Crossroads: Popular Music in America

The sender of my new book was very nice;he quickly sent me the book and CD. I would recomend him.If next semester I need books and he has them I'll buy from him. Thank you.

This lively and accessible book explores the musical traditions of five broad groups - Native Americans, European Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans - with particular interest in how those multicultural roots have intermingled to create contemporary American music. Along the way, author Elizabeth Barkley achieves a near impossible feat: presenting concise and candid histories of each cultural group, in addition to equally concise and clear explanations of the stylistic elements of their music. These elements are reinforced by the companion CD, which provides 18 listening examples with commentary. My only criticism is that the book suffers from inattentive editing. For example, the first citation in Chapter One is "Ibid." Several photo captions apparently include layout notations not intended for readers' eyes, sometimes to a mildly humorous effect. The content deserves better. Though designed for college students with no prior musical training, this book will be invaluable to high school and college music teachers wanting to infuse more diversity into their coursework, or for social studies teachers wanting to infuse more popular culture. I would also recommend it to those specifically interested in African American music since - not surprisingly - about half the chapters touch on it in one way or another. Highly recommended!