Conclusion: The Making of Tradition; The Protest Songs of 1848 in the German Folk Revival 303

2020 ◽  
pp. 303-328
Author(s):  
David Robb
Keyword(s):  
Folk Revival ◽  
Protest Songs

Talking Union

Red Strains ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernie Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
World War ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
Protest Songs ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Progressive Party ◽  
American Left

Ernie Lieberman grew up in the midst of the folk revival that took place during the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. This chapter describes how folk music came to be important to the American left, the issues on which they focused (union organizing, racial and gender equality, peace), and Lieberman's own participation in the movement. As a child in the 1930s, he admired Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and sang folk and protest songs at summer camp, Progressive party conventions, and on tours for the Civil Rights Congress. In the 1950s, he performed and recorded albums with the first interracial folk group, and later, as political folk music began to reach a wider audience, became a songwriter.

Merging Traffic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Slobin
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Auto Industry ◽  
General Motors ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
United Auto Workers ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
Auto Workers ◽  
The Media ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Special Case

This chapter surveys the institutions and movements that brought together the city’s musical life with the aim of merging disparate styles, trends, and personnel. First comes the auto industry, based on archival sources from Ford and General Motors that show how the companies deployed music for worker morale and company promotion. The complementary work of labor follows, through the United Auto Workers’ songs. Next comes the counterculture’s musical moment in the age of the folk revival and the artist collectives of the 1950s–1960s. Motown offers a special case of African American entrepreneurial merging of musical talent and style. The chapter closes with a look at the media—radio and newspapers—with their influential role in bringing audiences together, through music, in a city known for segregation, oppressive policing, and occasional outbursts of violence.

Country Music as Cultural Practice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford R. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Community Expression ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry

This chapter argues that country music should be examined first and foremost as social practice—as a driver of community expression and social capital through music, words, and dance. While country music functions in a multitude of ways, from narrative storytelling to commercial product and points in between, the commercial sphere of country music has been exhaustively examined. Scholarly inquiry into country music, rooted in the folk revival of the mid-twentieth century and significantly influenced by collectors (and collections) of commercial country music, has maintained a southern, commercial focus for much of the past half-century. As such, scholarly and popular understanding of what, where, and who country music springs from has ignored significant regional vernacular forms and uses of country music. Ethnographic inquiry has made it possible to tell the story country music culture and traditions. Murphy illustrates his argument with examples from New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and Atlantic Canada.

American Folk Music as Tactical Media

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Adam Svec
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
Tactical Media ◽  
Writing Machines

American folk music has long presented a problematic conception of authenticity, but the reality of the folk scene, and its relationship to media, is far more complicated. This book draws on the fields of media archaeology, performance studies, and sound studies to explore the various modes of communication that can be uncovered from the long American folk revival. From Alan Lomax's cybernetic visions to Bob Dylan's noisy writing machines, this book retrieves a subterranean discourse on the concept of media that might help us to reimagine the potential of the networks in which we work, play, and sing.

scholarly journals Transcending the moment

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-508
Author(s):  
Martin J. Power ◽  
Aileen Dillane
Keyword(s):  
Folk Song ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Protest Songs ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Ordinary Person ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Traditional Structures ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Political Songs

Abstract Our paper argues that British singer Billy Bragg performs protest songs that cleverly draw upon musical forms underpinning his positioning as a voice of, and for, the ordinary person, ultimately disenfranchised by governmental adherence to neoliberal policies. While political songs are a product of their time, many of them can also transcend that historical moment and have a longer shelf-life in terms of their capacity to inform political thinking and action. Our song(s) of choice in this paper do so not just in terms of the relevance of their ‘literal’ message but also in how they draw upon traditional structures of feeling and generic elements of folk song to underpin this sense of ‘grass-roots’ critique via a modified, acoustic ballad form and a performance style. This serves to authenticate and legitimate the singer and his message and, in turn, allows Bragg to accumulate political and cultural capital.

Labor and Industrial Protest Songs in Canada

1969 ◽  
Vol 82 (323) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Fowke
Keyword(s):  
Protest Songs
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