Sarig, Roni

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Sarig, Roni

PERSONAL:

Married Danielle Dardashti; children: Uri and Raquel.

ADDRESSES:

Home— White Plains, NY.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

The Everything Bicycle Book: For Bike Lovers of All Ages!, Adams Media Corporation (Holbrook, MA), 1997.

The Secret History of Rock: The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard, Billboard Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Kol Shevile Ha-meshi, Kineret (Ramat-Gan, Israel), 2001.

(With wife, Danielle Dardashti)The Jewish Family Fun Book: Holiday Projects, Everyday Activities, and Travel Ideas with Jewish Themes, illustrations by Avi Katz, Jewish Lights (Woodstock, VT), 2002.

(With Danielle Dardashti)The Jewish Lights Book of Fun Classroom Activities: Simple and Seasonal Projects for Teachers and Students, illustrations by Avi Katz, Jewish Lights (Woodstock, VT), 2004.

Third Coast: Outkast, Timbaland, and How Hip-hop Became a Southern Thing, Da Capo Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, Vibe, Rolling Stone, XXL, and Spin.

SIDELIGHTS:

Roni Sarig is a New York-based writer who has published on diverse topics. He writes regularly on Jewish popular culture and contributes to a number of periodicals, including the New York Times, Vibe, Rolling Stone, XXL, and Spin magazines. Sarig published his first book,The Everything Bicycle Book: For Bike Lovers of All Ages!, in 1997. In it he outlines the various types of bicycles available and how a potential buyer can choose the model best suited to their needs. He also covers bicycle maintenance, safety, and style tips.

Sarig followed up his debut book a year later with The Secret History of Rock: The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard. In this book he discusses bands that did not have significant commercial success but were highly influential on later bands that did have large followings. He includes stories and backgrounds on the bands as well as a discography. Sarig switched topics again, publishing two books with his wife, Danielle Dardashti, on Jewish culture. Published in 2002,The Jewish Family Fun Book: Holiday Projects, Everyday Activities, and Travel Ideas with Jewish Themes provides an entertaining way for families to learn about or expand their knowledge of Jewish culture through activities, games, and history. This concept was followed up two years later with The Jewish Lights Book of Fun Classroom Activities: Simple and Seasonal Projects for Teachers and Students. Here the husband-and-wife team give ideas for teachers to use in the classroom to learn about Jewish culture, including crafts, cooking, games and history.

In 2007, Sarig returned to music, publishing Third Coast: Outkast, Timbaland, and How Hip-hop Became a Southern Thing. Here Sarig expands on the history of hip-hop music and rap from its widely considered start in New York to earlier forms in the southern United States. Sarig covers hundreds of acts in Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Virginia Beach, and other locales where musicians and industry insiders were creating their own versions of rap and hip-hop, which would later go on to influence the more mainstream forms. Reviews were mostly positive. A contributor to Publishers Weekly found the book "informative and entertaining, keeping an eye on the big picture while managing this huge swath of uncollected music history." Writing in Paste, Jesse Jarnow called the "clearheaded" book "an essential document of the last two decades of pop." Jarnow thought it was a bit "dry," however. Concluding a review in Booklist, Mike Tribby said Third Coast provided "a good introduction to its subject and appreciation of an important movement in pop music."