Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation - by David Malvinni (Hardcover)

About the Book

Although fans and scholars alike recognize the Grateful Dead as icons of the psychedelic music, the band's improvisatory approach still remains an enigma to the uninitiated. In Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation, Malvinni unravels this mystery, walking readers thr...

Book Synopsis

Although fans and scholars alike recognize the Grateful Dead as icons of the psychedelic music, the band's improvisatory approach still remains an enigma to the uninitiated. In Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation, Malvinni unravels this mystery, walking readers through the band's musical decision-making process. Written for rock music fans with little to no background in music theory and scholars and students of popular music culture, the book reveal the method behind the seeming madness of America's greatest jam band.

Review Quotes

As the first scholarly monograph on the music of the Grateful Dead, David Malvinni's Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation is a significant addition to popular music scholarship. Although numerous edited volumes of essays focused on the band have been published in the two decades since the band's demise after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, this is the first by a single author to focus entirely on a musicological assessment. And since it has often been the sociological aspects of the Grateful Dead phenomenon that have received the most attention, especially the audience, the colorful fans known as Deadheads, it is a refreshing change for a scholar to focus entirely on what should be of primary importance for a musical ensemble: its music.

David Malvinni's Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation is . . . a necessary addition to the growing secondary literature on the music of the Grateful Dead.

Offering a philosophical framework, Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation provides an aesthetic appreciation of the musical stylings of this legendary band. A seminal work of outstanding and original scholarship, Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation is written in a form and format that will make it easily accessible to non-specialist general readers and fans of the Grateful Dead. Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation is a highly recommended addition to academic library Popular Culture and 20th Century American Music reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

About the Author

Musicologist and classical guitarist, David Malvinni is adjunct professor of Music and African-American studies at Santa Barbara Community College and author of The Gypsy Caravan: From Real Roma to Imaginary Gypsies in Western Music and Film (Routledge, 2004).