Great blog post from Molly on the coauthorship of this book here. 

UNM professor and Pete Seeger biographer David Dunaway and co-author Molly Beer discuss & sign their new book Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals(Oxford, $27.95) at a release party.  Dunaway and Beer will also provide audio of interviews used in the book.

Culled from more than 150 interviews recorded from 1976 to 2006, some of which will be heard at the signing, this book spans seven decades and presents a wide range of generations and perspectives, shedding light on the musical, political, and social aspects of this movement.

The narrators highlight many of the major folk revival figures, including Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Mary Travers, Don McLean, Arlo Guthrie, and Ry Cooder.  They tell the stories of musical groups including the Freedom Singers, the Almanac Singers, the Weavers, and the Composers' Collective.  Folklorists, musicians, musicologists, writers, activists, and aficionados reveal not only what happened during the folk revivals, but what it meant to those personally and passionately involved.

What sets this book apart is its format - a collaboration between two very different perspectives.  Already using a multi-voice form for a multi-faceted narrative, Dunaway and Beer took it one step further and co-wrote the book - a man and a woman, a child of the folk boom and a child of Madonna and Nirvana.  There wouldn't be Navajo punk rockers in David's history of folk music, or a scene of Pete Seeger picking his banjo astride a toilet - but together Beer and Dunaway write a book that considers both ends of the spectrum and wades beyond the "romantic mist" that can shroud the genre.  

From an essay of Beer's regarding co-authorship, this exchange illustrates the range of persepective involved:
"'There is no budding Pete Seeger on the horizon,' David remarks, pensively stroking his goatee.  'Young people just aren't writing protest music.  I mean, Ani DiFranco is in her 40s!'

'True, but the guitarist in Rage Against the Machine has a political-science degree from Harvard,' I counter, Wikipedia churning out facts on my lap.  'And NWA has a rap sheet with the FBI.'"

David Dunaway is Professor of English and Communications at the University of New Mexico, and he is a national expert on oral history, folk music, and Route 66.  He is currently a DJ for KUNM in Albuquerque, and he works with the National Park Service's Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program.  He has recently completed an anthology, A Route 66 Companion.

Molly Beer has taught literature and writing at the Universidad Tecnica de Ambato, Excuador, and UNM.