The Literature of American Popular Music

Posted on January 8, 2007
Filed Under Teaching |

This is the book list for a new course I’m teaching this semester. One of the great things about being a professor is that I get to organize courses around things I am passionate about. Anyway, the list:

Later: This is a new course & I am still putting it together even though I start teaching it the day after tomorrow. Obviously, I have the overall arc of the course established, but I’m still filling in details. Actually, the first time through a course is for me always a process of filling in details & discovering the subject in relation to my students. My main problem is cutting down the number of songs I want to play in class to a manageable number & trying to pick tunes that are tightly relevant to the books we’re reading. Without imposing self-discipline, I could wind up just going into class all semester & playing my favorite blues & jazz. But that would be wrong. So I’ve been doing a lot of listening & thinking & list-making.

I’m going to start with a couple of days on the Anglo-American ballad tradition, arguing that the ballad represents a fundamental form of story telling & using it to establish certain naratological conventions that I’ll return to when we discuss the fictions that are the main reading for the course.

Later yet: After the ballads, we’ll begin with the blues by reading Part I of the Palmer book while listening to a bunch of early blues (Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters) & that should provide for Train Whistle Guitar. During that discussion, we’ll hop back a bit to Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong & the New Orleans jazz scene. There’s a great bit of Autobiography by Jelly Roll Morten where he talks about working the bars & brothels of the Crescent City. Part One of the course will end with a reading of August Wilson’s play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, with appropriate music from Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith & others.

Comments

4 Responses to “The Literature of American Popular Music”

  1. Sam on January 8th, 2007 1:11 pm

    So, there’s this music going on in the US and it resonates all the way across the Atlantic and some time passes and the echo returns in the form of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cream, The Who, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. And the course of American music is changed for ever.

    Do any of the course materials approach this topic?

    With a title like “the literature of american music”, I don’t expect it to be a history class. However, there are a few historical instances, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, etc touring the UK; The Who and JHE at Monterey, Cream’s extended shows at the Fillmore, and Tom Dowd introducing Eric Clapton and Duane Allman to each other. The list goes on.

    These all make up fascinating bits of history that, in my view, make it impossible to talk about American popular music without talking about British music at just about the same time.

    Well, there is the Band’s, Music From Big Pink… Anyway, I wish I could take this class!

  2. Joseph Duemer on January 8th, 2007 1:20 pm

    Sam, it’s not a music class, it’s a lit class with a soundtrack. In the course title, I use the word “popular” instead of “pop” because it’s really about the ballad tradition & the blues tradition & how they have informed recent American literature. We’re focusing on fiction, though we’ll also spend a bit of time talking about the literary qualities of some popular music. We will talk about the way the blues went to England & then came back to the US in the 60s.

  3. Ariel on January 9th, 2007 11:54 pm

    Aha! I found it all by myself! Take that you booklisthider!

    See you in 42.5 hours.

  4. Ariel on January 10th, 2007 12:09 am

    P.S. We should read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski while listening to the soundtrack that his sister (Poe) made to go with it. Yes yes. We should we should.