Country music on location: ‘field recording’ before Bristol

Popular Music ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
TONY RUSSELL
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Careful Planning ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Field Recording ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Carter Family ◽  
Made In

From 1923 to 1931, record companies based in the northern USA stocked their catalogues of Southern vernacular music, particularly African-American blues and white ‘old-time’ music, largely with ‘location recordings’ made in Southern cities such as Atlanta, Memphis and Dallas. These recording trips, which are sometimes characterised as speculative, were in fact partly planned, the uncertainty of discovering recordable new talent offset to some extent by the prior booking of artists with whom the companies had already had success. The evidence for this careful planning, however, has been somewhat obscured by the unscheduled discovery, in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1927, of Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family, whose commercial success and stylistic innovations would have enormous influence on country music.

Not as It Is Written

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-100
Author(s):  
Benjamin Houston
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
International Exhibition ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Made In

This article discusses an international exhibition that detailed the recent history of African Americans in Pittsburgh. Methodologically, the exhibition paired oral history excerpts with selected historic photographs to evoke a sense of Black life during the twentieth century. Thematically, showcasing the Black experience in Pittsburgh provided a chance to provoke among a wider public more nuanced understandings of the civil rights movement, an era particularly prone to problematic and superficial misreadings, but also to interject an African American perspective into the scholarship on deindustrializing cities, a literature which treats racism mostly in white-centric terms. This essay focuses on the choices made in reconciling these thematic and methodological dimensions when designing this exhibition.

Call Your "Mutha"

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Caputi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Mother Nature ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Mother Earth ◽  
Made In

The proposed new geological era, The Anthropocene (a.k.a. Age of Humans, Age of Man), marking human domination of the planet long called Mother Earth, is truly The Age of the Motherfucker. The ecocide of the Anthropocene is the responsibility of Man, the Western- and masculine-identified corporate, military, intellectual, and political class that masks itself as the exemplar of the civilized and the human. The word motherfucker was invented by the enslaved children of White slave masters to name their mothers’ rapist/owners. Man’s strategic motherfucking, from the personal to the planetary, is invasion, exploitation, spirit-breaking, extraction and toxic wasting of individuals, communities, and lands, for reasons of pleasure, plunder, and profit. Ecocide is attempted deicide of Mother Nature-Earth, reflecting Man’s goal to become the god he first made in his own image. The motivational word Motherfucker has a flip side, further revealing the Anthropocene as it signifies an outstanding, formidable, and inexorable force. Mother Nature-Earth is that “Mutha’ ”—one defying translation into heteropatriarchal classifications of gender, one capable of overwhelming Man, and not the other way around. Drawing upon Indigenous and African American scholarship; ecofeminism; ecowomanism; green activism; femme, queer, and gender non-binary philosophies; literature and arts; Afrofuturism; and popular culture, Call Your “Mutha’ ” contends that the Anthropocene is not evidence of Man’s supremacy over nature, but that Mother Nature-Earth, faced with disrespect, is going away. It is imperative now to call the “Mutha’ ” by decolonizing land, bodies, and minds, ending rapism, feeding the green, renewing sustaining patterns, and affirming devotion to Mother Nature-Earth.

Introduction

Popular Music ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
David Horn
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
International Association ◽  
Outstanding Contribution ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Founding Member ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
The World ◽  
Set Up

This issue of Popular Music is produced in honour of Paul Oliver, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to popular music scholarship.Paul was a member of the original Editorial Board for Popular Music when it was set up in 1980 and continued to serve as a member of that body, and subsequently of the Editorial Group, until 1990. He was also a founding member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and has maintained a keen interest in the organisation, continuing to attend, and speak at, its international conferences. His vision of both the potential and the needs of the Association as a global network lay behind his proposal in 1985 that a project be undertaken to compile a worldwide encyclopedia of popular music, an idea which subsequently bore fruit in EPMOW (The Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World). All these achievements are worth celebrating in themselves, but it is Paul's outstanding contribution to scholarship in the area of vernacular – particularly African-American vernacular – music that we wish to honour with this issue.

Race in Country Music Scholarship

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Carter Mather
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Southern Music ◽  
Construction Of Whiteness ◽  
British Culture

This chapter reviews how country music scholarship deals with race. It then suggests how scholarship might move forward toward a more critical stance. While evidence points toward African American innovation at the origins of country, survey histories of country music trace the music’s origins to British culture in Appalachia. Revisionist scholarship attempts to uncover black contributions in most periods of country’s history. Its most common topics are the construction of whiteness by the country music industry and the segregation of southern music in the 1920s into “race” and “hillbilly” marketing categories. This chapter ends by suggesting that country scholarship focus on race as a chief concern of the field, complicate its view of segregation, and give more attention to musical sound.

The Fiery Debate

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Antonin Dvorak ◽  
Musical Identity ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Vernacular Music

About eight months after Antonín Dvořák became director of Jeannette Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music in New York, he weighed in publicly on the question of American musical identity and argued that African American vernacular music (or “negro melodies”) should become the foundation of a national classical style. The New York Herald, which first printed his remarks, stoked a months-long debate that exposed deep-seated anti-Black racism throughout the country’s classical music industry as many musicians rejected the Bohemian’s suggestions outright. Dvořák remained supportive of African American music and musicians but did not fully understand the political implications of his positions.

The Brewing Storm

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Composers ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Black Vernacular ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Instrumental Works ◽  
Open Question

A small number of US-based composers began experimenting with the use of African American vernacular music as the basis for instrumental works around 1880, arguing that this music formed a truly American folk repertoire. Their works found public favor in the United States and, more importantly, in several European cities in the months leading up to Dvořák’s arrival as director of the National Conservatory. Dvořák’s own position in the debate about American national style was an open question until May 1893, when he revealed his belief in the authentic American identity of Black vernacular music, thus affirming the approach of earlier American composers.

The Impact of a Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean E. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Cardiac Failure ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Undue Influence ◽  
African American Music ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In

This chapter examines Harry T. Burleigh's legacy in African American music. Burleigh retired in 1946 from his position as baritone soloist at St. George's Protestant Episcopal Church, marking the end of an exceptional public career. He died of cardiac failure on September 12, 1949. All too soon after the influx of laudatory obituaries, the press got wind of the conflict over Burleigh's estate. This chapter first considers the trial involving Burleigh's two wills, both of which were challenged by Louise Alston Burleigh and their son Alston because they suspected his longtime housekeeper, Thelma Hall—a recipient of the second will together with her son James—of exerting undue influence on Burleigh. It also looks at various tributes made in Burleigh's honor, including one from Will Marion Cook, and concludes with an emphasis on the importance of black music to the Harlem Renaissance, Burleigh's mastery in arranging African American spirituals, and the newfound respect for his art songs.

“Qualify them for the duties of life”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Birk
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Transition Of Care ◽  
Affected Child ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Children’S Homes ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
American Children ◽  
Made In

This chapter examines the child welfare situation in the Midwest, including the transition of care from poor farms to children-only institutions. Beginning in the mid-1870s but increasing considerably during the 1880s and 1890s, poor farms were used less frequently for children, as counties, states, and charities opted to build children's institutions. Putting children from county-poor farms in institutions marked an important step in efforts to increase farm placement. This chapter first considers how indentures were made between county infirmaries and local residents before discussing the various concerns that arose from the construction of county children's homes. It also explores the changes made in the terms of an indenture contract; the placement of African American children; how religion and ethnicity affected child placements; the role of the institutional manager in finding a suitable family for a child; and the problems of institutional life. The chapter concludes by explaining what happened after placement parents got a child.

scholarly journals Thoughts in the Field: ‘Self-reflexive narrative’ in field recording

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isobel Anderson ◽  
Tullis Rennie
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Collaborative Project ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
Field Recording ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Getting Lost ◽  
Made In

This article considers the presence of ‘self-reflexive narrative’ in field recording. The authors interrogate a common presumption within sonic arts practice and sound studies discourse that field recordings represent authentic, impartial and neutral documents. Historically, field recording practice has not clearly represented narratives of how, when, why and by whom a field recording is made. In contrast, the social sciences have already experienced a narrative ‘turn’ since the 1970s, which highlighted the importance of recognising the presence and role of the researcher in the field, and also in representations of fieldwork. This provides an alternative framework for understanding field recording, in considering the importance of the recordist and their relationship with their recordings. Many sonic arts practitioners have already acknowledged that the subjective, personal qualities of field recording should be embraced, highlighted and even orated in their work. The authors’ own collaborative projectThoughts in the Fieldfurther explores these ideas, by vocalising ‘self-reflexive narratives’ in real time, within field recordings. The authors’ collaborative composition,Getting Lost(2015), demonstrates the compositional potentials this approach offers.

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