folk music thesis

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Towards an ethnography of a culturally eclectic music scene. Preserving and transforming folk music in twenty-first century England

GAYRAUD, ELISE,GAELLE,MARIE (2016) Towards an ethnography of a culturally eclectic music scene. Preserving and transforming folk music in twenty-first century England. Doctoral thesis, Durham University.

This thesis presents an analysis of the recent transformations in the folk music scene in England. Through interviews of professional and amateur folk artists, it elicits musicians’ points of view about the music they perform and their own compositions. Adopting an ethnomusicological approach, it compares and contrasts theories of cultural globalisation with the musicians' perceptions of their position within the music scene and in relation to musical traditions in the twenty-first century. Exploring changes in music-making, collecting, and modes and contexts of transmission, this study considers how musical repertoire is exchanged, adapted and preserved within and beyond local communities through means such as archiving, pub sessions, workshops, festivals and formal tuition. From the perspectives of both artists and audiences, contemporary modes and contexts of transmission and the development of new technologies for recording, sharing and teaching music have been encouraging diverse transformations of perception, repertoire, composition and interpretation, as well as the dynamics of interaction between folk musicians. This thesis sheds light on how folk musicians’ horizons have expanded far beyond the local sphere; processes of globalisation have engendered global perspectives, new conceptualisations of what “traditional” and “folk” music are, complex identities reflected in musical hybridisation, new opportunities to access traditional and folk music, new forms of communication technology, demographical changes and cross-borders musical initiatives. The thesis demonstrates that, although the folk music scene in England might often be perceived as somewhat conservative in outlook and overshadowed by a profusion of widely disseminated contemporary popular musical products, many folk musicians have been open to transformation, adapting to new contexts and modes of transmission, embracing new communication technologies, and drawing influences from beyond the immediate local surrounding. At the same time as preserving musical heritage they have been enriching it in diverse ways to ensure its continued relevance.

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Home > School, College, or Department > Honors > Honors Theses > 582

University Honors Theses

Music and ireland's national identity: connecting folk music and cultural theory through emotional sociology.

Alexandra Habecker , Portland State University Follow

First Advisor

Jelena Simonic Schiff

Date of Award

Document type, degree name.

Bachelor of Music (B.M.) in Music: Voice and University Honors

Folk music -- Ireland -- History, Music -- Ireland, Irish national characteristics, Emotions -- Social aspects, Music and history, Culture

10.15760/honors.591

Music has been a crucial component of every major social movement in history. Though studies have shown that music and other areas of the arts are a product of the surrounding world in response to their own historical context, I propose that music can and has directly impacted society through the effects of music on the human emotional response. By looking at cultural theory through a musicological lens and using Ireland's rich and rooted musical culture as an example, this thesis suggests that with further research into the connection between music and emotions, along with expanding interest in the growing field of emotional sociology, we can explain and identify the role of music as an agent of social change.

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

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http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/25388

Recommended Citation

Habecker, Alexandra, "Music and Ireland's National Identity: Connecting Folk Music and Cultural Theory through Emotional Sociology" (2018). University Honors Theses. Paper 582. https://doi.org/10.15760/honors.591

Since June 15, 2018

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Liveness and Mediatization: Folk Music Education in the Digital Age

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Folk Music As A Voice Of Marginalized Society: A Comparative Study Of Goalparia Folk Music Of Assam And Phleng Phue Chiwit Of Thailandfolk Music As A Voice Of Marginalized Society: A Comparative Study Of Goalparia Folk Music Of Assam And Phleng Phue Chiwit Of Thailand.

2013, The Eastern Anthropologist

Folksongs identify itself with the people of the particular area and surroundings. They are verbally carried out through generations depicting the picture of a particular society and community. The colonial history of Western Assam had witnessed the political manipulation by the British authority, bifurcating the densely populated Rajbanshi territories to create Assam and Bengal. Koch-Rajbanshis are one of the major tribes of Assam and Bengal in India. After the territorial split, the Rajbanshis living in Bengal soon lost their language, culture as well as their civilizational roots. The condition of the Rajbanshis in the newly formed State of Assam was nothing better. Having lost their language, culture and identity, they soon got degenerated into an inferior community. At a juncture when the Koch Rajbanshis had to encounter a phase of crisis, Goalparia folk songs of Pratima Barua Pandey emerged as an instrument of effective intervention to usher in a path of hope for these people, who desperately needed a direction for possible redemption of their cultural, linguistic as well as social identity. In a similar fashion, Phleng phue chiwit folksongs of Thailand reflects the marginalized people’s lives of Thailand especially after 1930’s (the period of 1930’s marked by the political change from monarchy to constitutional monarchy). Some of the well known singers through this particular group of folksongs used to lay emphasis on the corrupt politicians and satirizing the corrupt officials of the time. In 1970’s Carabao groups under the Phleng Phue Chiwit emphasized on peoples equal rights especially farmers, workers and labourers. Suntharee Wechanont in …

Related Papers

Simona Sarma

This article will look at the figure of Pratima Barua Pandey, one of the icons of Goalpariya folk music in Assam, through a critical feminist lens. Basing the study on the qualitative method of interviews, especially with musicians, singers and other stakeholders associated with the folk form in question, we will try to locate her persona within a framework of contradictions, as someone who had transgressed the constricting spaces of caste/class/gender to be where she was, with deep and caring relationships with local practitioners of the folk form, and also as someone who co-opted and sanitized the form at the same time, given her social location and the larger politics of culture within which she was located. By including the first-hand narratives of our research participants throughout the article, we attempt to arrive at a 'thick description' of the concerned theme of study. Such an understanding will help to critically interrogate the conventional image of Pratima Pandey as the 'hero' of Goalpariya folk music.

Parasmoni Dutta

Partha Thakuria

Folklore as discourse

Chandan Kumar Sharma

That whatever is written is more prestigious and trustworthy than what is not written is a very widely prevalent notion. But this veneration for the written material as well as the dichotomy between the written and oral is a construct. The written tradition often starts with the putting down of the oral material into writing. And indeed, there was a time when orality (speech) enjoyed superior status over writing. My contention here is that such hierarchies are constructs of the dominant power structures of a particular period of time and they should be dispensed with for a dialogical relationship between the oral and the written discourses. However, the reluctance to give due credit to oral discourse still persists which is held to be a legacy of the 19th century preoccupation of historiography with ‘fact’ and ‘documents’. They are no doubt essential to historians but they do not themselves constitute the history. They have to be processed by the historian before becoming history. The exercise of processing involves interpretation and hence different meanings. Moreover, excessive dependence on documentary evidence may often lead to misleading results. For example, historical accounts of the reigns of kings are often biased in favour of the kings. Besides, even during the colonial rule and after that there are instances of destruction or concealment of documents. [Pandey 2000 (1997): 11] And alongside the destruction of ‘information’ there is also an attempt to construct new proofs both officially and non-officially in an organized fashion. All these raise question marks regarding the presumed solidity of the written discourse. The oral communication of remembered experience, however, could be meaningfully used to throw new light on events that might get distorted by the ideological predilections of the dominant discourse of a particular period. Those who are invariably at the receiving end of such ideological prejudices are the marginalized, voiceless groups in the society. Giving voice to such voiceless groups has been a strong impulse in the development of oral history. This paper shows that oral discourse, though largely a neglected domain provides significant insight into the understanding of the social existence of a particular community. This is especially true of the erstwhile non-literate communities that remain marginalized within the dominant discourse. In the wake of ethnic resurgence among such communities in the contemporary world, oral discourse often emerges as the only agency through which the distinct ethnic identity of these communities can be established. This paper explicates this fact in the context of the Bodo ethnic group in Assam.

Ripunjay Nath

Large number of people in North-East India are followers of Islam. Assam is one such state whose western regions like Kamrup and Goalpara had early contacts with the Islamic world because of the routes and passes through the mountains which connected the region with China and Burma. But it is interesting that before the 13th century there was no record of Islam being a dominant religion in the region. Yet today almost thirty per cent of the population of Assam alone follows Islam. In 1205 A.D., Bakhtiyar Khilji invaded Assam, and this event created the starting point from when the early migration of Muslims started. It was after his invasion of Kamrup, that traces of followers of Islam came to be found in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. After his invasion, other invaders from North India continued their struggle to capture Assam, and it ended in 1682 A.D. at the Battle of Itakhuli between the Mughal and the Ahom forces. Apart from these invasions, there are many reasons that led to Muslims entering the region of Assam and assimilating with the local people at different times. Assamese Muslims had a very little cultural difference with the local population. This dissertation shall discuss the origin and development of Muslim society in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam between 1205 and 1682 A.D. It shall also try to focus on the various aspects of the Assamese Muslim society, their contributions towards Assamese society and culture, and their importance among the local people.

Journal of Human Values

dev pathak , Moureen Kalita

The folklore studies scholar, such as Dorson (1976, Folklore and fakelore: Essays toward the discipline of folk studies, Harvard: Harvard University Press), was emphatic about the distinction between folklore and 'fake lore', one being authentic and the other as invented by the popular industry; however, he paradoxically maintained interest in the contemporariness of folklore. This was a paradox since the contemporariness of folklore is largely, and usually, due to intersections of folk with popular and political. Nevertheless, the emphasis on contemporariness was a harbinger of discussion on the potential dynamics of folklore, and everything buried therein, including value orientation. This essay is guided by the observations emerging from folklore studies, socio-cultural anthropology and performance studies in order to get into a specific case of Bihu, a folk performance inclusive of songs, dance, attires and instruments inter alia in Assam, in the northeast of India. The curious case of Bihu in flux divulges dynamics of value orientation and intersections of identity politics, in the wake of the contemporariness of folklore.

Sk. Makbul Islam

E-Journal on Folklore. Article, Book Review,

CHIRON OLIVIER

Dr. Anjan Saikia

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Folk music traditions'

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Lopez, Edwin Gerardo Aybar. "American Folk Traditions in Piano Concert Music." Diss., North Dakota State University, 2013. https://hdl.handle.net/10365/27102.

Chamberlin, Phillip Mark. "Folk Wiki : the shared traditions of folk music and the Wiki way." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2006. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0001822.

von, Wachenfeldt Thomas, Sture Brändström, and Juvas Marianne Liljas. "Folkmusikundervisningen på fiol och gitarr och dess historiska rötter." Högskolan Dalarna, Pedagogiskt arbete, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-10942.

Bidgood, Lee. "Book Review of 'Exploring American Folk Music, Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the U.S.’ by Kip Lornell." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1040.

Rondón, Tulio Jose. "Cultural hybridization in the music of Paul Desenne: An integration of Latin American folk, pop and indigenous music with Western classical traditions." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/267912.

Burns, Robert, and n/a. "Transforming folk : innovation and tradition in English folk-rock music." University of Otago. Department of Music, 2008. http://adt.otago.ac.nz./public/adt-NZDU20080701.132922.

Ancín, Itziar. "The Kabir Project. Bangalore and Mumbai (India)." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23290.

Ferrari-Nunes, Rodrigo. "SPREE : Shetland's epistemological tradition of music making." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2016. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=230026.

Douglas, Gavin Duncan. "State patronage of Burmese traditional music /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/10621.

Lombardi, David. "Communication and Creative Process Between Musicians From Different Cultures : A report of travels, experiences, exchanges and encounters." Thesis, Kungl. Musikhögskolan, Institutionen för folkmusik, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kmh:diva-4221.

Price, Matthew Grenville Kean. "Changes in the teaching of folk and traditional music : Folkworks and predecessors." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/4035.

Cheung, Kwok-hung Stephen. "Traditional folksongs in an urban setting a study of Hakka Shange in Tai Po, Hong Kong /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2004. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B31364846.

Dellow, Rebecca. "'Fiddlers' Tunebooks' : vernacular instrumental manuscript sources, 1860-c1880 : paradigmatic of folk music tradition?" Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2018. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/22115/.

Misgeld, Maria. "FOOTPRINTS OF THE FOREST : Exploring the indoor space as an artistic quality in herding call." Thesis, Kungl. Musikhögskolan, Institutionen för folkmusik, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kmh:diva-3592.

Messoloras, Irene Rose. "East meets West arranging traditional Greek folk songs for modern chorus /." Diss., Restricted to subscribing institutions, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1666907321&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

Wikström, Fanny. "Folkmusik på piano : En studie av tre folkmusikpianisters spelsätt och deras förhållningssätt till pianot som folkmusikinstrument." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Musikhögskolan Ingesund, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-6538.

Davey, Mervyn Rex. ""As is the manner and the custom" : folk tradition amd identity in Cornwall." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10036/3377.

Yi, Chung-han. "A performance guide to Heejo Kim's choral arrangements based on traditional Korean folk tune and rhythmic patterns." connect to online resource, 2009. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-9818.

Wakaba, Philip N. "Preserving traditional Agikuyu music : the development of a comprehensive teaching guide." CardinalScholar 1.0, 2009. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1536757.

García, Peter J. "La Onda Nuevo Mexicana multi-sited ethnography, ritual contexts, and popular traditional musics in New Mexico /." Access restricted to users with UT Austin EID Full text (PDF) from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International, 2001. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3031600.

Cockell, James Edward. "Schenkerism and the Hungarian oral tradition." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0010/MQ34305.pdf.

Lies, Mattias. "Vattenringar : En individstudie i folkmusikvågens efterdyningar." Thesis, Växjö University, School of Education, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:vxu:diva-1273.

This essay is about two Swedish folk musicians, Anders Rosén and Leif Stinnerbom, who have been playing two important rolls in the developing process of Swedish folk music, on their separate ways. The main part of this work is focused on the era called “The Folk Music Vogue”, which was the era when my informants were in the limelight on the Swedish fiddler scene of the 70s.

Our music culture is constantly lying under the change of progress and I find it interesting to reflect how these kinds of changes are affecting the role of the musician.

In this essay I am reflecting on the different perspectives of the musicianship according to my informants and how they both are referring to their role as musicians. The purpose is further on to see how they have been relating to the change of progress on the field of the Swedish folk music during the 70s and up to this date. Throughout interviews with the informants I am analyzing their personal relationship to their life as folk musicians. I am focusing on their personal relationship to the Swedish folk music climate of today, as well as to the Folk Music Vogue of the 70s.

The essay also focuses on the interpretation of traditional folk tunes, which leads us further on into the folk music tradition itself. During the 70s there was a young generation of fiddlers, which my informants was a strong part of, who was questioning the old values of the traditional folk music. With new kinds of perspectives and with different values this young generation changed the values in the tradition and through this, the folk musical climate became more open minded than before.

One of my main conclusions in this essay is that my informants have been changing their relationship to the style of folk music as well as to the field of folk music. They have been changing their point of view, and these changes is mainly a result of the developments that have occurred in the style and on the field of folk music, after the era of the Folk Music Vogue, and further on up to this very date. These changes have also been affecting their personal relationship to their own musicianship.

The history chapter of this essay will give the reader relevant information about the Swedish folk music history. Throughout the history the reader will get a bigger picture of the circumstances before and meanwhile the time of the Folk Music Vogue. The answers of my informants are compared to this history but firstly I have been comparing them with each other, and thereby answer the main questions of this essay.

Yi, Chung-han. "A Performance Guide to Heejo Kim's Choral Arrangements Based on Traditional Korean Folk Tunes and Rhythmic Patterns." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2009. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9818/.

Martina, Aileen. "The Traditional Bambuco in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Colombian Composition." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1993. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500243/.

Eriksson, Karin. "Sensing Traditional Music Through Sweden's Zorn Badge : Precarious Musical Value and Ritual Orientation." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för musikvetenskap, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-319842.

Cheung, Kwok-hung Stephen, and 張國雄. "Traditional folksongs in an urban setting: a study of Hakka Shange in Tai Po, Hong Kong." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31364846.

Ruiz-Caraballo, Noraliz. "Continuity and Change in the Puerto Rican Cuatro Tradition: Reflections on Contemporary Performance Practice." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1448876345.

Injejikian, Hasmig. "Sayat Nova and Armenian ashoogh musical tradition." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59269.

Mphaphuli, Murembiwa Julia. "Tsenguluso ya kubveledzele kwa ndeme ya nyimbo dza sialala dza Vhavenda." Thesis, University of Limpopo, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10386/1240.

Evans, Garry Windel. "Marcel Mihalovici a critical evaluation of his solo and chamber works for clarinet, a lecture recital, together with three recitals of selected works by Bozza, Uhl, Martino, Sowerby, Kalliwoda, Bax, and others /." Thesis, connect to online resource. Access restricted to the University of North Texas campus, 2006. http://www.unt.edu/etd/all/Dec2006/Restricted/evans_garry_windel/index.htm.

Olson, Ted S. ""Foreword"." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://www.amzn.com/1621904180/.

Melendez, Melissa Sybel. "Gonzalo Castellanos-Yumar's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (2003): A Phenomenological and Traditional Analysis of the Concerto with Consideration of its Stylized Venezuelan Folk Rhythms." Diss., Tucson, Arizona : University of Arizona, 2006. http://etd.library.arizona.edu/etd/GetFileServlet?file=file:///data1/pdf/etd/azu%5Fetd%5F1445%5F1%5Fm.pdf&type=application/pdf.

Larsson, Karl. "Folklig sång i sångundervisning. Hur vanligt är det egentligen? : En kartläggning av svensk folkmusik i sångundervisning." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för konstnärliga studier (from 2013), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-68290.

Hwang, Mirae. "The Blue Bird." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1522319891865069.

Ståbi, Kersti. "Att gestalta Vǫluspá ur poetiska Eddan : som folksångare och muntlig berättare." Thesis, Kungl. Musikhögskolan, Institutionen för folkmusik, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kmh:diva-2502.

Jensen, Kirstine Nurdug. "Fremstillingen af en familietradition : en hermeneutisk tolkning." Thesis, Stockholms konstnärliga högskola, Institutionen för danspedagogik, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uniarts:diva-682.

Aravena-Decart, Jorge Andres. "Représentations et fonctions sociales des musiques d'inspiration andine en France (1951-1973)." Thesis, Besançon, 2011. http://www.theses.fr/2011BESA1046/document.

Lynch-Thomason, Sara. "“I’ve Always Identified with the Women:” How Appalachian Women Ballad Singers’ Repertoire Choices Reflect Their Gendered Concerns." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3488.

Gibbs, Levi Samuel. "Song King: Tradition, Social Change, and the Contemporary Art of a Northern Shaanxi Folksinger." The Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1371429829.

Menezes, Potiguara Curione. "Que som é esse? Diálogos culturais refletidos em processo composicionais na música brasileira contemporânea." Universidade de São Paulo, 2017. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/27/27158/tde-31052017-114521/.

Caplat, Jacques. "Quand le geste technique transforme l'intention : l'évolution de l'accordéon diatonique en Bretagne." Thesis, Paris Sciences et Lettres (ComUE), 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018PSLEH139/document.

Costa, Tony Leão da. "Música de subúrbio: cultura popular e música popular na hipermargem de Belém do Pará." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UFF, 2013. https://appdesenv.uff.br/riuff/handle/1/175.

Kyser, Tiffany S. "Folked, Funked, Punked: How Feminist Performance Poetry Creates Havens for Activism and Change." Thesis, Connect to resource online, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2192.

Kaniaris, Spyridon. "Ritmos y modos de la música tradicional griega en la creación musical: investigación a través de la práctica y la composición." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Politècnica de València, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/171757.

"Folk Traditions in the Solo Piano Music of Geirr Tveitt." Doctoral diss., 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.26877.

Bracewell, Maureen. "Andean musicians in Vancouver : transcultural traditions and identity." Thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/11642.

Mugovhani, Ndwamato George. "Venda choral music: compositional styles." Diss., 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1202.

Hillhouse, Andrew Neil. "Tradition and innovation in Irish instrumental folk music." Thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/16572.

Coulter, William David. "Traditional Irish folk music, the Ó Domhnaill family, and contemporary song accompaniments." Diss., 1994. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/31274086.html.

Tuohy, Sue. "Imagining the Chinese tradition the case of Huaʻer songs, festivals, and scholarship /." 1988. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/24081522.html.

Canadian Journal for Traditional Music (1976)

Theses and dissertations involving canadian folk music.

Amtmann, William. "La vie musicale dans la Nouvelle France." Doctoral Dissertation, Strasbourg University, 1956.

Cavanagh, Beverley Anne. "Music of the Netsiik Eskimo: A Study in Acculturation." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, in progress.

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2 The “Southernness” of Country Music

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Published: 06 June 2017
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This chapter presents an overview of Bill C. Malone’s “southern thesis,” as first articulated in his 1968 study, Country Music, U.S.A.: A Fifty-Year History , and examines the influential role that this regional interpretation has played in shaping country music scholarship. The chapter surveys some of the major trends in the scholarly literature over the past five decades regarding the music’s perceived southernness. It explores Malone’s problematic presentation of the American South as an exceptional region rooted in a unique rural folk culture, and the resulting historiographical debates. The chapter also identifies some significant topical and interpretative lacunae that now pervade the country music scholarship as a result of Malone’s interpretation, and suggests several approaches to rectifying these omissions, including reinterpreting prewar country music as a commercial product of a modern, urban-industrial America and focusing attention on the American regional traditions and musical tributaries that contributed to its creation.

That hillbilly music is a phenomenon solely of the South in general and of the Southern Appalachians in particular is a myth in the best sense of the word. The myth has had its factual aspects—that the music was first recorded in the South, that the musical style was originally Southern. But … [e]‌arly hillbilly performers came not only from the lowland and upland South, but from the Great Plains and the Midwest—and eventually New England, Nova Scotia, and Alberta. That the first important hillbilly radio show originated in Chicago cannot be explained solely by the presence of Southern migrants. Its manifestation was of the South; its essence was of rural America. Southern hillbilly music seems but a specialized and dominant form of a widespread music. … —D. K. Wilgus, “An Introduction to the Study of Hillbilly Music” (1965)

Guest editor D. K. Wilgus penned these often-quoted words in his introduction to the 1965 “Hillbilly Issue” of the Journal of American Folklore . Arguably, that landmark issue launched country music studies as a scholarly enterprise, and from its beginning, as Wilgus’s statement makes clear, scholars have grappled with the genre’s regional origins and identity. Of course, since the mid-1920s, record companies and, to a lesser degree, radio barn dance programs, had portrayed hillbilly music, as it was then called, as an expression of the rural American South, particularly a Mountain South. Years later, in formulating their interpretations of the music, many of the first generation of country music scholars embraced this nostalgic idea. But Wilgus cautioned his colleagues to resist the alluring myth of country music’s southernness, and instead argued for approaching the genre as a widely dispersed rural folk music that flourished throughout the United States and even parts of Canada. 1 Despite his pronouncement, however, scholars have, over the decades, insisted that this genre is essentially a commercialized form of the traditional white folk music of the rural American South, and that romantic convention now pervades the historiography. Today, the premise that country music is, and always has been, distinctly southern stands as one of the cornerstones of country music studies.

Since the inception of country music studies, its narratives and historiography have been profoundly shaped by the idea of the American South. Specifically, country music studies relies on the scholarly convention of “southern exceptionalism”: the belief that the American South developed outside the main currents of American history, and therefore its past and its culture are separate and distinct from those of the national experience. 2 For more than a half-century now, southern exceptionalism has animated southern historiography and has provided many scholars with a conceptual framework for explaining what they perceive as the region’s peculiar history and culture. In recent years, however, this concept has drawn mounting criticism. As editors Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino argued in The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (2010), “the notion of the exceptional South has served as a myth, one that has persistently distorted our understanding of American history.” 3 Nevertheless, while under attack in other academic quarters, southern exceptionalism continues to flourish within country music studies in the form of what Roderick J. Roberts, writing in 1978, first identified as the “southern thesis”—that is, the idea that this genre of music developed chiefly out of the traditional white folk music of the rural American South and that it is therefore intrinsically southern. 4 Unfortunately, this interpretive concept has a limited, even closed off, examination of certain subjects within the scholarship, resulting in a parochial understanding of country music’s commercial origins and development. Despite its widespread currency within both scholarly and popular discourse, the southern thesis remains problematic, and, over the years, it has sparked, and continues to spark, heated debate.

In this chapter, I examine the longstanding concept of the southern thesis and its influential role in shaping country music scholarship. To do so, I survey some of the major trends that have emerged in the field over the past five decades regarding the perceived southernness of the music. Certainly, the nationalization and, indeed, globalization of country music since World War II have raised important questions about the regional origins and identity of the music. This chapter, however, focuses chiefly on prewar recorded country music, because it was during the formative period between 1922 and 1942 that this genre of commercial music first came to be defined as southern. Moreover, although radio broadcasts and stage shows contributed to country music’s popularization, it was primarily the US recording industry that transformed this music into a discrete genre of American commercial music and, in the process, regionalized it. 5 The chapter then goes on to examine some significant topical and interpretative lacunae in the existing scholarship, before concluding with a consideration of some areas that may yield productive research in the future.

The “Southern Thesis”

Since at least the late 1950s, folklorists and other scholars have associated country music with the American South. 6 It was historian Bill C. Malone, however, who, in his now-classic study, Country Music, U.S.A.: A Fifty-Year History (1968), first articulated, and remains most closely identified with, the southern thesis. “Modern American country music,” Malone wrote in the first line of his opening chapter, “emerged out of the varied social and musical currents of the South.” 7 Oddly, though, he failed to define this wellspring culture region explicitly, in that first as well as in subsequent editions of Country Music, U.S.A. 8 But, not unlike the first generation of country blues scholars who preceded him, Malone constructed a grand theory for the historical origins and development of an entire genre of American popular music based on the concept of a distinctive southern rural folk culture, an idea that borrowed heavily from decades of regionalist sociological and, especially, folklore scholarship. 9 “Commercial country music developed out of the folk culture of the rural South,” Malone asserted, and then went on to argue that “[t]‌he music developed lineally out of the rural styles of the past, and the bulk of its performers today, in point of origin, are southerners who came from farms or small towns or who are only a generation away from a farm background.” 10

Malone also drew, to a lesser extent, on the scholarship of southern history, and in formulating his southern thesis, he identified the specific historical conditions in the American South that gave rise to prewar recorded country music, including a population composed predominantly of white, Anglo-Celtic Protestants—“an agricultural economy” based on African American slavery, a cultural conservatism and commitment to the preservation of tradition, and a “rural way of life.” 11 As a result of these combined historical influences, Malone envisioned the American South to be an exceptional place, a land that stood outside of, or at least deviated sharply from, the nation’s mainstream—though, as he conceded, its folk music was deeply influenced by music from outside the region. Anglo-Celtic musical traditions that had once been widespread throughout colonial British North America “endured in the South long after they had ceased to be important elsewhere.” Moreover, “only in the South did they contribute to the creation of a lasting regional music.” 12 Later, in Southern Music/American Music (1979), Malone extended his southern thesis to argue that much of American popular music, including jazz and blues, also emerged directly from southern rural folk music. 13

From Malone’s southern thesis, several important arguments flowed. Not only did country music represent a commercialized extension of rural southern folk music, but much of the music’s identity and historical development could be explained by its southernness. First, Malone argued that, prior to World War II, the audience for country music consisted almost exclusively of rural and small-town Southerners and, to a lesser degree, Midwesterners. 14 Second, he attributed the eventual diffusion of the music across the United States and much of the globe to a southern diaspora. Country music “became a national phenomenon” during World War II, he argued, chiefly as a result of the large-scale migration of Southerners to military bases and defense plants in Midwestern and West Coast cities. In the following decades, during the Cold War, southern servicemen stationed at military bases overseas helped further spread the popularity of the music to Germany, Japan, and other nations around the world. 15 Malone’s southern migration theory proved to be an appealing and influential model, and many subsequent studies have adopted its basic premise to account for the national spread of country music, especially during the “Okie migration” of the Great Depression, including James N. Gregory’s The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of White and Black Southerners Transformed America (2005), Gerald W. Haslam’s Workin’ Man Blues: Country Music in California (1999), and Peter La Chapelle’s Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California (2007). 16

With the publication of Country Music, U.S.A. , the southern thesis soon gained widespread currency within the field of country music studies and beyond. Its acceptance resulted from the book’s scholarly authority and remarkable comprehensiveness, combined with several other factors, including a dearth of competing conceptual frameworks. But as an “origins myth,” the southern thesis also provided an attractive explanation for the birth and development of country music. Informed by an impressive array of historical and folkloristic methodologies, it confirmed what many scholars, journalists, and music fans already believed to be true—that country music was, and is, a product principally of the rural American South. Much of the southern thesis, after all, mirrored the fabricated but appealing regionalized history and imagery of the music propagated by the record companies and radio barn dance programs of the 1920s and 1930s. By and large, succeeding scholars have followed Malone’s interpretive lead, producing monographs that focus on country music in particular southern (or quasi-southern) regions, states, and, in some cases, cities, while also connecting the music intrinsically to rural southern folk culture. Among the more noteworthy of these works are Charles K. Wolfe’s Tennessee Strings: The Story of Country Music in Tennessee (1977) and his Kentucky Country: Folk and Country Music of Kentucky (1982); Ivan M. Tribe’s Mountaineer Jamboree: Country Music in West Virginia (1984); Wayne W. Daniel’s Pickin’ on Peachtree: A History of Country Music in Atlanta, Georgia (1990); and Jean A. Boyd’s The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing (1998). 17 To be sure, this group of local and regional studies undermined, to a degree, Malone’s premise of a cohesive American South and its pan-southern folk culture by highlighting the social and cultural variations that existed in specific southern locations. In the end, however, most of these studies adhered to the prevailing scholarly interpretation of country music as an inherently southern music derived primarily from rural folk culture.

Other scholars from a variety of academic fields, including sociology and cultural geography, have reaffirmed the southern thesis. Sociologists Richard A. Peterson and Russell Davis Jr., for example, provided quantitative support for the theory in their frequently cited 1975 Journal of Country Music article, “The Fertile Crescent of Country Music.” Based on their study of the birthplaces of 416 “country music notables,” Peterson and Davis concluded that “the South has been, and still is, the cradle of country music,” with nearly 80% of the artists surveyed hailing from what the authors famously described as “the fertile crescent of country music,” a region “beginning with West Virginia in the northeast continuing south and west encompassing most of the Southeast, as well as including Texas and Oklahoma.” 18 Moreover, the authors also endorsed Malone’s assertion of the rural roots of the music, citing data that revealed that “country music has been and continues to be most often produced by performers born in rural areas and small towns.” 19 While Malone, along with Peterson and Davis, focused on the regional origins of country music performers or musical styles, in the mid-1970s, other scholars began to examine different aspects that also ostensibly demonstrated the music’s southernness. Some, for example, mapped the regional concentration of country music radio stations and audiences, whereas others identified “southern” themes and references in song lyrics. 20

Meanwhile, Malone has continued to refine his southern thesis in three revised editions of Country Music, U.S.A. (1985, 2002, and 2010) and in other studies, articulating it with greater nuance and sophistication but always maintaining the central validity of his premise. 21 For example, in his contribution “The South and Country Music” to The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music (1998), Malone admitted that, while “[i]‌t may seem foolhardy to attribute a southern identity to country music when we note the music’s strength everywhere in the United States and throughout the world,” the music nonetheless “has always had a special relationship with the South.” 22 But in reaffirming the intellectual soundness of the southern thesis, Malone and other scholars have been forced to perform a delicate balancing act, arguing for the essential southernness of country music while simultaneously acknowledging all the ways in which this music has been, at least since the late 1960s, national and even international in scope and content. 23 Malone and other southern thesis adherents now acknowledge that country music embodies a certain ambiguous geographical identity, and the relationship of this music to region and nation remains in constant tension, sometimes more “southern” than American, other times more American than “southern,” depending on the historical period under discussion—all of which has resulted in a sort of intellectual confusion that undercuts the authority of the southern thesis as a coherent interpretive model. Indeed, as Malone conceded in 1979 in Southern Music/American Music , “Southern styles have become so enmeshed in American popular culture that it is now impossible to determine where their southernness ends and their Americanism begins.” 24

Critiques of the Southern Thesis

Today, most standard histories of country music still echo Malone’s southern thesis, but over the decades a handful of academic and popular writers have strongly criticized this interpretive concept. Beginning in the late 1960s, as country music underwent another surge of national popularity, some sociologists and journalists challenged its enduring southernness. Without denying that country music may have once been a southern music that reflected the perspective and values of white Southerners, these writers tacitly embraced the massification thesis of Theodor Adorno and other “Frankfurt school” theorists, arguing that, by the late 1960s, the homogenizing effects of mass culture had so eroded the diversity of regional cultures in the United States that the music and its audience no longer bore much of an intrinsic relationship to the American South. 25 Writing in 1975, for example, Richard A. Peterson and Russell J. Davis contended that, although “its fans come from all walks of life,” country music’s core audience consisted of “middle-aged, white, working-class people irrespective of whether they live in small towns, rural areas, or large cities. Moreover, most of these people have never lived in the crescent-shaped homeland of country music.” 26 In explaining contemporary country music’s growing national appeal, Peterson and Davis, along with several other critics of the southern thesis, implicitly advanced what might be described as a competing “Americanization of Dixie” thesis. This argument asserted that, as a result of the gathering momentum of postwar regional transformations and the increasing encroachment of powerful technologies and mass culture, the American South was converging with the rest of the nation socially, culturally, and economically. Significantly, this argument represented the inverse of the “southernization of America” thesis to which Malone and his allies implicitly subscribed. 27 Such arguments, it is also worth noting, reflected broader debates in southern historiography at the time when the postwar rise of the Sun Belt and the dismantling of Jim Crow segregation prompted historians to argue whether, as John B. Boles framed the question, the American South was “persisting as a distinct region or vanishing into a great homogenous American culture.” 28

Scholars and journalists who championed the concept of homogenization steadily chipped away at the southern thesis during the 1970s and even, as we have seen, forced advocates of the southernness of country music to modify some of their claims as it applied to the postwar history of the music. The most influential and forceful critics of the southern thesis, however, consisted of what I call the “regional revisionists,” a group of primarily folklorists that includes Simon J. Bronner, Roderick J. Roberts, Neil V. Rosenberg, George H. Lewis, Peter Narváez, and, more recently, Paul L. Tyler and Clifford R. Murphy. 29 Since the mid-1970s, they have attempted to challenge Malone’s southern thesis, though sometimes only implicitly, by documenting various regional country music traditions that thrived outside the American South before World War II. None of these critics denied the preeminent role of that region in the origins and development of commercial country music. Rather, they took exception to Malone’s argument of a singular country music tradition developing from an exceptional folk culture that existed only in the American South. Writing in his 1978 Journal of Country Music article titled “An Introduction to the Study of Northern Country Music,” Roderick J. Roberts disputed “the Malone premise that in the romantic, mystical cauldron of the South, the imported Anglo-Celtic musical tradition boiled and bubbled, catalyzing in some unique fashion, while throughout the rest of the nation the bemused immigrants blithely forgot their music.” 30 If a rural folk culture was prevalent throughout the American South, as Malone asserted, it was never confined solely to that region, these scholars countered, and, in fact, similar grassroots musical traditions flourished throughout the United States and much of Canada, including in New York State, New England, the American Midwest, and even in British Columbia and the Canadian Maritimes. For Roberts, commercial country music “represented one regional development of a deeper underlying Anglo-Celtic tradition that reacted to differing influences in different areas of the continent.” 31

Although the scholarly debate about country music’s southernness raged most fiercely between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s, this issue remains one of the primary ongoing concerns of country music studies and recently has been taken up by a new generation of multidisciplinary scholars. In 2014, in one example of how this issue continues to engage scholars, the Journal of American Folklore published a “Country Music” special issue that featured four articles devoted to a reconsideration of the southernness of country music—with Bill C. Malone, among other respondents, offering commentary. 32 That same year, Clifford R. Murphy, one of that issue’s contributors, published an extended rejoinder to the southern thesis in his book, Yankee Twang: Country and Western Music in New England (2014). Following a long parade of regional revisionists, Murphy argued that “New England—indeed, much of the North American continent—has a long, rich history and tradition of country and western music that dates back as far as that of its famous southern counterpart.” However, that New England musical tradition, he lamented, “has been buried under a mountain of corporate propaganda that wants you to believe that country music is an exclusively southern cultural export.” 33 In challenging the southern thesis, then, Murphy and other regional revisionists advanced what might be termed an “American thesis” or, in some cases, a “North American thesis” for the origins and historical development of commercial country music.

Of all the regional revisionist studies published since the mid-1970s, undoubtedly the most influential have been those of Simon J. Bronner, who in his 1987 book, Old-Time Music Makers of New York State , and a series of preceding articles, offered the most direct and compelling challenge to Malone’s southern thesis. Without denying “the large shadow cast by the South over country music,” Bronner insisted that the history of country music was “a more complicated story than the outline that has been previously drawn in works such as Malone’s of a national musical foliage growing from a single southern root.” 34 Bronner also criticized what he called Malone’s “migration thesis,” which, as we have seen, attributed the growing national popularity of country music during World War II to a southern diaspora, while ignoring similar grassroots musical traditions in other regions that could also help account for the nationalization of country music. 35 In the end, Bronner concluded “that the story of old-time music is not a simple plot of a nationalization of southern music, as Malone has called its development into country music, but rather it is a saga of complex regionalization, and later commercialization, out of the folkways of a nationwide regional experience.” 36

Collectively, the regional revisionists attempted to reorient the scholarship of country music beyond the American South, and their examinations of how local musical and cultural practices shaped the development of regional music traditions have served to complicate prevailing understandings of country music in both its vernacular and its commercial forms. But these scholars nevertheless remained trapped within Malone’s conceptual framework. In making their cases for a more complex, multiregional history of country music, they adopted both Malone’s definition of the music as a rural, folk-derived music and his theoretical paradigm for its historical development, and then simply transposed them onto other states or regions. Writing in Old-Time Music Makers of New York State , for example, Bronner agreed with Malone about the “historical conditions that helped to perpetuate a rurally based music that later developed into country music”; but he disputed Malone’s claims “that these conditions and the old-time music associated with them are unique to the South.” 37 As communications studies scholar Brian Rusted has noted of Malone’s critics, “Rather than saying that the problem is in how he conceives of place, their challenges reframe his southern thesis as a sin of omission. … For all intents and purposes, the spatial accounts of country music by authors following and even critical of Malone’s thesis are the same: only the region and the names of the performers have changed.” 38 In the end, then, much of this revisionist scholarship is constrained by the same conceptual frameworks of region and folk culture found in the very argument it sought to overturn. So far, despite this still-growing body of literature, the fundamental outlines of the southern thesis remain largely undisturbed.

Whether it be the American South, the Midwest, New York State, the Canadian Maritimes, or elsewhere, geography remains central to country music studies, and much of its scholarship, including studies of both historical and contemporary traditions, reflects a local or regional approach (See Jada Watson’s chapter 5 on cultural geography in this volume). 39 Even “country music” and especially its former marketing label, “country and western music,” conveys a sense of place. In his provocative chapter in Challenging Frontiers: The Canadian West (2004), however, Brian Rusted questioned the fundamental usefulness of geographical place as an analytical tool for understanding the history of this music because of what he described as “the ambivalent relation between the spatialized performance of traditional country music and its recording and subsequent deterritorialized diffusion.” 40 Instead, Rusted advanced the concept (borrowed from cultural anthropologist George Marcus) that “culture is increasingly deterritorialized.” As Rusted, quoting from a 1994 article by Marcus, explained, “many cultural phenomena and processes can no longer be contained by the conventions that fix place as the most distinctive dimension of culture. Merely historicizing local culture … or describing the depth and richness of tradition fails to capture the side of culture that travels, its production in multiple, parallel, and simultaneous worlds of variant connection.” 41 In introducing this concept of “deterritorialized” culture to country music studies, Rusted subverted the fundamental premise of Malone’s southern thesis and, significantly, pointed the way toward a more nuanced and satisfying interpretative model for understanding the origins and development of commercial country music.

As Rusted indicated, the regional focus of Malone’s southern thesis remains riddled with problematic assumptions. Not only does this concept tend to ignore or downplay the ways in which highly mobile, mass-mediated cultural elements traverse space and time to become embedded in multiple local cultures, but it also obscures the resulting connections of those cultures across regional and even national borders. To be sure, Malone attempted to present rural southern folk culture historically as neither static nor isolated. 42 He recognized, for example, that country music “has absorbed styles, songs, instruments, and influences from a multitude of nonwhite and noncountry sources.” 43 In particular, he stressed the myriad northern, urban influences on southern folk music. Chief among these were nineteenth-century songs derived from the minstrel stage and popular songwriters, and Malone later elaborated on the profound influence that this body of songs exerted on country music in a long chapter in Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers: Southern Culture and the Roots of Country Music (1993). 44 Nevertheless, despite countless examples of adaptations and borrowings of such songs and even in the face of the disruptive forces of technology and commercialization, Malone insisted that rural southern folk music somehow remained distinctly “southern.” 45 But if, as he conceded in the first revised edition of Country Music, U.S.A. , “much of this music came from nonsouthern sources, a very large percentage, in fact, from the North,” then to what degree can we still consider country music, even its prewar traditions, to be intrinsically “southern”? 46

Judging from the first decade of commercial recordings, it appears that hillbilly music emerged from the intermingling of local vernacular traditions and an assortment of mass-mediated national and global musics, as Brian Rusted and Karl Hagstrom Miller, among others, have demonstrated. 47 Certainly, by the 1920s, as various kinds of commercial music—via sheet music, traveling shows, phonograph records, radio broadcasts, and, eventually, talking motion pictures—circulated throughout the American South and were adapted and reworked within the musical cultures of local communities, they eroded the distinctiveness of Malone’s rural folk culture even as they reshaped it. How else can we account for small-town Southerners such as Frank Hutchison, Jimmie Tarlton, and Howard Dixon who, on prewar hillbilly records, demonstrated a mastery of the Hawaiian steel guitar, an instrumental style created some five thousand miles away on a set of small Pacific Islands? Although these artists’ exposure to the Hawaiian guitar often came to them second-hand, as it were, their fascination with and eventual adoption of this instrument and its attendant style reveals, as musicologist Charles Hiroshi Garrett has noted, “the international, ethnically diverse, and multicultural roots of American music”—in this case, specifically hillbilly music. 48 But in presenting the American South as an exceptional region rooted in a persistent and unique, rural folk culture, Malone essentially sealed it off from outside musical influences, although this was not his intention. As a result, his southern thesis obscures much of the cultural interplay and exchange that connected the American South and recorded hillbilly music to a variety of different regions and musical traditions. 49 Indeed, his claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the southern thesis actually ends up depicting southern folk culture as relatively static, isolated, and largely unaffected by the mainstream mass culture that had engulfed much of the nation by the 1920s. It is therefore problematic to situate the origins of an entire commercial genre in an imagined, culturally constructed geographical region and its purportedly distinctive folk culture that, by the advent of the hillbilly recording industry, were profoundly implicated in a broader, mass-mediated world of diverse commercial musics.

The “Southern Thesis” and Lacunae in Country Music Scholarship

For nearly five decades now, the southern thesis has structured much of country music scholarship, and as a result of its interpretive dominance, it has inadvertently produced several significant lacunae within the scholarly literature that should be explored. First, and perhaps most obviously, the southern thesis has created a seductive but false dichotomy between an authentic, musically superior, rural folk culture unique to the American South and an inherently inferior, modern, mass-mediated culture common to other regions of the United States. 50 Indeed, Malone has argued as much, noting that, during the 1920s, the northern record producers and talent scouts who ventured into the American South found “southern rural music” to be “both different and more interesting than the rural music forms of the North,” and, furthermore, that “southern string bands” in particular possessed a “vitality and rhythmic punch that set them apart from other rural bands in America.” 51 In presenting the American South as an exceptional place where a rural folk culture continued to flourish into the 1920s and beyond, Malone established the region as a bastion of folk authenticity and traditionalism in a modernizing nation. It alone, according to him, gave birth to commercial country music and its subregional offshoots of western swing, honky tonk, and bluegrass. The southern thesis, then, is dismissively negative and intrinsically counterproductive because it implies that other regional musical traditions are somehow less significant or culturally resonant than those of the American South. As a result, comparatively few studies of non-southern country musicians and musical traditions have been produced, and those handful that do exist have been marginalized as somehow less relevant to the nearly one-hundred-year development of commercial country music.

At the same time, the southern thesis, with its focus on country music as a commercial variant of rural white folk music, has portrayed hillbilly recording artists as “tradition-bound rural southerners who came of age in the countryside and mountain hollows, often isolated from or little influenced by the main currents of modern urban life and mass culture,” as I argued in Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South (2008). 52 Such romanticized portrayals, however, have impeded the advancement of more complex and sophisticated scholarly interpretations of this music as a modern phenomenon produced by residents of an emergent urban-industrial America who were demonstrably influenced by its mass culture. 53 Perhaps even worse, these pastoral depictions have also perpetuated pernicious stereotypes of the music and its performers as being artistically and culturally backward. Thus, in the fifth edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (2007), Michael Kennedy and Joyce Bourne Kennedy could define “hillbilly songs” using language that smacks of condescension: “The traditional songs (largely of European origin) of the primitive peoples of the mountain regions (e.g., Appalachians) of the S.E. parts of the USA.” 54

The southern thesis has also hampered efforts to chronicle country music’s evolution in more historically accurate ways. Take, for example, the attempt to identify the commercial origins of this music. Today, most scholars credit A. C. “Eck” Robertson and Henry Gilliland’s “Sallie Gooden,” backed with “Arkansaw Traveler,” waxed in June 1922 for Victor, as the first country music record. 55 This historic claim, as Simon J. Bronner noted in a 1979 Journal of Country Music article, rests on the premise that this record represented “the first combination of Southern folk music performed by true practitioners of the tradition on commercial recordings catering to a general market.” 56 But such a definition excludes the “traditional and ‘old-time’ music present on discs prior to June of 1922,” Bronner argued. In his article, he went on to survey nearly twenty older Edison recordings of the same or similar material by popular artists such as Billy Golden, the Edison Male Quartet, and John J. Kimmel. The only salient difference, it seems, is that these earlier recording artists were not native Southerners who could be considered “true practitioners” of the region’s folk music. 57

Furthermore, the interpretation of country music as intrinsically southern has also biased understandings of other aspects of the genre’s history, including the constituency of its prewar audience and the causes for its unprecedented national popularity during World War II. Perhaps less directly, it has also obscured much of the extraordinary ethnic and racial diversity found on hillbilly recordings, particularly African Americans’ significant but largely unrecognized involvement in this genre, due to its emphasis on the Anglo-Celtic folk roots of prewar commercial country music. 58 Thus, scholars have tended to ignore or downplay the popular and vernacular musical tributaries from outside of the American South that fed and influenced hillbilly music. All of which is to say that the southern thesis has narrowed the genealogy of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century sources of this music and closed off a broader, more inclusive discussion of its precommercial roots and commercial origins.

In formulating the southern thesis, Malone helped enshrine the interpretive concepts of “folk” and “traditional” as the touchstones by which to assess the authenticity of country musicians and styles. “One cannot join the ‘folk’; one must be born into the culture,” Malone asserted in the first edition of Country Music U.S.A. Thus, a whole parade of country recording artists and radio entertainers, “[n]‌o matter what their talents might be, and regardless of the skills they might possess in imitating folk styles,” he argued, “can never be considered as authentic folk performers.” 59 Although the now outmoded, intrinsically problematic concepts of “folk” and “traditional” have largely been abandoned in folklore studies, they continue to be deployed as evaluative standards within country music studies. For instance, in his 2014 response titled “ ‘The Southern Thesis’: Revisited and Reaffirmed,” in the “Country Music” special issue of the Journal of American Folklore , Malone dismissed professional New York studio singers such as Vernon Dalhart and Carson J. Robison as “imitators of the rural musicians who were beginning to appear in American entertainment at that time.” 60 Nevertheless, these so-called citybilly artists made thousands of profitable hillbilly recordings, that were advertised and marketed as such. To marginalize Dalhart, Robison, and other citybillies, who collectively accounted for as much as one-third of the estimated 11,000 hillbilly releases between 1924 and 1932, seems an ahistorical exercise based solely on arbitrary definitions of who and what are authentically “folk” and “traditional.” 61

Perhaps the most significant blind spot of Malone’s southern thesis, however, is that it almost completely disregards the business history and commercial dimensions of country music. Since the inception of the field, scholars have largely studied country music in isolation from both the broader history of the US recording industry and of other contemporaneous genres of American popular music, because of their southern-thesis-inspired interpretation of it as essentially a rural southern folk music outside of, and separate from, the commercial world of capitalist imperatives and profit-driven motives. 62 As Bill Ivey, then director of the Country Music Foundation, complained in a 1986 review of Malone’s first revised edition of Country Music, U.S.A. , “Businessmen, songwriters, and other players have walk-on parts or a quick scene here and there, but the roles of law, institutions, and commercial alliances are virtually ignored.” 63 To conceptualize the hillbilly music of the 1920s and 1930s as simply a commercialized variant of southern folk music disregards the numerous ways in which record producers, for example, defined, shaped, and otherwise influenced this music: through, for instance, their decisions regarding the selection of field-recording locations; artists, songs and tunes; release takes; and series assignments. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, record company officials “influenced the scope and sound of hillbilly music in so many ways that it simply cannot be considered a pure, unmediated expression of southern culture.” 64 Even though most corporate records of the prewar companies involved in the hillbilly recording industry are no longer extant, some source material regarding the business practices of these early firms do still exist. Few such business histories have been produced, however, and at least some of this inattention can be blamed on scholars’ persistent focus on country music as a rural folk tradition and their attendant preoccupation with chronicling its precommercial folk genealogy. 65

Areas for Future Research

The dominance of the southern thesis has inadvertently created gaps in the scholarly literature that now provide significant opportunities for researchers to advance the field of country music studies. For example, since the 1970s, regional revisionists and other scholars have produced biographical studies of various New England and Midwestern fiddlers and string bands who made prewar commercial recordings, including Alanson “Mellie” Dunham, Jasper “Jep” Bisbee, John Baltzell, the Plymouth Vermont Old-Time Dance Orchestra, and John Wilfahrt’s Concertina Orchstra. 66 But more studies are needed of such non-southern musicians and of their musical traditions and music scenes, both in historical and contemporary settings, all of which, as Paul L. Tyler has recommended, “should be considered in writing the full history of American country music.” 67 Also needed are more detailed and insightful comparative analyses of American regional musical styles, especially “northern” and “southern” fiddling and string band music, so that scholars are equipped with a better sense of what elements constitute these regional styles and what distinguishes them from one another. Scholars should be careful, however, to avoid essentialist arguments in their approach. Terms such as “northern fiddler” or “midwestern string band” are just as intrinsically problematic as “southern musician.” Scholars also need to approach geographical place as more than just what Brian Rusted has called “a mere setting, the nominal locale where certain historical actions occurred.” In particular, scholars must “treat region as a dynamic concept,” as Robert H. Ferguson has advised, in a way that appreciates not only “vibrant cultural exchange” across regional boundaries but also how such interactions link a particular region to other regional, national, and global forms of culture. 68 Furthermore, scholars should avoid the inclination to “just add and stir” (to borrow a phrase from women’s studies) non-southern musicians into otherwise conventional, southern-thesis-driven histories. Rather, the inclusion of these musicians requires scholars to, at long last, abandon the southern thesis and to fundamentally reinterpret country music and the multitude of American regional traditions and musical tributaries that contributed to its creation. In short, as regional revisionists have long argued, the time has arrived to embrace the broader, multiregional traditions of American country music and to fully integrate them into a comprehensive, truly national master narrative of country music.

Beyond reconceptualizing country music as an American music, the time has also come, in this age of globalization, for scholars to traverse national boundaries (see Nathan D. Gibson’s chapter 24 on global country music in this volume). Regional styles of country music around the globe have multiplied prolifically since World War II, as a 2015 New York Times article profiling the country music scene in Kenya suggests. 69 With the exception of country music in Canada and Australia, however, the international presence of this music has received surprisingly little attention until recently. 70 One of the most important and welcome recent trends in country music studies is a focus on the music’s global popularity and the ethnographic documentation of traditions in such countries as Brazil, the Czech Republic, Japan, and Thailand; scholars would profit from redoubling their efforts in this exciting subfield. 71 Most such studies chronicle postwar musical traditions and scenes, but the reality of country music’s international diffusion stretches back to the 1920s when, as American cultural imperialism expanded around the globe, US record companies marketed 78-rpm recordings of this music throughout the British Empire, including in South Africa and India, and even in Japan, Sweden, and Portugal. 72 As yet, though, scholars have conducted far too few analyses of American country music’s prewar global dimensions. 73

Conversely, the field of country music studies will also profit from additional accounts that explore the significant but understudied influence of global musics on country music in the United States. Provocative studies of the Hawaiian guitar’s impact on American music by Brian Rusted and John W. Troutman serve as excellent models for this kind of scholarship, as do Robert B. Klymasz’s and James P. Leary’s pioneering accounts of the influence of various eastern and central European immigrant traditions on country music in western Canada and the upper American Midwest, respectively. 74 Much more remains to be done, though, in this productive field, and this kind of work will undoubtedly help reorient standard narratives by connecting country music, both as a commercial genre and a performative tradition, to broader global music traditions.

Scholars must also focus more attention on prewar country music as a product of a modern, urban-industrial America. Not only did record companies employ progressive business practices and state-of-the-art technology to record, manufacture, advertise, and distribute this music, but the lived experiences and musical influences of the artists who made these records were deeply shaped by a modern world and its mass culture. Even though many hillbilly singers and musicians spent much of their lives in small towns or even rural areas, their contact with the powerful mass media of commercial radio and phonograph records enabled them to participate in a broad national mass culture. As I argued in Linthead Stomp , these artists were “children of the modern age, for they were among the first generation of southerners to be deeply influenced by automobiles, movies, radios, phonograph recordings, and mass-circulation newspapers and magazines.” Although rooted in local and regional vernacular cultures, much of prewar hillbilly music reflected the modernizing forces of industrial development, urban growth, and farm-to-factory migration that engulfed the American South during the half-century before World War II. Scholars, thus, should view this music as being as “thoroughly modern in its origins and evolution as its quintessentially modern counterpart, jazz.” 75

Most of all, scholars need to approach prewar country music principally as a commercial music and devote greater attention to the influential role of the U.S. recording industry in creating it. Although some scholars—notably Archie Green, Charles K. Wolfe, Tony Russell, Richard A. Peterson, and Barry Mazor—have published important studies in this area, a significant amount of research remains to be done on the business, advertising, and marketing practices of the hillbilly recording industry. 76 As I have argued elsewhere, country music, like all other genres of American popular music, is a commercially constructed category that, since its inception in the 1920s, has been continuously redefined by, among others, record company officials who were charged with producing and promoting recordings that would enjoy brisk sales among the nation’s record buyers. 77 Conceptualizing hillbilly music as primarily a commercial product can help us understand how corporate recording practices, advertising strategies, and marketplace concerns, along with the constraints of technology, transformed the hybridized music of ordinary Americans—albeit chiefly white, rural, and working-class Southerners—into the appealing and profitable regionalized genre that we recognize as the precursor of modern country music.

In particular, a business-focused approach reorients the discussion of country music’s southernness by placing the emphasis more properly on the commercialization of the music. Doing so reveals that the music’s regional identity was not the product of some unique folk culture that supposedly existed only in the American South, as Malone has argued. Rather, its southernness resulted chiefly from the prewar recording activities and advertising campaigns of the New York-based record companies that produced and sold these records. During the 1920s, fiddle and string band music flourished throughout much of the United States, but, as folklorist Norm Cohen has suggested, the US recording industry regionalized this music by intentionally concentrating its field-recording sessions in the American South and by affixing to this music particular southern descriptions and images in its advertising, both of which formed much of the basis for what Simon J. Bronner has called country music’s “myth of southern origin.” 78 In short, approaching country music as a commercial genre helps explain its southernness more accurately and historically as a product of the US recording industry and refocuses our attention squarely, though not solely, on its business dimensions. In doing so, this advantageous approach can remedy significant lacunae that exist within the current scholarship and, in turn, advance the field of country music studies in new and provocative directions.

Country music studies now stands at a pivotal moment. A series of important recent books and articles by scholars working in a variety of academic disciplines are beginning to push the field beyond the decades-old constraints imposed on it by the influential but problematic concept of the southern thesis. Creative approaches to non-southern musicians and musical traditions; an appreciation of the reciprocal influences of American grassroots music and national and global musics; a recognition of the modern, urban-industrial sources of prewar hillbilly music; and an increased focus on the business history of country music have all yielded, and will continue to yield, revelations long precluded by the basic premises of the southern thesis. Country music studies, I believe, has arrived at the beginning of a post-southern thesis era, and much of the scholarship produced in this field in the next ten years will almost certainly differ dramatically from the more traditional, southern-focused interpretations of the last five decades.

Despite the promise of post-southern thesis scholarship, a number of obstacles remain in the dismantling and clearing away of this stubborn concept. For example, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, through its exhibitions and some of the books published under its imprimatur, contributes significantly to the perpetuation of country music’s southern identity. Indeed, local civic leaders and tourism officials have transformed Nashville into “Music City, U.S.A.”—or simply “Music City,” as the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau now officially bills the city. In Nashville especially, there are few indications that the entrenched myth of country music’s southernness will be replaced with a more inclusive and historically accurate interpretation. Record executives, radio program directors and deejays, museum and tourist attraction staff, historical reissue producers, fans, and even many scholars are far too deeply invested, both emotionally and financially, in the romantic notion of country music as a rural, folk tradition of the American South and of Southern Appalachia in particular. From a strictly commercial perspective, one cannot deny that selling such a myth makes good business sense. But the progress of country music studies depends on a penetrating examination of country music, in full historical perspective, within larger national and global contexts.

Writing a new master narrative of country music poses a number of challenges to scholars, including finding new answers to “perennial questions” that Bill C. Malone himself, the principal architect of the southern thesis, has, over the years, raised “about country music’s alleged southernness, identity, and authenticity.” 79 At a 1989 conference held to celebrate the opening of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Southern Folklife Collection, Malone, reflecting on his thirty years of scholarship, asked rhetorically, “Is the music Southern in either origin or ultimate meaning? … Is country music a direct outgrowth of folk music? Or is the music preeminently a product of commercial developments and decisions? And is country music truly a reflection of the society in which it exists? Too often,” he went on to lament, “the answers to such questions have been presented simply and accepted with little challenge, and only rarely have they inspired the kinds of rigorous debate that any field of serious scholarship deserves.” 80 Over the course of his fifty-plus years as a scholar, which have yielded more than half a dozen books and a multitude of articles, Malone has offered his own responses to these questions. But there are undoubtedly other ways to answer them.

With country music studies now entering its sixth decade as an academic discipline, as scholars, we must critically reevaluate what we know, or think we know, about country music and engage in “the kinds of rigorous debate” that Malone called for to advance the field interpretively. Only by asking such probing questions will scholars be able to extend the discussion of country music in exciting new directions, beyond the narrow, restrictive paradigms and concepts that have structured it for the last five decades, especially the binaries of “northern/southern,” “rural/urban,” “folk/commercial,” and “authentic/inauthentic.” Surely Malone’s questions, posed more than a quarter century ago, provide a useful starting place to begin achieving these goals. At the same time, however, current and succeeding generations of scholars, informed by new sources and insights and armed with new theories and methodological approaches from an ever-widening array of multidisciplinary fields, will need to formulate new questions about, among other things, the southernness of country music and its rural folk origins. Despite the demonstrated staying power of the southern thesis, serious and thoroughgoing future scholarship, I predict, will reflect as well as foster an increased appreciation for conceptualizing country music principally as the commercial global enterprise that it has always been.

For critical reading, encouragement, and suggestions in the preparation of this chapter, the author wishes to thank Kathleen Drowne, Travis Stimeling, Tony Russell, Ronald D. Cohen, Bill C. Malone, James E. Akenson, Brian Ward, Kevin Fontenot, Paul Gifford, Lance Ledbetter, and the late Archie Green.

1. D. K. Wilgus , “An Introduction to the Study of Hillbilly Music,” Journal of American Folklore [ JAF ] 78, no. 309 (July–September 1965): 196 .

2. Monroe L. Billington , “Introduction,” in The South: A Central Theme? ed. Monroe L. Billington (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 1 .

3. Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino , “Introduction: The End of Southern History,” in The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism , ed. Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 7 . The scholarly literature on southern exceptionalism is extensive; for more on the concept, see, for example, James M. McPherson , “Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New Look at an Old Question,” Civil War History 29, no. 3 (September 1983): 230–244 ; and Laura F. Edwards , “Southern History as U.S. History,” Journal of Southern History 75, no. 3 (August 2009): 533–564 .

4. If Roberts did not coin the term “southern thesis” as it applies to Malone’s regional argument, at the very least he can be credited with one of its first printed usages. See Roderick J. Roberts , “An Introduction to the Study of Northern Country Music,” Journal of Country Music 7, no. 4 (January 1978): 26 .

It is worth noting that for the sake of convenience in this chapter, I employ the labels prewar country music and hillbilly music interchangeably, if anachronistically.

6. For examples of this regional interpretation in country music scholarship that precedes even the Journal of American Folklore ’s 1965 “Hillbilly Issue,” see Fred G. Hoeptner , “Folk and Hillbilly Music: The Background of Their Relation,” Caravan 16 (April–May 1959): 16 ; and D. K. Wilgus , Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship since 1898 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1959), 433 .

7. Bill C. Malone , Country Music, U.S.A.: A Fifty-Year History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), viii .

8. Ibid . 5. The context of Malone’s discussion, however, implies that he meant roughly the eleven states that once constituted the Confederate States of America (“[t]‌he socially ingrown rural South, from the tidewater of Virginia to the pine barrens of East Texas”).

9. In formulating his theory, Malone identified the persistence of a unique rural folk culture to explain the distinctiveness of the American South, an idea first advanced by the eminent southern historian David M. Potter in a 1961 article, “The Enigma of the South” (though Malone does not cite this work in his footnotes or bibliography). David M. Potter , “The Enigma of the South,” Yale Review 51 (October 1961): 142–151 . For a fuller analysis of Potter’s concept, see Charles Winston Joyner , “The South as a Folk Culture: David Potter and the Southern Enigma,” in The Southern Enigma: Essays on Race, Class, and Folk Culture , ed. Walter J. Fraser Jr . and Winfred B. Moore Jr . (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 157–167 ; and Charles Joyner , Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 141–150 .

Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. , viii, ix.

11. Ibid . 3–4. See also Simon J. Bronner , Old-Time Music Makers of New York State (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 41 .

Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. , 3–5.

13. Bill C. Malone , Southern Music/American Music (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1979), esp. 1–5, 18, 153 ; Bronner, Old-Time Music Makers , 195, n. 37. Malone advanced this same argument in his introductory essay to the “Music” section in the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture , ed. Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 985–992 ; as well as in his expanded introduction to the stand-alone volume, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture , ed. Charles Reagan Wilson , vol. 12, Music , ed. Bill C. Malone (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 1–17 .

Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. , vii.

15. Ibid . 185, 192–193.

16. James N. Gregory , The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of White and Black Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005) ; Gerald W. Haslam , with Alexandra Haslam Russell and Richard Chon , Workin’ Man Blues: Country Music in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) ; Peter La Chapelle , Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) . For other studies that employ a similar explanation to account for the spread of country music traditions, see James N. Gregory , American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) ; Nicholas Dawidoff , In the Country of Country: People and Places in American Music (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997) ; and Chad Berry , Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000) .

17. Charles K. Wolfe , Tennessee Strings: The Story of Country Music in Tennessee (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977) ; Wolfe , Kentucky Country: Folk and Country Music of Kentucky (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982) ; Ivan M. Tribe , Mountaineer Jamboree: Country Music in West Virginia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984) ; Wayne W. Daniel , Pickin’ on Peachtree: A History of Country Music in Atlanta, Georgia (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1990) ; Jean A. Boyd , The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998) .

18. Richard A. Peterson and Russell J. Davis , “The Fertile Crescent of Country Music,” Journal of Country Music 6, no. 1 (Spring 1975): 19, 21, 26 .

19. Ibid . 23. It is worth mentioning, however, that on the point of country performers’ rural origins, Peterson and Davis’s results were skewed toward that conclusion due to the fact that they defined “cities” as urban places with only extraordinarily large populations (“greater than 250,000”; Ibid . 20 ). Cultural geographers George O. Carney and Paul Fryer reached the same conclusions in their respective studies: George O. Carney , “T for Texas, T for Tennessee: The Origins of American Country Music Notables,” Journal of Geography 78, no. 6 (November 1979): 218–225 ; and Paul Fryer , “Local Styles and Country Music: An Introductory Essay,” Popular Music and Society 8, nos. 3–4 (1982): 63–76 , reprinted in All That Glitters: Country Music in America , ed. George H. Lewis (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1993), 62–74 . It should be noted, however, that much of Carney’s article was plagiarized from that of Peterson and Davis.

20. See, for example, George O. Carney , “Spatial Diffusion of the All-Country Music Radio Stations in the United States, 1971-74,” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 13, no. 46 (Summer 1977): 58–66 ; Carney , “From Down Home to Uptown: The Diffusion of Country-Music Radio Stations in the United States,” Journal of Geography 76, no. 3 (March 1977): 104–110 ; Carney , “Country Music and the South: A Cultural Geography Perspective,” Journal of Cultural Geography 1, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 1980): 16–33 ; Billy D. White and Frederick A. Day , “Country Music Radio and American Culture Regions,” Journal of Cultural Geography 16, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1997): 21–35 ; Stephen A. Smith , “Sounds of the South: The Rhetorical Saga of Country Music Lyrics,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 45, no. 2 (Winter 1980): 164–172 ; and Melton A. McLaurin , “Songs of the South: The Changing Image of the South in Country Music,” in You Wrote My Life: Lyrical Themes in Country Music , ed. Melton A. McLaurin and Richard A. Peterson (Philadelphia, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1992), 15–33 .

21. Bill C. Malone , Country Music, U.S.A. , rev. ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985) ; Bill C. Malone , Country Music, U.S.A. , 2nd rev. ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002) ; Bill C. Malone and Jocelyn R. Neal , Country Music, U.S.A. , 3rd rev. ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010) ; Paul L. Tyler , “The Rise of Rural Rhythm,” in The Hayloft Gang: The Story of the National Barn Dance , ed. Chad Berry (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 31 .

22. Bill C. Malone , “The South and Country Music,” in The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music , ed. Paul Kingsbury (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 529 .

23. See, for example, Bill C. Malone , “Country Music, the South, and Americanism,” Mississippi Folklore Register 10, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 54 ; and Malone , Don’t Get above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002), esp. 13–15 .

Malone, Southern Music/American Music , 153.

25. Richard A. Peterson and Paul DiMaggio , “From Region to Class, The Changing Locus of Country Music: A Test of the Massification Hypothesis,” Social Forces 53, no. 3 (March 1975): 503–504 .

Peterson and Davis, “Fertile Crescent,” 19.

27. On these two concepts, see John Egerton , The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974) .

28. John B. Boles , “Introduction: The Dixie Difference,” in Dixie Dateline: A Journalist Portrait of the Contemporary South , ed. John B. Boles (Houston, TX: Rice University Studies, 1983), 1 .

29. For examples of these and other regional revisionists’ studies, see Robert B. Klymasz , “‘Sounds You Never Before Heard’: Ukrainian Country Music in Western Canada,” Ethnomusicology 16, no. 3 (September 1972): 372–380 ; Neil V. Rosenberg , “‘Folk’ and ‘Country’ Music in the Canadian Maritimes: A Regional Model,” Journal of Country Music 5, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 76–83 ; Michael Taft , “‘That’s Two More Dollars’: Jimmy Linegar’s Success with Country Music in Newfoundland,” Folklore Forum 7, no. 2 (1974): 99–120 ; Simon J. Bronner , “Woodhull’s Old Tyme Masters: A Hillbilly Band in the Northern Tradition,” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 12, no. 42 (Summer 1976): 54–63 , reprinted in Exploring Roots Music: Twenty Years of the JEMF Quarterly, ed. Nolan Porterfield (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), 127–134 ; Simon J. Bronner , “Country Music Culture in Central New York State,” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 13, no. 48 (Winter 1977): 171–182 ; Paul F. Wells , booklet notes to New England Traditional Fiddling: An Anthology of Recordings, 1926-1975 (John Edwards Memorial Foundation, Inc. JEMF-105) ; Roberts, “Northern Country Music,” 23–28; Simon J. Bronner , “The Country Music Tradition in Western New York State,” Journal of Country Music 7, no. 4 (January 1978): 29–46, 55–59 ; Peter Narváez , “Country Music in Diffusion: Juxtaposition and Syncretism in the Popular Music of Newfoundland,” Journal of Country Music 7, no. 2 (May 1978): 93–101 ; James P. Leary , “Ethnic Country Music on Superior’s South Shore,” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 19, no. 72 (Winter 1983): 219–230 ; Bronner, Old-Time Music Makers ; George H. Lewis , “A Tombstone Every Mile: Country Music in Maine,” in Lewis , All That Glitters , 102–115 ; James P. Leary , Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) ; Paul L. Tyler , “Hillbilly Music Re-Imagined: Folk and Country Music in the Midwest,” JAF 127, no. 504 (Spring 2014): 159–190 ; Clifford R. Murphy , Yankee Twang: Country and Western Music in New England (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014) ; and James P. Leary , Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937-1946 (Madison and Atlanta: University of Wisconsin Press and Dust-to-Digital, 2015) .

Roberts, “Northern Country Music,” 24.

31. Ibid . 26.

32. Conceived of as a sort of (belated) sequel to the journal’s 1965 “Hillbilly Issue,” the 2014 “Country Music” special issue featured articles by Ronald D. Cohen, Patrick Huber, Paul L. Tyler, and Clifford R. Murphy, with comments by Bill C. Malone, Erika Brady, and Norm Cohen. See Thomas A. DuBois and James P. Leary , “Country Music,”, JAF 127, no. 504 (Spring 2014) , special issue.

Murphy, Yankee Twang , 1, 13.

Bronner, Old-Time Music Makers , xv, 47.

35. Ibid . 46–47 . For other critiques of Malone’s migration thesis, see Roberts, “Northern Country Music,” 24; and Peterson and DiMaggio, “From Region to Class,” 500–502.

Bronner, Old-Time Music Makers , xv.

37. Ibid . 41. See also Bronner, “Country Music Culture,” 171; Lewis, “Tombstone Every Mile,” 105.

38. Brian Rusted , “Hank Snow and the Eastern Frontiers of Western Music,” in Challenging Frontiers: The Canadian West , ed. Lorry W. Felske and Beverly Rasporich (Calgary, Alberta, Canada: University of Calgary Press, 2004), 184 .

Contrary to Rusted, other scholars have explicitly argued for the importance of geographical place in any serious understanding of country music. See, for example, Wolfe, Tennessee Strings , vii–viii.

Rusted, “Hank Snow,” 184–186, 187.

41. Ibid . 185–186.

42. Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. , 18–19; see also ibid . rev. ed., 5, 27.

Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. , viii.

44. Ibid . 18–19, 22–23 ; Bill C. Malone , Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers: Southern Culture and the Roots of Country Music (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993), 43–68 .

Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. , viii–ix, 3.

46. Ibid . rev. ed., 29.

47. Rusted, “Hank Snow,” 191–195; Karl Hagstrom Miller , Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Popular Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), esp. 215–217 .

48. Charles Hiroshi Garrett , Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 168 .

49. Robert H. Ferguson , review of Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South , by Patrick Huber (2008), H-Southern Music at H-Net Online, accessed January 5, 2015, https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23122 .

See, e.g., Malone, Don’t Get above Your Raisin’ , 16.

51. Ibid . 16.

52. Patrick Huber , Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), xiv .

53. Ibid . esp. xiv, 6.

54. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Bourne Kennedy , The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music , 5th ed. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2007), 347 , s.v. “hillbilly songs.”

Malone and Neal, Country Music, U.S.A. , 35.

56. Simon J. Bronner , “Old-Time Tunes on Edison Records, 1899-1923,” Journal of Country Music 8, no. 1 (May 1979): 95 . See also Roberts, “Northern Country Music,” 26.

Bronner, “Old-Time Tunes on Edison Records, 1899-1923,” 95.

58. Patrick Huber , “Black Hillbillies: African American Musicians on Old-Time Records, 1924-1932,” in Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music , ed. Diane Pecknold (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 19–81 .

Malone, Country Music, U.S.A. , x.

60. Bill C. Malone , “‘The Southern Thesis’: Revisited and Reaffirmed,” JAF 127, no. 504 (Spring 2014): 228 , and the article to which he was responding: Patrick Huber , “The New York Sound: Citybilly Recording Artists and the Creation of Hillbilly Music, 1924-1932,” JAF 127, no. 504 (Spring 2014): 140–158 . See also Norm Cohen , “A Few Thoughts on Provocative Points,” JAF 127, no. 504 (Spring 2014): 233–234 , in which he notes other country music scholars’ similarly dismissive comments about Dalhart’s recordings.

Huber, “New York Sound,” 145.

Huber, “New York Sound,” 148. Two important studies that do situate hillbilly music within broader commercial contexts are Norm Cohen’s liner notes to Minstrels and Tunesmiths: The Commercial Roots of Early Country Music (John Edwards Memorial Foundation, Inc. JEMF-109) and Miller’s Segregating Sound .

63. Bill Ivey , review of Country Music, U.S.A. (rev. ed.), by Bill C. Malone in The Country Reader: Twenty-Five Years of the Journal of Country Music, ed. Paul Kingsbury (Nashville, TN: Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), 290 . Originally published in Journal of Country Music 11, no. 2 (1986): 91–93 .

64. Patrick Huber , “Before ‘The Big Bang of Country Music’: Recording Hillbilly Music on Location Prior to the 1927 Bristol Sessions,” International Country Music Journal 2016 , ed. Don Cusic (2016), 31–32 .

65. Huber, “Black Hillbillies,” 58, n. 9. Whereas scholars have failed to undertake many studies of the prewar country music industry, a rich literature exists about the music’s postwar business history. For examples of such studies, see “The Unseen Hand: How Producers Shape the Country Sound: A JCM Special Report ,” Journal of Country Music 12, no. 2 (1987) ; Bill Ivey , “The Bottom Line: Business Practices That Shaped Country Music,” in Country: The Music and the Musicians , ed. Paul Kingsbury , Alan Axelrod , and Susan Costello , rev. and updated ed. (New York: Country Music Foundation and Abbeville Press, 1994, 280–311 ; Joli Jensen , The Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialization, and Country Music (Nashville, TN: Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt University Press, 1998) ; Diane Pecknold , The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007) ; and Michael Jarrett , Producing Country: The Inside Story of the Great Recordings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014) .

66. See, for example, Sally Thompson , “Plymouth Old-Time Dance Orchestra,” Vermont History 40, no. 3 (Summer 1972): 185–189 ; Paul F. Wells , “Mellie Dunham: Maine’s Champion Fiddler,” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly 12, no. 43 (Autumn 1976): 112–118 ; Simon J. Bronner , “John Baltzell: Champion Old Time Fiddler,” Old Time Music 27 (Winter 1977/78): 13–14 ; Howard L. Sacks , “John Baltzell, A Country Fiddler from the Heartland,” Journal of Country Music 10, no. 1 (1985): 18–24, 33–35 ; David Sanderson , Mellie Dunham, A Remembrance (Waterford, ME: Norway Downtown Revitalization, 2003) ; Howard L. Sacks , “From the Barn to the Bowery and Back Again: Musical Routes in Rural Ohio, 1800–1929,” JAF 116, no. 461 (Summer 2003): 314–338 ; Paul Gifford , “Jasper E. ‘Jep’ Bisbee: Old-Time Michigan Dance Fiddler,” Old-Time Herald 9, no. 6 (Winter 2004/2005): 30–34 ; and Tony Russell , “Nicholson’s Players,” Old-Time Herald 13, no. 5 (March 2013): 28–35 .

Tyler, “Hillbilly Music Re-Imagined,” 160. Indeed, Peter Narváez specifically argues for the importance of studies of “regional and local performers, well outside of the southern ‘fertile crescent’ of country music” as being “essential to an understanding of the diffusional processes whereby the music has spread.” Narváez, “Country Music in Diffusion,” 93.

Rusted, “Hank Snow,” 185; Ferguson, review of Linthead Stomp .

69. Isma’il Kushkush , “Country Music Finds a Home Far from Home, in Kenya,” New York Times , July 1, 2015 .

70. In addition to the Canadian studies cited in endnote 29, see, for example, Tim B. Rogers , “Country Music Bands during the 1950s: A Comparative Survey,” in Ethnomusicology in Canada , ed. Robert Witmer (Toronto, Ontario: Institute for Canadian Music, 1990), 225–235 ; Linda Jean Daniel , “If You’re Not in It for Love: Canadian Women in Country Music,” in The Women of Country Music: A Reader , ed. Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 161–185 ; Andrew Smith , “The Yodeling Cowgirls: Australian Women and Country Music,” in Wolfe and Akenson , Women of Country Music , 186–201 ; Graeme Smith , Singing Australian: A History of Folk and Country Music (North Melbourne, Australia: Pluto Press, 2005) ; Daniel Fisher , “Mediating Kinship: Country, Family, and Radio in Northern Australia,” Cultural Anthropology 24, no. 2 (May 2009): 280–312 ; Byron Dueck , “Civil Twilight: Country Music, Alcohol and the Spaces of Manitoban Aboriginal Sociability,” in Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience , ed. Georgina Born (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 239–256 ; Sarah Baker and Alison Huber , “Locating the Canon in Tamworth: Historical Narratives, Cultural Memory and Australia’s ‘Country Music Capital,’” Popular Music 32, no. 2 (May 2013): 223–240 ; and Toby Martin , Yodelling Boundary Riders: Country Music in Australia since the 1920s (University of Melbourne: Lyrebird Press, 2015) .

71. Among such works are Tōru Mitsui , “The Reception of the Music of American Southern Whites in Japan,” in Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined , ed. Neil V. Rosenberg (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 275–293 ; Alexander Sebastian Dent , River of Tears: Country Music, Memory, and Modernity in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009) ; Jane M. Ferguson , “Another Country Is the Past: Western Cowboys, Lanna Nostalgia, and Bluegrass Aesthetics as Performed by Professional Musicians in Northern Thailand,” American Ethnologist 37, no. 2 (May 2010): 227–240 ; Lee Bidgood , “Performing Americanness, Locating Identity: Bluegrass and Ethnography in the Czech Republic” (PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 2010) ; Amporn Jirattikorn , “Lukthung: Authenticity and Modernity in Thai Country Music,” Asian Music 37, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2006): 24–50 . For a brief overview of the history of global country music and a selected bibliography, see Nathan D. Gibson , “Sound Review: International Country Music,” JAF 127, no. 504 (Spring 2014): 236–242 . See also Gibson’s chapter 24 in this volume.

Gibson, “Sound Review,” 236; Tony Russell, Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942 , with editorial research by Bob Pinson, assisted by the staff of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 9–33, 44–45.

73. See, for example, Bob Coltman , “Habitantbilly: French-Canadian Old Time Music,” Old Time Music 11 (Winter 1973): 9–13 and Old Time Music 12 (Spring 1974): 9–14 ; Graeme Smith , “Australian Country Music and the Hillbilly Yodel,” Popular Music 13, no. 3 (October 1994): 297–311 ; Rusted, “Hank Snow,” 181–200; Melissa Bellanta and Toby Martin , “The Sins of the Son: Country Music and Masculine Sentimentality in 1930s to 1940s Australia,” Australian Feminist Studies 27, no. 74 (December 2012): 355–372 ; Martin, Yodelling Boundary Riders , 11–80; and Andrew Smith , “Tex Morton: Australia’s Country Music Pioneer,” International Country Music Journal 2016 , ed. Don Cusic (Nashville: Brackish Publishing, 2016), 83–108 .

74. Rusted, “Hank Snow,” 181–200; John W. Troutman , Kika Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016) ; Klymasz, “ ‘Sounds You Never Before Heard,’ ” 372–380; Leary, “Ethnic Country Music,” 219–230; Leary, Folksongs of Another America .

Huber, Linthead Stomp , xiv, 37, 39.

76. See, for example, Archie Green’s pioneering series of “Commercial Music Graphics” articles that appeared in the John Edwards Memorial Foundation Newsletter (later the John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly ) between 1968 and 1985; Charles K. Wolfe , “The Legend That Peer Built: Reappraising the Bristol Sessions,” Journal of Country Music 12, no. 2 (1989): 24–35 , reprinted in The Bristol Sessions: Writings about the Big Bang of Country Music , ed. Charles K. Wolfe and Ted Olson (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2005), 17–39 ; Tony Russell , “Country Music on Location: ‘Field Recording’ Before Bristol,” Popular Music 26, no. 1 (January 2007): 23–31 ; Tony Russell , “Aftershocks: Location Recording after the Bristol Sessions,” in Cusic, International Country Music Journal 2016 , 57–65 ; Richard A. Peterson , Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) ; and Barry Mazor , Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014) .

Huber, “Black Hillbillies,” 52–53.

Cohen, “A Few Thoughts,” 233; Bronner, Old-Time Music Makers , 41.

Malone and Neal, Country Music, U.S.A. , xviii.

80. Bill C. Malone , “Country Music and the Academy: A Thirty-Year Professional Odyssey,” in Sounds of the South , ed. Daniel W. Patterson (Chapel Hill, NC: Southern Folklife Collection, 1991), 54 .

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Lecture: Folk Music and the Nordic Newcomers

Folk Music and the Nordic Newcomers: Swedish Immigrant Musicians in the Upper Midwest Renee Vaughan Tuesday, April 30, 2024 4:00-5:00 p.m. Memorial Library , Room 126, 728 State St Free and Open to the Public

Join 2024 Musician-in-Residence Renee Vaughan (nyckelharpa) for a public presentation on her research into first-generation Swedish immigrant musicians. Based on a variety of sources (from Mills Music Library and elsewhere) and contacts on both sides of the Atlantic, Vaughan will present her findings and the biographies of a variety of incredible Swedish immigrant musicians.

We are pleased to be joining our colleagues from Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest , Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures , and Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+ in presenting this event.

Thesis Paper on Bangladeshi Folk Song

Folk songs and music of a community, uninfluenced by any sophisticated musical rules or any standard Music styles. Bangladesh has a rich folk music, which includes both religious and secular songs.

Folk music may be described as that type of ancient music, which springs from the heart of a community, based on their natural style of expression, uninfluenced by the rules of classical music and modern popular songs. Any mode or form created by the combination of tune, voice and dance may be described as music. Thus, the combination of folk song, folk dance, and folk tune may be called folk music

The history of folk music composition can be traced back to 8 th century between (1800-1850) A.D; which was the time for growth of Charya Geeti. Generations of rural poets; composers created enormous tradition of Bangla folk music. Of which “Baul Song” is the most remarkable. The folk song of Bangladesh is a mixture of Vaishnaism and Sufism. It also may be classified as being an emotional, secular, sectarian and religious song.

Characteristic of Bangladeshi folk song

i. It is composed by rural folk on basis of ancient rules transmitted orally. ii. These ancient rules of music have not been influence by classical or modern music. iii. This song may be sung in groups or individually. iv. No regular practice is required for folk music. v. It is composed and performed by illiterate or semi-illiterate people. vi. It is a spontaneous expression in easy language, local dialect, and simple tune.

Both words and tune are appealing. Despite its universal appeal it uses local dialect. ix. It depends upon nature and the rural environment. x. It is an explicit manifestation of the joys and sorrows of daily life. xi. It uses simple and natural rhythms. It contains a strong emotive expression of human love and separation.

In Bangladesh folk music has great variety, with songs being composed on the culture, festivals, views of life, natural beauty, rivers and reverie life. These songs are also about social inequality and poverty, about the material world and the supernatural. Mystical songs have been composed using the metaphors of rivers and boats. We can classify this mainly two ways.

Bangladeshi folk music therefore varies from region to region. . Some songs are regional in character, but others are common to both Bangladesh and west Bengal Also Folk songs may be sung individually or in chorus.

Captured Area

Different folk songs belong to different regions of Bangladesh and West Bengal and are listed below:

i. Bhatiyali: These types of songs are generally sung by boatman. It is seen nearly all regions of Bangladesh, basically the riverside area. ii. Bhawaiya : Actually this kind of sung by the Coachman .Specially Rajshahi, Dinajpur, Rangpur, and Pabna. iii. Baul and spiritual songs: It sung in Birbhum and Kushtia. iv. Jarigan: Jarigan sung as like as Charya by groups. It sung in Dhaka, Mymensingh, Sylhet, and Faridpur. v. Sari: In Sylhet and Mymensingh a group of singer sings this song with a particular theme. vi. Gambhira: In Rajshahi, Malda there is a special kind of song called Gambhira. It is sung by a grand-father and a grand-son about a specific topic.

Murshidi: It’s a religious song. Roof-beating song s: This song sung at the northern regions of Bangladesh. ix. Wedding sings : Basically in rural areas wedding songs are sung in weddings. x. Nil Puja: To celebrate the Puja in Bangladesh this type of songs are sung. xi. Pastoral songs: It’s a one kind of regional song, sung by the tribes . Specially In Mymensingh, Sylhet, Habiganj.

The folk music of Bangladesh is different from other music not only because of its distinctive mode but also because of the richness of its seventh note. Apart from its tunes, Bangla folk music is also distinct in its rhythm. Folk music has a basic style of composition and can be classified into four groups.

First, tunes consisting of: ‘Sa Ra Ma Pa’.

Secondly: ‘SaGaMaPa’.

Thirdly: ‘Sa RaGa Pa’

And fourthly: ‘Sa Ra Ga Ma Pa’

Folk music strictly follows this pattern, which is followed only in classical music. All folk songs in the world usually involve the pentatonic scale, which is found in Bangla folk songs as well as in Santal and Garo-Hajang songs.

Bangladesh has a good number of musical instrument originally of her own. Originally country musical instruments include:

i. Ektara ii. Dotara iii. Dhole iv. Bashi v. Mandira vi. Khanjani Sarinda. Dugdugi ix. Hari x. Kumkum xi. Zura Jhunjhuny

Now a day’s western instrument such as Guitar, Drums, Saxophone and Synthesizer etc are being used along side country instrument.

Contribution of singers

In Bangladesh folk song became so stronger and popular since many years ago. It became possible by the contribution of some singers of our country. Such as–

i. Lalan Shah ii. Siraj Saiah iii. Hasan Raja iv. Abbasuddin v. Radha Romon vi. Durbin Shaih vii. Shachin Dev Burman

In Bangladesh folk song used as a ceremonial, occasional, and festival also as a weeding song. Like as—

i. Pahela Baishak ii. Nabanna iii. Paush Parban iv. Chaitra Shankranti v. Hal-khata vi. Pahela Fulgun vii. Rural Marriage ceremonies Baishaki fair etc.

Present Condition

At present the condition of folk song in our country is very poor. Now a day our rich traditional folk song inevitable influenced by western music and culture. Band and pop music is getting popular in country. Now the modern Bangla song and also the folk song sung in western melody. TV has become the major source of entertainment. Bad kind of remixes and music videos are shown at the TV. Because of that we forget and neglect our rich traditional folk song. Now we like to present the condition of our folk song in our country in a graph.

Present Warriors

Though today’s generation has lack of interest in folk music, after then many singers of our country trying to encourage our young generation to listen our folk song. They are trying to modify the tunes, uses new instruments without changing the lyrics. Organizing a lot of concert for increasing popularity of folk song to our young generation and the people of all ages. Doing this they have to do a lot of hard work so we called them the present warriors. Such as-

Mustafa Zaman Abbasi
Kangaliny Sufia
Abdul Kuddus Boyati
Abdur Rahman Boyati
Farida Parveen
Bangla Band and many other unknown bauls.

Some contribution to keep the existence

Government and Non- Government organization like—-Bangla Academy, Nazrul institution, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Fine Arts institution, Chayanat, etc. play significant role to flourish Bangla folk song. Much popular person, singers, artists and other organization providing encouragement and popularizing Bangladeshi folk song.

If we want to get back our golden era we have to do some special work. Such as—–

i We have to do a lot of concert of folk music. ii. Creating consciousness to our young generation that our own song is the best. iii. Government has to increase its attempts for folk music. iv. The number of the sponsor should be increased. v. Create a permanent academy for folk music. vi. Increase interest of music companies. vii. Ensure the financial stability of the folk singers. viii. Honored them with judgment. ix. Give them chances to perform not only in the country but also out side the country. x. Identify new folk singer and patronize them. xi. More program in TV channels. xii. Protecting the real lyrics and tunes. xiii. Remove listening remixes. xiv. Some specific kind of folk song that is not available now should be protected.

If we can do these activities we are over sure that, we can bring our golden musical era again.

Socio-Cultural Problems Faced By People Living With Aids In Bangladesh

Bangladesh at a glance, socio cultural problems faced by people living in bangladesh, over all health, illness condition of the children aged 6-24 month, power system automation, dear sophie: how can i improve our startup’s international recruiting, research provides information on adjusting the thermal characteristics of ferroelectric materials using electric fields, constipation, vehicular homicide, demutualization, latest post, key features and characteristics of the continental crust, diaphragm valves, droughts in europe could be averted by reducing emissions faster, global research on coastal oceans as carbon dioxide stores, researchers examine how freshwater diatoms remain in the light, wetting current.

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Kevin Young ’92 reflects on what took root at Harvard and how it’s grown

When Kevin Young ’92 came to Harvard as an undergraduate, he dreamed of becoming a poet. He wanted to write about Louisiana and his family, something he had yet to see in poetry collections.

Young studied under celebrated poets Seamus Heaney and Lucie Brock-Broido, joined the Dark Room Collective, a Boston-based community of African American writers, and threw himself into poetry.

“I’ve never wanted to do anything else,” said Young as he reminisced about his time at Harvard Wednesday to an audience gathered at Lowell Lecture Hall to celebrate him as he was awarded the 2024 Harvard Arts Medal.

The Harvard Arts Medal recognizes a Harvard or Radcliffe alum or faculty member who has demonstrated excellence and achievement in the arts.

Young is an acclaimed poet, an editor, an essayist, a professor, and a library curator. At Emory University in Atlanta, where he taught, he was the curator of the 75,000-volume Raymond Danowski Poetry Library , one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of verse. He also served as director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, the world’s oldest and largest Black archive. A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship , Young is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture .

For Young, all his intellectual endeavors are closely tied, and they all took root during his time at Harvard, where he took classes in poetry, learned letterpress printing, handled archival material, and took inspiration from his professors and peers.

“All these roles are expressions of me, but also part of the work I do,” said Young during a conversation with Brenda Tindal, chief campus curator for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

“Once I started to think about the people I tried to write about in my poems, people I hadn’t seen in poetry, my family and Louisiana, for one, were also people who weren’t always in the archives. And the two things seemed similar. Writing poetry can be an act of recovery. It is certainly an act of remembrance. And for me, that’s what archives were …”

Writing poems and curating archives are also connected to directing a museum, said Young. “We definitely show things at the museum that we want you to understand better and help contextualize, but we don’t put our finger too hard on that. We have objects like Harriet Tubman’s shawl and Emmet Till’s casket. How can you not have all the feelings in seeing these objects and encountering them? The important thing is that encounter, and for me that’s in poetry, that’s in archives, that’s in museums.”

Presented by the Office for the Arts at Harvard in partnership with the Department of English, the ceremony kicked off Arts First (April 24-28), the University’s annual festival showcasing the creativity of students, faculty, staff and University affiliates in the arts.

Harvard University interim President Alan Garber awarded the medal to Young by welcoming him to join the list of previous honorees, who include Yo-Yo Ma ’76, Frank Gehry, G.S.D. ’57, Ar.D. ’00, Ruben Blades, LL.M. ’85, and Colson Whitehead ’91, among many others. The first Harvard Arts Medal was awarded in 1995.

“From the crowded field came individuals of outstanding achievement in the arts; they created worlds of possibility and potential with art, in architecture, and with music, poetry, and writing,” said Garber. “Today his singular talent joins their revered number. If we all share what Kevin Young has called, and I quote him, ‘an American desire for more,’ then our medalist more than delivers. He is an acclaimed poet and essayist. He is an editor. He is a museum director. He is thrillingly prolific to all of our benefit.”

Young has published 15 books of poetry and prose, most recently “Stones,” shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and “Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015,” longlisted for the National Book Award. His poetry collection “Jelly Roll: A Blues” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2003. The poetry editor at The New Yorker since 2017, where he hosts the Poetry Podcast, Young is the editor of nine poetry volumes, including the highly praised anthology “African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song.”

Describing herself as a friend and fan of Young, Tracy K. Smith ’94, professor of English and of African and African American studies and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, offered remarks during the ceremony. She spoke of her long friendship with Young — they met as undergrads at Harvard — and her admiration for his masterful craft as a poet of the African American experience in the U.S.

Smith spoke about “Saying Grace,” a poem included in Young’s first poetry book, “Most Way Home,” published in 1995. Young’s senior thesis was the basis for this book, which covered oral histories of the South.

“The miracle here is that a grounded, gritty, even a grisly memory with the proper attention floods the reader with a sense of longing, reunion, and astonishment,” said Smith. “Young has published 10 books of poems and several works of highly researched nonfiction since the release of ‘Most Way Home,’ but I begin at that beginning because early poems like this one is where I met Kevin Young as a poet and where, here at Harvard, I first began to learn from the example of his dedication.”

Smith recalled the time when Young printed a letterpress broadside of his poem “Reward,” which was part of his then-thesis in progress and eventually made it into “Most Way Home.” “Even then he took himself seriously as an artist,” said Smith. “I remember the reading Kevin gave in Adams House in the spring of 1992 and feeling my heart catch in my throat when his voice rose steady, already in his now-familiar cadence, and with an authority I thought was the domain of only older folk or professors and famous poets.”

As part of the ceremony, undergraduate poets Taylor Fang ’25, Mia Word ’24, and Isabella Cho ’24 asked Young questions about his writing process, finding his voice, and the role of poetry in understanding and talking about history.

“I’m really interested in how history shapes us and how history is encountered by ordinary folks,” said Young. “To me, one of the great things about poetry is that it makes the ordinary extraordinary, and it makes the extraordinary an ordinary occurrence … I think a good museum does something of that, too. You see yourself in it and you see each other.”

Of his writing process, Young said it’s important to try to capture feelings and sensations, leaving the understanding for later. He advised young poets to wrestle with language and form and make them their own, and be open to revise drafts because it is part of the practice.

“It’s not always fun revising, but it also is part of getting it right,” said Young. “It’s not always going to feel 100 percent, and in a way, that’s part of the yearning and searching. … That’s maybe why you write 25 books because you’re trying to get it right.”

Young ended the ceremony with a reading of the poem “Hereafter,” and he called on the audience to open their hearts and minds to the arts.

“Art welcomes you, and moreover awaits you,” said Young. “Start something. Make something. Dream alone or with others. Sing. Come on in.”

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Jane Smiley’s Folk Music Novel Hits Some Bum Notes

“Lucky” features a 1970s singer-songwriter who finds improbable success.

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The cover features a dreamy photo image of out-of-focus flowers superimposed over the face of a young woman with long hair. The book’s border color is brown, with lavender, peach and white fonts.

By Wesley Stace

Wesley Stace is a musician and novelist.

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LUCKY , by Jane Smiley

Fictional folk singers have generally been the butt of the joke, holy fools or total idiots: Think of “National Lampoon’s Animal House” when John Belushi’s Bluto brutally smashes the guitar of the young man whose only offense is singing “I gave my love a cherry…,” the sincere saps of “A Mighty Wind” or the Coen brothers’ prickly, unattractive Llewyn Davis. With the glorious late-career renaissance of Joni Mitchell and the eye-opening recent Joan Baez documentary “I Am a Noise,” however, perhaps the time is right for Jodie Rattler, the protagonist of Jane Smiley’s new novel, “Lucky.”

Born in 1949, Rattler grows up in St. Louis with her mother (“the problem was that my father was married to someone else”) and a large extended family where half-hour singalongs follow dinner. Her “luck” begins with a talismanic $86 roll of $2 bills she wins at age 6 at the racetrack with her Uncle Drew. Through a combination of talent and happenstance, she becomes a jobbing singer-songwriter while still at Penn State.

The lives of Jodie’s real-life influences — Joni, Joan, Judy, Janis and their contemporaries — were fraught with incident, from drug abuse and unwanted children to secret marriages and suicide. Rattler’s problem, beyond introversion, is of a different dimension: money (too much). Her debut Elektra single — and songwriters of the Spotify era may want to look away now — earns her three royalty checks totaling roughly $215,000, which, invested by her uncle, is worth a cool half million by 1974.

Jodie, who “didn’t need the success,” becomes her own directionless trust fund kid. There is a 1974 solo album, the admirably named “Fair Isle,” that doesn’t seem to sell, and by the age of 30, she wants “to use my performances to get to places I hadn’t been before, to explore.” Less of a vocation, then, and more an opportunity for sightseeing? The song titles and their accompanying lyrics are well observed (though it’s odd that none of them seem to have choruses) but as often happens in fiction, the band names — the Scats, the Ceiling Fan Fliers and the Garter Belts — aren’t.

Jodie finds and loses love, has, by her count, 23 compensatory affairs and returns home to look after her aging family, but doesn’t have enough drive to sustain a career. Her life in music is an impossible fantasia that requires no manager or agent, functions without interviews and radio appearances, and — least likely of all — features band rehearsals that start at 8 in the morning.

“Lucky” also presents surprising misinformation about, among other things, the British 20-pence piece (minted here a decade too early), toad-in-the-hole (which isn’t “neatly housed in a puffy pastry,” or any pastry) and the availability of birth control to unmarried women in the U.K. after the 1967 Family Planning Act; she only had to ask a doctor.

There is an undercurrent of anxiety in the book that I thought presaged a twist (the trauma that underpins Jodie’s lack of vim, for example) but this shoe hovers without dropping. Our narrator has proved herself a rather linear and fussy thinker — somewhat disappointingly, given her freewheeling spirit and laissez-faire attitude to her career — yet just when the reader is hoping for a satisfying fade, the epilogue takes a wild left swerve. It’s as if Smiley has awakened from a trance and sought to distance herself from everything that’s gone before with a little bad-faith bargain-basement postmodernism (though this does have the fringe benefit of providing some cover for the musical bum notes).

Earlier, Jodie admits that even audience applause is not much of a pleasure “because when you finish your set, you are thinking about the mistakes you made and what you might have done better,” adding, “Maybe this is true for all musicians.” I don’t think it is. But perhaps a novelist might think so.

LUCKY | By Jane Smiley | Knopf | 384 pp. | $29

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Babehoven's ‘Water's Here In You' is a Contemplative Gem

Babehoven's Water's Here In You begins with singer Maya Bon on bended knee, hands outstretched. "I forgive you," she sings atop cascading harmonies and persistent guitar strums, extending an olive branch to an estranged family member who has fallen ill. The track, "Birdseye," is a sobering meditation on reconciliation and repentance, a nod to the fragility of life, and the thesis statement of the Hudson Valley duo's latest album.

Few artists out there write a melancholic smasher like Babehoven's Bon and Ryan Albert, whose swaying and unique melodies can make the listener feel like they're hearing something totally new. Part of that disarming enchantment comes from the contemplative loop-like quality of the duo's songwriting. Bon's use of chant-like repetition can feel almost liturgical, as if her purely emotional confessions might someday become sacraments.

Apropos of the album title, Water moves just like it does in nature. Babehoven often compare the concept of time to the element: it dilutes and purifies, sometimes standing still, other times refusing to stagnate. "Water's here in you/It is here in me too," Bon sings on "My Best Friend Needs," a reminder of just how much we all hold in common. The 12 tracks on Water's Here In You are stuffed with references to land and light that can be taken both literally and metaphorically, and everything is tinted blue – the album could serve as an audio accompaniment to Maggie Nelson's book Bluets . For all its lyrical meandering, Water is punctuated by simple but cutting statements that land like a gut punch: "I want to be nice." "I long to be someone new who never said that to you." "I don't have to be your love."

The songs on Water's Here In You blend indie-rock with folk and country twangs, occasionally venturing into shoegaze-y territory. At times, the music feels holy and hymnlike: distant, child-chorus-like vocals hover over billowing organs on "Lonely Cold Seed." There's a grandiosity to "Chariot," a reverb-heavy, dizzying number that offers strength for the listener to borrow from – "This time you're clean between/And you'll be sparkling through the chaos" – and just when you wish the song wouldn't end, it flows right into the extended instrumental on "Cherry," a soft landing, a comedown, a postlude.

"Ella's From Somewhere Else," the final track on Water , is a head-bobbing Mazzy Star-esque ode to two Ellas from Bon's life: fellow musician Ella Williams from the band Squirrel Flower, as well as her childhood dog. Bon lists off a smattering of memories with tenderness and specificity: eating snacks in a cornfield, jumping into a stream – "Five years old, five years ago, I first loved you," she recalls. The gratitude displayed throughout Water 's Here In You is extraordinarily moving, and it's apparent that Babehoven have a penchant for finding magic in the mundane.

Who are the Flaming Lips? A guide to music and more at the 2024 Word of South festival

Take 100 artists and 50 events sprinkled across 10 stages over three days at Cascades Park and you have Word of South , a festival of literature and music. The words fly April 26-28 for the 10th year.

It's like everything everywhere all at once. You might miss something you had meant to see but on the way you'll stumble on something else delightful. There are events geared to children near the playground, for example, and cool seats inside for jazz lovers.

First thing, look for a map and schedule to grab when you enter the downtown park at 1001 S. Gadsden St. to help with locating the stages.

Sapped by the sun? There are abundant spots for cold libations, snacks and shady places under trees and awnings to revive yourself. Some events are inside in the air conditioned Marriott AC Hotel Ballroom while many artists perform under tents.

Keep an eye on the weather, though. Hats, sunscreen, sunglasses, water and folding chairs come in handy. In case of rain, check Word of South social media .

The festival is all free except for the The Flaming Lips show on Friday.

Here's a guide to navigating all the culture.

Festival updates

Tommy Prine will not be appearing at this year’s Word of South due to illness.
Visit Tallahassee Director Kerri Post will replace Jay Revell as the moderator of our Bicentennial Panel at 3 p.m Saturday on the Midtown Reader Stage.
Rebecca Renner has moved to 12:30 p.m. on Sunday instead of 3 p.m.

More festivals: Looking for fun events? Top 5 things to do around Tallahassee

First up: Flaming Lips kick it off

The Flaming Lips live in concert as the kick-off act of Word of South fest at The Adderley Amphitheater in Cascades Park. 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 26. Tickets are $40 to $75. Almost sold out. Visit theadderleyamphitheater.com .

The first time the Grammy Award-winning The Flaming Lips played Tallahassee was when the novice Oklahoma City band had just released its debut album “Hear It Is” in 1986. The Lips, which also came back to the capital in 1987 when the follow-up “Oh My Gawd!!!” disc came out, were a loud, noisy, gee-tar band that played a blend of post-punk and psychedelic rock.

Initially, lead singer Wayne Coyne, on his first visit, still held onto his regular job as a fry-cook at Long John Silver’s. Coyne, who is also a gifted visual artist, got hired to draw a cartoon for Student Campus Entertainment T-shirts at Florida State.

In 1993, mainstream success strangely popped up when The Lips scored a hit single with “She Don’t Use Jelly.” Beavis and Butt-head called the song’s trippy video “college music” on MTV and the tune landed The Lips a guest spot on the then-smash teenage soap opera TV show “Beverly Hills 90210.”

Even the non-core audiences who recoiled at the band’s usual freak-out fare loved “Jelly.” Then it was back to experimental ways for The Lips. Just when it looked as if The Lips were destined to become a One-Hit Wonder of the Grunge Era, the band changed its sound, thanks mainly to the addition of multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd. The group transformed itself into something sounding like a symphony orchestra mixing it up in the parking lot with the world’s strangest pop band.

The recording studio practically became part of the new approach. The Lips’ lush album “The Soft Bulletin” blew nearly everyone away in 1999. “The Bulletin” paved the way for the gold-record selling concept album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (2002). The album’s swooningly melancholy single “Do You Realize??” quickly became a bittersweet anthem that people used on videos taken at births, funerals, graduations, and other major life events.

For a brief spell, “Do You Realize??” was named the state song of Oklahoma before a killjoy governor got elected and decreed, “Enough of that poignant stuff.”

When The Flaming Lips outfit returns to Tallahassee to kick off this year’s annual Word of South festival in Cascades Park on Friday night, April 26, the band will play the “Yoshimi” album, track for track in order, for the LP’s 20th anniversary.

And, yes, “Do You Realize??” is the final cut on the album. For all the math nerds out there, “Yoshimi” was released 12 years ago but a little thing called the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way. Better late than never. Cue the robots. — Mark Hinson

Here's the whole shebang:

Jazz: Feel the rhythm as Latin and Cuban jazz take an energetic spin at Word of South

SCHEDULE FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 26

The Flaming Lips, 7:30 p.m., Adderley Amphitheater. Gates open: 6 p.m. Show starts: 7:30 p.m. *This is a ticketed event.

Black Opry: Black artists put folk and country music in spotlight at Word of South

SCHEDULE FOR SATURDAY, APRIL 27

10 a.m. - Move Walk (Meet behind the Amphitheater)

Adderley Amphitheater Main Stage

11 a.m. - Rickards High School Marching Raider Band

6:30 p.m. - The Currys / The Krickets

8 p.m. - Rising Appalachia

Literacy Lane Kids Events

Noon – 4 p.m. Leon County Schools STEAM Bus

Noon - Bracelet Making and Watercolor Art with FINACIOUS

1 p.m. - Maya Johnson , Founder of Maya’s Book Nook

1:30 p.m. - Good Morning Tallahassee , Leon County Schools

2 p.m. - Dylan Snowden

2:30 p.m. - Anna Blalock

3:30 p.m. - Storytelling Workshop

Salvation South Stage

2 p.m. - Daniel Wallace / Chuck Reece

3:15 p.m. - Abe Partridge / Jim White / Tad Bartlett

4:45 p.m. - Tommy Prine / Chuck Reece

Club Downunder Stage at Centennial

1:45 p.m. - 911

3:30 p.m. - Ally Free

5:15 p.m. - Daniel Bedrosian / George Clinton / The P-Funk All-Stars

Cascades Stage

1 p.m. - Allison Clarke

3 p.m. - Phabrik

4:30 p.m. - Katie Skene Band

Flamingo Magazine Stage

1:15 p.m. - Virginia Chamlee / Frank Douglas / Doug Moody

2:45 p.m. - Hotel Fiction

4:15 p.m. - Anne Hull / Diane Roberts

5:30 p.m. - The Sh-Booms

Florida Jazz & Blues Stage at the Marriott AC Hotel Ballroom

12:45 p.m. - Peter and the Wolf

2 p.m. - Anne Bogel / What Should I Read Next? Podcast

3:30 p.m. - Anne Bogel / Lauren Groff

5 p.m. - The Road to Now Podcast (Bob Crawford and Ben Sawyer) / Jonah Goldberg

Midtown Reader Stage

12:30 p.m. - FBA Fiction Panel: Pat MacEnulty / Thomas Reed / Kweku Abimbola / Jessica Stark

1:45 p.m. - FBA Non-Fiction Panel: Doug Alderson / Phillip Hubbart / Sarah McNamara / Jacki Levine

3 p.m. - Bicentennial Panel: Jay Revell / Ely Rosario / Mandy Stringer / Tiffany Baker / Rachel Porter

4:15 p.m. - Suzanne Allain / Michelle Johnson

5:30 p.m. - Ed Gray Tribute: Jennifer Portman / Jane Kamensky / Katherine Mooney

FSU Credit Union Stage at the Marriott AC Plaza

1:30 p.m. - Leon Timbo

3 p.m. - Tray Wellington

4:30 p.m. - The Psycodelics

Amicus Brewing Ventures Stage

2:30 p.m. - The Eyrie

4 p.m. - Robocromp

SCHEDULE FOR SUNDAY, APRIL 28

Salvation stage south.

1:30 p.m. - The Black Opry: Ally Free / Leon Timbo

2:45 p.m. - Blind Boys of Alabama

4 p.m. - Blind Boys of Alabama Book Talk / Charles Driebe

Club Downunder Stage at Centennial Field

2:15 p.m. - Annie DiRusso

3:45 p.m. - Willi Carlisle

3 p.m. - Ginny Myers Sain / Sofia Camille

4:30 p.m. - Pat Puckett

1:15 p.m. - Tananarive Due / Melinda Michelle

2:30 p.m. - Kelsey Barnard Clark / Leon Majcen

4 p.m. - Sarah Morrison

12:45 p.m. - Roger Glenn

2 p.m. - Son d’Aqui

3:15 p.m. - Panel on Latin and Cuban Jazz

4:15 p.m. - Pan Con Bistec

12:30 p.m. - Rebecca Renner / Nancy Klingener

1:45 p.m. - Kyle Kimbrell / Kerry James Evans

4:15 p.m. - Sunshine State Biodiversity Group: Nathaniel Rich / Jeff VanderMeer

1:30 p.m. - Bill Wharton

3 p.m. - DJ Demp / Tokyo Extra0rdinaire

4:30 p.m. - Leyla McCalla

1:45 p.m. - Jim White / Mark Hinson

3:15 p.m. - Grant Peeples / Rosalee Walsh

FREQUENT Q&A

Can i bring my dog.

Yes! Your furry friend will love Cascades Park. Dogs are not allowed in the amphitheater area.

Can I bring a cooler?

No coolers. However, there will be food and drink vendors at the park during the festival.

Where can I park?

All State of Florida parking lots and garages labeled here are free and open starting 6pm Friday, April 26 through Sunday, April 28. See maps at wordofsouthfestival.com.

Where can I sit?

Word of South has open seating for all performances, except The Flaming Lips performance on Friday, April 26. The Saturday and Sunday Amphitheater shows are open seating in the seats and on the grass. All other outdoor performances will be under tents in the grassy areas of Cascades Park. Please bring your own portable chair, towels, or blankets to sit on. Chairs will not be available for stages designed on grassy slopes.

Is the park wheelchair accessible?

Yes, there is wheelchair accessibility throughout Cascades Park.

How do I access the Florida Jazz & Blues/Marriott AC Stage?

This stage is located in the ballroom of the Marriott AC, the new hotel at Cascades Park. The Marriott may be entered through the main entrance on Gadsden St. or the plaza facing Gaines St. To access the plaza, use the stairs directly behind the Capital City Amphitheater. (Need an elevator? Ask a festival volunteer for assistance.) The ballroom is on the same floor as the bar. Look for Word of South signage.

How do I access the Midtown Reader Stage and Bookstore?

These are both located in the Parkview Event space overlooking Cascades Park. The entrance is from the plaza facing Gaines St. Take the staircase behind the Amphitheater up to the plaza and look for Word of South signage.

What if it rains?

In the event of rain, Word of South performances will be moved to alternate venues. Check Word of South social media pages, or the Word of South app for schedule and location changes.

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