Songcatchers

Music is elemental, universal, instinctive -- a mysterious pulse at the very heart of the human experience. But although we have made music for countless millennia, it's been scarcely a century since we acquired the technology to capture and explore all its astonishing variety. This is the tale that unfolds in Songcatchers, at once a panorama of the world's music and a vivid portrait of the pioneers who traveled far and wide to collect it. Mickey Hart, the Grateful Dead's percussionist, is also a dedicated musicologist who has recorded traditional music all over the globe. His personal quest is part of this fascinating book, but here, too, are trailblazers like Jesse Fewkes, who made the first field recordings on wax cylinders in 1890; John and Alan Lomax, whose work with folk and blues artists helped define modern music; and many more -- men and women whose curiosity led them from Africa, Asia, and far-flung Pacific islands to the Arctic Circle, often at great personal risk and usually burdened with balky, cumbersome equipment. Their legacy -- of high adventure and dedicated scholarship -- is as priceless as it is colorful. Filled with historical photographs and highlighted by a time line that traces the hundred-year evolution of recording technology, Songcatchers is an informative, always engrossing odyssey of the world's musical heritage and our ongoing effort to understand, appreciate, and preserve it. Book jacket.