Folk Music and History

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Folk Music and History

• Tanya Rowell Katzemba

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• Every song has its story. The folk songs and
  ballads of early America describe life as
  experienced by the common people. They were sung
  within the family mothers to daughters, fathers
  to sons, husbands and wives to each other. They
  were sung by neighbors and at gatherings of
  larger communities. The stories told were carried
  in the memories of those who heard them,
  (Dzuris, 331).
• Folk music is an important medium for accessing
  the history of marginalized peoples. This exhibit
  is an attempt to expose folk music as a valuable
  historical source. In it we will explore various
  events and epochs of North American history
  through song and ballad.

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• Folk music is increasingly becoming accepted as a
  legitimate historical source among historians and
  history teachers. It is valuable for learning
  about what is sometimes referred to as folk
  culture. It also depicts histories that have
  been largely ignored in the academic field of
  history. Marybeth Hamilton, in her examination of
  blues in African American history, asserts that
  historians have turned to blues as a key form of
  folk culture, echoing the voices of the
  inarticulate, with experiences that historians
  had for too long ignored, (Hamilton, 18).
• Folk music can be an especially useful tool for
  making history accessible Now that I teach
  United States history, I use an American song
  practically every day. I find songs one of the
  best motivators a teacher can employ. I use them
  to set the mood, to illustrate an aspect of
  history, to trace the history of popular culture,
  but especially as an important primary souce,
• (Maxeiner, 1).

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Folk music and the labour movementThe
Preacher and the Slave-Utah PhillipsJoe
Hill-Paul RobesonCasey Jones the Union
Scab-Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers
Left an Industrial Workers of the World protest
in Chicago, ca. 1930. Right above the IWW logo.
Below the Little Red Songbook.
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• Folk music was instrumental in labor organizing
  in North America in the early and mid-twentieth
  century. One of the more infamous and radical
  labour unions, the Industrial Workers of the
  World (also known as the Wobblies, whose logo
  is pictured here) were called the great singing
  union and used song as their central organizing
  and publicity tool, (Notes to Classic Labor
  Songs, Smithsonian Folkways, SFW 40166).
  Pictured here is an image of their famous Little
  Red Songbook, from which many classic labour
  songs came and were used in protest. Joe Hill,
  one of the most well-known Wobblies songs, is
  about the great labour songwriter Joe Hill, who
  wrote, among many important labour songs, Casey
  Jones the Union Scab and The Preacher and the
  Slave, included in this portion of the exhibit.

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Woody Guthrie 1913 Massacre
Woody Guthrie (sticker on guitar reads This
machine kills fascists)
Woody Guthrie album cover released on
Smithsonian Folkways
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• In 1913, the Western Federation of Miners struck
  against the copper-mine owners in Calumet,
  Michigan, seeking safer working conditions. On
  Christmas eve of that year, company
  strikebreakers arrived at the miners Christmas
  party. They barred the doors and yelled fire!
  in the panic that followed, 73 children were
  smothered or trampled to death, (Logsdon, notes
  to Classic Labor Songs, Smithsonian Folkways,
  SFW 40166).
• Woody Guthrie was one of the most prolific
  singer/songwriters of the early twentieth
  century. His songs told stories of the poor and
  working class of the United States, of which he
  was part, and sang with feeling about their
  experiences as migrant workers, as poor, of
  living through the Dust Bowl and Great Depression
  of the 1930s, and of exploitation.

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Historical Accuracy and Folk Music

• With Guthries 1913 Massacre, we have an
  example of an event that has not been heavily
  reported except for in the form of song. This
  brings up the issue of historical accuracy when
  using folk songs and ballads as legitimate
  historical sources. As noted by historian Linda
  Dzuris, Exaggeration is a common technique used
  in the genre of folk music. Ballad stories
  tend to be autonomousthat is, they contain in
  themselves the information they explore. They do
  not seek historical accuracy, (Dzuris, 331).
  Why, then, would we choose to value these songs
  for what they can tell us about an event in
  history? Dzuris gives us a compelling argument
  for the use of folk music as a historical source
  despite its exaggerations. When working with any
  primary source, a historian is confronted with
  questions about accuracy and historical truth.
  Yet we still use these for what pieces of a
  historical puzzle they can fill in for us. Even
  thus flawed, the snapshot image is worth looking
  at. Like diaries and letters, antiquated maps and
  period photographs, ballads are significant
  sources of information, (Dzuris, 332).

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Jean Ritchie Barbry Ellen

• Tracing the roots of Appalachian music to the
  British Isles

Barbry Ellen is a ballad that has been found
published as early as 1740 in the British Isles.
It was first played as Barbara Ellen in the
British Isles, then migrated to the United States
with people who settled in the Appalachian
Mountains. Jean Ritchie, born into a musical
family of Kentucky in 1912, has made it part of
her lifes work to trace the history of
Appalachian people back to the British Isles and
Ireland through studying folk songs, and their
migration across the Atlantic Ocean.
Jean Ritchie and her father outside their family
home in Viper, Kentucky
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Appalachian History

• Moonshiner- Roscoe Holcomb

This song is from Kentucky, and was most likely
composed during the Prohibition era of United
States history. The Appalachian Mountains had
been settled by people of Scotch-Irish-Catholic
descent, who had been historically opposed to the
Temperance movement, which was largely motivated
by Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the Northeastern
states. This song gives an example of resistance
to Prohibition among these communities, (Notes
from Classic Mountain Songs, Smithsonian
Folkways, SFW 40094).
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Works Cited

• Maxeiner, Andrea. Sing America! Using folk songs
  to teach American History, Common Place 5(4)
  2004.
• Dzuris, Linda. Using Folk Songs and Ballads in
  an Interdisciplinary Approach to American
  History, History Teacher 36(3) 2003.
• Hamilton, Marybeth. The Blues, the Folk, and
  African American History, Transactions of the
  Royal Historical Society, 11, 2001.
• Various Artists, Classic Labor Songs,
  Smithsonian Folkways, SFW 40166.
• Various Artists, Classic Mountain Songs,
  Smithsonian Folkways, SFW 40094.
• Woody Guthrie, Struggle, Smithsonian Folkways,
  SFW 40025.
• Images courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways.