“America is a candy store for music: Blues, Rock & Roll, Pop, Rap, Country, Classical, Bluegrass, R& B, Jazz, Native American, Gospel, Broadway, Soul, Heavy Metal. You want to eat it here, or have it wrapped to go? How did this diversity evolve in such a short time from one common soil? AMERICA’S MUSIC is a big, scholarly book. Its structure is its beauty: small chapters, bite-size servings, broken down with each musical movement, so that ingredients can be savored and understood to get the big picture. This is the greatest book on music I have ever come across, and makes it easy to get an in-depth survey of the glorious landscape of music in America.” Gilbert Chase, AMERICA’S MUSIC From the Pilgrims to the Present (Chicago and Normal: University of Illinois Press, 1992)

“Did you ever think that the best music is the music we get to hear on the radio? Sorry to break your heart. The music we get to hear is the music the Music Industry wants us to listen to. Though there has been reform, the forces of capital, monopoly, mega-entertainment conglomerates, have continued to choke spontaneity and experimentation from the heart of music-makers. Music changed for America when the entrepreneur found out how much money there was in popular music consumption. Drugs, payola, you name it and we bought it. And we’re still buying it. This book is 25 years old and still tells it like it is. The names have changed but it’s the same old game. Take this picture and extrapolate to Music, Books, Film, and then you might be ready for the really bad news.” Frederic Dannen, HIT MEN (NY: Penguin Books, 1975)

“This is a fascinating book by the percussionist for the Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart. It follows the origins of the drum in history, through myth, legend, and the personal quest of the author to unlock the power of percussion. Great pictures of drums from ancient times and faraway places. The first instrument seems to have been two bones knocking against each other, a drum. And the first drummer, appears to have been the daughter of a Sumerian King.” Mickey Hart with Jay Stevens, DRUMMING AT THE EDGE OF MAGIC, Journey into the Sprit of Percussion (Harper San Francisco, 1990)

“Alan Lomax breaks it down. Co-founder, with folklorist/father John A. Lomax, of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, Alan Lomax takes us on a sensual and moody journey through the south in search of the Blues. In books I have suggested so far, I have looked at: the origins of song; the evolution of musical forms in the history of American culture; the history of a particular instrument, the drum, in the traditions of world cultures. Now, in THE LAND WHERE THE BLUES BEGAN, we can take a deep look at one musical form native to America. The hardships and humor that survive in The Blues, an integral part of African American culture, are vividly retold by interview and story. We can understand why the Blues transformed mostly all forms of American music, from American Classical to Rock & Roll. This story is told by a master.” Winner of the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.” Alan Lomax,  THE LAND WHERE THE BLUES BEGAN (NY: Pantheon Books, 1993)

Odile Hellier (The Village Voice Bookshop, Paris; by phone):

“One book I loved very much: ADA, by Nabokov. What a wonder, the writing! Reading Russian, I’m all the time tuning into the Russian mind; and, reading him, I see the playfulness of his Russian mind translating itself into English. It comes through in the irony, the ridiculousness of the world, the distance between the character and what happens to him. How he plays: puns in three or five languages: French, English, Russian, sometimes German, sometimes Italian — and the language of the entomologist, with his complicated, ornamental descriptions of plants and insects: a Baroque playfulness, combined with tenderness and a totally subversive love. This book is about culture, society of course, with an ironical eye on the upper classes of France, England, and America, which he knows because that was his milieu. I cannot tell you the pleasure I had reading this book, how it stimulates the imagination: it takes you above the ground.” Vladimir Nabokov, ADA (US: Vintage; UK: Penguin; paperback)

“It’s incredible that Grace Paley would be in Paris just now, reading [at the Village Voice] these essays written over the years, given the political climate of the last week, the bombing of Kosovo, because these essays also dealt with political activities of the past. She’s certainly against the bombing, as she was against the war in Vietnam, but although she did not speak about Yugoslavia, she understands that it is necessary to get rid of evil. Her life as an ecologist, woman, feminist, pacifist, an activist in many issues: it is meaningful for me to have her here, now.” Grace Paley, JUST AS I THOUGHT (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1999)

“Barbara Kingsolver’s new book is a quantum leap up from her previous novels — the scope, the canvas, the destiny: enormous; really wonderful. The book is about the imposition of cultures on other cultures. The title says it all: the preacher who carries his guilt with him to Africa, to the Congo of Patrice Lumumba. In a small village where the people speak Kilonga he wants to baptize the children by immersion, because he feels they live in darkness, though the river is filled with crocodiles! He speaks about ‘Patajesus,’ drawing on the Kilongan word for ‘truth’; but he pronounces it as ‘poisonwood,’ and so is totally wrong: he preaches not that Jesus is ‘truth’ but ‘poison.’ This is a real novel, of ‘real’ lives: the preacher, his wife, and their three daughters. Five different lives lived with humor and tragedy in moral, cultural and political situations; a masterpiece.” Barbara Kingsolver, THE POISONWOOD BIBLE (US: HarperCollins; UK: Faber paperback, 1998)

“I read a British book which you may want to know about, by a man who was in prison and then worked in a slaughterhouse. Despite the fact that it was a little bit difficult for me to enter that world at first, I found the author is very, very generous with his rather picaresque, rather deformed characters. A very generous book, funny at times in spite of the very, very, very dark world. It’s really a beautiful book.” Jimmy Boyle, THE HERO OF THE UNDERWORLD (UK/US: Serpent’s Tail, 1999)

“Jake Lamar is an African-American writer living in Paris who is best known for BOURGEOIS BLUES. His third novel, CLOSE TO THE BONE, is just out. His novels are always contemporary and interesting, about the African-American middle class which has money and education and goes back and forth between Europe and the States. He is a subversive kind of writer. He writes about African-American characters, but he’s not protecting them at all: he blurs borders, frontiers, lines between white and black. He debunks the polarization and, though he certainly speaks about racism, undermines it all the time. Racism is an issue, but not treated as we’ve been used to seeing it dealt with in novels. This is a new kind of African-American literature. He’s not carrying the banner of race, but describing a generation across colors.” Jake Lamar, CLOSE TO THE BONE (NY: Crown Books, 1999)