Without roots music, there would be no American music or modern popular culture today. No jazz, no rhythm & blues, no pop music, no rock & roll, no Beatles, no Rolling Stones, no MTV, no rap," writes singer Bonnie Raitt in American Roots Music, published this month by Harry N. Abrams. The book is based on a PBS series of the same name, which begins airing October 29. Roots music is the old work and folk songs brought by European immigrants and African slaves to this country. It includes the sounds of our musical heritage—the blues, gospel, country, bluegrass, Cajun, zydeco and Tejano—that influence today’s popular music, especially rock ’n’ roll.

The legacy of roots music has filled our lives with styles as diverse as the twang of Bob Dylan and the smooth harmonies of Motown, from venerable crooner Tony Bennett to crossover pop artist k.d. lang, with whom Bennett toured this past summer. A century ago, folk music was an oral tradition passed from one generation to the next. After World War I, Americans migrating to cities took their music with them, and radio stations broadcast it to wider audiences. Musicians listened to one another, and gradually their sounds intertwined and changed to create new music.

"People—like young Elvis Presley—began listening to gospel and black music on Sunday morning radio programs, while at the same time young future rock & roll and soul singers in Detroit, St. Louis, and Philadelphia were tuning into the Grand Ole Opry broadcast," writes Raitt, who was just 14 years old when she heard a record called Blues at Newport ’63. "It changed my life. I got it as a gift, and as a young guitar player I learned every single note on the record and played them until my fingers bled."

American Roots (the film and book) resulted from a unique collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Experience Music Project (EMP). American Roots tells the stories of the songwriters, musicians and entrepreneurs who kept the music changing. "Musical strains cross boundaries and influence one another," writes Robert Santelli, one of the book’s editors and deputy director of EMP. "One artist borrows from another, who borrows from yet another. Songs are reshaped with altered lyrics and fresh solos. Reinventions are plentiful, even unstoppable." He adds that the term "American roots music" was created in the 1980s to replace "folk music" and is used "to describe any American music form that had influenced pop music and was a ‘root’ of rock & roll, or as a simple substitute for folk." In the book, icons Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald are conspicuous in their absence. But jazz as a genre was intentionally omitted, says Santelli. American Roots Music is "not an exhaustive version of this country’s roots music history." Instead, it presents "overviews of the major roots music genres, featuring artists whose work is emblematic of their times and whose stories are meaningful and historically significant." It is, finally, the story of that uniquely American gumbo of sounds that welcomes all to the table.

—Marlane A. Liddell