stage, especially in these late years of his career, will remember that he carries himself with a kind of austere majesty, as if time had already chi him, like his presidential ancestor, from a block of marble; by whatever art it is that a man conveys his character and sense of himself to the world, Monroe seems to continue a lineage that reaches back almost to Lexington, the heart of the Blue Grass and the Athens of the West. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
subdivided rhythm, original bluegrass, bluegrass singing, banjo roll, blue velvet band, bluegrass singer, bluegrass instruments, hillbilly string band, bluegrass style, old southern sound, folk banjo, parlor books, ridiculed figure, bluegrass repertoire, clawhammer style, aural tradition, dreadful snake, bluegrass music, harmonic sphere, hillbilly musician, banjo style, ancient tones, thumb string, bluegrass fiddler, bluegrass song Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Bill Monroe, Blue Grass Boys, Earl Scruggs, Grand Ole Opry, North Carolina, Jimmie Rodgers, New Orleans, Louis Armstrong, Stanley Brothers, Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt, Charlie Poole, Civil War, Muleskinner Blues, New Grass Revival, New York, Uncle Dave, Arnold Shultz, Ralph Rinzler, Alan Lomax, Carter Stanley, Dan Emmett, Father of Bluegrass Music, Virginia Minstrels, Blue Ridge New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Whoever has seen Bill Monroe up close, on stage, especially in these late years of his career, will remember that he carries himself with a kind of austere majesty, as if time had already chi him, like his presidential ancestor, from a block of marble; by whatever art it is that a man conveys his character and sense of himself to the world, Monroe seems to continue a lineage that reaches back almost to Lexington, the heart of the Blue Grass and the Athens of the West. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
subdivided rhythm, original bluegrass, bluegrass singing, banjo roll, blue velvet band, bluegrass singer, bluegrass instruments, hillbilly string band, bluegrass style, old southern sound, folk banjo, parlor books, ridiculed figure, bluegrass repertoire, clawhammer style, aural tradition, dreadful snake, bluegrass music, harmonic sphere, hillbilly musician, banjo style, ancient tones, thumb string, bluegrass fiddler, bluegrass song Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Bill Monroe, Blue Grass Boys, Earl Scruggs, Grand Ole Opry, North Carolina, Jimmie Rodgers, New Orleans, Louis Armstrong, Stanley Brothers, Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt, Charlie Poole, Civil War, Muleskinner Blues, New Grass Revival, New York, Uncle Dave, Arnold Shultz, Ralph Rinzler, Alan Lomax, Carter Stanley, Dan Emmett, Father of Bluegrass Music, Virginia Minstrels, Blue Ridge New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 92
books:
See all 92 books this book cites
96
books
cite this book:
See all 96 books citing this book
- Black Music of Two Worlds: African, Caribbean, Latin, and African-American Traditions by John Storm Roberts on 5 pages
- Studies in African Music (2 Volumes) by A. M. Jones on 5 pages
- Bluegrass Banjo by Pete Wernick on 4 pages
- Bluegrass Songbook by Peter Wernick on 4 pages
- The Folk Songs of North America: in the English Language by Shirley Collins on 4 pages
See all 92 books this book cites
- The Bill Monroe Reader (Music in American Life) by Tom Ewing on 8 pages
- Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Race and American Culture) by Eric Lott on 5 pages
- Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy by Annemarie Bean on 5 pages
- That Half-Barbaric Twang: THE BANJO IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE (Music in American Life) by Karen Linn on 4 pages
- Horse Opera: The Strange History of the 1930s Singing Cowboy by Peter Stanfield on 4 pages
See all 96 books citing this book
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