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FOLKSONGS AND THEIR MAKERS BY HENRY GLASSIE, EDWARD D. IVES AND JOHN F. SZWED (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1971. Hardbound $5.00, Paperback $3.00) Folksongs and Their Makers is a collection of three essays in a slim volume of 170 pages introduced by Ray B. Browne, well-known for his work in popular culture, American studies, and folklore, the three disciplines which admirably coalesce in each essay. By blending the critical methods of comparative and analytical folklore with biography, ethnology, textual history, and aesthetic theory, Glassie, Ives, and Szwed have initiated and developed a fascinating approach to understanding the creative processes of the individual folk artist in his twentieth-century community. While there is a distinct focus in each essay, together they examine the relationships between the forces of folk tradition and popular culture on the song-maker, the reciprocating impacts of artist and audience, and the patterns of creation, recreation , and preservation. And I might add, the theoretical framework for each essay always remains as the framework, while interesting application completes the picture. The leading essay by Henry Glassie, "'Take That Night Train To Selma': An Excursion To The Outskirts of Scholarship," takes us in fact to the center of scholarship in tracing from 1965 the construction of an anti-Negro, antiItalian song of 27 stanzas by Dorrance Weir of upstate New York. Glassie concludes that Dorrance Weir's song is not a folksong in the traditional sense, but it does contain folkloristic components and it is an invaluable cultural artifact. The problem, however, is that the song exists in the twilight zone between folklore and popular culture, and so Glassie asks, "Who will study the song composed by Pop Weir's son?" Those who accept Glassie's challenge, as we should do in the Southwest, must be prepared to observe the evolution of a song over a decade, discover the musical sources, the cultural stimuli, and the biographical facts that influence the composition, sensitively analyse the particular give and take of artist and audience, and then record, document, and synthesize. Like Henry Glassie, Edward D. Ives, author of the outstanding work on Larry Gorman: The Man Who Made the Songs (Bloomington, 1964), and John F. Szwed, an urban ethnologist, have studied the single works of individual songsters of the far Northeast. Ives goes back to the turn of the century to scrutinize Maine lumberman Joe Scott's pastoral and melancholy ballad ofa broken engagement, "The Plain Golden Band." Szwed outlines the complex interweaving of song, the composer's marital state, and the community's socio-economic structure. Paul E. Hall's "The Bachelor's Song" mirrors the Newfoundland peasant community's anxiety for stability and continuity and its pity for a man who lives in unfullfilled and incomplete adulthood. PETER WHITE* •PETER WHITE is Assistant Professor of American Literature at The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He received the Ph.D. from Penn State in 1976 in Early American Literature, and he is editor of a forthcoming edition of Benjamin Tompson's poetry, Penn State Press, 1 979. He is currently working on a collection of fiddle-tunes of the Southwest. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW89 ...

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