Ronald D. Cohen and Rachel Clare Donaldson, Roots of the Revival: American and British Folk Music in the 1950s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014, $25.00). Pp. 216. isbn978 0 2520 8012 8.

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. MULLOY
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
The 1950S

University Geographies and Folk Music Landscapes

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
David K. Blake
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Distant Object ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
The University

By examining folk music activities connecting students and local musicians during the early 1960s at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this article demonstrates how university geographies and musical landscapes influence musical activities in college towns. The geography of the University of Illinois, a rural Midwestern location with a mostly urban, middle-class student population, created an unusual combination of privileged students in a primarily working-class area. This combination of geography and landscape framed interactions between students and local musicians in Urbana-Champaign, stimulating and complicating the traversal of sociocultural differences through traditional music. Members of the University of Illinois Campus Folksong Club considered traditional music as a high cultural form distinct from mass-culture artists, aligning their interests with then-dominant scholarly approaches in folklore and film studies departments. Yet students also interrogated the impropriety of folksong presentation on campus, and community folksingers projected their own discomfort with students’ liberal politics. In hosting concerts by rural musicians such as Frank Proffitt and producing a record of local Urbana-Champaign folksingers called Green Fields of Illinois (1963), the folksong club attempted to suture these differences by highlighting the aesthetic, domestic, historical, and educational aspects of local folk music, while avoiding contemporary socioeconomic, commercial, and political concerns. This depoliticized conception of folk music bridged students and local folksingers, but also represented local music via a nineteenth-century rural landscape that converted contemporaneous lived practice into a temporally distant object of aesthetic study. Students’ study of folk music thus reinforced the power structures of university culture—but engaging local folksinging as an educational subject remained for them the most ethical solution for questioning, and potentially traversing, larger problems of inequality and difference.

Talking Italian blues: Roberto Leydi, Giovanna Marini and American Influence in the Italian folk revival, 1954–66

Popular Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-334
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Love
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
Postwar Italy

AbstractThis article examines how Roberto Leydi and Giovanna Marini, two important figures of the Italian ‘folk revival’, negotiated diverse American cultural influences and adapted them to the political context of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that American musical traditions offered them valuable models even as many Italian intellectuals and artists grew more critical of US society and foreign policy. To explore this phenomenon in greater depth, I take as examples two particular moments of exchange. I first discuss American folklorist Alan Lomax's research in Italy and its impact on Leydi's career. I then examine how Marini employed American talking blues in order to reject US society in her first ballad, Vi parlo dell'America (I Speak to You of America) (1966). These two cases provide specific examples of how American influence worked in postwar Italy and the role of folk music in this process.

Background in the United States and Great Britain to 1950

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Public ◽  
The 1950S

Throughout the twentieth century, folk music has had many definitions and incarnations in the United States and Great Britain. The public has been most aware of its commercial substance and appeal, with the focus on recording artists and their repertoires, but there has been so much more, including a political agenda, folklore theories, grassroots styles, regional promoters, and discussions on what musical forms—blues, hillbilly, gospel, Anglo-Saxon, pop, singer-songwriters, instrumental and/or vocal, international—should be included. These contrasting and conflicting interpretations were particularly evident during the 1950s. This chapter begins by focusing on Alan Lomax (1915–2002), one of the most active folk music collectors, radio promoters, and organizers during the 1940s. Lomax had a major influence on folk music in both the United States and Great Britain, tying together what had come before and what would follow. The chapter then discusses folk festivals and performers; British folk music, musicians, and trans-Atlantic musical connections; and Carl Sandburg's publication of the The American Songbag in 1927.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Music Community ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Radio Programs ◽  
Harry Belafonte

This introductory chapter traces the emergence of a rich folk music community in the 1950s. During the decade, folk music was part of the pervasive culture, as well as the emerging counterculture. Popular folk performers such as John Jacob Niles, Burl Ives, Josh White, Harry Belafonte, and the early Weavers easily entered the musical mainstream, while others existed more on the fringe but still attracted a loyal following. In addition to the commercial performers, there were also folk festivals, radio programs, record collectors, small record labels, and a host of organizations and venues. Indeed, folk music remained widespread and accessible, despite its often-perceived left-wing taint. Across the Atlantic a similar, although smaller, movement became visible. Moreover, they were increasingly connected: American folk music had a definite influence on the British scene.

“constant sources of experience and tension” — Bartók's influence on transylvanian composers

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-182
Author(s):  
István Németh G.
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
The 1950S

Abstract The paper examines how members of the “Cluj/Kolozsvár School” of composition, the disciples of Sigismund Toduţă, Gábor Jodál, Max Eisikovits and János Jagamas dealt with the influence of Bartók. One can find traces of Bartókian influence in the work of Transylvanian composers beginning from the 1950s, a series of hommage-compositions being written on the occasion of Bartók-anniversaries in 1965, 1970 and especially 1981. The last piece mentioned was composed in 1998. The paper focuses on the cases of five individual composers: Cornel Ţăranu, Ede Terényi, Péter Vermesy, György Orbán and Boldizsár Csíky. In addition to the analysis of certain compositions à la Bartók written by them, their declarations as well as the role of Ernő Lendvai's theories are taken into consideration. A distinction is made among (1) the arrangements of folk music melodies collected by Bartók, (2) the hommage-pieces containing quotations from Bartók's art music, and finally, (3) those longer or shorter periods in a composer's career in which Bartók's influence can be detected in a whole series of compositions.

‘Must Be Born Again’: resurrecting the Anthology of American Folk Music

Popular Music ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHERINE SKINNER
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Recording Industry ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Cultural Status ◽  
Organisational Structures ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Born Again ◽  
Sociohistorical Context

Since the 1997 reissue of the 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, journalists, scholars and musicians have promoted this collection as the ‘founding document’ (Marcus 1997) and ‘musical constitution’ (Cantwell 1996) of the urban folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. This reception differs markedly from that of its original issue, which sold few copies and attracted only minor critical attention. This article provides an account of the transformation in the Anthology's cultural status – showing that the canonisation of the Anthology stems not just from its content, but from the interplay of its content and its sociohistorical context. I identify some of the factors that influenced the retrospective consecration of the Anthology, including the important work of key people, the growth of a new field (‘Americana’ music) and changes in the organisational structures of the recording industry.

THE HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MUSICAL CULTURE OF BASHKIRIA IN THE 1950S - MID-1980S

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (4) ◽  
pp. 75-82
Author(s):  
N.V. AKHMADIEVA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Musical Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Russian Composers

In the 1950s-1980s. the musical culture of Bashkiria was further developed, acquiring specific forms. As a result of the influence of various musical cultures, forms of professional art that were not inherent in traditional national culture were actively developing in the republic. Historically, the artistic and aesthetic experience of Bashkiria was limited to monodic forms of folk music (monophonic songs and instrumental tunes). The problem of overcoming the predominance of traditional monody in professional musical culture was urgent. Having adopted and creatively using the best traditions of classical and Soviet music, Bashkir professional music has gone an accelerated path from traditional monophonic folk music to complex genres of professional art. For several decades, such genres as opera, symphony, ballet were created in Bashkiria. Already in 1950-1970. a national style is formed on the basis of the creative implementation of folklore and the interaction of national and international in musical art. In the 1960s. against the background of the continuous interest of Bashkir composers in chamberinstrumental and chamber-vocal genres, the center of gravity is shifting to the field of musical-theatrical, symphonic music. In the musical life of the republic, great importance was attached to the popularization of musical culture. Bashkir radio paid great attention to the promotion of musical knowledge and works. Back in the early 1960s. musical and educational programs were conducted in the Bashkir and Russian languages, concerts of Bashkir, Chuvash and Russian composers were broadcast. Often, the radio played works by amateur composers with the participation of the authors themselves. At the same time, with the huge genre diversity of the musical culture of Bashkiria, significant and talented works of many authors remained outside the active cultural life, unable to popularize them and bring them to the mass audience. As a result, a serious gap was noticeable between the musical culture itself and its consumer. The low level of culture of perception of music by the population, due to the lack of professional musical education, formed preferences for pop, popular music.

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