If It Sounds Good, It Is Good: Seeking Subversion, Transcendence, and Solace in America's Music

Description

American roots music is not a product of an elite leisure class, as some academics contend, but of explosive creativity among slaves, hillbillies, fieldhands, drunks, slackers, and hucksters. Yet these poor, working-class people, built the foundations of jazz, gospel, blues, bluegrass, rock 'n' roll, and country music, an unparalleled burst of invention. This is the counterfactual to the academics' story. Manning takes us down a long, strange path, following music to deeper understandings of racism, slavery, inequality, meditation, addiction, the science of our brains, and ultimately to an enticing glimpse of pure religion.

Rick Bass is a writer and environmental activist. Bass won the Story Prize for books published in 2016 for his collection of new and selected stories, For a Little While. He won the 1995 James Jones Literary Society First Novel Fellowship for his novel in progress, Where the Sea Used to Be. He was awarded the General Electric Younger Writers Award, a PEN/Nelson Algren Award Special Citation for fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Richard Manning is a lifelong journalist and the author of eleven books. He is a contributing editor for Harper's magazine, was a John S. Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford University, and has received many awards, especially in environmental journalism.

"Richard Manning is the most significant social critic in the northern Rockies. We're fortunate to have Dick Manning as he continues his demands for fairness while casting light on our future." --William Kittredge, author of The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology and The Next Rodeo: New and Selected Essays "Richard Manning's work has always been something special, distinguished by its intense passion and its penetrating insights." --George Black, author of Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone "Richard Manning is at the head of his class." --Larry McMurtry, author of over two-dozen books including The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove/p> "Richard Manning is the West's greatest journalist. Read this book, and then read everything else he has written and everything he will ever write." --Rick Bass, author of Why I Came West and The Traveling Feast "A good researcher, facile writer, and passionate critic." --Orion "Richard Manning tells the story of a feeling we've all known our whole lives: that those resonating sounds and melodies inside of us run generations deep and connect us to all living things. A beautifully written reminder that without music, we are nothing." --Jeff Ament, Pearl Jam