What is American, and what has been regarded to be American (or not) in the past? Rachel Clare Donaldson investigates in her book, “I Hear America Singing,” the negotiating of American identity during the folk music revival which took place in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century, beginning in the 1930s. It lasted through the 1960s when the interest in folk music, along with its commercialization, peaked and soon declined. The author reconstructs the discussions on national identity in which folklore played a crucial role as identity marker through the lens of the very protagonists of the revival. Key figures of American folk music enter the stage, including Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, and Sarah Gertrude Knott, among others. Why, one could ask, folk music? The history of folklore is a well-measured field of study, but the book adds new insights to the topic of folklore and cultural policy by combining the intellectual history of the folk revival with the history of the social movements of the investigated period, focusing on the main pop-cultural and political tendencies.
Donaldson's book is based on her dissertation and draws on archival materials both published and unpublished, secondary literature, and oral history interviews which were conducted by the author or found in archives. After briefly introducing the reader to the influential theoretical background of the era, such as the regionalist movement, and then outlining the book, Donaldson starts the revival in the identity crisis of the Great Depression. In the 1930s folk music enthusiasts laid the ground for the folk revival by launching festivals that were promoting a “pluralist view of democracy” that combined “racial, ethnic, and religious pluralism with the celebration of the economically marginalized” (21). Many folklorists were inspired by the left-wing ideas and the liberalism of the New Deal era and took up this definition of “the people” (see also Walt Whitman's poem “I Hear America Singing” from which the title is borrowed). They found folklore not only in white Anglo-Saxon traditions of music and dance, but also in all other cultural groups in America. For instance, Sarah Gertrude Knott founded with other colleagues the National Folk Festival (NFF). At the first production of the NFF, in 1934, the program featured performances by Kiowa Indians, as well as French folksongs, African American spirituals, and folklore from many other immigrant groups and from all parts of the U.S. This heritage, as the festival founders constructed it, was distinctly American in its “unity-within-diversity.” At the NFF, for instance, black and white groups performed on the same stage. The use of folk music to disseminate ideas of regionalism and pluralism to the public was also taken up by others. For example, other folk singers and folklorists like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger (who would later form the Almanac Singers), and Alan Lomax (working at the Archive of American Folk Song, funded by New Deal programs) promoted a pluralist, anti-racist Americanism which was sometimes leaning towards very leftist ideas but always grounded in the ideals of political democracy.
The revival took another direction during World War Two when the aim of ending social segregation was substituted by the idea of using folklore to teach democracy in contrast to the totalitarian systems in Europe. The second chapter, “The People?s War,” investigates how folklore contributed to that ideological battle and how governmental propaganda and societal leaders “tried to rally the nation under a banner of diversity” (53). Alan Lomax, who was now working for the Armed Forces Radio Service, broadcasted radio programs like “Singing America” which aimed at uniting America during the war, using folk music and scripted interviews. And the NFF included military choruses in the festival program.
The following chapters portray the revival during the postwar era and the “gain,” “boom,” and “bust” (terms used in the titles of the book chapters) of the folk revival. Folk enthusiasts founded the organization and journal, People's Songs, in the 1940s that addressed the people who “are on the march and must have songs to sing,” as they describe their approach in the first edition (86). The many ways to spread folksongs, work songs, and traditional songs, through school curricula, or the radio, would later in the 1950s help in “Keeping the Torch Lit” (chapter 4). In the era of the Cold War, McCarthyism resulted in political programs like the Federal Employee Loyalty Program and “hyper nationalism” (101). As Pete Seeger recalled, even talking about peace came under suspicion. Some “communist” bands and albums were blacklisted.
At the same time, the fight of the revivalists against censorship resulted in new journals like Sing Out! and folk music labels like Moses Asch's Folkways Records, which helped to move folk music into the realm of popular culture and set the stage for “The Boom.” In the 1950s, more folk festivals, e.g., the Newport Folk Festival, and TV shows like “Hootenanny” appeared. Newport made no distinction between traditional and nontraditional musicians, and thus, folk music no longer meant protest. Folk music opened into pop culture, and folksongs were now dealing with universal problems--they were “written in the first person” (150), as some revivalists criticized. The bust came as the political climate changed, and as the New Left no longer believed that folk music could better social and political problems, and when American youth moved on to new music styles.
In short, “I Hear America Singing” is a thoroughly researched and elegantly written book. Donaldson fashions a fascinating narrative of how folk music and political ideas are intertwined and how folklore can shape and is shaped by cultural politics. The reconstruction of the ideological background of the folk revival is based on a rich selection of empirical materials, and the voices of the resounding names bring back to life the ideologically laden and politicized times. Sometimes, however, during this tautly told story, especially folklorists and folk music lovers might look for a detour in order to learn more about the theoretical background of some of the concepts employed, and hearing more from the “folks” who stand away from the big spotlights. This compromise does not impair the pleasure of reading this study, which draws a vivid picture of the close ideological and personal relationships between the folk music enthusiasts and the social movements over a period of forty years. It will find its audience among us folklorists and the broader public alike.
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[Review length: 1066 words • Review posted on November 17, 2015]