The Guitar In America: Victorian Era To Jazz Age (American Made Music Series)

The Guitar in America: Victorian Era to Jazz Age (American Made Music Series)

From the Publisher From parlor instrument to jazz electric, this study of musical evolution in America's progressive era ---Documents a movement in America's musical history that has been neglected ---Introduces important primary sources to scholars and a wealth of music to guitarists ---Provides new insight into how America's musical culture grew from conflicts and competitions between business and art, popular and elite tastes, and native and immigrant populations ---Offers research described by Tim Brookes as "the definitive work on the bizarre history of the guitar and the BMG movement" ---Expands the American Made Music Series The Guitar in America offers a history of the instrument from America's late Victorian period to the Jazz Age. The narrative traces America's BMG (banjo, mandolin, and guitar) community, a late nineteenth-century musical and commercial movement dedicated to introducing these instruments into America's elite musical establishments.Using surviving BMG magazines, the author details an almost unknown history of the guitar during the movement's heyday, tracing the guitar's transformation from a refined parlor instrument to a mainstay in jazz and popular music. In the process, he not only introduces musicians (including numerous women guitarists) who led the movement, but also examines new techniques and instruments. Chapters consider the BMG movement's impact on jazz and popular music, the use of the guitar to promote attitudes towards women and minorities, and the challenges foreign guitarists such as Miguel Llobet and Andres Segovia presented to America's musicians.This volume opens a new chapter on the guitar in America, considering its cultivated past and documenting how banjoists and mandolinists aligned their instruments to it in an effort to raise social and cultural standing. At the same time, the book considers the BMG community within America's larger musical scene, examining its efforts as manifestations of this country's uneasy coupling of musical art and commerce. Book Description From parlor instrument to jazz electric, a study of musical evolution in America