Don't Get above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class

IF 0.1 4区 社会学 0 FOLKLORE
Rosemary N. Killam
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引用次数: 37

Abstract

Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class. By Bill C. Malone. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 392, preface, introduction, photographs, notes, bibliography, discography, indices. $35.95 cloth) This is a wonderfully nostalgic and grounded book. In the introduction, the author, a well-beloved writer about country music for four decades, contextualizes himself, describing how and when and why he learned country music in his own childhood. In the preface he specifies that the chief focus of this book is on "the music made by southern working people." The book's historical sweep is wide-it reaches back to eighteenth-century dance instruction books (152) and forward to such recent songs as Steve Earl's 1996 "Christmas Time in Washington" (247). The book's chapters center on work, home, church, love and its heartaches, dance, and patriotism, particularly within the transmission media of radio and recordings. The photo images range from Pappy O'Daniel with his Hill-Billy Flour Band (1938) through Willie Nelson at MerleFest (2000). The book's argument is supported by approximately 650 footnotes covering 71 pages. Malone augments the narrative with a useful bibliography, discography, and index of song titles in addition to the extensive general index. For all its nostalgia, though, some readers will find this book disappointing. Malone uolcs in the preface that readers should not expect an intensive exploration of song lyrics (viii). He leaves to others any exploration of the uses made of southern working-class music in primary-school music books, as well as the sale of song-lyric collections and of sheet music, often including guitar tablature and piano accompaniments. (As a group, southern working-class song writers and singers have learned to read music in multiple ways-through regular instruction in school, in the process acquiring such songs as "This Land is Your Land" and "The Boll Weevil Song;" through shape-note singing in church; and through adult evening music classes, at one time offered everywhere in the South, that combined music instruction with socializing among neighbors and flirting and courtship among the marriageable young. The effects of these multiple and deeply culturally contextualized sources of learning on working-class music cry out to be studied but are not explored in this book.) As noted above, the book provides a wide-ranging historical and cultural outline of the development of the repertoire central to southern working class country music. In his conclusion, Malone posits that "No demographic study has ever accurately measured the country music audience, but I suspect that most fans are suburban-dwelling Middle Americans. …
《别高高在上:乡村音乐与南方工人阶级
《别高高在上:乡村音乐与南方工人阶级》比尔·c·马龙著。(香槟:伊利诺伊大学出版社,2002。第xvi + 392页,前言,引言,照片,注释,参考书目,目录,索引。这是一本非常怀旧又接地气的书。作者是一位写了40年乡村音乐的作家,深受人们的喜爱。在前言中,作者介绍了自己的背景,描述了他童年时学习乡村音乐的方式、时间和原因。在序言中,他明确指出本书的主要焦点是“南方劳动人民的音乐”。这本书的历史范围很广,可以追溯到18世纪的舞蹈指导书(152),也可以追溯到最近的歌曲,比如史蒂夫·厄尔1996年的《华盛顿的圣诞节》(247)。这本书的章节集中在工作、家庭、教堂、爱情及其心痛、舞蹈和爱国主义,特别是在广播和录音的传播媒介中。这些照片的范围从Pappy O'Daniel和他的Hill-Billy Flour乐队(1938)到Willie Nelson在MerleFest(2000)。这本书的论点有大约650个脚注,覆盖71页。马龙增加了一个有用的参考书目,唱片,歌曲标题的索引除了广泛的一般索引的叙述。尽管有怀旧之情,但有些读者会觉得这本书令人失望。马龙在序言中写道,读者不应该期望对歌词进行深入的探索(viii)。他把对小学音乐书中南方工人阶级音乐用途的探索留给了其他人,以及歌词集和乐谱的销售,通常包括吉他谱曲和钢琴伴奏。(作为一个群体,南方工人阶级的词曲作者和歌手已经通过多种方式学会了读音乐——通过在学校的正规教学,在这个过程中学会了《这片土地是你的土地》和《棉铃象鼻虫之歌》这样的歌曲;通过成人晚间音乐课程,这种课程一度在南方各地开设,将音乐教学与邻居之间的社交以及适婚年轻人之间的调情和求爱结合起来。这些多元的、深刻的文化背景化的学习来源对工人阶级音乐的影响迫切需要研究,但本书没有探讨。)如上所述,这本书提供了一个广泛的历史和文化的发展纲要,保留曲目中心到南方工人阶级的乡村音乐。在他的结论中,马龙认为“没有任何人口统计研究能准确地衡量乡村音乐的听众,但我怀疑大多数乐迷是居住在郊区的美国中产阶级。”…
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来源期刊
WESTERN FOLKLORE
WESTERN FOLKLORE FOLKLORE-
CiteScore
0.40
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