Billy Bragg - Live Virtual Event
PLEASE NOTE: THE CUT-OFF TO ORDER BOOK(S) FOR ACCESS TO TONIGHT'S EVENT ENDS AT 5 P.M. TODAY TO ENSURE ALL GUESTS RECEIVE THEIR INVITATION CODE AHEAD OF THE PROGRAM.
YOU MAY STILL ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF EITHER TITLE AFTER 5.P.M. TODAY, WHICH A CAPPELLA WILL SHIP SHORTLY AFTER THE EVENT. HOWEVER, ORDERS RECEIVED AFTER 5 P.M. WILL NOT INCLUDE A ZOOM ACCESS CODE.
A Cappella Books proudly presents a special virtual event with legendary singer-songwriter, activist and author, Billy Bragg.
Bragg will join Atlanta music journalist Chad Radford for a Zoom discussion of his career and two most recent books,“The Three Dimensions of Freedom” (2019) and “Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World” (2017), followed by an online Q&A session.
A Cappella will host the event on Wednesday, May 6 at 6 p.m (EST). Tickets are limited to 100 guests. Pre-order a copy of either title at via the purchase links below to obtain your private invitation link via email. Each book comes with a bookplate signed by Billy Bragg.
Please be sure to include your email address at checkout. A Cappella Books will forward your Zoom access link the day before the event. Your signed book will arrive via shipping or local delivery (where applicable) shortly AFTER the author program.
About “The Three Dimensions of Freedom”
At a time when opinion trumps facts and truth is treated as nothing more than another perspective, free speech has become a battleground. While authoritarians and algorithms threaten democracy, we argue over who has the right to speak.
To protect ourselves from encroaching tyranny, we must look beyond this one-dimensional notion of what it means to be free and, by reconnecting liberty to equality and accountability, restore the individual agency engendered by the three dimensions of freedom.
About “Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World”
“Roots, Radicals & Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World” is the first book to explore this phenomenon in depth - a meticulously researched and joyous account that explains how skiffle sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it.
It's a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch-hunts. Billy traces how the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s.
Emerging from the trad-jazz clubs of the early '50s, skiffle was adopted by kids who growing up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. These were Britain's first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a pop culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of “Rock Island Line” and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year.
Like punk rock that would flourish two decades later, skiffle was a do-it-yourself music. All you needed were three guitar chords and you could form a group, with mates playing tea-chest bass and washboard as a rhythm section.
About the Author
Billy Bragg has been a tireless recording artist, performer and political campaigner for over thirty years. His albums include his punk-charged debut, “Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy,” “Talking with the Taxman About Poetry,” “Don't Try This at Home,” the treatise on national identity timed to coincide with the Queen's Golden Jubilee, England, “Half English,” and his stripped-down latest, “Tooth and Nail.” Billy has enjoyed a No. 1 hit single, had a street named after him, been the subject of a “South Bank Show,” appeared onstage at Wembley Stadium, curated Left Field at Glastonbury, shared spotted dick with a Cabinet Minister in the House of Commons cafeteria, been mentioned in Bob Dylan's memoir, and shaken hands with the Queen. At their best, his songs present 'the perfect Venn diagram between the political and the personal' (Guardian). Billy published “A Lover Sings” with Faber in 2015, containing over seventy of his best-known lyrics, selected and annotated by the author.
