At the 1996 annual meeting of the American Folklore Society, Jane Beck delivered her Presidential Address entitled “Taking Stock." In preparation for that address, she spent two years inviting AFS members to share their stories about how they became folklorists. Among other things, she wanted to know about “each person’s life in folklore—how they first came into the field, what attracted them, and what they thought they were going to do with it.” She wanted to know about the life circumstances that lead to one’s decision to enter the field. This is a topic that folklorists never tire of sharing and in Sing It Pretty: A Memoir we are gifted with a beautifully written, engaging account of one woman’s life experiences in the field of folklore.

For those working in public sector folklore, employing the concepts and methods of our discipline to fulfill the public mission of government, Sing It Pretty provides a personable and modest account of how that sector of our field came into being and blossomed. Through Hawes’s anecdotes we learn about the formation of the folk arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts and her strategies for creating access to public resources for folk artists around the country. But this book is far more than a history lesson. It is a brilliant exploration of the issues we have grappled with as a field since her father John Lomax set out to document the song traditions of our nation.

The book begins in Hawes’s remarkable childhood in Texas where a mother assigned Latin mottos to her children to help guide their behavior. Hawes was given the motto Faciendo ediscere facere, “by doing, you learn to do,” a motto that would accompany her throughout her life of honoring the artistic excellence of those who learn by doing. She lost her mother at the age of ten and was essentially raised by her traveling folklorist father. At ten, she already had a good understanding of the complexities of the genre of folk songs but by the age of fifteen she was well immersed in the field of folk song recording. From grinding cactus needles for use with aluminum recordings, to transcribing the songs collected by her father and older brother Alan, to conducting scholarly research for their publications, she was already exploring questions of audience, ownership, and notions of what is “exceptional” artistry. As she says, “folkloring in those days was a family affair” (15). By the time she headed off to college at Bryn Mawr, she had traveled throughout the rural south and found herself in Europe on the eve of World War II. She credits her travels with seeing poverty and injustice up close, which in turn shaped her political convictions.

As a memoir, the book is filled with well-told narratives that help us understand how one person not only came to the field of folklore but also helped to shape it. Told in the first person, the narrative progresses chronologically through her life. One gets the impression that Bess Hawes is an adventurous spirit who doesn’t recognize her own courage. In fact, there is a sense of living in the shadow of brilliance (her father and brother) without seeing it in herself. This modesty makes the book very accessible as we travel with her through her years as a member of the Almanac Singers (where she helped to define contemporary ideas about folk music), her job working in the War Office (as a pacifist) defending the need to continue broadcasting music during the war, her first job teaching in a university in California, her forays into the world of “childlore” where she could bridge her teaching life with that of motherhood, her work with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and eventually her move to the National Endowment for the Arts where she focused her fine-honed skills on the “problem of what the Endowment should do about folk arts” (120). The book is filled with her own musings on such significant issues as why certain traditions survive while others fade; the role of play in negotiating “the interlock of order and flexibility, group consensus and individual freedom, stability and change” (83); and the politics of representing and supporting folk arts in a public agency. She includes some reprints of her early articles and moves easily between memoir narrator and scholarly folklorist. She talks about those who have inspired her including the students in her early folklore classes who motivated her to explore certain topics on a deeper level; the church janitor where she taught music who intoned “one song, one hour” thus freeing up space in the song to learn “where the art of improvisation is born” (60); the artists who prompted her to design public programs that are accessible and fair; and the folklorists like Ralph Rinzler who saw in her the knowledge and skills to succeed.

This captivating memoir offers glimpses of a much larger movement, seen through the eyes and experiences of one of its most significant and influential leaders. Teaching folklorists will appreciate her anecdotes from the classroom—“I found myself spending the first half of each semester broadening the classes’ concept of the field, and the last half narrowing it back down from their happy attempts to include all behavior and communication under folklore” (74). Scholars will appreciate her thoughtful examinations of the nature of folklore, issues of class distinctions, considerations of how and why folk traditions continue or don’t, and the primacy of the artist’s knowledge. As one who was asked to set policy regarding funding for folk arts, she had to develop a finely crafted definition that accurately encompasses the expanse of the field while accounting for limitations in resources. She describes this as “dancing along cobwebs” while trying not to get weighed down (121). Students will appreciate the breadth of her experiences and the possibilities they suggest for work as a folklorist. Cultural workers, especially those engaged in public policy, will appreciate the subtle and skillful ways in which Hawes takes what she has learned from her interactions with artists and tradition bearers to battle the “ever-present comic miasma hanging about the whole idea of folk arts” (129) and shape the way politicians and bureaucrats understand culture. Her deep–rooted respect for the producers and practitioners of cultural traditions is evident in every word on the page.

The memoir is a genre of narrative that is of particular interest to folklorists. Within the pages of personal anecdotes, we seek those truths that highlight a common experience while honoring individual identity. Sing it Pretty may be the first memoir written by a folklorist and it is a privilege to venture into the life of one so prominent in our field. This book should be required reading for all students of folklore, music, public policy, and culture studies. It also might just inspire others to write their own memoirs—what a contribution that would make to our understanding of the discipline! Through her writing, Bess Lomax Hawes continues to be an inspiration.

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[Review length: 1169 words • Review posted on April 13, 2009]