The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad

Rating:
Summary: A great new book on some great old songs
Review: Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus have been listening to some great old songs, and some new ones too - songs about doomed lovers, highway shooters, and a nation lost and found. The essays they have put together are stunning -- my favorites are Dave Marsh on "Barbara Allen," which people have been singing for 500 years; Wendy Lesser on dancing to Dylan's "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" with her baby boy in her arms; and Sean Wilentz on the curse behind "One more round, Delia's gone." Greil's last word on the "embarrassment" of "folk music" is also terrific. And the companion CD is a must.

Rating:
Summary: American hearts are broken all over and have been for years
Review: So, I'm reading this amazing book, The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad and it's smart and it's emotional and it makes *me* feel smart and also, emotional. It takes all these well-known ballads and makes you really think about how these songs have stood the test of time. What makes them resonate after all these years? I'm awed and utterly fascinated.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven but satisfying
Review: This book, and the accompanying CD, have been needed for a long time. But I was disappointed by the fact that not all of the essays accompanying songs are about the songs as much as the interpretations of the individual writers about what the songs mean to them. Frankly, I wasn't interested in that, just as I'm not interested in how these songs remind people of how much they hate George W. Bush or the political right. The irony is that these songs are, in effect, red state songs, if you want to look it from a completely superficial standpoint. But these songs speak to everybody, and always have. Tying political points to them drags down the appreciation one feels. I especially enjoyed it when the essays went into the particular events behind the songs, or in the case of "El Paso," how the song was written and recorded. Perhaps what I wanted was another version of "Stagolee Shot Billy," a wonderful study of the Stagger Lee mythos. I would recommend this book to anyone, even with those reservations.