Music History Monday Podcast: From Classical To Country: Rock to R&B

 Today's music is fragmented, much like the nation. Songs are expected to stay in their genre lane. When they don't, there's controversy like Old Town Road by Lil Nas X that combined music genotypes under the country music aegis. Or Beyonce's new country album, Cowboy Carter, in which she adds her distinctive inflections into the country genre.

There are numerous music podcasts that study popular music, its trends and artists. Each has its own specialty. Song Exploder breaks down the fabric of a song as explained by its creator. Then, we have Switched On Pop and its musical forensics, and Slate's Hit Parade, with its focus on the popularity of music based on Billboard charts. 

Today, I am recommending a music podcast that has a host who sounds like a history professor. You can practically hear the tweed on his jacket. The host is not very dynamic, and can be pedantic. Furthermore, the podcast does not limit itself to one genre -- classical, R&B, blues, jazz, rock, bluegrass, country, zydeco, and so on.

Yet, this podcast, Music History Monday, is a must-listen for those listeners with a passion for music -- all kinds, from different times, and from different artists.

The show's tepid marketing pitch is this: "Explore Music History with Professor Robert Greenberg one Monday at a time. Every Monday Robert Greenberg explores some timely, perhaps intriguing and even, if we are lucky, salacious chunk of musical information relevant to that date, or to … whatever. If on (rare) occasion these features appear a tad irreverent, well, that’s okay: we would do well to remember that cultural icons do not create and make music, but rather, people do, and people can do and say the darnedest things."

So over 120 episodes, what does the podcast cover? Everything and everybody. The episodes are short and appropriately so, about twenty minutes. On the most recent show, Greenberg marked the birth on April 15, 1894 – 130 years ago today – of the American contralto and blues singers Bessie Smith.  Appropriately nicknamed “The Empress,” Bessie Smith remains one of the most significant and influential musicians ever born in the United States.

Greenberg has profiled cellist and conductor Arturo Toscanini, Bob Dylan, Swan Lake by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Don McLean's American Pie, Ashbury Street in San Francisco in the 1960s, Robert Moog and his synthesizer, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and so many more conductors, musicians, singers, and songs. 

The driving force here is the host, Robert Greenberg, who received a BA in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976.  In 1984, Greenberg received a Ph.D. in music composition, With Distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Greenberg has composed over fifty works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. Recent performances of his works have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy and The Netherlands, where his Child’s Play for String Quartet was performed at the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.

Greenberg has received numerous honors, including being designated an official “Steinway Artist,” three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and three Meet-The-Composer Grants. Notable commissions have been received from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Alexander String Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, San Francisco Performances, and the XTET ensemble.

Greenberg is currently music historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, where he has lectured and performed since 1994. He has served on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley, California State University East Bay, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chaired the Department of Music History and Literature from 1989-2001 and served as the Director of the Adult Extension Division from 1991-1996.

In May 1993, Greenberg recorded a forty-eight lecture course entitled “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” for the Teaching Company/Great Courses Program of Chantilly, Virginia.  (This course was named in the January, 1996 edition of Inc. Magazine as one of “The Nine Leadership Classics You’ve Never Read”.) The Great Courses is the preeminent producer of college level courses-on-media in the United States. 

Dr. Greenberg’s book, How to Listen to Great Music, was published by Plume, a division of Penguin Books, in April, 2011.

Greenberg lives with his children Lillian and Daniel, wife Nanci, and a very cool Maine coon (cat) named Teddy in the hills of Oakland, 

 Music History Monday Podcast is very hip, Greenberg is more academic than charismatic as host, the sound production is decent at best, but the podcast is worthwhile for fans of all kinds of music.

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This review is part of an ongoing series of reviews, recommendations, and essays about Indie podcasters -- their craft, their challenges, and the critical role they play in podcasting. These entrepreneurs display skills as disparate as hosting, sound production, graphic design, scriptwriting, interviewing, marketing genius, and financial watchdog. They are the heart and soul of podcasting.