Everyday Music by Alan Govenar (review)

Note: A special online resource for this book, which includes an education guide and other instructional aids, as well as photography, audio recordings, and videos, is available at www.everydaymusiconline.org.

Everyday Music is an outgrowth of author, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker Alan Govenar’s 35,000 miles of field research travels across Texas beginning in the mid-1980s. In the introduction to Everyday Music, the words of champion Texas fiddler, Howard Dee “Wes” Westmoreland III, spoken in simple terms, provide a framework for the eleven chapters that follow: “The music morphs from performance to performance, generation to generation. Everybody brings their own touch” (p. 4).

The nature of folklore, the evolution of traditions from generation to generation, the persistence of cultural expressions, and the importance of documentation for preserving culture are key underlining themes that help drive this book. The author’s recordings of Tigua Indian chants from the mid-1980s are the only ones in existence. “I had not fully realized,” Govenar remarks, “how a single interview could have such importance in helping one generation connect with another” (p. 5).

In the body of Everyday Music, Govenar sets out to “explore the development of different styles of music and the ways they are learned and remembered” (p. 5). Each chapter in the book opens with the author’s remembrances of the featured personality. Drawn from the extensive field notes, written in a smooth, fluid style, these colorful accounts are a joy to read. To be sure, they are one of the main strengths of the publication. So, too, are the many artist quotations cited in the text. The quotations vividly illuminate the text, although some critiques may argue there are far too many. The latter part of each chapter is more biographical in nature, combining research from the author’s 1980s fieldwork with his more recent 2009–2011 follow-up studies. Context throughout the book on the respective music genres is uneven. In many cases, more elaboration would be a welcome addition. Differing fonts distinguish the author’s opening journal outtakes, written in the present tense, from the largely biographical information that follows. Although the design and layout of the book are without flair, readers will delight in the visual impact of the book.

For the most part, the wealth of historical and contemporary photographs featured in the book provides illustrations of the text. In particular, the historical photographs stand out: Cowboy singer John Burrus looking ever so much like Humphrey Bogart in a 1949 portrait (p. 22); Barrelhouse blues player Alexander Moore belting out songs for “White Patrons Only” at the Southern House in Dallas in 1947 (p. 68); legendary Texas folk icon Lydia Mendoza with her guitarra doble (12-string guitar) in hand, pictured at a recording session in her home in 1938 (p. 87). Some images, however, seem to lack information and could have easily been left out.

To be sure, the more predictable Czech accordionist, cowboy songster, country fiddler, and guitar maker/musician—all from the more northern climes of the state—are featured in Everyday Music. But who would have imagined a “bones percussionist” from the “Golden Triangle” area, in the southeast corner of the state (think refineries and cracking towers), or a drummer/chanter from the El Tigua Indian Reservation near El Paso, 834 miles to the west? Govenar’s featured picks in Everyday Music remind the reader that whether known or unknown, all these personalities are (were) ambassadors for those music types that make up the “cultural patchwork of traditional music in Texas.”

As is always the case with oral histories, certain recollections seem to be a bit overstated. Barrelhouse blues singer Alexander Moore’s account of how he learned to play the piano in white people’s homes gives readers pause: “Every time I’d walk by, I’d pluck one note, and every day it would be a different note. That’s the way I learned to play the piano” (p. 65).

Everyday Music...