Available From UC Press

In this fascinating social history of music in Los Angeles from the 1880s to 1940, Catherine Parsons Smith ventures into an often neglected period to discover that during America's Progressive Era, Los Angeles was a center for making music long before it became a major metropolis. She describes the thriving music scene over some sixty years, including opera, concert giving and promotion, and the struggles of individuals who pursued music as an ideal, a career, a trade, a business--or all those things at once. Smith demonstrates that music making was closely tied to broader Progressive Era issues, including political and economic developments, the new roles played by women, and issues of race, ethnicity, and class.

Catherine Parsons Smith is Professor Emerita at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is the author of several books, among them William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions (UC Press, 1999), which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.