Once called “folk” music, “roots” still refers to the “unwritten traditional music of ordinary people” (ix), though it now includes blues and other world music. The change of nomenclature doesn’t resolve the problems associated with the study and practice of traditional music—especially authenticity and appropriation—nor does it eliminate the need to understand the social politics of race and place in fixing musical identity. This new volume tackles these issues with scholarly care.

Transatlantic Roots Music examines the effects of the cross-cultural trade in folk and blues music between the United States and Great Britain in the mid-twentieth century. The collection addresses, in particular, British perceptions of American folk and blues cultures, how the racialization of those musical genres (on both sides of the pond) were produced, and how national identities are negotiated through the interpretation of musical sources and expressions.

Editors Jill Terry and Neil A. Wynn arranged the thirteen essays historically, beginning with some history of folkloric theory and early scholarship. This is followed by three essays on American folk artists who visited Great Britain and had long-lasting impacts on the British musical imagination. Three more chapters examine the infusion of blues in British rock ’n’ roll and how the “British invasion” of the 1960s re-introduced the blues to American audiences. The final essays address economic inequalities in the music industry, the role of recorded music and its fans in producing local identities, and a reflection on folkloric processes in the invention of “Celtic” music.

Terry and Wynn open with an introduction to the larger themes addressed throughout the book: race, class, and place as markers of authenticity. They introduce the first folk revivalists—Francis James Child, Cecil Sharp, and John and Alan Lomax—and outline their various transatlantic crossings to research and preach the gospel of roots music.

Paul Oliver, an important early British scholar of roots music, discusses the history of American-made music in Europe, beginning with nineteenth-century minstrel groups. The twentieth century brought jazz and swing music to Europe, and in the 1960s blues artists began to tour. Oliver notes that in addition to live performances, recorded music and the emergence of music-specific magazines helped create a passion for African-American blues.

Christian O’Connell suggests that Oliver’s own activities contributed to the invention of the blues as a category and helped to create a mythic origin story. O’Connell also critiques Oliver’s methodologies for producing naturalized and racialized categories of music.

The English ballad tradition in America was an early topic for folk scholars. Erich Nunn complicates John Lomax’s easy association of white Englishness with the ballad form.

The next three essays address reciprocal transatlantic exchanges through specific musicians: Americans Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; and British musicians The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Eric Burdon. Will Kaufman explores Woody Guthrie’s musical activism. Guthrie, he argues, romanticized the notion of “folk” as authentic culture-bearers through his Dust Bowl ballads.

Bob Dylan visited London in the early 1960s where he discovered—and according to John Hughes, voraciously appropriated—British folk song structures and themes.

American folklorist Alan Lomax moved to London in order to escape America’s McCarthy-era persecutions. Ronald D. Cohen provides a concise biography of Lomax before his discussion of Lomax’s highly influential radio and television broadcasts, between 1950 and 1958, which introduced American folk and blues to the British public. Lomax’s efforts were key to the development of skiffle and later on to rock ’n’ roll.

Roberta Freund Schwartz provides a more technical analysis of the style and evolution of blues rock as well as a close look at the personalities who created it, including The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, who have always been vocal about their appreciation for American bluesmen. Freund Schwartz points out that the sociological differences between British rockers and African-American musicians were reflected in British interpretations of American blues. That distance also allowed them to incorporate other materials and produce a unique sound.

In Brian Ward’s essay on Eric Burdon, we see another example of the problem with insisting on a singular and racial origin of music. Burdon attempted to locate the African-American ancestry of his most popular recording, “House of the Rising Sun.” Ward cautions, however, that “Burdon was so keen to give black artists their due that he neglected the role of white southerners in the evolution of the song” (157).

The 1960s invasion of British blues-rockers was a catalyst for renewed attention to America’s own unique forms. Andrew Kellett addresses how white Chicago natives, Paul Butterfield and Michael Bloomfield, who learned the blues directly from Chicago’s most famous bluesmen, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, complicated the imaginary “father/son” relationship that the British rockers had already laid claim to.

Robert H. Cataliotti introduces a discussion of the economic inequities between white British and black American musicians. Despite their vocal support of American bluesmen, white rockers made fortunes off their blues recordings while black musicians continued to struggle financially.

The final two essays stand slightly apart from the others. David Sanjek writes about the creation of “Northern soul” by one small community of fans who came to identify with the raw recordings of early blues music.

And finally, musician Duck Baker unravels the construction of “Celtic” music and culture. Celtic, like blues, rock ’n’ roll, and folk, is produced via a selective process through which some aspects are chosen to represent the tradition and other aspects—or people or races—are ignored or forgotten.

The greatest omission in Transatlantic Roots Music, to my mind, is a carefully edited soundtrack; my personal collection of examples from both sides of the ocean isn’t nearly extensive enough. But there is enough in this collection to be of interest to all scholars and students of the history and development of American and British musical cultures.

--------

[Review length: 958 words • Review posted on February 6, 2013]