VOICES FROM THE VERNACULAR MUSIC CENTER

Electric Guitar w/ Guest Dr. Steve Waksman

Episode Summary

EP 18 is out and our hosts have a conversation with our guest, Dr. Steve Waksman about the Electric Guitar! Steve Waksman share's his experience as scholar and performer, focusing on the development of the electric guitar, it's role in American culture, and the influences to live sound and performance. VOICES FROM THE VERNACULAR MUSIC CENTER is a podcast from at Texas Tech University. Join Roger and Chris as they range across the centuries and around the worlds of oral-tradition music and dance, with guests along the way! We would like to thank the TTU Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation for funding Series 1 and the J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts for funding Series 2. Please Like | Follow/Subscribe | Download | Share | Leave a Review!

Episode Notes

Intro - 0:00

• Tune called Planxty Sir Festus Burke | Randal Bays/fiddle, Chris Smith/tenor banjo, Roger Landes/bouzouki | composition by Turlough O’Carolan, from the album “Coyote Banjo” by Chris Smith

Part I, Path to the Electric Guitar in Academia  - 01:10

Part II, Research into Amplification  - 21:03

Part III, Current Projects & Scholarship - 25:30

Part IV, Talking About Bill Hanley  - 28:15

Part V, New Technology in Live Performances  - 32:34

Part VI,  Perceptions of the Electric Guitar - 44:34

Part VII, The Electric Guitar in American Culture Conference - 52:38

Outro - 01:01:07

• Planxty Sir Festus Burke

Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor of Music at Smith College

Scholar of U.S. popular music and popular culture, with particular specialty in the study of live music, music genres, music technology and musical instruments (especially the guitar).

Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Harvard University Press, 1999) 

This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk (University of California Press, 2009)

Contributor to the Cambridge Companion to the Guitar, the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop and Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music Around the World

Keynote speaker at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's American Music Masters event honoring the legacy of musician and inventor Les Paul. In 1998 Waksman's dissertation on the electric guitar won the Ralph Henry Gabriel prize awarded by the American Studies Association.

New project:  

Live Music in America: A History, 1850–2000 

Full Playlist for EP 18
VVMC Book Club
VVMC: Friends & Voices, a Collaborative Playlist
Voices from the Vernacular Music Center