One of the earliest documented Scottish song collectors actually to go 'into the field' to gather his specimens, was the Highlander Joseph Macdonald. Macdonald emigrated in 1760 - contemporaneously ...with the start of James Macpherson's famous but much disputed Ossian project - and it fell to the Revd. Patrick Macdonald to finish and subsequently publish his younger brother's collection. Karen McAulay traces the complex history of Scottish song collecting, and the publication of major Highland and Lowland collections, over the ensuing 130 years. Looking at sources, authenticity, collecting methodology and format, McAulay places these collections in their cultural context and traces links with contemporary attitudes towards such wide-ranging topics as the embryonic tourism and travel industry; cultural nationalism; fakery and forgery; literary and musical creativity; and the move from antiquarianism and dilettantism towards an increasingly scholarly and didactic tone in the mid-to-late Victorian collections. Attention is given to some of the performance issues raised, either in correspondence or in the paratexts of published collections; and the narrative is interlaced with references to contemporary literary, social and even political history as it affected the collectors themselves. Most significantly, this study demonstrates a resurgence of cultural nationalism in the late nineteenth century.
Bob Dylan's iconic 1962 song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" stands at
the crossroads of musical and literary traditions. A visionary
warning of impending apocalypse, it sets symbolist imagery within a
...structure that recalls a centuries-old form. Written at the height
of the 1960s folk music revival amid the ferment of political
activism, the song strongly resembles-and at the same time
reimagines-a traditional European ballad sung from Scotland to
Italy, known in the English-speaking world as "Lord Randal."
Alessandro Portelli explores the power and resonance of "A Hard
Rain's A-Gonna Fall," considering the meanings of history and
memory in folk cultures and in Dylan's work. He examines how the
ballad tradition to which "Lord Randal" belongs shaped Dylan's song
and how Dylan drew on oral culture to depict the fears and crises
of his own era. Portelli recasts the song as an encounter between
Dylan's despairing vision, which questions the meaning and
direction of history, and the message of resilience and hope for
survival despite history's nightmares found in oral traditions. A
wide-ranging work of oral history, Hard Rain weaves
together interviews from places as varied as Italy, England, and
India with Portelli's autobiographical reflections and critical
analysis, speaking to the enduring appeal of Dylan's music. By
exploring the motley traditions that shaped Dylan's work, this book
casts the distinctiveness and depth of his songwriting in a new
light.
The years between 1910 and 1940 were formative for Mexico, with
the ouster of Porfirio Díaz, the subsequent revolution, and the
creation of the new state. Amid the upheaval, Mexican dance emerged
as ...a key arena of contestation regarding what it meant to be
Mexican. Through an analysis of written, photographic,
choreographic, and cinematographic renderings of a festive Mexico,
Choreographing Mexico examines how bodies in motion both
performed and critiqued the nation.
Manuel Cuellar details the integration of Indigenous and
regional dance styles into centennial celebrations, civic
festivals, and popular films. Much of the time, this was a top-down
affair, with cultural elites seeking to legitimate a hegemonic
national character by incorporating traces of indigeneity. Yet
dancers also used their moving bodies to challenge the official
image of a Mexico full of manly vigor and free from racial and
ethnic divisions. At home and abroad, dancers made nuanced
articulations of female, Indigenous, Black, and even queer
renditions of the nation. Cuellar reminds us of the ongoing
political significance of movement and embodied experience, as
folklórico maintains an important and still-contested
place in Mexican and Mexican American identity today.
Performing Russia Olson, Laura
2004, 20040731, 2004-07-31, 20030101, Volume:
7
eBook
This book examines folk music and dance revival movements in Russia, exploring why this folk culture has come to represent Russia, how it has been approached and produced, and why memory and ...tradition, in these particular forms, have taken on particular significance in different periods. Above all it shows how folk "tradition" in Russia is an artificial cultural construct, which is periodically reinvented, and it demonstrates in particular how the "folk revival" has played a key role in strengthening Russian national consciousness in the post-Soviet period.
Laura J. Olson is Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Colarado, Boulder. She has been researching and performing Slavic folk music since 1987.
'This book offers valuable insights into post-Soviet Russian society, culture, and grass-roots political developments.' - MLR, 102.1, 2007
'Olsen has a talent for clear exposition and cogent summary, as she shows in her survey of the appropriation of folk song in the eighteenth century by the literate cl asses and the main trends in folk-song performance in the nineteenth.'
- MLR, 102.1, 2007
Reds, whites, and blues Roy, William G; Roy, William G
2010., 20100701, 2010, 20100101, Volume:
45
eBook
Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the ...social landscape. Reds, Whites, and Blues examines the political force of folk music, not through the meaning of its lyrics, but through the concrete social activities that make up movements. Drawing from rich archival material, William Roy shows that the People's Songs movement of the 1930s and 40s, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s implemented folk music's social relationships--specifically between those who sang and those who listened--in different ways, achieving different outcomes.
City Folk Walkowitz, Daniel
04/2010, Volume:
3
eBook
This is the story of English Country Dance, from its 18th century roots in the English cities and countryside, to its transatlantic leap to the U.S. in the 20th century, told by not only a renowned ...historian but also a folk dancer, who has both immersed himself in the rich history of the folk tradition and rehearsed its steps.In City Folk, Daniel J. Walkowitz argues that the history of country and folk dancing in America is deeply intermeshed with that of political liberalism and the 'old left.' He situates folk dancing within surprisingly diverse contexts, from progressive era reform, and playground and school movements, to the changes in consumer culture, and the project of a modernizing, cosmopolitan middle class society.Tracing the spread of folk dancing, with particular emphases on English Country Dance, International Folk Dance, and Contra, Walkowitz connects the history of folk dance to social and international political influences in America. Through archival research, oral histories, and ethnography of dance communities, City Folk allows dancers and dancing bodies to speak. From the norms of the first half of the century, marked strongly by Anglo-Saxon traditions, to the Cold War nationalism of the post-war era, and finally on to the counterculture movements of the 1970s, City Folk injects the riveting history of folk dance in the middle of the story of modern America.
This book gathers international voices from the field of ethnomusicology discussing the socio-political relevance of the discipline. The articles draw from contemporary discourses that take into ...account the role of music and dance in shaping social and political realities. An important field connected to political relevance is heritage, either in connection with the UNESCO or with archives. Ontologies of indigenous groups and their relevance in knowledge production is discussed in ethnomusicology nowadays as well as the possibilities of decolonising the discipline. Two articles from ethno-choreology explore dance from the gender perspective and in the post-socialist political structures. Different approaches from applied ethnomusicology deal with social justice, participatory dialogical practice, and the socio-political relevance of performance. Forced migration is seen as comprehensive topic for future ethnomusicology. The contents of the book mirror influential discourses of ethnomusicology today that will definitely shape the future development of the discipline.
Performing Englishness examines the growth in popularity and profile of the English folk arts in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the only study of its kind, the authors explore how ...the folk resurgence speaks to a broader explosion of interest in the subject of English national and cultural identity. Combining approaches from British cultural studies and ethnomusicology, the book draws on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with central figures of the resurgence and close analysis of music and dance as well as visual and discursive sources. Its presentation of the English case study calls for a rethinking of concepts such as revival and indigeneity. It will be of interest to students and scholars in cultural studies, ethnomusicology and related disciplines.
We tend to take for granted the labels we put to different forms of music. This study considers the origins and implications of the way in which we categorize music. Whereas earlier ways of ...classifying music were based on its different functions, for the past two hundred years we have been obsessed with creativity and musical origins, and classify music along these lines. Matthew Gelbart argues that folk music and art music became meaningful concepts only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and only in relation to each other. He examines how cultural nationalism served as the earliest impetus in classifying music by origins, and how the notions of folk music and art music followed - in conjunction with changing conceptions of nature, and changing ideas about human creativity. Through tracing the history of these musical categories, the book confronts our assumptions about different kinds of music.
