‘Custom Made Woman: A Life in Traditional Music,’ Alice Gerrard

American music legend Alice Gerrard has lived an extraordinary life in the arts and politics: She formed the foundational duo Alice & Hazel, participated in the pioneering Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, and helped create the blueprint for studying traditional American music via her founding of the publication The Old-Time Herald. This book from the old-time/bluegrass musician is as inviting, unassuming and unconventional in form — part photo book, part autobiography, part collection of profiles of the musicians she studied with — as it is illuminating. “Instead of heading down paths of more popular folk music…I took the road less traveled,” Gerrard writes. “I had a need to understand not only the music but its context, the everyday of it, the politics of it; to understand cultures different from my own.” —J.B.