American Studies/Music 420
Seminar: American Folk Revivals
Spring 2008
TR 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Schambach 108
Lydia Hamessley
List 204
office phone: 859-4354
e-mail: lhamessl@hamilton.edu
office hours: MW 1-2:30 p.m
Catherine Gunther Kodat
Root 104
office phone: 859-4341
e-mail: ckodat@hamilton.edu
office hours: W 10-11:30 a.m.; R 4-5:30 p.m.
Required texts:
John Lomax and Alan Lomax, eds. Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads, intro. by Judith Tick. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000 (NY: Macmillan, 1941).
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. NY: Routledge, 2006.
James Agee and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941.
Friends of Old Time Music , 3 CD set. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. SFW CD 40160, 2006 (original release, 1964).
Reading/Listening/Viewing Schedule
1700-1900: The Roots of American Folk Music
WEEK 1
Tuesday, 1/22: Introduction: What is folk music?
Reading:
Scott Alarik. "What is Folk Music?" Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground. (Cambridge, MA: Black Wolf Press, 2003) 249-58.
Jane S. Becker. "Revealing Traditions: The Politics of Culture and Community in America, 1888-1988." Jane S. Becker and Barbara Franco, eds. Folk Roots, New Roots: Folklore in American Life (Lexington, MA: Museum of Our National Heritage, 1988) 19-60.
David Evans. "Record Reviews: Folk Revival Music." Journal of American Folklore 92 (1979): 108-15.
Thursday 1/24: 19th-century Folk Collectors; American Musical Instruments and Southern Styles
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen, Folk Music: The Basics, Chapter 1, 1-8.
Benjamin Filene. "Setting the Stage: Identifying an American Folk Music Heritage, 1900-1930." Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music . (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 9-15 .
Kip Lornell. "Anglo-American Secular Folk Music," 71-79, 94-99; "African-American Religious Folk Music," 124-29; and "African-American Secular Folk Music," 144-69. Introducing American Folk Music: Ethnic and Grassroot Traditions in the United States, 2nd ed. (NY: McGraw Hill, 2002).
Norm Cohen. "Instruments and Musical Aspects." Folk Music: A Regional Exploration. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005) 63-82.
Robert Cantwell. "Ancient Tones: The Roots of Southern Songs." Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984) 115-42.
Pete Seeger. "The Folklore of Prejudice." Jo Metcalf Schwartz, ed. The Incompleat Folksinger (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972) 418-21 .
Listening:
Jean Ritchie. "House Carpenter." Ballads from her Appalachian Family Tradition, M1630.18 .R5 B3 2003, track 5.
Sheila Kay Adams. "Little Farmer Boy." A Spring in the Burton Cove, M1630.18.A3 S6 1990, CASSETTE TAPE. Side 1, first song.
Dock Reed. "Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin’ Bed." Introducing American Folk Music. M500, track 8.
Benjamin Bligen. "Talking ‘Bout a Good Time." Introducing American Folk Music. M500, track 9.
Texas Prisoners. "Chopping in the New Ground," Introducing American Folk Music. M500, track 12.
Leadbelly. "Rock Island Line." Introducing American Folk Music. M500, track 13.
Big Joe Williams. "Night Cap Blues." Introducing American Folk Music. M500, track 14.
Sheila Kay Adams. "Barbary Allen." My Dearest Dear. M1630.18.A3 M9 2000, track 4.
Charlie Poole. "Pearl Bryant." Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers. M1630.18 .P6 C4 2004, track 12.
Glen Smith & Wade Ward. "Sally Goodin." Introducing American Folk Music. M500, track 1.
Wednesday 1/23 (7:30 p.m.) and Friday 1/25 (2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.), MWPAI, Utica: I’m Not There (2007, 135 minutes).
WEEK 2
Tuesday, 1/29: Slave & Native American Songs as "Authentic" American Folksong
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics, Chapter 1, 8-17.
William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison. Slave Songs of the United States. (NY: Peter Smith, 1929 [1867]) i-xxiii.
Dena J. Epstein. "Reports of Black Folk Music, 1863-67," and "Conclusion." Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977) 274-96, 343-48.
Henry Edward Krehbiel. "Songs of the American Slaves." .Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music. (NY: G. Schirmer, 1914) 11-28.
Michael Pisani. "The Nationalism Controversy: Quotation or Intonation" "In Search of the Authentic: Musical Tribal Portraits, 1890-1911," and " 'I’m an Indian Too': Playing Indian in Song and on Stage, 1900-1946." Imagining Native America in Music. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) 182-86, 211-14, 243-46.
"Antonín Dvořák and the Development of National Music" and "Amy Beach Replies to Antonín Dvořák." J. Heywood Alexander, ed. To Stretch Our Ears: A Documentary History of America's Music. (NY: W.W. Norton, 2002) 259-66.
Listening:
"Run, Old Jeremiah"
"Choose Your Seat and Set Down"
"Roll, Jordan, Roll"
"Arwhoolie"
"Quittin' Time Song"
"Unloading Rails"
"Chopping in the New Ground"
"Many Thousan' Gone"
"Yeibichei Song"
Charles Wakefiled Cadman. "From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water." An Old Song Resung: William Parker sings Ives, Griffes, Farwell, and Cadman. M2 .R31 v.463 1995, track 4.
Viewing:
Bamboozled (2000, 135 minutes).
Thursday 1/31: Minstrelsy; Stephen Foster
Reading:
Richard Crawford. "Blacks, Whites, and the Minstrel Stage." America's Musical Life: A History. (NY: W. W. Norton, 2001) 196-220.
"Negro Minstrelsy," and "Pedee or Swanee? Stephen Collins Foster." J. Heywood Alexander, ed. To Stretch Our Ears: A Documentary History of America's Music. (NY: W. W. Norton, 2002) 123-25, 128-30, 135-39.
Hans Nathan. "Hard Times: A Negro Extravaganza." Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. (Norman: U Oklahoma Press, 1962) 415-26.
Eric Lott. "Introduction," and "Blackface and Blackness: The Minstrel Show in American Culture." Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1993) 3-12, 15-37.
Friday 2/1: Carolina Chocolate Drops. Schambach 201, 12-12:30 p.m. ATTENDANCE REQUIRED.
Charles Wolfe. "Rural Black String Band Music." Black Music Research Journal 10, no. 1 (1990): 32-35.
1900-1920: Ballads & Cowboy Tunes
WEEK 3
Tuesday 2/5: Francis James Child and his Collection
Reading:
Stephen Winick. "What Child is This?" Dirty Linen 110 (February/March, 2004): 29-33, 88.
George Lyman Kittredge. "Introduction." English and Scottish Popular Ballads Edited from the Collection of Francis James Child (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1904) xi-xxxi. Note that you also have the complete Table of Contents of this book with this reading.
Gordon Hall Gerould. "The Nature of Ballads: Chapter 1." The Ballad of Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932) 1-14.
Listening:
For these ballads, use the Kittredge book above (PR1181 C5 1904) and Bertrand Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), ML3650 B82.
Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, Child 4
Lord Randal, Child 6
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet (Eleanor, Elinor, Ellender, The Brown Girl) Child 73
Barbara Allen, Child 84
Gypsy Davy (or Laddie), Child 200
Thursday 2/7: Cecil Sharp
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics, Chapter 2, 19-26.
Benjamin Filene. "Setting the Stage: Identifying an American Folk Music Heritage, 1900-1930." Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music . (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 15-27 .
Lila W. Edmonds. "Songs from the Mountains of North Carolina." Journal of American Folklore 6, no. 21 (1893): 131-34.
Cecil J. Sharp. "Introduction." English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), iii-xxiii. Note that you also have the complete Table of Contents of this book with this reading.
WEEK 4
Monday 2/11: Songcatcher (2000, 109 minutes), 4:10 p.m. SCCT 3040.
Reading:
Walter Nelson, "Everything Old is New Again: Songcatcher and the 'Old-Time Music' Revival." http://www.echo.ucla.edu/volume4-issue2/folk/nelson.html.
Listening:
Songcatcher: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture. CD 501.
Songcatcher II: The Tradition that Inspired the Movie. M1630.18.S6V3 2002.
Tuesday 2/12: Sharp’s Legacy; Appalachian Dance
Reading:
David E. Whisnant. "All That is Native and Fine: The Cultural Work of Olive Dame Campbell, 1908-1948." All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983) 103-27.
Mike Seeger. "Introduction." Talking Feet: Buck, Flatfoot and Tap—Solo Southern Dance of the Appalachian, Piedmont and Blue Ridge Mountain Regions (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1992) 1-6, 9-14.
Thursday 2/14: Alan Lomax; Cowboy Songs and Ballad Collecting
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics, Chapter 2, 26-29.
Benjamin Filene. "Setting the Stage: Identifying an American Folk Music Heritage, 1900-1930." Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music . (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 27-34 .
John Lomax. "Collector's Note." Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. (NY: Sturgis & Walton, 1910), np. (10 very small pages).
John Lomax. "American Ballads and Folk Songs" and "Penitentiary Negroes." Adventures of a Ballad Hunter. (NY: Macmillan, 1947) 106-33, 134-64.
Bruce Molsky class visit
Friday 2/15: Highland, Heath & Holler, Schambach 201, 12-12:50 p.m. Attendance Recommended
Friday 2/15: Highland, Heath & Holler, Wellin Hall, 8 p.m. Attendance Required.
Saturday 2/16: Syracuse Symphony and the Martha Graham Dance Company: Appalachian Spring. Crouse Hinds Hall, 8 p.m. Attendance Required.
Reading:
background reading on Appalachian Spring
Don McDonagh, Martha Graham, A Biography (NY: Praeger, 1973), 177-80.
1920s: Folk Music Goes Commercial
WEEK 5
Tuesday 2/19: Race & Hillbilly Records
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics, Chapter 2, 29-38.
Benjamin Filene. "Setting the Stage: Identifying an American Folk Music Heritage, 1900-1930." Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music . (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 34-39 .
Charles K. Wolfe. "The Legend that Peer Built: Reappraising the Bristol Sessions." Charles K. Wolfe and Ted Olson, eds. The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2005), 17-39. See also 40-53, "The Bristol Sessions: The Cast of Characters" for a description of each group recorded in the Bristol Sessions. (This section is NOT on e-reserve; the book itself is on reserve: ML3524 .B73 2005.)
Archie Green. "Hillbilly Music: Source and Symbol." Journal of American Folklore 78, no. 309 (1965): 204-28.
Tony Russell. "Old Familiar Tunes." Yonder Come the Blues: The Evolution of a Genre. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 160-78.
Robert M. W. Dixon and John Godrich. "Into the Field, 1927-1930." Yonder Come the Blues: The Evolution of a Genre. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 277-294.
Listening:
"Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891-1922," liner notes by Tim Brooks. (St. Joseph, IL: Archeophone Records, 2005) .
Thursday 2/21: Carl Sandburg, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, & Robert Winslow Gordon
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics, Chapter 2, 38-45.
Benjamin Filene. "Setting the Stage: Identifying an American Folk Music Heritage, 1900-1930." Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music . (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 39-46 .
Carl Sandburg. "Introduction and Prefatory Notes." The American Songbag. (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1927) vii-xvi.
Robert Winslow Gordon. "Some Mountain Songs From North Carolina," 6-12; "Negro Work Songs from Georgia," 13-19; "Negro Spirituals from Georgia," 20-26; "Negro 'Shouts' from Georgia," 27-33; "The Old Ballads," 64-70; " 'Fiddle Songs,' " 71-77; and " 'Banjo Songs,' " 78-84. Folk-Songs of America. (NY: National Service Bureau, Works Progress Administration, 1938).
Pete Gilpin and George Myers Stephens. Bascom Lamar Lunsford, 'Minstrel of the Appalachians': His Ballads & His Folk Songs, His Mountain Square Dancing. (Asheville: Stephens Press, 1966).
Viewing:
David Hoffman. Bluegrass Roots. Redwood Estates, CA: CustomFlix, 2003 (originally Music Makers of the Blue Ridge, 1965). DVD.
1930s & 40s: Folk Music/Art Music; Collections & Collaborations
WEEK 6
Tuesday 2/26: The Seegers & the Lomaxes; Folk Music, the New Deal, & FDR
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics, Chap. 3, 47-65.
Benjamin Filene. "Searching for Folk Music's Institutional Niche: Alan Lomax, Charles Seeger, B.A. Botkin, & Richard Dorson." Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 133-51.
Charles Seeger. "Grass Roots for American Composers." Modern Music 16 (1939): 143-49.
Alan Lomax. "Folk Music in the Roosevelt Era." Ronald D. Cohen, ed. Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1933-1997. (NY: Routledge, 2003) 92-96.
Judith Tick. "Discovering 'Unmusical' America." Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1997) 233-46.
Viewing:
Post Office Murals/Thomas Hart Benton paintings and drawings
The Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, 1936; 25 minutes)
Thursday 2/28: The Lomax Folksong Collections
Reading:
John and Alan Lomax, eds. Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads. Mineola, (NY: Dover, 2000 [Macmillan, 1941]). Read all the front matter (Intros & Prefaces, xiii-xl) and familiarize yourself with the book as a whole.
Benjamin Filene. " 'Our Singing Country': John and Alan Lomax, Leadbelly, and the Construction of an American Past." American Quarterly 43:4 (1991): 602-24.
Alan Lomax. "Music in Your Own Back Yard" and "America Sings the Saga of America." Ronald D. Cohen, ed. Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1933-1997. (NY: Routledge, 2003) 47-55, 86-91.
Bess Lomax Hawes. "Reminiscences and Exhortations: Growing up in American Folk Music." Ethnomusicology 39:2 (1995): 179-92.
Viewing:
Lomax, the Songhunter. ML423.L65 2007
WEEK 7
Monday 3/3: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000, 107 minutes), 4:10 p.m., SCCT 3040
Reading:
Scott Alarik. "Why Didn't the Music Industry Jump on the O Brother Bandwagon?" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou? Reveals the Gulf Between Folk and the Music Biz." Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground. (Cambridge, MA: Black Wolf Press, 2003) 96-98, 193-96.
O Brother, Why Now? A Folk-Revival Symposium. http://www.echo.ucla.edu/volume4-issue2/folk/index.html. Read the introduction and the six entries by Hogeland, Howard, Nelson, Seeger, Titon, and Williams.
Tuesday 3/4: Ruth Crawford Seeger & the Lomaxes
Reading:
Judith Tick. "Lomax Country" and excerpt of " 'The Breath of the Singer': Transcriptions." Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1997) 247-73.
Listening:
"Rissolty, Rossolty"
Viewing:
Rodeo (Agnes de Mille, 1942), "Hoedown."
Thursday 3/6: Dance and More Collaboration: Aaron Copland & Martha Graham
Reading:
Ted Shawn. "The Sources of Thematic Material." The American Ballet. (NY: Henry Holt, 1926) 15-26.
Ellen Graff. "The People’s Culture: Folklore on the Urban Stage." Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928-1942, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997) 132-52.
Elizabeth B. Crist Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland During the Depression and War. (NY: Oxford University Press, 2005) 3-13.
Lynn Garafola. "Making an American Dance: Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring." Carol J. Oja and Judith Tick, eds. Aaron Copland and His World. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Wayne D. Shirley, Ballet for Martha: The Commissioning of Appalachian Spring (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1997). on reserve.
Performance:
Sparky & Rhonda Rucker: Events Barn, 4:00 p.m. Attendance Required.
Reading:
Scott Alarik. "We All Came As Strangers: The African and Irish Immigrant Experience." Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground. (Cambridge, MA: Black Wolf Press, 2003) 239-42.
Sparky Rucker. The Blue and Gray in Black and White. M1637.R8 B5 1992.
1930s & 40s Folk Music, Unions, & Left-Wing Politics
WEEK 8
Tuesday 3/11: Woody Guthrie & Union Songs
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 3, 66-72.
Charles Seeger. "On Proletarian Music." Modern Music 11 (1934): 121-27, 238.
Ronald D. Cohen. "The Left and Folk Music." Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society, 1940-1970 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002) 19-27.
R. Serge Denisoff. "Folk Music and the American Left." R. Serge Denisoff and Richard Peterson, eds. The Sounds of Social Change (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972) 105-20.
John Greenway. "The Song-Makers: Guthrie, Aunt Molly Jackson, Ella May Wiggins." American Folksongs of Protest (NY: Octagon Books, 1977) 243-309.
Thursday 3/13: The Almanac Singers
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics, Chapter 3, 73-84.
Ronald D. Cohen "Almanac Singers and the War Years." Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society, 1940-1970 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002) 27-38.
Robert Cantwell. "Ramblin' Round Your City: The Almanac Singers." When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) 117-50.
Richard A. Reuss. "The Almanac Singers: Proletarian 'Folk' Culture in Microcosm." Richard A. Reuss with JoAnne C. Reuss, American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927-1957 (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2000) 147-78 .
Peter Seeger. "A Revival of Interest in Folk Music?" Jo Metcalf Schwartz, ed. The Incompleat Folksinger. (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 11-26.
SPRING BREAK
1950s: The Genesis of the Folk Boom
WEEK 9
Tuesday 4/1: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Reading:
James Agee and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941)
William Stott. "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The Photographs; The Text." Documentary Expression and Thirties America. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1973) 259-314.
Morris Dickstein. "Copland and American Populism in the 1930s." Aaron Copland and His World, Carol J. Oja and Judith Tick, eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, 95-100).
Thursday 4/3: The People’s Songs, The Weavers, the Red Scare, & Pete Seeger
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 4, 89-107.
Ronald D. Cohen. "People’s Songs, Popular Folk, and the Later 1940s," and "The Weavers and the Red Scare, 1950-1954." Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society, 1940-1970. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002) 39-66, 67-92.
Robert Cantwell. "He Shall Overcome: Pete Seeger." When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) 243-266.
George Margolin. "Sidewalk Hootenanny." People's Songs, 1 & 2 (February and March, 1947): 6.
WEEK 10
Tuesday 4/8: Harry Smith Anthology
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 4, 107-110.
Robert Cantwell. "Smith's Memory Theater: The Great Folkways Anthology." When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) 189-238.
Griel Marcus, "The Old, Weird America," 5-25; Jon Pankake, "The Brotherhood of the Anthology,' 26-28; Luis Kemnitzer, "West Coast Record Collector," 29-31; Moses Asch, "The Birth and Growth of the Anthology of American Folk Music," 32-33; and Neil V. Rosenberg, "Notes on Harry Smith's Anthology," 35-37, in liner notes to A Booklet of Essays, Appreciations, and Annotations Pertaining to the Anthology of American Folk Music, Harry Smith, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Folkways 40090).
Rani Singh, "Foreword," 2-5; Hal Willner, "When Harry Met Hal," 8-14; Izzy Young, "A Tribute to Harry by Izzy Young," 15-18; Grant Alden, "The New, Weird America . . ." 20-29; Jeff Place, "An Introduction to The Anthology of American Folk Music," 33-34; timeline and table of contents, 35-38, in liner notes to The Harry Smith Project: Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited. South 82663-10041, 2006.
Listening:
Harry Smith Anthology and the Revised Anthology (selections)
Thursday 4/10: Bluegrass
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 3, 84-87; Chapter 4, 110-112.
Neil V. Rosenberg. "Bluegrass: What Is It?" and "How Bluegrass Got Started—a Debate." Bluegrass: A History. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985) 6-17.
Robert Cantwell. "The High, Lonesome Sound: Ritual, Icon, and Image." Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984) 200-25.
Alan Lomax. "Bluegrass Background: Folk Music with Overdrive." Ronald D. Cohen, ed. Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1933-1997. (NY: Routledge, 2003) 200-02.
WEEK 11
Tuesday 4/15: The Kingston Trio; Greenwich Village
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 4, 112-23.
Robert Cantwell. "When We Were Good: Class and Culture in the Folk Revival." Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, Neil V. Rosenberg, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993) 35-60.
Henrietta Yurchenco. "The Beginning of an Urban Folk-Song Movement in New York: A Memoir." Sonneck Society Bulletin 13:2 (1987): 39-43.
Oscar Brand. "Washington Square." The Ballad Mongers: Rise of the Modern Folk Song . (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1962) 155-171 .
Ted Myers, "Walking Away from Home to Greenwich Village: Confessions of a Teenage Beatnik," 5; Barry Alfonso, "Woody's Radio: A Folk Tale,: 6-22; Jac Holzman and Cary Ginell, "Jac Holzman: He Followed the Music," 23-31, in the liner notes to Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Boom, 1950-1970. Rhino Records R2 74264, 2001.
Thursday 4/17: The New Lost City Ramblers: The Seeger Legacy Continues
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 4, 123-27.
Ray Allen. "Performing Dio's Legacy: Mike Seeger and the Urban Folk Music Revival." Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds: Innovation and Tradition in Twentieth-Century American Music. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama, eds. (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2007) 224-51.
Scott Alarik. "The New Lost City Ramblers: They Brought the Mountains to the Cities." Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground. (Cambridge, MA: Black Wolf Press, 2003) 187-90.
Viewing:
Rainbow Quest.
1960s: The Peak & Demise of the Folk Boom
WEEK 12
Tuesday 4/24: Freedom Songs
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 5, 148-53.
"Preface and Introduction." We Shall Overcome! Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement. Guy Carawan and Candie Carawan, eds., for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. (NY: Oak Publications, 1963) 5-8.
"Introduction," and "Freedom Is a Constant Struggle." Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Songs of the Freedom Movement. Guy Carawan and Candie Carawan, eds. (NY: Oak Publications, 1968) 8-9, 91-95.
Pete Seeger. "The March from Selma to Montgomery." Jo Metcalf Schwartz, ed. The Incompleat Folksinger. (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972) 104-13.
Mary King. "Danville" (excerpt). Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. (NY: William Morrow and Company, 1987) 92-98.
Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser. Everybody Says Freedom: A History of the Civil Rights Movement in Songs and Pictures. (NY: W. W. Norton, 1990).
Viewing:
We Shall Overcome
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Revelations (1960).
Thursday 4/24: Protest Music and the Southern Appalachians
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 5, 153-56.
Guy Carawan. Voices from the Mountains. HN79.A13 C37 1975.
Barry O'Connell. "Whose Land and Music Shall Ours Be? Reflections on the History of Protest in the Southern Mountains." Appalachian Journal 12:1 (1984): 18-30.
William G. Roy. "Aesthetic Identity, Race, and American Folk Music." Qualitative Sociology 25:3 (2002): 459-69.
Jens Lund and R. Serge Denisoff. "The Folk Music Revival and the Counter Culture: Contributions and Contradictions." The Journal of American Folklore 84:334 (1991): 394-405.
Pete Seeger. "Some Folk Roots and Protest Traditions." Jo Metcalf Schwartz, ed. The Incompleat Folksinger. (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972) 62-91 .
WEEK 13
Tuesday 4/29: Friends of Old Time Music; The Newport Folk Festival
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics Chapter 5, 145-48.
Alan Lomax. "The 'Folkniks'—and the Songs They Sing," and "Getting to Know Folk Music." Ronald D. Cohen, ed. Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1933-1997. (NY: Routledge, 2003) 195-97, 203-10.
Ray Allen. "Staging the Folk: New York City’s Friends of Old Time Music." Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter 35, n. 2 (Spring 2006): 1-2, 14-15.
Peter Siegel. "The Friends of Old Time Music," intro in liner notes to Friends of Old Time Music, Smithsonian Folkways, SFW CD 40160, 2006.
R. Serge Denisoff. "Epilogue: The Folk Music Revival and the New Protester." Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971, 167-70.
Susan Montgomery. "The Folk Furor." Mademoiselle (December 1960), 98-100, 117-19.
Viewing:
Festival!: Folk Music at Newport.
Thursday 5/1: Bob Dylan & Joan Baez
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 5, 137-45.
Avital H. Bloch. "Joan Baez: A Singer and Activist." Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s. Avital H. Bloch and Lauri Umansky, eds. (NY: New York University Press, 2005), 126-51
Phil Ochs. "The Art of Bob Dylan's 'Hattie Carroll.' " Broadside 48 (July 20, 1964): 2. On reserve, also available at http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/hattie-carroll.html.
Listening:
"The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," lyrics available at http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/hattie.html
Viewing:
The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965.
"The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," 1964 performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmVqyzoailc.
WEEK 14
Monday 5/5: Don't Look Back (Pennebaker, 1967; 96 minutes) 4:10 p.m., SCCT 3040
Reading:
Joan Baez, "Winds of the Old Days." And A Voice to Sing With: A Memoir (NY: Summit Books, 1987), 83-98.
Ian Frazier. "Legacy of a Lonesome Death." Mother Jones (November/December 2004), http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/slant/2004/11/10_200.html.
Irwin Silver, "Fan the Flames (Joan Baez)." Sing Out! 17 (1967): 33, 49.
Tuesday 5/6: Newport Folk Festival—Dylan goes electric
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 5, 157-67.
Benjamin Filene. "Performing the Folk: Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan." Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 182-232.
R. Serge Denisoff. "Epilogue: The Folk Music Revival and the New Protester." Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971).
Paul Wolfe. "Dylan's Sellout of the Left." R. Serge Denisoff and Richard Peterson, eds., The Sounds of Social Change. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972) 147-50.
Irwin Silver. "An Open Letter to Bob Dylan." Sing Out! (1964): 22-23.
Thursday 5/8: Final Presentations
A Mighty Wind (2003, 91 minutes)
Reading:
Ellen J. Stekert. "Cents and Nonsense in the Urban Folksong Movement: 1930-66." Neil V. Rosenberg, ed. Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 84-106.
FINALS WEEK
Wednesday 5/14: 9 a.m.-12 p.m., course wrap-up
Reading:
Ronald D. Cohen. Folk Music: The Basics. Chapter 6, 169-87.
Benjamin Filene. "Coda." Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 233-36.
Bruce Jackson. "The Folksong Revival." Neil V. Rosenberg, ed. Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993) 73-83.
Pete Seeger. " The Folk Process." Jo Metcalf Schwartz, ed. The Incompleat Folksinger. (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972) 1 44-49 .
David Simons. "All We Are Saying: The History of Protest Music in American Folk Song." Acoustic Guitar 11:6 (2000): 67-81.
Participation: 30%. Since this course is a senior seminar, we set high standards for participation. You will be graded on the quality and quantity of your contributions to in-class discussions. Further, this course has a hands-on component: rudimentary banjo playing and flatfooting (a kind of Appalachian dance). There will be time spent in class on these activities, but you will also be expected to practice some on your own. While you will not be graded on your banjo-playing or dancing skills, you will be graded on your practice of these activities. You will have access to a banjo outside of class, and you should view your access to these instruments as a privilege. Please handle them with the greatest care and in the manner we describe. You are liable for any damages to or loss of these instruments that you cause to occur.
Project 1: 32%. This project is a library/research assignment. You will each be given a well-known "hit" tune (ballad, song, fiddle tune) and asked to research the life of the tune throughout the period of American history on which we are concentrating. You will want to uncover how the tune came to have the iconic status that it does, how it is usually performed, who have been the major performers of the tune, what kind of performance issues and practices the tune raises, among other questions. Of course, the questions that are asked will be driven somewhat by the tune itself. You will submit an annotated bibliography/discography and write a 3-page (750-1,000 words) essay on the tune and your findings.
Project 2: 38%. This project will be a broader research project of your own design. Since this course just scratches the surface of some topics and omits others, there are many avenues of inquiry left for you to explore on your own. This final project will consist of a 15-18-page (4,000 words) paper and a class presentation on the last day of the class.
