Music and the Road: Essays on the Interplay of Music and the Popular Culture of the American Road

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Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Paul Simonthese familiar figures have written road music for half a century and continue to remain highly-regarded artists. But there is so much more to say about road music. This book fills a glaring hole in scholarship about the road and music. In a collection of 13 essays, Music and the Road explores the origins of road music in the blues, country-western, and rock n roll; the themes of adventure, freedom, mobility, camaraderie, and love, and much more in this music; the mystique and reality of touring as an important part of getting away from home, creating community among performers, and building audiences across the country from the 1930s to the present; and the contribution of music to popular road films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, and On the Road.

Reviews

Gordon Slethaug has assembled a band of traveling companions for a musical road trip that spans time, place, and genre. This is a sparkling collection of essays that casts a critical yet appreciative eye on American road music and its power to mobilize and mythologize. * Stacilee Ford, Honorary Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong *
This collection opens on to new vistas and soundscapes of the American road, offering fresh and compelling perspectives on how music, race, gender, and mobility shape one another across the landscapes of the twentieth-century United States. Scholars and students of cultural history will find Slethaug and his contributors excellent traveling companions. * Cotten Seiler, Associate Professor of American Studies, Dickinson College, USA *
a good introduction to road music. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *

Author Bio

Gordon E. Slethaug is Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is the former Head of the English Department and former Associate Dean of Graduate Programs in Arts at Waterloo, as well as the former Director of American Studies at the University of Hong Kong. His published books include: International Teaching and Learning at Universities (2015); Adaptation Theory & Criticism: Postmodern Literature and Cinema in the USA (2014); Hit the Road, Jack: Essays on the Culture of the American Road (2012); Beautiful Chaos: Chaos Theory and Metachaotics in Recent American Fiction; and The Play of the Double in Postmodern American Fiction (2000).