Folk Music

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• SOURCE: Pop Matters
  1/11/2023
  

  The Unlikely Story of the 1960s Revival of Delta Blues Giant Son House

  After shifts in African American musical styles, the Great Depression and the Great Migration consigned him to obscurity, Son House recorded live music in the 1960s. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/10/2021
  

  Barbara Dane’s Life of Defiance and Song

  Barbara Dane's left politics kept her from success in the music industry, but the label she founded released and preserved protest music from around the world, a legacy now being highlighted by the Smithsonian. 

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• 1/31/2021
  

  Lawrence Gellert, Black Musical Protest & White Denial: An Interview With Steven Garabedian

  by Aaron J. Leonard

  Steve Garabedian's new book reexamines the life and work of Lawrence Gellert, a Jewish New Yorker who relocated to the South, recorded African American songs, and clashed with the growing establishment of white folklorists. Is it time to reappraise Gellert's contributions to the preservation of Black musical culture?

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/29/2020
  

  The Long, Lonesome Roads of Jerry Jeff Walker

  Music writer Amanda Petrusich remembers the iconoclastic songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, who died this week at 78. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/15/2020
  

  How to Handle the Hate in America’s Musical Heritage

  A new project updating the famous Anthology of American Folk Music wrestles with the fact that part of the American songbook has been overtly racist. 

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• SOURCE: The Bitter Southerner
  8/4/2020
  

  Somebody Died, Babe: A Musical Coverup of Racism, Violence & Greed

  by Kevin Kehrberg & Jeffrey A. Keith

  The song "Swannanoa Tunnel" has been changed through generations of recordings by white musicians, concealing its origins as a song sung by Black convict-lease laborers who were forced to work in deadly conditions, often as punishment for minor crimes (or no crimes at all). 

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• SOURCE: Monthly Review
  4/26/2020
  

  A History Of American Protest Music: Which Side Are You On?

  From the bloody labor struggles of Harlan County, “Which Side Are You On?” made its way into a New York recording studio, and got modified to fit the message of countless underdog protagonists.

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• SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
  4/7/2020
  

  John Prine Dies at 73; Acclaimed Folksinger, Songwriter Created Classics of Lyricism and Storytelling

  Bob Dylan once said, “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs.”