Southern Cultures: Fall 2009. Music (review)

This volume of Southern Cultures presents a good, although far from exhaustive, overview of the majority of folk and pop musical genres hailing from the American South. As the editor states in the introduction, these are almost all the genres that were born in the U.S. Of the major ones, bluegrass and gospel do not receive article-length attention in this book, which contains photographs beautifully accompanying the text as well as a compact disc with a selection of both archival and contemporary recordings of artists ranging from original 1920s' folk to today's crossover artists with links to the South.

Oral history material is used in some essays. Only two, in fact, are based mostly on excerpts from interviews conducted by their authors. These are among the most worthwhile pieces. The opening one by William R. Ferris is a fragment of a larger body of interviews with one bluesman, James "Son" Thomas, whose voice and guitar can be savored on the accompanying disc. Both snippets date back to the early 1970s, although their conversations had begun a few years earlier. Thomas' story, largely unedited and in his own way of speaking, is one of a hard life in the Mississippi countryside, punctuated by highlights linked to his music and other artistic activities. The second part of his recollections drifts away from music and is colored by a peculiar tint of a bygone Southern spirituality. The author makes no editorial interventions that might interrupt or significantly alter the message or character of the bluesman's narrative. His audio recordings come from the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina.

The second article significant for its use of oral sources, although not exclusively, is John W. Troutman's presentation of the multiple talents and activities of Pura Fe Crescioni, a Tuscarora artist and community organizer. Fortunately, a recording of hers, combined with a traditional Native American men's dancing song, is also featured on the CD. The audio, just like the text, resonates with an eye-opening depth, bringing to life the interconnected, multifaceted issues revolving around Native heritage and its preservation, the inherently multi-ethnic character of American music, the specially crafted instruments that Pura Fe uses, her musicianship, and the themes of her songs. Short direct quotations from the artist, mostly concerning her past experiences, like meeting other musicians and learning her craft, are weaved into the narrative of her life and her people's history which they complement with detail and color with emotion.

Another essay that ought to be mentioned in the context of the history of oral history is "Mill Mother's Lament," about the union leader from the Carolina Piedmont who was murdered in retaliation for her active involvement in the strike at her textile mill. Her story had already reached a wide audience with the publication of Like A Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) by Jacqueline Dowd Hall, et al. In this essay, Patrick Huber presents much more background information on her life, impressions of her by acquaintances, and journalists from the general and union press of the period, while also relying quite heavily on Like a Family and written sources on the labor history of the region.

The volume's weakness is that no comparable use of oral sources is the basis of articles on jazz or country music. These genres, like southern rock, have only received summary treatments in the form of top-ten lists with commentary that often reads like oblique, paragraph-long album reviews from mainstream rock magazines. Among the remaining essays one deserves mention, although it is virtually without oral history content: "Haunting America: Emmet Till in Music and Song." It traces the various instances of all kinds of artists (not only Southern and not only musicians) taking up the theme of this gruesome lynching from the 1950s in their work...