486 Notes, March 2015 folk legacy of white Americans. Considered ers, and the political, social, and musical as- in this light, the Trio’s popularity with pects of the Trio’s legacy. young, white, privileged college students Jim Alberts becomes perhaps more explicable than Library of Congress Bush would like to admit. The issue of race is perhaps most explicit in the song “The Tijuana Jail,” in which white Californians Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock are oppressed by evil Mexicans, an issue Improvisation. By David Malvinni. that resonates in right-wing politics to this Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. day. Other songs, however, illustrate this [xvii, 277 p. ISBN 9780810882553 with far more musical subtlety. “Coplas,” (hardcover), $45; ISBN 9780810883482 from the Trio’s first album, is a case in (e-book), $44.99.] Music examples, il- point. Guard delivers the Spanish lyrics lustrations, tables, appendix, bibliogra- with a driving, visceral intensity; his perfor- phy, index. mance is thoroughly convincing and pulls the listener along with a vigorous energy. Over the past fifteen years, scholarship In the bridge, Reynolds and Shane then de- on the Grateful Dead has blossomed, with liver insinuating comments in a pseudo- vibrant and illuminating articles filling the Spanish accent (à la “The Tijuana Jail”) pages of a peer-reviewed journal (Dead and pseudo-Mariachi whoops and hollers. Studies) and multiple volumes of interdisci- It’s an odd mix, in that Guard provides a plinary essays (Jim Tuedio and Stan compelling argument for the style (in his Spector, eds., The Grateful Dead in Concert: performance), but the rest of the arrange- Essays on Live Improvisation [Jefferson, NC: ment makes its underlying racism abun- McFarland, 2010], to name just one). Due dantly clear, a kind of “Mariachi min- to the perception that one must use techni- strelsy,” as a colleague of mine put it. cal musical language to discuss music, Of course, their stroking of the sensibili- much of this fine work has centered on ties of their white collegiate audience was sociological, philosophical, economic, reli- hardly the only component of the Trio’s gious, historical, and communicative as- success. The entire folk revival was, in a cer- pects of the Grateful Dead and their fer- tain sense, an illusion, but the Trio had the vent fan base, the Deadheads. The main power, for generations of fans, to make that exceptions to this rule include analytical es- illusion vitally real and powerful. From a says on Dead compositions and improvisa- personal standpoint, I suspect that many of tions by musicologists and music theorists my musical interests were sparked, to some such as Michael Kaler, Graeme M. Boone, extent, by my childhood exposure to my and Shaugn O’Donnell (Michael John parents’ collection of albums by the Kaler, “Jamming the Blues: The Grateful Kingston Trio, Chad Mitchell Trio, Peter, Dead’s Development of Models for Rock Paul and Mary, and the New Christy Improvisation,” Critical Studies in Improvisa- Minstrels, among other such groups. There tion 9, no. 1 [2013]; Graeme M. Boone, also seems to be little question that the cur- “Tonal and Expressive Ambiguity in ‘Dark rent preoccupation with acoustic “roots Star’ ” in Understanding Rock: Essays in music” (again, among young, white per- Musical Analysis, eds. John Covach and formers and audiences) would not be as Graeme M. Boone [New York: Oxford Uni- prevalent as it is, were it not for the bands versity Press, 1997], 171–210; and Shaugn of the folk revival. O’Donnell, “Bobby, Béla, and Borrowing This book is an important contribution in ‘Victim or the Crime’ ” in All Graceful to the history of the folk revival, and de- Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead serves a place in any comprehe