Huddie Ledbetter, or more widely known as Leadbelly, remains to this day as one of the most significant blues musicians of the 20th century, sparking inspiration in countless musicians throughout the past century like Bob Dylan, Little Richard, and Brain Wilson. His iconic singing voice and guitar playing have also been key in defining for many people a truly American “folk” music. This association as a significant music for American identity, however, did not happen by chance or solely due to Leadbelly’s virtuosity and musicianship. John Lomax, the American folk music collector, is responsible for the first recordings of Leadbelly, which happened when Lomax was visiting American prisons in search of “unadulterated” American folk music. The story of Leadbelly and Lomax’s intermingled careers is told in the March of Time episode titled “Leadbelly,” showing their first meeting and recordings at the Louisiana State Penitentiary where Leadbelly was serving time, as well as further into Leadbelly’s career and how Lomax was largely responsible for Leadbelly’s success, taking him around the country to colleges, concert halls, and to Lomax’s own home in the North. While the short film’s focus seems to be a celebration of the musicianship and career of Leadbelly, John Lomax’s immense influence on the narrative of Leadbelly seems to overshadow the musician himself.

Link to the film

The film’s awkwardness seems to come not only from the fact that Lomax and Leadbelly both seemed to be following a script to reenact their meeting and interactions together, but also from the relationship between the two that the film depicts. Specifically, it is hard to ignore the issue of race here, as the film seems to depict a sort of idealized version of a master/slave relationship. The way Leadbelly is shown to have begged to be Lomax’s “man” and his referring to Lomax as “boss” and “sir,” as well as Lomax presenting himself in a way that makes him to be the hero of the story for taking in the underprivileged minority, all give the film a tone that feels problematic, though this may be a product of viewing such a film in the 21st century.

The importance the film places on Lomax is, however, appropriate in a way that was perhaps not intended. The creation of a national identity through the folk music of particular black musicians uninfluenced by commercial music of the time was a deliberate act by John Lomax, scholar Benjamin Filene claiming that the Lomax brothers were “creators as much as caretakers of a tradition” (Filene 604). Essentially, what became known as true American folk music was shaped by people like the Lomaxes’ own visions of what that means. Viewing this film under such a lens perhaps makes John Lomax’s significance within the film make a tremendous amount of sense, even though it may take away from the incredible musician that is Leadbelly himself.

Works Cited:

Filene, Benjamin. “‘Our Singing Country’: John and Alan Lomax, Leadbelly, and the Construction of an American Past.” American Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 4, pp. 602-624.

N.A. “Leadbelly.” March of Time, Vol. 1, Ep. 2, Home Box Office, 1935.

Though Charles Ives has gained a reputation of being one of the most private and mysterious

Charles Ives

American composers, through his many verbose writings about his own music as well as his correspondence with other musicians and publishers, many insights can be found about his unique musical processes and his own feelings about his music’s place within the larger musical world.

In particular, a letter from Ives to Franco-American pianist and composer E. Robert Schmitz from 1923, found in Selected

E. Robert Schmitz, Franco-American pianist and composer

Correspondence of Charles Ives, addresses Ives’ relationship with his own music and his interest in a modernist musical drive. The letter is in reference to an article by Ives featured in the bulletin published by Schmitz’s Franco-American Music Society about the use of quarter-tones. He writes about some parts of the article that were omitted that he decides “would probably be better left in,” parts that he feels would “bring out more fully the underlying idea that the use of quarter-tones is but one of the ways by which music may be less encaged by some of the restrictions of custom and habit” (Ives 143). This alone to me shows an interest by Ives in the ability of music to break free of norms and push forward out of tradition, an interest shared by many composers during this time in the early 20th century.

Ives, Charles. Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives. Edited by Thomas Clarke Owens, University of California Press, 2007.

Today, in the twenty-first century, musicians and scholars struggle just as much with how to define the abstract umbrella term that is “folk music” as they did at the beginning of the twentieth century when the importance and recognition of such music started to become accepted in the US. Even more difficult is recognizing what folk music counts as “authentic” within its respective context, a difficulty extending well beyond folk music but into any category of music with enough history behind it, such as early Renaissance music, jazz, and these days even hip-hop.

Such a conversation was even had here at St. Olaf during the 1960’s, a time when folk music rose into the popular sphere and was embraced by a wide variety of musicians and listeners. An article published in the campus newspaper The Manitou Messenger on February 15, 1963, entitled “Whatever folks are singing…that’s what makes it folk music” after a Pete Seeger quote, discusses this popularization of folk music and the various ways of defining it, as well as the conversations had on campus about the authenticity of various folk musicians. It specifically mentions student Jan Clausen’s KSTO radio program in which she played what she defined as “authentic” folk music, a word which, according to the article, “represents an argument which has arisen with the commercial popularity of folk singers.” Some of the artists that Jan would play, artists whom she defined at authentic folk musicians, included people like Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and Erik Darling.

The inclusion of these particular artists leaves interesting questions about what this woman in particular defined as “authentic” in respect to folk music. Lead Belly, the nickname of Huddie Ledbetter, was a black blues and folk guitarist and singer from the early twentieth singer from Louisiana who was recorded by the Lomaxes for their Library of Congress archive recordings, and influenced later popular folk artists like Bob Dylan. Lead Belly’s race and place of birth point toward what many would consider “authentic” folk as the image of folk is often associated with minorities from more rural areas who generally have little access to the more commercial or “art” music worlds at the time. Next, we look at Pete Seeger, a white folk musician of urban origin with almost no connection by birthright to any sort of folk tradition. However, he did in fact mentor under the prominent folk music revival figure Woody Guthrie. Oral tradition is a key aspect of folk music, and such a musical mentorship almost certainly entailed passing down music orally. Pete Seeger was also part of the movement of urban folk musicians that strongly opposed commercial music and sang of political themes focused on “the people.” So perhaps Jan’s definition of authentic folk music is more complex than solely based on race or origin or tradition, but instead takes these into account as well as intention, musical philosophy, and legacy.

Below are recordings off of Lead Belly’s Lead Belly’s Last Sessions and Pete Seeger’s self titled album, both of which are available on vinyl in the music library.

Works Cited:

Hare, Steve and Jan Newbury. “Whatever folks are singing…that’s what makes it folk music.” The Manitou Messenger. 15 Feb 1963: 6. East View. Web. 30 October 2017.

This photograph from the Lomax photography collection, depicting a group of African-American prisoners singing while working in the Darrington State Farm woodyard in Texas, interested me upon first sight as it seemed to me to be familiar to what we have learned about slave-era music and musical functionality despite being shot in 1934. In this photograph is featured “Lightnin’” Washington, an African-American prisoner during this time whose singing was recorded multiple times alongside his group who usually accompanied him in these recordings, also pictured here. The act of physical labor accompanied by singing is a type of functional music very familiar to slave music, specifically work songs, in which slaves would sing to the rhythm of physical labor to keep a consistent work pace and pass the time working, among other things. This photograph shows that such musical tradition had not died out after slavery had ended and likely retained its musical functionality to some extent.  

Field Recordings CD

Washington and his group were some of many African-American musicians during the early twentieth century to have been recorded for the Library of Congress by John Henry Faulk. In 1933, Faulk recorded the group performing a call-response song called “The Grey Goose,” which is featured alongside other of Faulk’s recordings of African-American music on this CD collection entitled “Field Recordings Vol. 10-11; 1933-1941.” These CDs, released in 1998, contains interesting narratives and images along with the cover and descriptions, as it talks of how slavery was “a scathing indictment of human rapacity and greed,” while also featuring on the cover a slightly shocking image of an antiquated advertisement for buying slaves alongside large instances of the word “Negroes.” The narrative is clearly intended to be a condemnation of the evils of slavery and racism, but certain imagery as well as the fact that it is intended to advertise to people to buy the CD makes it a bit complicated. 

*While I was not able to find a insertable recording of the mentioned song, here is a link to a page containing a recording. Just press “Listen” on the top right of the page. http://kodaly.hnu.edu/song.cfm?id=616#analysis

Sources:

Field Recordings Vols. 10 & 11, 1933-1941. Web. 3 Oct. 2017. <http://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cliner_notes%7C313399#page/null/mode/1>.

Lomax, Alan, photographer. [“Lightnin'” Washington, an African American prisoner, singing with his group in the woodyard at Darrington State Farm, Texas]. Apr. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/2007660013/>.

     The text I am sharing today is a paper published in The Journal of American Folklore  in 1895, written by music educator and studier of Indian music John Comfort Fillmore, entitled “What Do Indians Mean to Do When They Sing, and How Far Do They Succeed?”. John Comfort Fillmore was originally a teacher and textbook writer, though was asked by Harvard’s Peabody Museum in 1888 to examine a collection of Omaha Indian songs, which lead to a long exploration of Indian music of various tribes. This extensive ethnographic research informed many articles he published after 1888, many containing theories about universal harmonic sense and placing Western music tradition onto unrelated cultures’ musics. (McNutt, 62)

    This particular article similarly seems to work under an assumption that Western music theory and harmony have a certain objective truth. The title itself shows a certain amount of cultural superiority as it seems to assume that American Indian singing has to follow Western music rules and if it doesn’t, then it must not be successful music. There seems to be a lack of understanding that the way the American Indians’ music is sung could possibly be correct within its own standards, or that there is no conscious intention to be correct at all. He makes the claim that “the Indian always intends to sing precisely the same harmonic intervals which are a staple of our own music, and that all aberrations from harmonic pitch are mere accidents” (Fillmore, 138), again showing an attempt to extend Western music theory onto a musical tradition that evolved independently from it. He further makes the point that these “accidents” are due to “imperfect training, or rather to the total lack of it” (Fillmore, 138). This claim seems to function under the belief that only those trained in Western practice are “correct” and that an American Indian training within their own cultural practice still is not viewed as having training.

    In this article, Fillmore does not appear to be a very trustworthy author. Though he makes frequent mention to having worked with Indian singers and transcribed and studied Indian music, he spends mostly all of his focus on his perception that Indian singers are not able to sing consistently in tune within the Western scale. Instead of leaving his own cultural background to the side in order to focus on Indian music and singing in its own respective context, he attempts to apply his understanding of Western practice onto it, which leads to his focus upon pitch accuracy. A possibly more open-minded conclusion that could be reached from his findings of inconsistency in pitch value would be that perhaps precise pitch accuracy is not much of a focus in certain Indian singing. These biases shown by Fillmore perhaps represent much of the academic world’s view on Indian music during the 19th century, one not jaded enough to ignore the importance of studying and preserving Indian music, but still bearing the belief that it is culturally inferior, primitive, or unevolved in comparison to Western practice.

Link to the article

Sources:

Fillmore, John Comfort. “What Do Indians Mean to Do When They Sing, and How Far Do They Succeed?” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 8 no. 29, pp. 138-142. April 1895. Web.

McNutt, James C. “John Comfort Fillmore: A Student of Indian Music Reconsidered.” American Music, vol. 2 no. 1, pp. 61-70. Spring 1984. Web.