{"id":3878,"date":"2019-09-23T22:21:56","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T03:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=3878"},"modified":"2019-09-23T22:21:56","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T03:21:56","slug":"is-there-such-a-thing-as-geographic-authenticity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2019\/09\/23\/is-there-such-a-thing-as-geographic-authenticity\/","title":{"rendered":"Is There Such a Thing as Geographic Authenticity?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last class period concluded with a short discussion of the ability to \u201cbuy into\u201d the commercial market of country or hillbilly music. Based on Harry Jackson\u2019s album \u201cthe \"\"<\/a>Cowboy\u201d and others like it, commercial country music claimed (and still claims) geographic authenticity even though relatively little exists. This album, produced by Smithsonian Folkways, didn\u2019t care that Harry Jackson grew up in Chicago and later adopted the cowboy lifestyle. But his music was recorded to make money, so it\u2019s a fair guess that only so much geographic authenticity was needed. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But what about the traditions that are recorded outside of the commercial market? I would think that geographic authenticity is important to someone like Alan Lomax. In 1961, the folk song collector was asked to speak at an ethnomusicology conference in Detroit. Over the course of two hours, Lomax and his wife Antoinette Marchand detailed their experiences as successful ethnomusicologists, and inserted field recordings and stories from their travels. Of the Georgia Sea Island Singers\u2019 member Bessie Jones, Lomax says:<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason that this material about Bessie\u2019s sexual attitudes is so crucial, she is almost a pure informant from the middle of the 19th century back, as her repe[r]toire is composed of only the oldest classic songs, and all of her attitudes about singing are the nearest thing to the African pattern that we have found in America, the shape of the songs, shape of the music, how she treats all musical situations.1<\/sup><\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is important to note that the Georgia Sea Island Singers were of particular interest to ethnomusicologists like Lomax. The Georgia Sea Islands held slaves and plantations during the 19th-century just like other parts of the south. Due to the relative lack of contact with outside European cultures, the dialects, songs, and other art forms originating from in the Islands are considered by historians the purest form of West African-sourced material in America.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n