Last year in this journal (Bennett Reference Bennett, Petrus and Cohen2016) I reviewed a volume whose release coincided with a major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. The exhibition examined the role of that city in the folk revival of the 20th century, and charted the careers of those who contributed to the growth of traditional music in the USA. The scope of that book was necessarily limited to a history told through the filter of New York City and the musicians, labels, promoters and listeners who came together there from all corners of the country; it deftly interrogated the paradox that an essentially rural music needed an urban centre to become a cultural force to rival that of other popular musics.
One of the two authors of that volume, Ronald D. Cohen of Indiana University Northwest, here collaborates with Rachel Clare Donaldson of the College of Charleston on a work published slightly earlier that appears in the Music in American Life series from the University of Illinois Press. It covers much of the same territory as the New York project (especially the detailed chapter here on the Weavers and their persecution by the US government) but instead of focusing on a small geographic centre, Roots of the Revival: American and British Folk Music in the 1950s asks how the folk revival grew from cultural and political connections between the collectors and performers of various kinds of folk music from both sides of the Atlantic.
The book is designed chronologically, each of the six chapters focusing on a short period during the 1950s, except the first, which gives an overview of developments prior to that decade. This section establishes a key theme of the book: that much of the discourse at the time tended to group disparate traditions together. Collectors who published their findings would frequently place music of European origin alongside material from largely African, or primarily Native American, heritage and use the term ‘folk’ as an umbrella term. One example given by the authors is Louise Pound's Folk-Songs of Nebraska and the Central West (1914), which ‘included songs of Indian, Irish, German, English, and African American background’ (p. 12). Such acts of semantic compromise are uncovered throughout the volume. The reader is reminded that Harry Smith's 1953 Anthology is a vastly varied collection of songs from various European American, Native American and African American traditions. That collection is itself a fascinating insight into the mentality of an American musical and academic culture at the cusp of civil rights era revisionism.
Chapters 2 and 3 concentrate on the persecution of left-leaning acts like The Weavers. The authors describe how that group attracted the attention of promoters and labels in an unprecedented manner, but also suffered one of popular music's most regrettable downfalls under the McCarthyist government. Thus, we are reminded how individuals like Alan Lomax lived and worked in the UK, partly because his interest in traditional music drew him to institutions like the English Folk Song and Dance Society at Cecil Sharp House, London, but also because the scrutiny aimed at him and his associates was unrelenting. Lomax was listed in Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television in June 1950 alongside Pete Seeger, Oscar Brand, Richard Dyer-Bennet and others; the political witch hunt was to severely curtail the success of The Weavers and countless others.
These chapters alternate between developments in the USA and the UK, including assessments of the magazines produced by those in the folk music scene like Sing! and Sing Out!, and Alan Lomax's time in London performing and making programmes for the BBC. The fourth chapter places folk music in the context of the growing counterculture of the 1950s, amid the maturing of rock ’n’ roll and the beat movement, and the explosion of skiffle. The final chapters navigate the last years of the decade, exploring how civil rights intersected with the scene, the proliferation of festivals and publications like Caravan and Gardyloo, and noted groups like The Ramblers and the Kingston Trio. The concept of authenticity and the debate over the shift into the mainstream and away from the radical fringes are interrogated. The theme throughout is cross-Atlantic musical dialogue, and a sense of connection with the past: ‘Musical influences flowed back and forth across the Atlantic, as they had done for countless decades’ (p. 131).
Cohen and Donaldson have produced a painstakingly researched and carefully focused study, which examines the relationships between the various strands of (gradually commercialized) folk music of the US and UK in the 1950s. The prose is enriched with frequent references to a range of fascinating archival material. It skilfully describes the political fall-out from the generally left-leaning sensibilities of the performers and publishers in the decade in the context of a rapidly changing cultural and social climate in these key years. Its illustrations, furthermore, provide a visual clue to the rather beautiful artwork produced by magazines and promoters working at the time. What the book lacks, however, is a sense of joy in the music itself. Perhaps the authors’ aim was to produce a resolutely factual account of the period, but the rigour of its research would not be compromised by more engagement with the sound of the music, the feelings behind the lyrics and the passion that drove so many of these artists. It is a book that stubbornly adheres to names, dates and places, and quite right too, but this makes it perhaps not the first choice for those readers who want to connect with the music, and the personalities behind the songs. However, those seeking a concise but deeply researched political and social history of a cultural phenomenon would find this volume a welcome addition.
