| Author's Guide to the Concise Edition | p. xi |
| Folk and Ethnic Musics | |
| The Anglo-American Tradition | p. 3 |
| "Barbara Allen" as a Prototype of the Anglo-American Ballad | p. 3 |
| Print and the Ballad | p. 5 |
| Imported versus Native Ballads | p. 6 |
| The Music of the Ballads | p. 7 |
| Fiddle Tunes | p. 9 |
| Folk Music as an Instrument of Persuasion in the Twentieth Century | p. 12 |
| The African-American Tradition | p. 20 |
| African Music and Its Relation to Black Music in America | p. 20 |
| Religious Folk Music: The Spiritual | p. 21 |
| Secular Folk Music | p. 27 |
| The American Indian Tradition | p. 40 |
| Music in Aboriginal Indian Life | p. 41 |
| Characteristics of Indian Music | p. 46 |
| Indian Music and Acculturation | p. 47 |
| The Latino Tradition | p. 53 |
| Sacred Music from Mexico | p. 53 |
| Secular Music from Mexico | p. 56 |
| Music from the Caribbean and South America | p. 67 |
| Three Prodigious Offspring of the Rural South | |
| Country Music | p. 77 |
| Enduring Characteristics of the Music | p. 77 |
| Enduring Characteristics of the Words | p. 81 |
| Commercial Beginnings: Early Recordings, Radio, and the First Stars | p. 84 |
| The West: The Cowboy Image | p. 87 |
| The West: Realism and Eclecticism | p. 88 |
| Postwar Dissemination and Full-Scale Commercialization | p. 89 |
| The Persistence and Revival of Traditional Styles | p. 93 |
| Blues and Soul: From Country to City | p. 100 |
| Early Published Blues | p. 100 |
| Classic City Blues | p. 102 |
| Blues and Jazz | p. 104 |
| Boogie-Woogie | p. 105 |
| The Absorption of Country Blues into Popular Music | p. 106 |
| The Soul Synthesis | p. 109 |
| Blues in the 1990s | p. 110 |
| Rock and Its Progeny | p. 114 |
| Characteristics of the Music | p. 114 |
| Characteristics of the Words | p. 117 |
| A Brief History of Rock's Times and Styles | p. 122 |
| Popular Sacred Music | |
| From Psalm Tune to Rural Revivalism | p. 139 |
| Psalmody in America | p. 139 |
| The Singing-School Tradition | p. 142 |
| The Frontier and Rural America in the Nineteenth Century | p. 148 |
| Music Among Our Smaller Independent Sects | p. 156 |
| Urban Revivalism and Gospel Music | p. 161 |
| Urban Revivalism After the Civil War: The Moody-Sankey Era of Gospel Hymns | p. 161 |
| The Billy Sunday-Homer Rodeheaver Era: Further Popularization | p. 163 |
| Gospel Music After the Advent of Radio and Recordings | p. 166 |
| Popular Secular Music | |
| Secular Music in the Cities from Colonial Times to the Jacksonian Era | p. 181 |
| Concerts and Dances | p. 181 |
| Bands and Military Music | p. 184 |
| Musical Theater | p. 186 |
| Popular Song | p. 189 |
| Popular Musical Theatre from the Jacksonian Era to the Present | p. 194 |
| Minstrelsy and Musical Entertainment Before the Civil War | p. 194 |
| From the Civil War Through the Turn of the Century | p. 200 |
| The First Half of the Twentieth Century | p. 203 |
| The Musical Since the Advent of Rock | p. 210 |
| Popular Song, Dance, and March Music from the Jacksonian Era to the Advent of Rock | p. 217 |
| Popular Song from the 1830s Through the Civil War | p. 217 |
| Popular Song from the Civil War Through the Ragtime Era | p. 224 |
| The Band in America After the Jacksonian Era | p. 230 |
| Popular Song from Ragtime to Rock | p. 234 |
| Tin Pan Alley and Its Relation to Jazz and Black Vernacular Music | p. 235 |
| Jazz and Its Forerunners | |
| Ragtime and Pre-Jazz | p. 243 |
| The Context of Ragtime from Its Origins to Its Zenith | p. 243 |
| The Musical Characteristics of Ragtime | p. 246 |
| The Decline and Dispersion of Ragtime | p. 250 |
| The Ragtime Revival | p. 253 |
| Pre-Jazz | p. 254 |
| Jazz | p. 261 |
| The New Orleans Style: The Traditional Jazz of the Early Recordings | p. 261 |
| Dissemination and Change: The Pre-Swing Era | p. 263 |
| The Swing Era and the Big Bands | p. 267 |
| The Emergence of Modren Jazz: Bop as a Turning Point | p. 271 |
| The Pluralism of the Last Quarter Century | p. 277 |
| Classical Music | |
| Laying the Foundation: Accomplishments from the Jacksonian Era to World War I | p. 287 |
| 1830-1865: Education and Reform in a Time of Expansion | p. 288 |
| Outspoken "Nativists" of the Mid-Nineteenth Century | p. 289 |
| Louis Moreau Gottschalk and the Virtuoso in Nineteenth-Century America | p. 294 |
| After the Civil War: The Pursuit of Culture in a Time of Industrialization | p. 296 |
| The Second New England School | p. 298 |
| Five Individualists Around the Turn of the Century | p. 300 |
| The Evolving Tradition, 1920-1970 | p. 308 |
| Some Background for the "Fervent Years" | p. 308 |
| Music with Film | p. 312 |
| Music with Dance | p. 315 |
| Music with Poetry | p. 318 |
| Music Independent of Film, Dance, or Poetry | p. 321 |
| Modernism I: New Ways with Old Tools | p. 329 |
| Charles Ives (1874-1954) | p. 329 |
| Henry Cowell (1897-1965) | p. 339 |
| Lou Harrison and John Cage | p. 342 |
| Harry Partch (1901-74) | p. 343 |
| Edgard Varese (1883-1965) | p. 346 |
| Modernism II: The Impact of Technology and New Esthetic Concepts | p. 352 |
| The Surface Features of Mid-Century Modernism | p. 352 |
| The Two Dominant Rationales of Mid-Century Modernism | p. 355 |
| New Technology and the New Music | p. 359 |
| Other Aspects of Mid-Century Modernism | p. 361 |
| Modernism Transcended: Autonomy, Assimilation, and Accessibility | p. 368 |
| Minimalism: A Radical Antidote to Modernism | p. 369 |
| Modernism Gives Way to Assimilation and Reconnection | p. 373 |
| Music of Association and the New Accessibility | p. 375 |
| Opera Old and New | p. 380 |
| Opera in America before the 1930s: An Unassimilated Alien | p. 380 |
| Traditional American Opera Beginning in the 1930s | p. 380 |
| New Opera in the Last Quarter of the Century | p. 385 |
| Regionalism and Diversity | |
| Three Regional Samplings | p. 393 |
| Louisiana and the French Influence | p. 393 |
| The Upper Midwest and the Scandinavian Influence | p. 398 |
| The Sacramento Valley: A Rich Mix of Cultures | p. 401 |
| Index | p. 409 |
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