Listen to the Mockingbird: American Folksongs and Popular Music Lyrics of the 19th Century

Edited with an Introduction by Douglas Messerli

Price: U.S. $12.95

Series No.: 130

ISBN: 978-1-892295-20-0, Pages: 204

American Literature, Music

Editor Douglas Messerli has collected 78 lyrics of American folksongs and popular music. The African American spirituals, the chanteys, and the cowboy songs are beautiful paeans to the American way of life. But the rest are often perverse in their racial humor and sexual undertones, especially the minstrel songs and the Civil War ballads. These lyrics both energize and frighten us, not unlike the wild and open American landscape. From the patriotically conceived “America” (1832), to the rebelliously insistent “I’ll Marry the Man I Love” (1897), Listen to the Mockingbird reveals our national identity.

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Cover photographs (clockwise from left):

Stephen Collins Foster

Septimus Winner

Charles K. Harris

George F. Root