| Abstract |
Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the social landscape. This book examines the political force of folk music, not through the meaning of its lyrics, but through the concrete social activities that make up movements. Drawing from rich archival material, the author shows that the People's Songs movement of the 1930s and 1940s, and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s implemented folk music's social relationships--specifically between those who sang and those who listened--in different ways, achieving different outcomes. The author explores how the People's Songsters envisioned uniting people in song, but made little headway beyond leftist activists. In contrast, the civil rights movement successfully integrated music into collective action, and used music on the picket lines, at sit-ins, on freedom rides, and in jails. The author considers how the movement's Freedom Songs never gained commercial success, yet contributed to the wider achievements of the civil rights struggle. He also traces the history of folk music, revealing the complex debates surrounding who or what qualified as 'folk' and how the music's status as racially inclusive was not always a given. Examining folk music's galvanizing and unifying power, this book casts new light on the relationship between cultural forms and social activity. |
