The Guitar in America

Victorian Era to Jazz Age

By: Jeffrey J. Noonan

Narrated by: Jack Chekijian

Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

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 19th-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 toward 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 audiobook 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.

©2008 University Press of Mississippi (P)2014 Redwood Audiobooks

odd narration

there's something strange about the narration, like it's done with text to speech or ai voice emulation. Information is good, and guitar enthusiasts will enjoy learning about the transformative period of the American guitar.

For Guitarists

This has the feel of a doctoral dissertation that was published as a book. Nevertheless, it is a densely informative book that will be of interest to guitarists and historians of American music. The stereotypical images of guitars and banjos and mandolins do not match the historical record and there is a lot of music out there that has been woefully under-performed and which lays the foundation for a uniquely American guitar style. As an example, fans of Chet Atkins may be interested in his link back to William Foden and other American Guitarists from the turn of the (last) century. Do a YouTube search for "The Capital March" - if you are intrigued, this may be the book for you.

An adjunctive text for music historians

As is to be expected of anything published by a University Press, this is a well-researched, scholarly work. It covers primarily the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920's. The author designated this as the prehistory of the role of the guitar in musical form. It also only alludes to the physical changes made to the instrument as time and usage progressed. It was interesting to learn that the essential difference between English and Spanish guitars was not so much design as whether the strings were of wire or gut. Much referencing is based upon the periodicals of the early twentieth century promoting the mandolin and banjo, with the guitar taking least place. These periodicals were not only biased, but vested in promoting a given manufacturer. In the later years, these publications also lauded and promoted well-known performers of the day.
Once again, Jack Chekijian uses his professional expertise to keep the narrative from becoming boring, yet pacing the work so as to allow ease of note-taking.
This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review