Transatlantic Roots Music: Folk, Blues, and National Identities

Transatlantic Music: Folk, Blues, and National Identities. Edited by Jill Terry and Neil A. Wynn. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012. ISBN 978-161703-288-2. Roots or routes? editors of this set of conference proceedings intended to keep both senses of this homophonic pun. title of September 2009 conference at University of Worcester, England was The Transatlantic Routes of Music. Jill Terry and Neil Wynn explain in their introduction (p.ix), As knowledge of music and culture of non-English-speaking, nonwhite, non-European, and non-American grew, folk music broadened into 'world' and then 'roots' That is not to say that folk music evolved by itself into world music and roots music, but rather perception of listeners, researchers, editors, and retailers evolved to such labels. Terry and Wynn confirm this by adding (p.ix) the collection [of essays] explores not just interconnectedness of folk/roots music on either side of Atlantic, but also issues--the routes in conference title--of discovery rediscovery and representation of such musical forms. Continuing into first paper, Terry and Wynn amplify their sense of routes through historical and social contexts since 1950, of which I presume present book is latest event. While reading rest of proceedings, we should note direction each contribution is headed: eastward to United Kingdom, or westward to United States? Organized chronologically, two contributions about early research of Paul Oliver are placed first. Since publication of Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in Blues (Cassell; Horizon, 1960), Oliver has been longest-standing leader in blues research, and in his native England through his books and media broadcasts, he is a cultural hero. For Worcester conference, he gave a sketch of history of promotion and appreciation in Europe of African American music from 1870s to 1970s, including his key early works Blues Fell This Morning and Story of Blues (Barrie & Rockliff, Cresset Press, 1969). Christian O'Connell follows with a frank appraisal of Oliver's pre-1960 blues writings. For all intents and purposes, as first British scholar of blues, Oliver had to begin with a very romantic notion of culture that spawned blues. O'Connell admits (p.52), The reader of Oliver's work from 1950s is presented with images of a world where boundaries between historical fact and fictive elements of writer's imagination are often unclear. such, his publications through 1959 may have to be regarded as juvenilia. next three contributions treat musicians in white American ballad tradition and folk music. Erich Nunn leads first, noting that John Lomax had learned what was to become popular song Home on Range from a black singer, and that Bradley Kincaid had acquired his first guitar from his father, who in turned had traded for it from an African-American man. If attitude of early researchers like Cecil Sharp in American folk music was to seek Anglo antecedents, then Nunn may be right to call Lomax's situation of finding in a white cowboy culture an African American source the anxiety of ancestry. Let me render such anxiety in today's terms. Can a white man sing blues? has been an abiding question since 1950s. But that a black man sings cowboy music is a troubling one, especially for mainstream white culture who has adopted Home on Range since its first publication nearly a century ago. To take my argument further, can a black man sing Dixie? According to Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks in their book Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to Confederate Anthem (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), an African American may have been song's creator. Will Kaufman examines international influence of Woody Guthrie, ascribing it to three pairs of contrasts: low-class laborer and middleclass city man; Midwest rural versus East Coast urban; and commercial appeal of music versus its potential for activism. …

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