This book is a mixed bag.

On the negative side, the Revels approach to song and celebration is pretty limited. John Langstaff and his collaborators developed the Revels approach for the annual productions in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so some of the unspoken assumptions are that you will be able to do two or three major productions a year, that you will have a big budget (big by nonprofit standards), and that you live in a major metropolitan area with a big pool of amateur talent that you can draw upon. Culturally, the material is quite limited, and draws mostly from the Anglo-American folk traditions, with a little bit of Celtic influence -- exactly what you'd expect from an upper middle class Boston-area cultural milieu. Also typical of the upper middle class Boston scene, the folk music has been prettied up with accompaniments that draw heavily from the Western concert music tradition -- the material is obviously meant to be sung by trained voices in equal temperament, not by untrained folk voices singing modally. When I compare this collection with, say, Ruth Crawford Seeger's collections of American folk tunes, the limitations of the Revels approach are really obvious -- Seeger's brilliantly simple piano arrangements put the Revels arrangements to shame, and it's obvious that not only did Seeger transcribe directly from field recordings, but her amazingly sensitive ear was able to communicate a great deal within the limitations of Western musical notation. There are also some minor errors, e.g., a minor key tune taken from The Southern Harmony should be sung with a raised sixth (Dorian mode), but this is not indicated in the book.

On the positive side, within the above limitations, this is a good collection of tunes and arrangements. The pages are big enough that you can read the music and the lyrics. The tunes themselves are fun and of interest. If you ignore the arrangements, and just focus on the tunes, this is a nice collection of fun tunes. ( )