Chapter 1, I Never Heard a Horse Sing it: Defining Folk Music pp. 7 - 16
What is Folk Music? Anglo-Saxon sailors' songs? Calypso? Kentucky bluegrass? Flamenco? Cajun and zydeco? Rap!? And who, by the way, are "folk"? These are simple questions for which there have never been simple answers; They lead to a string of dichotomies: us and them, old and new, authentic and imitation, "low" culture and "high." The following efforts to define (or simply describe) folk music demonstrate the sheer range of opinion.
Once again it is time to shift our focus slightly, and pick up the tale in a new book. I think (and hope) you are going to enjoy this book, as we move again closer to our own time. I want to follow pretty much the same procedure that we've been following throughout the semester. For each chapter, do a little searching on the internet for something of interest to you (hopefully you'll find at least three) and put a link to them in your resource folder. Describe the link briefly, as many of you have been doing so far. I'll do my part, both on the web pages and in my resource folder, as well. How wonderful that Pete Seeger lived such a marvelous and full life. Read his Obituary Here.
***Sailor's Songs
Calypso***
***Cajun and Zydeco
Rap***
***Kentucky Bluegrass
Flemenco***
And One More
*** Reggae ***
Harry Belafonte, then and now
Click to read about this singer
and social activist.
There are a couple of things I'd like you to notice here. First is the socio-economic class of the "early collectors". For instance, John Avery Lomaxwas born in Texas, but wound up studying at Harvard. He was a businessman, but his passion was his collection of folk song, His collection in the Library of Congress has over 10,000 recordings in it. A representative sample is online. Alan Lomax, his son, followed in his footsteps. Charles Seeger, father of Pete Seeger, was a scholar in the field of Musicology--not qutie what you'd expect of the father of the famous singer. Follow the links to read a bit about these people. '
There are early books by the people mentioned in the American Archive. See what you can find there if you have a little time, and add it to your resources.
Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked howw 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat, by and by,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay;
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
Aunt Molly Jackson (called "Aunt" in reference to her profesion as a midwife) arrived in New York in 1931 fresh from the strikes of Harlan Country Kentucky. She had been "discovered that year be a cfommittee of leftist writers (Including Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and Sherwood Anderson) who visited the Kentucky coal mining region. Aunt Molly Jackson had a rough, rasping voice: undoubtedly authentic, ripe with class rage.)
You will eat, by and by,