digitizing folk music history seminar notes, 12 May 2011.
Thursday, 5/12. Archives and Power.
Readings:
- Filene, Romancing the Folk, 133-182.
- Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, eds. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-14.
- Smith, Anthology of American Folk Music, Part 2, listen.
- Optional: Browse That Old Weird America Blog, http://oldweirdamerica.wordpress.com/.
Today, let’s use the folk revival’s festivals, anthologies, archives, memories, and history to think about the question of cultural representation and, since we’re dealing with a mode of performance (music), re-presentation.
Different examples of representation by different representers:
- 1920s-30s record companies: “hillbilly,” “race” records
- Smith’s “Memory Theater” (Cantwell)
- Lomax’s radio shows and, later, “Global Jukebox” (Filene)
- Botkin’s applied folklore (Filene)
- Dorson’s scholarly folklore (Filene)
- Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Cantwell and Filene)
Vectors of representational strategies and approaches:
- Salvage/Preservationist vs. Functionalist approaches to representing (and re-presenting) the folk
- Is it the state or the market (or both?) doing the representing: for what reasons? with what effects?