The first book to explore the ballad's history and emotional appeal, surveying seventy years of the genre in modern America.

The Song Index features over 150,000 citations that lead users to over 2,100 song books spanning more than a century, from the 1880s to the 1990s. The songs cited represent a multitude of musical practices, cultures, and traditions, ranging from ehtnic to regional, from foreign to American, representing every type of song: popular, folk, children's, political, comic, advertising, protest, patriotic, military, and classical, as well as hymns, spirituals, ballads, arias, choral symphonies, and other larger works. This comprehensive volume also includes a bibliography of the books indexed; an index of sources from which the songs originated; and an alphabetical composer index.

River of Tears is the first ethnography of Brazilian country music, one of the most popular genres in Brazil yet least-known outside it. Beginning in the mid-1980s, commercial musical duos practicing música sertaneja reached beyond their home in Brazil’s central-southern region to become national bestsellers. Rodeo events revolving around country music came to rival soccer matches in attendance. A revival of folkloric rural music called música caipira, heralded as música sertaneja’s ancestor, also took shape. And all the while, large numbers of Brazilians in the central-south were moving to cities, using music to support the claim that their Brazil was first and foremost a rural nation. Since 1998, Alexander Sebastian Dent has analyzed rural music in the state of São Paulo, interviewing and spending time with listeners, musicians, songwriters, journalists, record-company owners, and radio hosts. Dent not only describes the production and reception of this music, he also explains why the genre experienced such tremendous growth as Brazil transitioned from an era of dictatorship to a period of intense neoliberal reform. Dent argues that rural genres reflect a widespread anxiety that change has been too radical and has come too fast. In defining their music as rural, Brazil’s country musicians—whose work circulates largely in cities—are criticizing an increasingly inescapable urban life characterized by suppressed emotions and an inattentiveness to the past. Their performances evoke a river of tears flowing through a landscape of loss—of love, of life in the countryside, and of man’s connections to the natural world.

"Rush is one of rock's most influential bands. Ranked third in consecutive gold or platinum albums after the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the band enjoys a devoted following by legions around the world and is revered by generations of musicians.

An updated edition of the most comprehensive account of Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize-winning work yet published, with the full story of every recording session, every album, and every single released during his nearly 60-year career. Bob Dylan: All the Songs focuses on Dylan's creative process and his organic, unencumbered style of recording. It is the only book to tell the stories, many unfamiliar even to his most fervent fans, behind the more than 500 songs he has released over the span of his career. Organized chronologically by album, Margotin and Guesdon detail the origins of his melodies and lyrics, his process in the recording studio, the instruments he used, and the contribution of a myriad of musicians and producers to his canon.

This book provides critical insights into the many, often overlooked, challenges and societal issues that face contemporary black men, focusing in particular on the ways in which governing societal expectations result in internal and external constraints on black male identity formation, sexuality and black ’masculine’ expression. Presenting new interview and auto-ethnographic data, and drawing on an array of theoretical approaches methodologies, Hyper Sexual, Hyper Masculine? explores the formation of gendered and sexual identity in the lives of black men, shedding light on the manner in which these are affected by class and social structure. It examines the intersecting oppressions of race, gender and class, while acknowledging and discussing the extent to which black men’s social lives differ as a result of their varying degrees of cumulative disadvantage. A wide-ranging and empirically grounded exploration of the intersecting roles of race, masculinity, and sexuality on the lives of black men, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, social stratification and intersectionality.

What if heaven is more real, physical, exciting, and compelling than anything we have ever heard? And what difference would it make? Myk Habets takes readers on a journey of discovery into what God has in store for those who love him. Forget playing harps on fluffy clouds. The reality of what God has in store for us will change the way you live, work, and play. Habets answers a series of questions about heaven that are asked by children and addresses things we all want to know but are often too afraid to ask. Written in easy-to-read language and incorporating insights from some of the best Christian novelists, Habets explains the meaning of a “Christian imagination” and how it can be put to work in creating a vision of the future that results in a life characterized by faith, hope, and assurance. This book appeals to all who want to know what the Bible says about life after death, and finds a way to make it understandable to others. It may even make you laugh out loud along the way.