A Singing Ambivalence: American Immigrants between Old World and New, 1830-1930 (review)

The bicentennial celebrations of 1976 provided an impetus for exploring and exhibiting many aspects of American culture, including some that had long been ignored. Theodore C. Grame's America's Ethnic Music (Cultural Maintenance Associates, 1976) reported the results of a general survey of its subject, relying heavily on ethnographic field collections. At almost the same time, Richard K. Spottswood's fifteen-volume set of LP recordings, Folk Music in America (1978), produced by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, showed that the commercial recordings of ethnic musics in the decades before World War II were not limited to the genres of "hillbilly" music, blues, and gospel. Similar bodies of music were recorded by artists for audiences of numerous ethnic communities in America. Spottswood's exposition opened many ears to a trove of musical recordings that deserved better treatment. In the three decades since, more than one thousand selections from that material—so meticulously catalogued by Spottswood in his seven-volume discography Ethnic Music on Records (University of Illinois Press, 1990)—have been reissued on LPs and then on CDs, providing greater availability than this music had during its first release.

Now that Pandora's box has been pried open and its treasures broadcast to a world of curious eyes and ears, it is time for a more analytic treatment of the contents. In his earlier book, A Passion for Polka: Old-Time Ethnic Music in America (University of California Press, 1992), Victor R. Greene explored the commercialization of ethnic American music in the first half of the twentieth century. In A Singing Ambivalence, he turns to the song lyrics—taken from commercial recordings, field recordings, manuscripts, and printed sources—to see what can be learned about the immigrants' fears, dreams, and experiences from their musical legacies. In successive chapters, Greene examines the music of the Irish, Germans, Scandinavians and Finns, East European Jews, Italians, Poles and Hungarians, Chinese, and Mexicans. Each chapter offers a thumbnail historical sketch of the conditions in the homeland that inspired emigration and the reception that the immigrants were given once they reached the United States. On an abstract level, there is great similarity in the musical diaries of each immigrant group, with the twin emotions of fear (of an inability to cope and overcome obstacles) and guilt (toward those left behind) tempered by a persistent optimism. Closer analysis, however, reveals differences among the groups. Some of these differences are due to the differing socioeconomic status of the emigrants, which can in turn be traced to the reasons for their departure from their homelands. Scandinavians and Germans, for example, were largely middle class and professionals, and they often adapted easily to their new country without losing their pride and love for their European roots. Asian immigrants, on the other hand, suffered the indignities of a people made unable to assimilate quietly among the established American denizens. A principal fear of the earliest immigrant groups—such as the Irish who came in the 1830s and 1840s—was the several-weeks-long nautical voyage itself, fraught with hazards of hostile weather and nutritional shortages. A century later, with transoceanic passage lasting a week or less, these particular perils diminished considerably. Another important variable that shaped the immigrants' concerns was their long-term intent: were they planning to make America their new home, or were they only coming to earn money to support the families they left behind and whom they intended to rejoin?

Greene quotes texts that address all of these issues, making a good case for the value of song as a tool that sociologists and historians cannot afford to ignore. In this regard, his work will be of great value to other scholars as well as to interested laypersons. However, there is one assumption that Greene makes but does not acknowledge: that the song texts are indeed accurate reflections...