In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals by David King Dunaway and Molly Beer
  • Bud Kliment
Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals. By David King Dunaway and Molly Beer. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 272 Hardbound, $34.95.

Except for hip-hop, folk music is the musical genre that generates the strongest opinions. Musicians and other listeners have persistently debated not only the confrontational political lyrics of many folk songs but also the nature of folk music itself: is it traditional or contemporary? Should it entertain or instruct? What happens when it is recorded, electrified, or—the ultimate paradox for an insistently noncommercial music—becomes successful? Folk music, as a means of American expression, can sound lyrical and soothing at one end of the spectrum, or provocative and argumentative at the other end.

Oral history thrives on contrary points of view. Many of the strong opinions artists interviewed for this book expressed about folk music enliven Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals, by David King Dunaway and Molly Beer. The authors weave excerpts from ninety-five interviews conducted over thirty years into profiles of American folk music's key players, such as Irwin Silber, cofounder of Sing Out! magazine; Moe Asch of Folkways Records; and Charles and Pete Seeger. Dunaway and Beer identify each interview excerpt by speaker and topic (for instance, "Holly Near, on singing across generations"), and each group of excerpts is linked and contextualized with historical summaries that also advance the narrative, which is both chronological and thematic.

Singing Out focuses on the years when folk music became prominent in American life, when its creators and audience negotiated and defined its form and purpose. Song collectors such as Cecil Sharp and John and Alan Lomax established a folk canon early in the twentieth century. During the Depression, the Popular Front viewed folk music as useful democratic expression that fought fascism, and the Roosevelt administration saw it as a way to unite the country. The music came alive, however, in 1940s New York, when a core group including Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, and Woody Guthrie, settled in Greenwich Village. Inspired by the live singing of traditional performers such as Lead Belly and Aunt Molly Jackson, the musicians formed a loose ensemble called the Almanac Singers. Their open-house hootenannies and other performances transformed folk from an old historical music genre to something rousing, urban, and activist. In a radical departure from the canon, the Almanacs sang topical and political songs, revising and updating old songs' lyrics. Appearing often at labor union rallies, they helped establish folk music's reputation as a Left-leaning tool for organizing and protest.

Most musical movements are also social scenes, and forties folk was no exception: the interviews in Singing Out convey the earnest atmosphere of the times while also personalizing it. Even as they tried to change the world, these [End Page 228] young people were still having fun. Bess Lomax Hawes (Alan Lomax's sister) demurely recalls how she and Pete Seeger "shared the front bedroom [with a sheet hung down the middle] in perfect sobriety and isolation and being very careful to not impinge on each other" (54). Lee Hays describes the household's "famous soup pot going all the time, where everybody brought in a potato or a piece of meat … that a lot of people ate out of, perpetually cooking on the back of the stove" (52). Symbolizing the friends' communal life, this soup pot is also an apt metaphor for the collaborative sustenance of the folk movement.

World War II hushed the folk scene: "It was quite a party. Then back to the army," says Pete Seeger about his wedding day (68). The postwar folk effort was more businesslike—Seeger and others established People's Songs in 1945 to use songs for political and social reform. They had bicoastal offices, a topical song bulletin, and over 2000 members. But they went broke supporting Henry Wallace's failed presidential campaign in 1948. From the Almanacs' ashes rose the Weavers, a quartet (consisting of Seeger, Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred...

pdf

Share