Exploring American Folk Music

by Kip Lornell

  Paul Oliver. Songsters & Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. This noted scholar examines the secular and sacred musical traditions found on records prior to World War II.

  Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCulloch. Robert Johnson, Lost and Found. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. As much as one possibly could, this is a biography of the legendary delta blues musician who died in 1938.

  Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks. Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family’s Claim to the Confederate Anthem. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Black and white musical interchange, the lives of everyday people, and an iconic song are interwoven in this carefully crafted and sometimes unsettling book.

  Elijah Wald. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2004. A combination of a biography of Robert Johnson and a look at the myths surrounding the development of country blues, Mississippi Delta style, Wald manages to be insightful, scholarly, accessible, and deft all at the same time.

  SUGGESTED VIEWING

  Lightnin’ Hopkins: Rare Performances 1960-1979. Vestapol. Taken from three separate and disparate sources, this film captures Hopkins playing on the streets, playing at a Houston bar, and performing for a national television audience on Austin City Limits.

  Mance Lipscomb. A Well-Spent Life. Flower Films. A gentle and loving portrait of a Texas songster who spent his entire life in south-central Texas.

  Louie Bluie. Pacific Arts Home Video. A documentary that examines the fascinating life of Howard Armstrong: string band musician, artist, and storyteller.

  Alex Moore. Black on White, White and Black. Documentary Arts/Folkstreams.net. An intimate and playful overview of the life and career of the veteran blues pianist Alex Moore, a native of Dallas, Texas.

  Peg Leg Sam. Born for Hard Luck. Davenport Films/Folkstreams.net. Medicine show performer, raconteur, storyteller, and harmonica wizard Arthur Jackson is the focus of this film.

  Various. Blues Up the Country. Vestapol. Subtitled “The Country Blues Guitar Legacy,” this is an anthology that includes Pink Anderson, Furry Lewis, Jesse Fuller, Josh White, among others.

  Various. Deep Blues. Robert Mugge Films. This interesting documentary looks at blues in the Mississippi Delta and was shot in 1990. Robert Palmer, whose book of the same name, assisted in the film’s production.

  Various. Deep Ellum Blues.Documentary Arts/Folkstreams.net. The Deep Ellum section of Dallas, Texas, served as a nexus for black folk and popular music until a freeway destroyed the area in the middle 1950s.

  Various. Devil Got My Woman: Blues at Newport, 1966. Vestapol. Utilizing interviews, informal jam sessions, and some concert footage, this is a buoyant and behind-the-scenes look at Howlin’ Wolf, Skip James, Son House, and the other musicians who appeared at that year’s Newport Folk Festival.

  Various. Gandy Dancers. Cinema Guild, Inc./Folkstreams.net. Interviews and musical performances by railroad track laborers form the core of this film.

  Various. Give My Poor Heart Ease: Mississippi Delta Bluesmen. New Jersey Network/Folkstreams.net. The blues experience through the eyes and words and music of B. B. King, Son Thomas, and others.

  Various. Gravel Springs Fife and Drum Bands. Center for Southern Folklore/Folkstreams.net. A brief (thirteen-minute) film that documents the social context for this music in the mid-South.

  Various. Jazz Parades: Feet Don’t Fail Me Now. Vestapol/Folkstreams.net. One of the excellent “American Patchwork” series that looks at jazz related traditions, such as the new breed of brass bands, black Indians at carnival, and dancing at a funeral.

  Various. The Land Where the Blues Began. Vestapol. Another of the “American Patchwork” films overseen by Alan Lomax; this one focusing upon the Mississippi Delta and featuring blues, work songs, and a fife and drum band performance.

  Various. Masters of the Country Blues. Yazoo. This series of videos draws upon a number of sources, most notably the Seattle Folklore Society. The majority of the performances were filmed in studios during the late 1960s through the middle 1970s while these older blues musicians were on tour. Despite the use of the term “Country Blues” in the series title, the musicians perform a wider variety of material, including sacred songs, ragtime instrumentals, and country dance tunes. The specific titles are: Yazoo 500 “Bukka White & Son House,” Yazoo 501 “Rev. Gary Davis and Sonny Terry,” Yazoo 502 “Lightnin’ Hopkins & Mance Lipscomb,” Yazoo 503 “Jesse Fuller & Elizabeth Cotten,” Yazoo 504 “Big Joe Williams & Mississippi Fred McDowell,” Yazoo 513 “Lightnin’ Hopkins & Roosevelt Sykes,” Yazoo 518 “Roosevelt Sykes & Big Bill Broonzy,” Yazoo 519 “John Lee Hooker & Furry Lewis.”

  Chapter 8

  ETHNIC AND NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITIONS

  • Jewish American: Klezmer

  • Native American

  • Hawaiian American

  • Franco-American

  • Scandinavian American

  • Final Thoughts

  Prior to the heightening of the Cold War in the early 1950s a great general interest in the diversity of American folk music had developed, at least among some performers and fans. Moses Asch, Folkways’s open-minded founder, included a variety of “ethnic” and Native American recordings among his vast catalogue. Asch’s own roots as the son of European/Jewish immigrants living in New York heightened his sensitivity and interest in a wide variety of musical genres. The first record that Asch issued in 1939 was by a Jewish group, the Baggelman Sisters. Along with their version of Huddie Leadbetter’s “Goodnight Irene,” the Weavers scored high on the pop charts in the early 1950s with “Wimoweh,” which was based on a song from South Africa. And the early issues of Sing Out! and folk music songbooks were dotted with songs originating outside of the United States.

  In the early twenty-first century most American folk music enthusiasts think in terms of either “folk troubadours” like Bob Dylan, Iris Dement, Dave Van Ronk, Nanci Griffith, Arlo Guthrie, and Peter, Paul & Mary or of Anglo-American and African American traditions like blues, gospel, and ballads. But the importance of the traditional music of people for whom English was not often their first language is becoming increasingly apparent. And the most noteworthy examples, such as Cajun music, are truly original American art forms, not simply traditional music imported to the United States. (Because the Hispanic community has grown so large, diverse, and important, their musical traditions are treated in a separate chapter.)

  An early Asch record label illustrates the diversity of music that appeared on the label. Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

  Making the distinction between music in America and American music is critical to understanding this chapter. Because the United States remains the destination for so many immigrants seeking a better life, virtually every country, region, and ethnic group on earth is represented within our population. We have already learned that people bring their cultural baggage with them—foodways, marriage customs, language, and music—most of which gradually assimilates with the already established cultures of the United States. A book that tries to cover all of the ethnic traditions found within our borders would be creating a veritable United Nations of music!

  Instead, we will sample these aspects of American music by discussing five important folk or folk-based musical communities/genres/ethnic groups that have developed in the United States as a hybrid of Old World and New World traditions. This hybridization (a form of creolization) usually requires decades of contact, although popular culture is transmitted more quickly. Some of the recent Southeast Asian refugees, for instance, have been making videos of their American-inspired popular music since the middle 1980s. And some second-and third-generation Asian Americans have embraced popular expressive culture, most notably hip-hop. The tens of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan who have arrived in the United States since the Russian invasion in 198
0 or the more recent migrants from the former Yugoslavia have not been here long enough for their music to blend with ours.

  Other groups, such as the Hmung (from northern Laos) and Vietnamese, have established large settlements in California, the Northeast, and in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Second- and third-generation Hmung Americans look to American popular music, especially rock but increasingly hip-hop, for their musical inspiration; but older song traditions are used to address new and often problematic situations they have encountered in the United States, such as the tensions between the patriarchal Hmung value system and the feminist leanings of some third-generation Hmung women.

  The social and musical patterns displayed by the Hmung in some ways typify the processes undergone by many immigrant groups that have arrived in the United States in the post-Reconstruction period. The first generation wants to preserve the old ways but the second generation tends to look to America for their language (and slang), new musical expressions, foodways, and other aspects of culture. Sometime later—usually in the third or fourth generation—younger members of the groups look back to their roots. This very general model has its exceptions, of course, but its pattern crops up surprisingly often.

  The distinction between ethnic and folk is equally vibrant and integral because they are related but not necessarily interchangeable. Folk has already been discussed and defined, while ethnic refers to an identity that is created by one’s place of origin, language, religion, and common history. Within this identity, one mixes the levels of culture in which we participate—folk, popular, and elite (or academic). To illustrate some of these distinctions, let’s look more closely at German Americans, one of the most long-standing European immigrant groups.

  In German American musical culture choral societies known as Liederkranz or Mannerchor have existed since the nineteenth century. They engage in active interregional competition, and in major cities, most notably Cincinnati and Milwaukee, they sometimes function as the basis for the chorus for opera companies. German Americans have also predominated in other spheres of elite music. The study of historical musicology was basically defined by Germans in the 1870s. German Americans have been very well represented in our classical orchestras and in their repertoires. For example, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was founded by a German-born conductor. Moravian church music has also strongly impacted upon various forms of American sacred music.

  Although German Americans have been quite involved in our musical culture, their offerings generally have little to do with folk music. Most, though not all, of their musical contributions are primarily directed toward elite culture. German American folk music consists almost entirely of German traditional music transported to the United States. One notable exception is the nineteenth century singing schools found in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, which were discussed earlier. The Bohemian American polka bands of south-central Minnesota, led by concertina players such as “Whoopie John” Wilfahrt, represent another twentieth-century manifestation of folk music. The “New Ulm” or “old-time” sound incorporated German dance tunes with an Americanized rhythm section to create an eclectic, distinctly regional sound. Groups like the Jolly Germans, the Six Fat Dutchmen (“dutchmen” is a local term for people of German descent), and Eddie Wilfahrt’s Concertina Band brought this blend of folk-based music to audiences throughout the northern Midwest.

  The zany cover for this album underscores public attitudes toward polka music. Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

  Religious and secular organizations play important roles in providing solidarity within ethnic enclaves. Various groups such as the Czechoslovak Sokol, Scandinavian Associations, German Turnverein, Polish American clubs, and the Norwegian Sons of Norway (parodied by Garrison Keillor’s “Sons of Knute” on his “Prairie Home Companion” radio broadcasts from the late 1970s to the present) provide a support network for newly arrived immigrants. Most immigrant groups have used music as one means of maintaining cultural identity. They have imported their native folk and popular music, often performing it for special events such as Christmas or weddings that are also celebrated traditionally. Music becomes one of the critical ties to their former home across the ocean.

  Traditions that have been all but lost or forgotten can later be revitalized. Several types of grassroots music that are clearly related to the folk music of non–English-speaking Americans have enjoyed a renaissance over the past few decades. Klezmer, for example, has undergone a renaissance in the Jewish community since the middle 1970s in much the same way that Cajun music has once again found favor in southwestern Louisiana.

  Native American music also contains examples of revitalization and revival, which refer to traditions that have been totally lost for several generations.

  Core Areas for Ethnic Music

  The Pia tribe of central Arizona inhabit the sparsely populated and stark desert country along the Gila River. The majority of the Pia were “Christianized” by strict fundamentalist missionaries. They had lost most of their traditional dances and songs by the dawn of the twentieth century, but in the 1960s and 1970s a select number of traditional songs and dances were reintroduced to younger members of the Pia tribe. Specifically, the round dance songs, which are usually named for birds like swallows, robins, and orioles, were revived. In his work on chicken scratch music, folklorist Jim Griffith has noted that the Pia’s musical revival came about as part of a larger effort to shore up their traditional ways of life in light of Western domination. In addition to the music, some of the younger women were introduced to the almost lost art of making traditional dresses and yucca baskets.

  Rather than a cursory survey of the entire non–English-speaking world in the United States, this chapter focuses upon five genres of music that have been part of our musical landscape for many decades: Jewish American (klezmer), Native American, Hawaiian, Franco-American (especially Cajun and zydeco), and Scandinavian American folk music of the upper Midwest. These creolized styles have evolved into dynamic, visible traditions. They are among the most influential and widespread types of folk music created by non–English-speaking Americans.

  JEWISH AMERICAN: KLEZMER

  Brought to the United States by professional musicians from eastern Europe, many of whom migrated here between 1880 and 1920, klezmer refers to the instrumental dance music played by small instrumental ensembles. Twentieth-century klezmer, as scholar and performer Henry Sapoznik points out, combines elements of folk and popular music, filtered through the Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Russian styles found in eastern Europe, into a delightful, unique blend. The present-day interest in klezmer results from the revitalization of a form of expressive culture that had become all but moribund by the 1960s.

  The word klezmer is a Yiddish term that contracts the Hebrew words kleyzmer, which can be translated as “vessel of melody” or “musician.” In Europe, Henry Sapoznik has written, most of these musicians were part of an economic and social underclass that was frowned upon both by rabbis and by the economic elite. They were often itinerate musicians and, therefore, subject to ridicule and scorn because of their lack of money and stability, for they made their living performing for weddings, weekend dances, and other celebrations. In this regard the early blues musicians who played in the rural South during the 1920s and 1930s hold much the same social position as klezmer musicians.

  Because klezmer musicians played at so many different types of venues, they soon developed a wide repertoire that favored both dances (waltzes, horas, polkas, and mazurkas) as well as lyrical styles, especially the doina (an improvised melody and song rooted in the tradition of Romanian sheep herders). The instrumental music was gradually augmented by a singer, poet, or social commentator who vocalized about the events of the day. These badkhn, as they came to be known, served as purveyors of news and information and sometimes satirized members of the audience, public officia
ls, or current events. In this regard badkhns fulfilled an age-old role in musical culture, one that is perhaps best illustrated in the early 2000s by rap musicians.

  The Yiddish theater also played an important role in the formation of klezmer. Much of this activity is based in musical theater fashioned from wide and disparate sources, ranging from the musical hall traditions, the dramas of Ben Jonson, and Italian opera to stories from the Bible. And the denizens of musical theater were as peripatetic as their musical counterparts, for they wandered the land in search of an audience. It was only natural that the two entities would find themselves performing at similar venues and eventually some of these theaters employed musicians as part of their companies.

  When these musicians reached the shores of America (often via Ellis Island), they continued to practice their craft and versatility continued to be one of their key themes. Many of these musicians played not only klezmer, but they also performed on the stages of local theaters or sometimes on the circuit that included Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and small towns and cities between. Most of them played any kind of job that came their way, and a few even got the chance to record for one of the major record companies, which were just exploring the possibilities of recording an even wider range of music.

  The remarkable and influential musical career of Dave Tarras stretched from the early 1920s into the late 1980s. He emerged as the respected and venerated klezmer clarinet player, influencing scores of musicians over the course of his sixty-plus years of playing mostly in and around New York City. Tarras arrived in New York in 1921 and soon became involved in the Jewish/Yiddish/klezmer scene. The diversity of his early musical experience emerged when Tarras recounted the following conversation with Moe Nodiff, Columbia’s A & R man for foreign recordings in the middle 1920s: