Writing from Neverland

Arthur Krim, “Appalachian Songcatcher: Olive Dame Campbell and the Scotch-Irish ballad.” Journal of Cultural Geography. 2006. HighBeam Research. (October 25, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-159390035.html

Dick Weissman, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution: Music and Social Change in America.” New York: Backbeat Books, 2010.

“Twas in the mer-ry month of May, The green buds were swel-ling, Poor
Wil-liam Green on his death-bed lay For the love of Bar-b’ra El-len.” These words come from the first verse of the English ballad, Barbara Allen, which was one of many English, Scottish, Irish, and Ulster-Scots’ ballads to have been found perfectly preserved in the Appalachian mountains. The discovery of these ballads at the turn of the twentieth century have been the subject of fascination by geographers, historians, and folklorists alike. In addition to this, the work of such people as Olive Dame Campbell, Cecil Sharp, and Charles Seeger in preserving these ballads for posterity had a direct impact on the folk and Celtic music revivals of the sixties. These ballads are not native to America, they were brought over with the waves of immigrants from Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. How and when they came to be preserved in small enclaves in the Appalachians has also been a subject of much discussion and scholarship.

Arthur Krim, in his article for the Journal of Cultural Geography, traces the scholarship surrounding these ballads, their preservation, and theorizes how they came to be in the Southern Appalachians. His thesis is how the original discoveries helped to touch off a folk/roots revival that has never quite disappeared, and how this archaic vocal music has maintained a vital part of the cultural practices and geography of the mountain core of Appalachia. It references both immigration and migration in the explanation of how the ballads came to Appalachia. Krim refers to this theory as a “sequence” of events that are tentatively described in the article, beginning with the Highland Scotch and Border British migrations to the Ulster Plantations in Ireland (mid-seventeenth century), bringing the Scottish ballads and their fiddle music, to the immigration of these Ulster-Scots-Irish to America (mid-eighteenth century) through Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the Piedmont, to finally settling down in the Appalachians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, having also acquired such instruments as the German dulcimer and the African-American banjo. While the instruments changed or were added to, the vocals did not, and out of this process of Immigration and migration is how a Scottish ballad from 1666 wound up being almost perfectly preserved in a remote Kentucky county settled in 1810 and first heard by Olive Dame Campbell in 1907.

Krim’s sources come primarily from the same people he discusses, Olive Dame Campbell and her husband, John, Cecil Sharp, and Eileen Semple’s work, as well as sources from a number of other people in the field. They are used to illustrate his points, giving background information and providing useful examples for further analysis. The article is more interdisciplinary, geographical with a social history flavor.

Dick Weissman’s book, “Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution: Music and Social Change in America” is a fairly comprehensive guidebook for the relationship between music and social change. He opens the book talking about the beginnings of American history and their music and then proceeds to work both chronologically and thematically up to the present day. The scope of the book is broad and diverse, covering a multitude of subjects from Native American music to union and protest songs to what he calls “music of hate” (racist and neo-Nazi music). Weissman spends an entire chapter to protest, union, and folk songs. He goes into the folk music revival and how it slowly went from songs sung back the backwards hillbillies to becoming a major influence on American music and culture. His sources and examples illustrate not only how social events impact music, but also how music impacts social events in turn. One of the examples he uses is Pete Seeger, famed folksinger and songwriter. Pete Seeger, who was introduced to folk music through his father, Charles, who collected folk songs for the Farm Resettlement Administration, and discovered a love for it himself. Pete Seeger, who among others was one of the founding fathers of the American folk music scene as it is known today. Weissman covers other huge names in the folk and celtic music revival, Joan Baez, Leadbelly, the Weavers, and Bob Dylan.

Weissman’s book is more an overview of the American music scene, specifically the complicated relationship it has with social change and events. It was published this year, so it is more current than the Krim article (published in 2006) and covers things on up to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does not reference immigration much past the first chapter of the book or emigration, but there is much talk of migration inside of the United States. Where the music was, where people would travel to in order to be a part of this group or this festival and how that too had an effect on the music scene and the participants in it. Like the Krim article, it is more interdisciplinary with a social history flavor to it.

Weissman’s focus is strictly on American artists and songwriters, and he states that there are several aspects of the American music scene that he did not cover (Gay and lesbian music for one and Christian music for another). Therefore while the book is deep and comprehensive, it is not an exhaustive text. His sources are legion and all of them point to the same conclusion that Weissman drives toward. That the links between music and social change start off as tenuous and grow steadily stronger as time goes by, until the period of the fifties and sixties where they become almost symbiotic with one another. Weissman also provides the connections that link the work of Olive Dame Campbell and the others to the folk/celtic music revival and the movements that sprang up in and around that period. The Krim article in a sense sets up the stage for the performance that the Weissman book portrays.