12 Aug 09 - 08:39 PM (#2699017) Subject: YouTube: American Folk History From: dick greenhaus There's a multi-part series on YouTube documenting the early days of the Lomax and post-Lomax folk revival. Lots of early movies of Lead Belly, Woody, Pete et al. Go see! |
12 Aug 09 - 09:06 PM (#2699033) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: Janie Link for American Folk History 1 From that point, follow the links in the sidebar. Haven't really checked it out yet, Dick, but will start tonight. Thanks! |
13 Aug 09 - 01:35 AM (#2699156) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: Amos Janie, Dick: I have just listened to all twelve segments. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for posting that signpost. Those recaps are a treasure. Just a damn treasure. A |
13 Aug 09 - 03:32 AM (#2699195) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: Deckman Incredible. Thanks everyone. Bob(deckman)Nelson |
13 Aug 09 - 11:26 PM (#2699933) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: Desert Dancer Refresh! |
13 Aug 09 - 11:37 PM (#2699937) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: Desert Dancer (Here's one of two threads discussing the BBC4 series last February: click1, here's the other: click2.) |
15 Aug 09 - 04:58 PM (#2701178) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: dick greenhaus I'm refreshing this because I think it's an important document--if only a documentation of how one branch (the commercial one) of American folk music evolved. It's certainly not all-inclusive...it's hard for me to agree that R&R wiped out folk music, until it was resurrected by folk-rock. But it's a fine summary of how one branch of folk music developed and withered. Now, if someone would do something similar for some other aspects of folksong---remember, Folk-Legacy started just about the time that pop-folk was taking off, but followed a distinctly different path. |
15 Aug 09 - 06:52 PM (#2701255) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: Janie I'm up to the 8th video. I'm glad to read your observations, Dick, that it documents one branch, the commercial branch. I would go a bit further and say it is Eastern Seaboard Urban Ethnocentric in it's perspective. I agree it is an important document and I am enjoying it, as well as learning a lot. It is also very much focused on an urban revival, and I am aware of lots of different thoughts and feelings arising within as I watch it. I never heard of Pete or Mike Seeger, or Leadbelly, or the Weavers, or Woodie Guthrie growing up. Both of my parents were in Huntington, WV by the time they reached puberty. My Dad's parent's were born and raised on eastern Kentucky dirt farms, and clawed their way out of poverty, and out of the country. My Mom's family were coal miners in southern West Virginia. My maternal grandmother wrenched the extended family out of the coalfields and to Huntington after my grandfather was killed when the roof collapsed in a deep mine, during the Great Depression. I wasn't steeped in a musical tradition of collectible Appalachian ballads as was Jean Ritchie, but my first memories of music are of my paternal grandfather singing his United Baptist hymns as he went about his chores, in a fine, tenor, mountain voice. As I have watched these videos thus far, I am, on the one-hand, delighted and educated. On the other, I think the thousands who share a similar history with my southern Appalachian family and our more recent culture are invisible in this story. It is like there are the remote enclaves, the discovery by the Lomax's of these enclaves, be they hollers or prisons, and the largess of patronizing east coast liberals in "reviving" music that was otherwise dead. I don't think I am prepared to write any more about my reactions to this series right now, and I'm not sure I will ever be ready to do so on this forum. Also not sure what I might eventually have worked out will be of general interest on the forum, as it really is a personal journey. As I said before, I agree it is an important documentary. Sure ignores anyone not "discovered" by the Lomaxs', or a leftist or liberal performing in Greenwich Village, or a group marketed by the likes of "Capitol Records" circa the late 60's or early 70's. Having said all that, and probably too much at that, I look forward to finishing the series. It really is a wonderful and important documentary. |
15 Aug 09 - 09:14 PM (#2701326) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: dick greenhaus Most of the memoirs published about the folk scene in the 50s to 70s suffer from this limited viewpoint--it's likely that a look at non-commercial folk music wouldn't sell, simply because nobody would have heard of the author. |
15 Aug 09 - 09:53 PM (#2701340) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: Amos Janie: I hear you yelling in between those quiet lines of type. This was a narrow line on a broad canvas; at least, though, someone was trying to listen, and if Lomax and his kind were the only channel they could get, that was a start. A |
16 Aug 09 - 10:50 AM (#2701566) Subject: RE: YouTube: American Folk History From: dick greenhaus Well, Lomax(s), Seeger(s), MacColl and the rest did radically change what the world considered to be folk music. But they only represented "one line on a broad canvas" (thanx Amos--I really like that image). |