A01=Stephen Wade
American
american ballads
american blues
american folk music
american roots music
american traditions
appalachian music
Archie Green
Author_Stephen Wade
balladeer
banjo
banjo dancing
banjo history
banjo instruction
banjo picking
banjo players
banjo styles
banjo techniques
banjo tradition
Bill Monroe
black folk music
bluegrass
bluegrass music
blues
blues history
blues music
blues revival
cajun music
call and response
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Category=AVLT
Category=JBCC1
chicago blues
chicago folk music
Cordell and Olean Kemp
country blues
country music
cultural diversity
cultural heritage
cultural history
David "Honeyboy" Edwards
Doc Hopkins
Dorris Macon
early recordings
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eq_music
eq_nobargain
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ethnomusicology
field recordings
fieldwork
Fleming Brown
folk archives
folk culture
folk festivals
folk history
folk music revival
folk musicians
folk revival
folk song collecting
folk song tradition
folk songs
folk traditions
folklore
folklore studies
forthcoming
gospel music
Helen Marie Rowe
hillbilly music
historic folk music
historic recordings
historical musicology
hollers
Huddie Ledbetter
instrumental music
irish traditional music
Jack Conroy
jazz influences
Jewel Fagan Haynes
Jim Schwall
Joe and Odell Thompson
John Jackson
Kentucky
Kirk McGee
labor songs
library of congress recordings
Lloyd Lewis
minstrelsy
music and identity
music archives
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music heritage
music history
national folk culture
Ola Belle Reed
old time banjo
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oral history
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oral tradition
performing tradition
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Raeburn Flerlage
railroad songs
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regional traditions
roots music
roots traditions
rural music
sacred music
Sid Harkreader
song collecting
southern folklore
southern music
spirituals
storytelling tradition
string band music
string instruments
Thaddeus Willingham
Uncle Dave Macon
Virgil and Mabel Anderson
Will Keys
Product details
- ISBN 9780252059865
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 01 Sep 2026
- Publisher: University of Illinois Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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"I can't teach you, but I can show you." With these words, Kentucky balladeer Doc Hopkins shared his musical knowledge with a willing student, summoning an independent streak deeply embedded in the American character. His words capture the informal creativity and colloquial practice that marks folk tradition as it extends from the countryside to the city and back again.
Stephen Wade recounts creators and conservators like Doc Hopkins, many of them born in the closing years of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. The figures include Sid Harkreader, Kirk McGee, Ola Belle Reed, Jewel Fagan Haynes, Cordell and Olean Kemp, Bill Monroe, Helen Marie Rowe, Virgil and Mabel Anderson, Joe and Odell Thompson, John Jackson, Huddie Ledbetter, Uncle Dave Macon, Dorris Macon, Raeburn Flerlage, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Jim Schwall, Archie Green, Lloyd Lewis, Thaddeus Willingham, Jack Conroy, and Fleming Brown. As Will Keys, another of the musicians featured here, once told the author about his way of playing, it's "AWYC, Any Way You Can." These individuals and their stories demonstrate how folklore offers a way of understanding the world.
Thoughtfully written, filled with original research, and abundantly illustrated with both color and black and white photography, Our Common Life illuminates the truth that creative freedom within informal tradition, fundamental to the artists and their processes, speaks to a resourcefulness inscribed in the nation's founding charter and expressed in its common life.
Stephen Wade recounts creators and conservators like Doc Hopkins, many of them born in the closing years of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. The figures include Sid Harkreader, Kirk McGee, Ola Belle Reed, Jewel Fagan Haynes, Cordell and Olean Kemp, Bill Monroe, Helen Marie Rowe, Virgil and Mabel Anderson, Joe and Odell Thompson, John Jackson, Huddie Ledbetter, Uncle Dave Macon, Dorris Macon, Raeburn Flerlage, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Jim Schwall, Archie Green, Lloyd Lewis, Thaddeus Willingham, Jack Conroy, and Fleming Brown. As Will Keys, another of the musicians featured here, once told the author about his way of playing, it's "AWYC, Any Way You Can." These individuals and their stories demonstrate how folklore offers a way of understanding the world.
Thoughtfully written, filled with original research, and abundantly illustrated with both color and black and white photography, Our Common Life illuminates the truth that creative freedom within informal tradition, fundamental to the artists and their processes, speaks to a resourcefulness inscribed in the nation's founding charter and expressed in its common life.
Stephen Wade is musician, author, and a Grammy-nominated recording artist best known for his long running stage performances of Banjo Dancing and On the Way Home. He is the author of the award-winning book The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience.
