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.
A crossroads? Part 1 of a series
The BIB editor writes:
Fifty-five years ago the blues singer and activist
Barbara Dane mentioned in
Sing Out! magazine that very few young blacks joined the folk scene, and put some of the blame on "the pre-eminent interest in the old-time Southern white sound which can only recall for these young people a time of pain without end".
Three years ago
Rhiannon Giddens presented in her
keynote address at the IBMA's 2017 business conference a vision that offered both challenge and hope, arguing that ethnic groups in the southern United States had a shared musical heritage and repertoire, despite a music industry that had segregated it into 'hillbilly' for whites and 'race music' or 'blues' for blacks. Bluegrass emerged from this sharing of music - it was "a creole music that comes from many influences – a beautiful syncretisation of the cultures that call this country home".
Giddens's address is often cited today, but the tensions of 2020 have brought back in some degree the tone of Dane's words. Statements have been made that raise fundamental questions affecting the playing today of what we call 'old-time' music (and by extension, impinge on bluegrass as well).
FOAOTMAD, the UK's organisation for old-time music and dance, has consequently devoted much of the latest issue of its magazine
Old Time News (issue 103, autumn 2020) to these questions. The editor,
Steve Wise, writes:
There is no escaping the fact that the music we play and love does have a darker side to its history and this is explored in a feature article by Tatiana Hargreaves which urges us all to think more deeply about the role of racism in the history of old-time. She has provided links to reading which explore these issues in more depth and I would encourage everyone to take a look at these.
I would similarly encourage reading them, but with a warning that no one (however worthy their cause) gets everything right, and some of what is said there has conspicuous flaws. I shall therefore offer my comments in a series of posts over the next few days. The first will consider the case against playing 'Turkey in the straw'.
*
Barbara Dane, 'The Chambers Brothers do that real thing',
Sing Out!, xv, no. 4 (Sept. 1965), pp 22-4.
'Rhiannon Giddens Keynote Address – IBMA Business Conference 2017' (with introduction by Robert Povelones), https://ibma.org/rhiannon-giddens-keynote-address-2017/
© Richard Hawkins
Labels: Controversy, Old-time, Opinion
