Songs sung to Sharp - from Martin Simpson and Thomm Jutz

Thanks to John Lawless on Bluegrass Today for news of a project that should be a classic for anyone interested in the links between the folk music of these islands and Appalachia. Topic Records, the venerable UK folk music record company, will release four weeks from today (29 Sept.) the album Nothing but Green Willow: the songs of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry.

English folk singer Martin Simpson and German-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter Thomm Jutz combine in their settings of some of the songs that Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles collected in the Appalachians in 1916-18, the first instalment being published as English folk songs from the Southern Appalachians (1917). A video of a song from the album, 'Edwin in the lowlands low', sung by Tim O'Brien, is on Bluegrass Today and on YouTube. The first single released by Topic, however, is of Cara Dillon singing 'Come all you fair and tender ladies', which can be heard on the Topic website and on YouTube. In another Topic video from YouTube, Simpson and Jutz talk about the origins of the project.

It should be recognised that Sharp and Karpeles went to Appalachia because Olive Dame Campbell, who had already been collecting songs there, was able to show Sharp evidence that the mountain people had the old songs that he was looking for. Her name is on the title page of the 1917 collection, as it includes songs she had collected. The BIB has published several posts concerning Cecil Sharp, which can be found by clicking on the label 'Cecil Sharp' at the foot of this post.

© Richard Hawkins

A not-really-necessary defence of Bluegrass: a history (and more)

The BIB editor writes:

The BIB post of 14/18 Aug. was mainly concerned with 'Making black influence in bluegrass visible', a student post by Teiana Nakano in Feb. 2018 on the blog 'Music 345: race, identity, and representation in American music'. Nakano's first paragraph (with links added by the BIB) reads:

Neil Rosenberg’s book Bluegrass: a history presents a greatly different idea of bluegrass history when being compared to Rhiannon Giddens’ keynote speech at the International Bluegrass Music Association Business Conference. I took particular interest to Giddens’ point that scholars and historians, which surely includes Rosenberg, have contributed the erasure of black history in bluegrass.

In fact, Rhiannon Giddens’s 2017 IBMA keynote address doesn't make this point. The scholars and historians she names are Dena J. Epstein, Phil Jamison, and Patrick Huber, all of whom strongly emphasise the importance of black traditions and performers in American folk and old-time music and dance. The people she blames are (a) Ralph Peer and others who created a segregated music marketing industry, fostering a myth that those who made and those who bought 'mountain music' were all white; and (b) folklorists and song collectors who colluded in creating this myth, among whom she focuses on Cecil Sharp. Readers of the BIB for 5 Oct. won't be surprised that I don't agree with her on this (see below).

Bluegrass: a history and the 2017 IBMA keynote address 'present different pictures' because they're about different things. Giddens asks 'Why is bluegrass so white?', and the answer (as she shows) is the artificial barriers that were erected before bluegrass developed. Her valid and important message - that it's time to remove barriers - takes nothing away from the value of Bluegrass: a history. Neil Rosenberg produced a comprehensive account, meticulously detailed and admirably organised and analysed, of the music that took its classic form in 1945, gained a name a decade later, and subsequently evolved. Those who wish the book had paid more attention to black music before 1945 should note that it does not pretend to be a history of white music before 1945 either.

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Warning: Readers who have seen quite enough about Cecil Sharp on this blog should stop reading now.

The paragraph on Sharp from the 2017 keynote address is as follows, in italics. My comments are in roman.

Folklorists and song collectors at the time also had a huge hand in the creation of this myth; Cecil Sharp, founder of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, was one of the first to brave the Appalachian mountains in search of it.
Of the myth? No; some people have written of Sharp as if he were looking for Elizabethan settlers or a 'pure Anglo-Saxon race', but he was in search of songs that had originated in Britain and Ireland, because that was the focus of his life. He had devoted himself to English folk song and dance for fifteen years, and he had been given solid evidence that many such ballads and songs were still being sung in Appalachia. Not surprisingly, he wanted to find them.

With Maud Karpeles he spent three years in the Appalachian mountains,
Nearly a year, all told: two months in 1916, about four-and-a-half in 1917, and a similar total in 1918.

... recording families and making much of what he found there – but only the white folks.
And not even all of them - not the Dutch or Germans, for instance, who were surely white enough...

Now by the time they got to western North Carolina, the black population wasn’t as high as it was, but that’s only part of the reason there’s no black representation in his collections, which influenced everyone who came after; they just plain didn’t like black people.
Regrettably, there is truth in this, but not the whole truth. Sharp, from long experience with country people in England, found the white mountain people familiar, accessible, and congenial, as well as being richer in the music he was seeking than he could ever have expected. By contrast, he had no experience to put him on an easy footing with African-Americans or encourage him to approach them, as he did not expect them to have songs with origins in these islands. When he met an individual black person who did - such as Aunt Maria Tomes, who sang 'Barbara Allen' for him - they seem to have got on well together; but Sharp and Karpeles certainly expressed feelings (to use the words of Kehrberg and Keith) of 'disdain and dismissal' about black people in general.

This abounds in their writings – my favorite quote is this one; after a long hard hike looking for the most isolated homesteads to record, they caught sight of some likely looking log cabins. Sharp says [in his private diary]: 'We tramped – a very hard and warm walk, mainly uphill. When we reached the cove we found it peopled entirely by negroes!! All our trouble and spent energy for naught.' Except of course, he didn’t say negroes.
It wouldn't have helped if he had, by some present-day standards. The dismay of Sharp and Karpeles at this place was clearly (as Phil Jamison recognises) because they believed no suitable songs would be found among black people; this was before they had met Mrs Sinda Walker or Aunt Maria Tomes. However, a year later Sharp's intense dislike of Winston-Salem, NC, was partly due to its black population. Mike Yates, in his major account of Sharp in Appalachia, considers the way Sharp writes in his diary about them 'indefensible', though possibly exacerbated by the effects of ill-health.

Two things more about Sharp and race: first, after his initial visit to Appalachia his view was that the mountain people had 'so many of the essentials of culture' chiefly because 'they have one and all entered at birth into the full enjoyment of their racial heritage' (English folk songs (1917), introduction, p. ix). Developing that further (ibid., pp xix-xx) - and using 'racial' and 'national' interchangeably - he suggested 'with the greatest diffidence' that city education authorities in the USA tended

to ignore the educational and cultural value of that national heritage which every immigrant brings with him [...].  I admit that the problem which faces the educationist in America is a peculiarly difficult one, but it will, I am convinced, never be satisfactorily solved until the education given to every foreign colonist is directly based upon, and closely related to, his or her national inheritance of culture [bold type added by the BIB].

In theory, at least, Sharp was consequently arguing against 'Anglo' supremacy in education.

Secondly, by the time he finally left Appalachia, his own brief experience there had indicated, and his communications with John C. Campbell would have confirmed, that there were no simple answers to the question of ethnic origins of its population. What he felt entitled to observe was that 'whatever admixture of races there may be in the mountains', the predominant culture there (judging by traditional songs and dances) was 'Anglo-Celtic' - a term that Campbell hoped might reconcile the proponents of 'Scotch-Irish' and 'English' origin.

*

John C. Campbell, The southern highlander and his homeland. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1921. Chapter IV, 'Ancestry', pp 50-71 (see Sharp's contribution, pp 69-71).

English folk songs from the southern Appalachians (1917 ed.), introduction by Sharp, pp ix, xix-xx.

© Richard Hawkins

A crossroads? Part 4a: 'An English song'?

The BIB editor continues his comments on items in Tatiana Hargreaves's 'An introductory resource list for understanding race and racism in old-time music' (Old Time News, issue 103, autumn 2020):

Parts 3 and 4 of this series have focused on the online article by Kevin Kehrberg and Jeffrey A. Keith from which Tatiana Hargreaves highlighted the passage beginning:

Sharp claimed 'Swannanoa Town' (explicitly), 'Swannanoa Tunnel' (by extension), and 'John Henry' (for good measure) as English in origin. Such distorted conclusions resulted from Sharp's understanding of folk music that placed Europe in general and England in particular at its center. This warped logic led Sharp to claim English ownership of music that was 200 years and 5,000 miles removed from his homeland.

Taken as a whole, this is nonsense; but it's partly excusable. Sharp did not claim that all the songs he collected in Appalachia came from England, but this could have been stated much more clearly.

Both of the published compilations (1917, 1932) of songs collected in the mountains by Cecil Sharp, Maud Karpeles, and Olive Dame Campbell were indeed entitled English folk songs from the Southern Appalachians. All the texts in these compilations were in the English language. The ballads indisputably came from the English-speaking traditions of these islands. The songs had been collected from the same people - often the same individuals - who sang the ballads, and for most of the songs roots in Britain or Ireland could be identified. As can be seen from his notes on the songs, Sharp's use of the term 'English' did not exclude Scotland and Ireland. So though the title English folk songs might be misunderstood, choosing it was perhaps understandable.

Sharp did not mean, though, that all the songs were therefore from these islands. On p. ix of his 1917 introduction he drew the reader's attention to two that he knew were not: no. 87 ('John Hardy') and no. 99 ('Wild Bill Jones') - examples of modern texts that were assimilated into tradition. Moreover, he wrote (pp xiii-xiv): 'Some of the song-texts are quite new to me, and are not to be found, so far as I have been able to discover, in any of the standard English collections.' The dozen examples he gave included no. 91, 'Swannanoa [or 'Swananoah'] Town'. For all he knew, these songs might yet be found in England; they might have died out there; or they might have originated in America. Whatever origin 'Swannanoa Town' had, Sharp did not 'explicitly' claim it as English in origin. The allegation that he also claimed 'Swannanoa Tunnel' and 'John Henry' consequently collapses.

Kehrberg and Keith also assert that 'Sharp's version', as they call it, 'conceals a record of social injustice and tragedy' through 'poetic and sonic omission' - because it's in the wrong tempo for a work song, and the words don't mention railroading, a cave-in, or a tunnel. 'Sharp's version' is recorded as having been transcribed in September 1916 at Black Mountain, NC, from the singing of Mrs Sarah Buckner and Mrs Ford, and there is no reason to believe that this is not how they sang it. For all anyone knows, they may have originally learned it in that form; in 1916 the 'folk process' in North Carolina had had twenty-five years to make changes in whatever the tunnel labour gangs had left behind them.

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(A personal note: the first version I ever heard of the song was Art Rosenbaum's 'Swannanoa Tunnel' on the 1962 compilation album Folk banjo styles (Elektra EKL-217), and - though not a work song - it's still my favourite. This recording, unfortunately, is not yet on YouTube. A similar sparse, intense treatment from Kentucky is 'Swanno Mountain' (sic) by Roscoe Holcomb.)

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English folk songs from the southern Appalachians: comprising 122 songs and ballads, and 323 tunes. Collected by Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp. With an introduction and notes. G.P Putnam's Sons, New York and London: The Knickerbocker Press. 1917.
This can be read online here.

English folk songs from the southern Appalachians, collected by Cecil J. Sharp; comprising two hundred and seventy-four songs and ballads with nine hundred and sixty-eight tunes, including thirty-nine tunes contributed by Olive Dame Campbell. Edited by Maud Karpeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932.


© Richard Hawkins

A crossroads? Part 4: 'Swannanoa Tunnel'

The BIB editor continues his comments on items in Tatiana Hargreaves's 'An introductory resource list for understanding race and racism in old-time music' (Old Time News, issue 103, autumn 2020):

Rhiannon Giddens in her 2017 IBMA keynote address emphasised how much - despite many negative factors - the traditions of black and white music from the southern USA held in common:

It is important to what is going on RIGHT NOW to stress the musical brother- and sisterhood we have had for hundreds of years; for every act of cultural appropriation, of financial imbalance, of the erasure of names and faces, of the outside attempt to create artificial division and sow hatred, simply to keep us down so that the powers-that-be can continue to enjoy the fruits of our labour, there are generous acts of working-class cultural exchange taking place in the background.

Kevin Kehrberg and Jeffrey A. Keith, in their article ‘Somebody died, babe: a musical cover-up of racism, violence, & greed’ for the Bitter Southerner online magazine, present a darker picture from the past, based on eight years of research into the song 'Swannanoa Tunnel'. The tunnel itself was the last and longest in a series driven through the Blue Ridge to allow the railroad to link east and west North Carolina. Work on this link (1875-91) was borne primarily by black convict labourers, of whom several hundred died from harsh conditions, harsh treatment, and disease. None received any credit; and as a further indignity, their work song 'Swannanoa Tunnel' has been appropriated by white collectors and performers, undergoing radical and misleading change. The sole recording of the song by a black singer that Kehrberg and Keith found was a 1939 field recording, 'Asheville Junction' sung by James William Love, a Duke University employee whose own life epitomised the pressures that black workers had to bear. The recording is reproduced in their article.

In Hargreaves's words, the song 'went from a Black American work song depicting brutal convict worker conditions to a supposed English ballad collected by Cecil Sharp'. Both these two assertions - 'depicting brutal convict worker conditions' and 'a supposed English ballad collected by Cecil Sharp' - are misleading. The first follows Kehrberg and Keith, who write: 'in song, the tunnel is a site of bone-crushing tragedy'; hammer songs of this type 'became running commentaries on the trials and tribulations of forced labour under cruel conditions, an expression of lament, and a form of creative resistance'. But though Love sang 'Asheville Junction' unmistakably as a work song, the words he sang hardly convey these kinds of message any more clearly than the words Sharp took down from Buckner and Ford in 1916, though Love's do include the verses 'Asheville Junction, Swannanoa Tunnel, All caved in, babe, all caved in' and 'Hammer falling from my shoulder, All day long, babe, all day long.'*

Kehrberg and Keith write that their researches taught them that 'there’s a gulf between white perceptions and Black realities'. Whether for this reason or for others, the song 'Swannanoa Tunnel' has been performed and recorded in traditional, folk-revival, pop, old-timey, country, and bluegrass styles by white performers, many of whom clearly had little or no idea of the song's background and no desire to learn more. Part of ‘Somebody died, babe' is devoted to an overview of a number of these widely varying recordings, with an accompanying audio playlist culminating in thirty seconds of Bryan Sutton, playing it basically as an alternative 'Nine pound hammer'.

One paragraph from Kehrberg and Keith might be seen as capable of putting our views of old-time and bluegrass music into a different perspective from the hopeful 'Yes, we can' message of Rhiannon Giddens, quoted above. Writing of Bascom Lamar Lunsford (North Carolina folklorist, performer, and festival organiser, who did much to make the song 'Swannanoa Tunnel' widely known), they cite his commentary on a 1935 recording he made of the song:

Lunsford mentions 'Negroes' as the 'construction men' who built the tunnel and brought the song, but then emphasises that it 'has been influenced a great deal by mountain sentiment', explaining that 'where music is brought in, the mountaineer works it over and uses it to his own taste.' That is to say, Lunsford was defending the song’s shift in perspective from an incarcerated laborer in an unfamiliar place to a local wage worker or guard, a process that dramatically transformed it from a Black work song to a Southern Apartheid-era white, working-class anthem.

To me, this appears to imply clearly that this was a deplorable outcome. How is the average old-time music enthusiast, though, to react to the fact that practically all those we regard as Old Masters of old-time come within this regrettable category of 'Southern Apartheid-era white, working-class'?

One last point: Kehrberg and Keith write that in Lunsford's notes on 'Swannanoa Tunnel' for his 1953 Folkways album Smoky Mountain ballads, he 'specifically cites Sharp’s claim that "it is a variant of an old English song"', as if he had endorsed the claim. All Lunsford does, in fact, is say that that is what Sharp said (though in fact Sharp did not say that). In the comments he made about the song in 1949 for the Archive of American Folk Song, Lunsford had written: 'It’s been mentioned in some of the books that it is a variant of an old English song, but it’s definitely a work song.'

For those who can stand it, more on this point will follow in another instalment of 'A crossroads?'

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Liner notes to Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Ballads, banjo tunes, and sacred songs of western North Carolina, Smithsonian Folkways SFW40082

Ken Bigger, 'Swannanoa Tunnel', Sing Out!, 23 July 2012, 25 July 2012, 28 July 2012 (with another selection of different recorded versions)

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*I have not seen the text of 'Swannanoa Town' that Sharp took down in autumn 1918 from Mrs Julie Boone in North Carolina (it's presumably in the 1932 edition of his Appalachian collections), but if the words are the same as those sung by Jeff Davis and Brian Peters in the presentation 'Sharp's Appalachian harvest' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65aG9uJvcps, at 1h.13m), they give a stronger hint of killingly hard, prolonged labour than the words of 'Asheville Junction' do.


© Richard Hawkins

A crossroads? Part 3: A brief defence of Cecil Sharp

The BIB editor writes:

I had intended part 3 of this series to focus on one of the sources listed by Tatiana Hargreaves in Old Time News - the online article by Kevin Kehrberg and Jeffrey A. Keith, ‘Somebody died, babe: a musical cover-up of racism, violence, & greed’. It's a compelling account of the circumstances in which one song, 'Swannanoa tunnel', was created in Appalachia and has subsequently been presented; it raises questions about the picture, put forward by Rhiannon Giddens, of a repertoire 'shared' among black and white Southerners; and it makes a statement about the respect due to music and its makers, with which I fully agree. Unfortunately, Hargreaves has chosen to highlight one of the most misleading passages in the whole piece:

Sharp claimed 'Swannanoa Town' (explicitly), 'Swannanoa Tunnel' (by extension), and 'John Henry' (for good measure) as English in origin. Such distorted conclusions resulted from Sharp's understanding of folk music that placed Europe in general and England in particular at its center. This warped logic led Sharp to claim English ownership of music that was 200 years and 5,000 miles removed from his homeland. Travel diaries from his Appalachian collecting trips also reveal a categorical disdain and dismissal of Black people. Had he known the true source of 'Swannanoa Town', he may [sic] not have even bothered to preserve it. Despite such views, the influence of Sharp's work lingers on today in common cultural perceptions of American folk music.

'Sharp' is Cecil James Sharp (1859-1924), founder of the folk music and dance revival movement in England, whose song-collecting in Appalachia with Maud Karpeles during eleven or twelve months in 1916-18 produced a body of over 1,600 tunes. Over the years he and his work have been criticised from one angle or another. In recent years his work in Appalachia has come under attack from the USA, with the most detailed and careful attack, backed by expert knowledge in the field of dance, coming from Phil Jamison; other American critics seem to suffer from prejudice, an inflamed imagination, or a general lack of grip. In the paragraph quoted above, for instance, the last sentence and (with strong reservations) the sentence about 'disdain and dismissal' are all that hold water. Kehrberg and Keith do themselves no favours by writing about the version of 'Swannanoa Tunnel' which Sharp transcribed from the singing of Mrs Sarah Buckner and Mrs Ford in September 1916, as if he had personally changed the words and altered the time signature of the tune from the original work song.

An adequate answer to all Sharp's critics would take far more space than the BIB can spare. What seems to be at the core of American objections to him, though, is the charge of 'anglocentricity': someone who was not blinkered by nationalistic anglocentricity, they imply, would have gone through Appalachia attempting, at least, to do justice to all its rich musical traditions. Those who take this line might consider the following:

• He was an Englishman, normally resident in England.
• He had, through over ten years of full-time collecting, teaching, and writing in England, earned a reputation as an expert on English folk song and dance.
• Having earned this reputation, he was able to lecture and give instruction in English folk song and dance in cities of the USA in 1914 and 1915.
• Because of this reputation, Olive Dame Campbell showed him in 1915 songs she had collected in Appalachia, which he could see at a glance were 'apparently of Irish, Scottish or English origin'. She suggested that he should come to Appalachia on the chance of finding more; and because he was interested in such material, he went.
• On arriving in Appalachia, he and Maud Karpeles found there was more of it than they could ever have expected.

Sharp had limited time and resources; he was in his mid-fifties; and he was not in the best of health for travel in the mountains. To me, it's not in the least surprising that he should have given first priority to places and people that had the music he was primarily interested in. He wasn't there to make a general survey of Appalachian music; and I consider it stands to his credit that he gave as much attention as he did to music that originated in America.

As a final tit-bit, here's an account he wrote of hearing the nephews of a Mrs Crawford, of Balsam, NC, play a fiddle-and-banjo duet in July 1917:

The thing was very skilfully played, plumb in tune, and its constant repetition had a very hypnotic effect on me and apparently on the players... the tunes look little enough when committed to paper, but the way they were played produced a very curious and not un-beautiful effect.

That should strike a chord with old-time enthusiasts.

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Phil Jamison, Hoedowns, reels, and frolics: roots and branches of southern Appalachian dance. University of Illinois Press, 2015. (Music in American Life)
Mike Yates, 'Cecil Sharp in America: collecting in the Appalachians' at http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/sharp.htm. 1999.

© Richard Hawkins

30 April 2019

2nd 'Albion to Appalachia' weekend, 31 May-2 June 2019

In response to the success of last May's 'From Albion to Appalachia' event in England, commemorating the final song-collecting trip in Appalachia made by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles (see the BIB for 12 Sept. 2017), a second 'From Albion to Appalachia' weekend will be held at Halsway Manor in the Quantock Hills, Somerset, England, on 31 May-2 June 2019.

The organisers announce: 'The weekend is aimed at singers and singer / instrumentalists with an interest in Appalachian song and music and their links with the British folk traditions, who wish to learn both technique and a new repertoire.' In the BIB's view, Irish old-time enthusiasts should not feel excluded by the term 'British' as used here. Full details are on the Halsway Manor website and the FOAOTMAD news blog.

01 April 2018

Good advice from the Birthplace of Country Music Museum

The Birthplace of Country Music Museum (BCMM) in Bristol, TN/VA, has just added to its website a useful article by Charlene Baker, 'Band aids: helpful tips for the gigless'. From her experience as a band member, artist manager, booking agent, and festival organiser, she puts forward eleven helpings of detailed advice on presentation, promotion, networking, and other areas that any band needs to bear in mind, ranging all the way from 'Get real' to 'Don't blow it'.

The BCMM also sends a reminder of its special exhibition of photos from the song-collecting trip by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles in Appalachia a century ago. This exhibition began on St Patrick's day and will run to 31 May. For a UK event commemorating the trip, see here.

19 March 2018

Anna and Elizabeth at the Sugar Club, Dublin, 9 May 2018

The FOAOTMAD news blog announces that Elizabeth LaPrelle and Anna Roberts-Gevalt (USA) will be touring these islands from 3 May to 16 May this year. Their online tour schedule shows one date in Ireland: they will be performing at the Sugar Club, 8 Lower Leeson St., Dublin 2, on Wednesday 9 May at 8.00 p.m. Online bookings can be made via a link on the tour schedule web page.

The schedule shows nine other dates in Britain, and last September it was announced that Anna Roberts-Gevalt would be one of the workshop tutors and performers at 'From Albion to Appalachia', a weekend residential event (18-20 May) in the Quantock Hills, Somerset, marking the centenary of the final song-collecting trip in Appalachia made by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles.

12 September 2017

'From Albion to Appalachia', 18-20 May 2018

Cecil Sharp (left) and Maud Karpeles (right) collecting songs in Appalachia

The FOAOTMAD news blog announces a weekend residential event at Halsway Manor in the Quantock Hills, Somerset, England, next spring - 'From Albion to Appalachia', commemorating the final song-collecting trip in Appalachia made by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles.

The course (18-20 May 2018) will explore Appalachian music and culture, and the links with 'the Old Country'. The tutors - Anna Roberts-Gevalt (USA), Jeff Warner (USA), and Brian Peters (UK) - will offer a range of workshops as well as a Saturday night concert. Full details are on the 'From Albion to Appalachia' web page. Halsway Manor is very accessible by car, bus, or train.