Old-Time Music and Dance: Community and Folk Revival

Introduction: Conjuring History

— xiii — INTRODUCTION: CONJURING HISTORY To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it “the way it really was.” . . . It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. —Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” When I began this text years ago, my goal was to correct an unsettling discrepancy in the depiction of the “folksong revival,” the cultural movement that has emerged in various forms throughout history in America and elsewhere. I had fallen behind this banner in my youth, and it has nourished me intellectually, politically, emotionally, and socially ever since. What I saw was a movement that at most every turn professed utopian aspirations, yet whose social and political underpinning was too often obscured by the giant shadows cast by its most prominent performers . At the time, I was living in Bloomington, Indiana, under the euphoric spell of the old-time music and dance community there with all its nostalgic and communal yearnings. The dance group was a kind of accidental utopia, looked upon by its adherents with a wry satisfaction that over time became part of its design. There a native “history” already existed, an active collective memory that circulated in amusing stories about our common past. Moreover, this carefree vocabulary of the past belied an uncommon astuteness regarding the thorny dilemmas of folksong revival—authenticity, community, representation, the politics of culture, and so on. All I had to do was write it down, which I did, — xiv — Introduction unabashedly. I identified vaguely with von Schmidt and Rooney’s Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (1979), which seemed unique in depicting ongoing social relations and not merely the heroic achievements of star performers, as the preeminent reality of folksong revival. This was in 1986, when I assembled the basic historical account that comprises this book. Partly as a component of an analytical study for the Indiana University Folklore Department, partly for a local history written for the group, I conducted twenty-five interviews, mostly by telephone, with the most knowledgeable veterans in the dance group. The local history I assembled was printed a year later as an attachment to the annual Sugar Hill calendar and was distributed in the dance community. Since then, this document has circulated in photocopies among those who came to the group later. My general impression was that it met with satisfaction and coincided with the prevailing historical mythos of the group. As the years passed, I was nagged by an urgency to revise the local history, infusing it with more of the analytical material. I began tinkering with the document, rewriting it several times, trying out various formats. This urgency was fueled largely by what I saw in many places as the eclipse of the spirit that had sustained old-time music and dance revival since it emerged from the shadows decades before. Whereas the original document had been written in the fullness of the moment of the dance, I now felt the need to explain that moment to a different audience, one that no longer took its spiritual cues from those longings that brought the original dancers together. The dance was not unique in this—few 1970s-era cultural utopias survived the unrepentant individualism of the 1980s. Postmodern culture had brought down the oppositional wall that had separated the dominant culture from all that it was not. Radical individualism and marketplace ontology made their way into the obscurest corners, appropriating culture to their liking. No one was unaffected by this, and its effects were horribly, horribly pleasant. Post-capitalist economics were particularly friendly to the smart, resourceful, and abundantly talented types who frequented old-time music and dance events. Corporate America discovered niche marketing, and suddenly things that were once the exclusive province of an underground economy—from Birken- — xv — Introduction stocks to Dr. Bronner’s soap to Celestial Seasonings teas—could now be bought by anyone. In much the same way, old-time music and dance made its way into the cultural marketplace, where it was discovered with alacrity and enthusiasm. It may have seemed we’d won a war we set out to win long ago. But as a part of the underground, these materials had been part of a worldview linked to Vietnam-era culture and politics. For those of us who felt we were enduring a bitter world, with too much hatred, hunger...