Seven novels by or about folk musicians

Henry Adam Svec is the author of American Folk Music as Tactical Media, a scholarly monograph, and Life Is Like Canadian Football and Other Authentic Folk Songs, a novel. His writing has also appeared in Noisey, MOTHERBOARD, C Magazine, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere. He holds a PhD in media studies from the University of Western Ontario, and currently teaches at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

At Electric Lit Svec tagged seven novels that honor grassroots musical traditions. One title on the list:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was less a musician per se than a folklore and music collector, and author. However, she incorporated music into some of her literary projects in the 1930s. She displays a folklorist’s attention to speech and myth in the writing of her most celebrated book, Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel centers on a young Black woman in Florida who seeks to find her way in love, through a sequence of uniquely challenging partnerships, on her own terms. The evocative imagery of the narrator, and the no less memorable rhetorical power of the characters, make Hurston’s 1937 novel an entrancing work to this day.

Read about another entry on the list.

Their Eyes Were Watching God also appears among Micheline Aharonian Marcom's eight epic quest stories, Michael Zapata's ten books that were almost lost to history, Yann Martel's five favorite books, and Benjamin Obler's top ten fictional coffee scenes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue