The Music of Our Burnished Axes: Songs and Stories of the Woods Workers of Newfoundland and Labrador catalogs songs and practices of music-making among woods workers in Newfoundland and Labrador, with a particular focus on the middle of the twentieth century. Written by Ursula Kelly and Meghan Forsyth, the collection of songs, poems, recitations, and narratives is accompanied by a few short chapters that provide a topical area-focused historical context, with peripheral attention to much music-specific engagement. It traverses music-making among these woods-working communities on levels ranging from the individual to the local, and larger reaching scopes. Additionally, Kelly and Forsyth find a way to make tangible the daily pressures and overarching social and cultural issues of members of the woods-working community, much of which are cataloged and preserved in these creative music-making practices.
The two authors offer deep connection to woods working and music. Kelly is herself a logger’s daughter, but also a “scholar of English literature, cultural studies, and critical education theory with an interest in issues of equity and justice” (Beverly Diamond in the foreward, xv). Forsyth is an ethnomusicologist specializing in music and dance traditions of the North Atlantic. The book provides two substantial chapters on the history of lumbering and logging (chapter 1) and how the practice of music-making existed in communities of woods workers (chapter 2), both written by Kelly. Forsyth, authors the third chapter which touches briefly on the musical features of the repertoire cataloged from Newfoundland and Labrador, but the bulk of the book is given to an extensive catalog of repertoire, organized in songs and tunes (chapter 4), recitations (chapter 5), poems (chapter 6), and narratives and first-person accounts (chapter 7). The end matter in The Music of Our Burnished Axes is thorough, offering many ways of finding a story, tune, or recitation by title or first line, as well as a topical and biographical index. The chapters that focus on the primary source material include notes for each entry, providing available context and background on the person to which the song, tune, poem, recitation, or narrative is attributed, how it was collected, and where it has traveled. Kelly and Forsyth do an exquisite job navigating the fluidity and movement of a predominantly oral tradition in the fixed medium of text and notation. The Music of Our Burnished Axes is by no means the first anthology of North American working songs, but it is the first significant collection of songs connected by both geographical location and the woods working community. Because this book is contextualized as a collection of songs, recitations, and poems, it will perhaps be most valuable as a reference resource rather than as topical foundation. The first three chapters could easily be read as an introduction to the collected material, but the greatest value may not be achieved by reading the book cover-to-cover. As someone who knew nothing about woods workers prior to reading the book, I found the historical chapters to be dense and at times overwhelmed by figures and acronyms. However, they are also rich with images and great detail about individual communities and practices. The heavy load of factual context is balanced with primary-source anecdotal vignettes, placed as separate, shaded boxes on the page. Stories like the prank turned myth of the Traverspine Devil (27) and images of the Newfoundland loggers ca. 1920 (43) provide links from the dryer historical lineage to the individuals who lived through the described events, ever connecting the book’s content with the distinct individuals who built and sustained their communities and practice. Added images and vignettes continue through the later, collection-based chapters of the book. On each song, tune, poem, recitation, or narrative page, Kelly and Forsyth contribute a set of notes that provide context for the printed material. Additional materials can include available information about the author, where the song originated, and where it traveled: the notes are a combination of narrative context and primary source material. The collection contains lesser-known materials as well as well-known tunes like John Valentine Devine’s “The Badger Drive.” Though the text of the song depicts a highly romanticized version of woods working, the accompanying notes situate the idealized text as it interacts with very real industry men: Hugh Wilding Cole, Billy Dorrity, and Ronald Kelly, all mentioned by full name in the song (73). Kelly and Forsyth trace earlier publications of the tune and include an anecdote about the origins of the title. The notes can also include direct musical observations; “Cut That Timber Down” connects the tempo of the music and the pace of the mechanized harvesting that was used to meet the Stephenville mill’s demand in the mid-1970s (236). The Music of Our Burnished Axes: Songs and Stories of the Woods Workers of Newfoundland and Labrador offers a way into understanding the interactions between music-making and labor among North American woods workers. It additionally provides a brand-new reference source for those looking to put into sonic context the lives and work of members of this community.
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[Review length: 834 words • Review posted on October 24, 2019]