Exploring American Folk Music
Page 7
cultural diffusion
cultural region
dynamics
electronic communication
ethnic
ethnomusicologists
folk-based music
foodways
forms
genre
harmony
interval
mass media
melody
meter
MTV
multicultural
musicology
pitch
postmodern
regionalism
revivalists
rhythm
scales
style
syncopation
texture
timbre
tone
tonic
vernacular culture regions
VH-1
Wade Ward
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Various. Anthology of American Folk Music, edited by Harry Smith. Smithsonian Folkways 40090. This Grammy-Award-winning, multi-CD set, originally issued in 1952, covers almost every important style of American folk music found in the South and is taken from commercial recordings originally issued during the 1920s through the early 1930s. This 1997 reissue includes an interactive CD devoted to the eclectic Harry Smith.
Various. Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Collection: The Journey of Chris Strachwitz 1960–2000. Arhoolie CD 491. This five-compact disc set and lavish booklet celebrates the label and the work of its founder, Chris Strachwitz, with a well-rounded anthology of his field recordings of blues, conjunto, string bands, etc., presented in chronological order.
Various. Classic Folk From Smithsonian Folkways. SFW40110. This single compact disc provides a nice overview of the Smithsonian Folkways’ huge catalogue.
Various. Folk Masters: Great Performances Recorded Live at the Barns of Wolf Trap. Smithsonian Folkways 40047. A compilation from the public radio series of the same name; these performances came from the 1992 season and include such stalwarts as Dewey Balfa, the Texas Playboys, Cephas & Wiggins, and Boozoo Chavis.
Various. Mississippi: River of Song. Smithsonian Folkways 40086. A musical tour of the Mississippi River and its contemporary musical traditions, such as blues, gospel, and Native American, are showcased on this two-CD set.
Various. My Rough and Rowdy Ways, Volumes 1 & 2. Yazoo 2039–40. These two compact discs survey songs about “badmen and hellraisers.” These forty-six selections were originally recorded during the 1920s and 1930s by artists such as Uncle Dave Macon, Tommy Johnson, the Fruit Jar Guzzlers, and Ken Maynard.
Various. Roots of American Music. Arhoolie 2001/2. This double set includes a fine cross-section of black and white folk music from across the United States. Most of the selections were recorded between 1960 and 1970.
Various. Smithsonian Folkways American Roots Collection. Smithsonian Folkways 40062. These twenty-six tracks cover a wide range of folk and folk-based artists, from Lead Belly to Lucinda Williams.
Various. The Alan Lomax Collection Sampler. Rounder CD 1700. This 1997 release inaugurates a breath-taking reissue series devoted to the work of Alan Lomax on several continents and over fifty years. “The Southern Journey Series” (a thirteen-volume set) revisits the late 1950s recordings by Lomax in the American South. The Alan Lomax Collection is—quite literally—all over the map. This set of over one hundred well-annotated compact discs looks at his work with folk and vernacular music not only in the United States but in the Caribbean and Europe as well.
Various. Times Ain’t Like They Used to Be: Early American Rural Music, Volumes 1 & 2. Yazoo 2028–29. A collection of some of the best recordings of blues, rags, fiddle tunes, ballads, etc., from the 1920s and 1930s by artists as diverse as Henry Thomas, Fiddlin’ John Carson, Rev. D. C. Rice, and the Shelor Family.
Various. The Young Fogies. Rounder 0319. This 2009 compact disc surveys the diversity of regional and grassroots music found across the United States through a mixture of younger and more veteran musicians performing fiddle tunes, blues, old-time dance tunes, and other forms of traditional music.
SUGGESTED READING
Philip Bohlman. The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. A scholarly and thoughtful approach to the problems of defining folk music in our postmodern world.
Jan Brunvand. The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction, 4th edition. New York: Norton, 1998. A solid introduction to folklore and folklife, including a good section on music.
George O. Carney, ed. The Sounds of People and Places—Readings in the Geography of American Folk and Popular Music, 3rd edition. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 1994. A series of essays about the geographical implications of American folk and popular music in the twentieth century. Includes an extensive and helpful bibliography.
Norm Cohen. Folk Music: A Regional Exploration. Lanham, MD: Greenwood Press, 2005. This nicely balanced book addresses the topic by geographical regions rather than by genre or personality or chronology.
Ron Cohen. A History of Folk Music Festivals in the United States: Feasts of Musical Celebration. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008. Folk music expert chronicles the development of festivals from as early as 1912 into the twenty-first century.
Oxford Music Online, N.D. Many biographies and topics related to folk music are found as part of this ongoing project to update and revise the most recent (2002) print version of this extensive project.
Daniel Kingman and Lorenzo Candelaria. American Music: A Panorama, Concise Edition, 4th edition. New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2012. Even the slimmed-down version of this survey includes several lengthy sections titled “Folk and Ethnic Musics,” “The Blues,” and “The Native American Tradition” related to the broad spectrum of American traditional music.
Ellen Koskoff, ed. The United States and Canada (Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 3). New York: Garland Press, 2000. This very ambitious volume encompasses a wide variety of vernacular music, including most of the folk and ethnic traditions covered in this book.
Stephanie Ledgin. Discovering Folk Music. New York: Praeger Press, 2010. A nicely written introduction to this broad field of music and culture, with a focus on the period since World War II.
Kip Lornell. The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide To American Folk Music. New York: Penguin/Perigee Books, 2004. The title says it all, a primer that provides an overview of the topic.
Greil Marcus. Invisible Empire: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. A very personal and revisionist look back at the music of Bob Dylan but equally importantly at various individuals, such as Dock Boggs, who helped to shape twentieth-century folk and folk-based music.
William McNeil. Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music. New York: Routledge, 2008. A landmark book that includes both black and white artists and topics in the same volume.
Terry Miller. Folk Music in America: A Reference Guide. New York: Garland, 1987. Miller provides a valuable guide to articles, books, and other studies of American grassroots music published through the middle 1980s.
Theo Pelletier (photographer), John Funkerman, and Elijah Wald. River of Song. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. A companion to the PBS-broadcast film, and multi-CD set about vernacular, folk, and folk-based music found along the Mississippi River from Minnesota to Louisiana.
Larry Sandberg and Dick Weissman. The Folk Music Sourcebook, 2nd edition. New York: Da Capo Press, 1989. With sections titled “Listening,” “Learning,” “Playing,” and “Hanging Out,” this book covers nearly everything in contemporary American folk music.
Jeff Titon and Robert Carlin. American Musical Traditions, Volumes 1–5. New York: Gale Group/Thompson Learning, 2002. These volumes reprint a wide range of articles, liner notes, and essays that cover a tremendous range of genres and styles from Native American to blues to Asian American musics.
Michael Ann Williams. Staging Tradition: John Lair and Sarah Gertrude Knott. Urbana: University of Illinois Pre
ss, 2006. This book contrasts how the Renfro Valley Barn Dance and the National Folk Festival produced and promoted folk music for audiences beginning in the late 1930s.
SUGGESTED VIEWING
Various. A Musical Journey. Vestapol. This low-tech but compelling video consists of “home movies” of Big Bill Broonzy, The McPeake Family, Pete Steele, and others filmed by Pete Seeger between 1957 and 1964.
Various. “Dreams and Songs of the Noble Old.” Vestapol. As part of the Alan Lomax Collection, this anthology includes interviews and brief performances by half a dozen of America’s best folk singers, such as blues man Sam Chatmon, fiddler Tommy Jarrell, and balladeer Nimrod Workman.
Various. Free Show Tonight. CARTS (Cutlural Arts Resources for Teachers and Students)/Folkstreams.net. An old-time traveling medicine show visits a small town in North Carolina, bringing with it a doctor, comedians, and plenty of music.
Various. Homemade American Music. Agrinsky Productions/Folkstreams.net. Follow Mike Seeger and Alice Gerrard in the late 1970s as they perform and visit other influential folk musicians on a journey throughout the southeastern United States.
Various. The Mississippi River of Song. Acorn Media Publishing. This lengthy journey from New Orleans northward to Minnesota was originally aired on PBS early 1999. The 4 one-hour programs are now available separately for home viewing.
Various. Mouth Music. Blaine Dunlap/PRESERIVSTA/Folkstreams.net This playful documentary demonstrates the distinctive modes of the human voice in daily life from jump-rope rhymes to the calls of auctioneers.
SUGGESTED WEB SITES
More and more traditional music can be found on the World Wide Web. There are various list serves, chatrooms, and sites for blues, old-time music, bluegrass, Cajun, klezmer, and so forth. In fact nearly all forms of American folk and grassroots music now enjoy a presence on the Internet. Its tempting to list all of the current urls for many of these groups, but the Web changes so quickly that this would be folly.
Instead, I have listed the well-established organizations or companies presently on the Internet. These should be on the Web for many years to come and will no doubt serve as resources not only for information but also as handy links to other related sites. Their precise location can be found using the search engine of your choice:
American Folklore Society
Arhoolie Records/Flower Films
College Music Society
Folklife Center of the Library of Congress
Folkstreams
Roots and Rhythm
Rounder Records
Shanachie Entertainment
Smithsonian Folkways
Society for American Music
Society for Ethnomusicology
Chapter 2
MASS MEDIA
• Introduction
• Minstrel and Medicine Shows
• Recording the Blues
• Record Companies and Folk Music
• Country Music over the Airwaves
• Border Radio
• The Ancestors of MTV and VH-1
• Uncle Dave Macon and the Electronic Media
• Final Thoughts
INTRODUCTION
The commercialization and popularization of American folk music have taken many paths over the decades. During the eighteenth century, folk music relied almost entirely on aural transmission. Low literacy rates in the United States meant that newspapers reached a small percentage of citizens, few people could read books, and even fewer could read printed sheet music.
By the middle 1800s, however, shape note hymnals and ballad chapbooks emerged as two early examples of the confluence of the printed media, commerce, and traditional music. Minstrel songbooks also contained much folk material. Most of these were published by small and regional presses, so their dissemination was usually quite limited. The trend to publish folk and folk-based material became more pronounced in the late nineteenth century and reached a new level of importance with the development of the electronic media in the early twentieth century.
Nearly all types of folk music have gained some measure of commercial attention through established, small groups of consumers already familiar with the traditions. Despite the burgeoning interest in Cajun music across the United States that began in the 1970s, its popularity remains strongest in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas, the area settled by the Arcadians in the eighteenth century. Cajun music can be heard locally on the radio (and sometimes seen on local television stations) and has been recorded by major and local record labels. But its primary appeal remains within its initial hearth area largely because of the language barrier (many Cajuns still speak a creolized, heavily accented French) and its propensity to perform easygoing two-steps and waltzes. A similar situation exists for Norwegian American folk music in the northern Midwest (especially in Wisconsin) and Native American music in selected reservations across the United States. For example, the blend of country western, Pima Indian (Tohono O’odom), and Mexican music known as waila (or “Chicken scratch”) is popular only in southern Arizona.
We’ve also discovered that music and musical styles migrate across regional boundaries, both due to human movement and the influence of the electronic media. Although cowboy music and its 1930s counterpart, western swing, originated on the lone prairies, its impact was not confined to the plains. The musicians of the Blue Ridge Mountains were deeply impressed by the Sons of the Pioneers, Roy Rogers, and Bob Wills. This occurred not because of the movement back east of musicians from Oklahoma and Texas but rather because easterners heard this music over their radios and on their phonographs and were captivated by western music’s genuine appeal and its intrinsic nostalgia. The image and myth of the West was further reinforced by matinee idols, such as Tom Mix, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, who appeared in dozens of films during the late 1930s and 1940s. In the Midwest, groups such as the Modern Mountaineers (Missouri) along with the Prairie Ramblers and Hoosier Hot Shots (Illinois and Kentucky) performed in a style closely allied with western swing.
This chapter discusses several ways in which the electronic mass media and popular culture have interacted with folk music. These changes, especially during the twentieth century with the advent of sound recordings and radio, have been profound, encouraging interesting hybrids such as western swing. The creation of such musical styles also further blurs the lines between the constructs of “folk” and “popular,” which are likely to change further as mass communication—particularly the Internet—becomes even more pervasive and as record companies large and small seek out even more discrete niche markets.
MINSTREL AND MEDICINE SHOWS
By the 1840s black folk performance practices were well known enough across the United States to be represented or reinterpreted in minstrel shows, the first distinctly American form of popular entertainment. Minstrel shows represent the country’s first major exploitation of folk culture through its presentation of black music and entertainment on the popular stage. An amalgamation of racial stereotypes and elements of actual black American vernacular culture, the minstrel stage brought a vision of southern plantation life to audiences throughout the country. Early minstrels rarely featured African American performers; rather they embraced white entertainers sporting blackened faces and playing their own interpretations of African American music. This blackface tradition provided Anglo-American performers with a mask of safety, removing them from the daily reality of the life that they portrayed. “Blacking up” became a staple vernacular entertainment, appearing later in medicine shows and the twentieth-century vaudeville stage.
Blackface white performers singing and telling stories in “Negro” dialect first gained prominence shortly after 1800. Within thirty years popular white performers such as George Washington Dixon, J. W. Sweeney, and Thomas Rice captivated audiences with their interpretations of emerging black culture. Their models were both British and Afro-American. The tunes they sang often followed well-known Irish and Scottish melodies, while the
lyrics relied upon images of American lore of the black man as a shuffling comic dandy in songs like “Zip Coon” and “Jump Jim Crow.” Thomas Rice popularized “Jump Jim Crow” in the late 1820s, taking it to the stages of America and to Europe by the middle 1830s. Some songs that we think of as “folk” and are often performed by traditional musicians, like “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” were actually composed by professional musicians touring on the minstrel circuit.
New York City is the birthplace of the minstrel show; it also served as its lexus during the classic period—1840 through 1870. Sometime in the early 1840s blackface entertainers joined together on the same stage to delight white audiences with their songs and stories about Sambo and other stereotyped black performers. Minstrel shows were actually born when small bands of blackface interpreters added new elements to their acts that helped to broaden their appeal. Short skits about southern black culture featuring stock black characters merely reinforced stereotypical views for northern audiences eager to learn more about the curious “Ethiopians” of the South. This combination of oral traditions and visual lampoons proved irresistible and audiences flocked to hear this new entertainment form. For the first time, on the stage at least, Americans paid to look at a reflection of themselves and of the development of their own vernacular culture.
The Virginia Minstrels, as Bill Whitlock, Frank Pelham, Dan Emmett, and Frank Bower billed themselves in early 1843, became the first group to popularize their format. Complete with ragged costumes, negro dialects, and the “curious gait” of the southern colored people, the Virginia Minstrels literally set the stage for America’s first unique form of popular entertainment. By 1850 minstrels were seen across the United States, and through the beginning of the Civil War Anglo-American performers dominated the minstrel stage. Blacks did not become minstrel performers in significant numbers until the decades following emancipation.
The underlying importance of minstrel shows extends beyond the appropriation of black culture by whites, a pattern that will repeat itself many times in this book. When people flocked to the minstrel stage, they reaffirmed America’s slow emergence from the domination of European culture. Minstrels presented a stereotypical vision of America’s common people: illiterate but hardworking Afro-Americans who toiled in the fields, frolicked to the sounds of banjos, and then shuffled off to the church on Sunday to sing spirituals. It also acknowledged our country’s agrarian roots, particularly for northern audiences who themselves labored in urban settings very unlike the laconic southerners portrayed in minstrels. Despite the oftentimes crude images and presentation, at least minstrel shows helped to prepare northerners for their eventual glimpse of the “real life” of southern blacks.