New York's fascinating history as presented in song.

In New York Sings, musicologist and folklorist Jerry Silverman has compiled a remarkable collection of songs about the people, places, and events of New York's 400-year history-from Henry Hudson's Half Moon to Pete Seeger's Clearwater, from Montauk to Niagara Falls, from the sidewalks of New York to the lumber camps of the Adirondacks. The traditional songs of New York are among the oldest in the vast repertoire of the American songbook, and included here are songs from the colonial period, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War I, as well as songs about the immigrant experience, the Erie Canal, baseball, life in sweatshops and on farms, and hard times and ragtimes along the Bowery, Coney Island, and the Great White Way. The book provides the melody, lyrics, and guitar chord symbols for each song, as well as fascinating facts and stories about the songs, their composers, and the historical events and people described.