It Still Moves
Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
"Where lies the boundary between meaning and sentiment? Between memory and nostalgia? America and Americana? What is and what was? Does it move?"
--Donovon Hohn, A Romance of Rust
Part travelogue, part cultural criticism, part music appreciation, It Still Moves does for today's avant folk scene what Greil Marcus did for Dylan and The Basement Tapes. Amanda Petrusich outlines the sounds of the new, weird America—honoring the rich tradition of gospel, bluegrass, country, folk, and rock that feeds it, while simultaneously exploring the American character as personified in all of these genres historically. Through interviews, road stories, geographical and sociological interpretations, and detailed music criticism, Petrusich traces the rise of Americana music from its gospel origins through its new and compelling incarnations (as evidenced in bands and artists from Elvis to Iron and Wine, the Carter Family to Animal Collective, Johnny Cash to Will Oldham) and explores how the genre is adapting to the twenty-first century. Ultimately the book is an examination of all things American: guitars, cars, kids, motion, passion, enterprise, and change, in a fervent attempt to reconcile the American past with the American present, using only dusty records and highway maps as guides.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this musical road trip, Petrusich (staff writer for Pitchforkmedia.com and author of Pink Moon) lights out into the country to discover what constitutes American music and the ways that it influences the music that has come to be known as Americana. Much like famed musicologist Alan Lomax the man instrumental in introducing Delta blues to the world Petrusich searches high and low, from Memphis and Nashville to Gainesville, Fla., and New York City for the many strains that compose the chorus of American music. In a narrative that is often humorous, Petrusich discovers the usual suspects Lomax, Harry Smith and Smithsonian Folkways, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Elvis, Robert Johnson but pulls out most of the shopworn stories about them. Moe Asch, for instance, who started Folkways Recordings in 1948 (later bought by the Smithsonian in 1987), famously turned down both Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, saying that they were both just singers that didn't have anything to say. Asch's label was so significant to the development of American music that Dylan has since commented that, early on, he had "envisioned myself recording on Folkway Records." For all her excursions into various regions of the country and various musical styles, however, Petrusich's conclusion that American music reflects the landscape from which it springs is disappointing.
