Bamboula!

the long version

In Bamboula!, S. Frederick Starr presents an authoritatively researched, engagingly written biography of America's first authentic musical voice. Starr paints for us a striking portrait of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's childhood in 1830s New Orleans, a city madly devoted to music, where opera companies, music halls, fiddlers and banjo-pickers, church choirs, and Army bands all contributed to what Starr calls "the most stunning manifestation of Jacksonian democracy in the realm of culture to be found anywhere in America." We meet Gottschalk's French-speaking maternal grandmother and also his African-American nurse Sally, both of whom regaled him with the songs, legends, and lore of the Creole world, which would inform some of his finest music.