{"id":700,"date":"2015-03-12T15:39:54","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T20:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=700"},"modified":"2015-03-16T19:38:02","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T00:38:02","slug":"newport-folk-festival-hosts-composer-of-the-the-american-folk-song-mass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2015\/03\/12\/newport-folk-festival-hosts-composer-of-the-the-american-folk-song-mass\/","title":{"rendered":"Newport Folk Festival Hosts Composer of the “The American Folk-Song Mass”"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the folk tradition started to die out, American folk started to take flight when John and Alan Lomax recorded and collected music of the rural regions of the United State, particularly in penitentiaries. In the 1940s, artists around the country decided to takes these recorded folk songs and make their own recordings. A single vocal accompanied by a guitar became the standard folk song, and people decided to write their own songs in the \u201cfolk\u201d style.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Along with this surge of new folk composers came Father Ian Mitchell, \u201cthe guitar-toting Episcopal priest…, and his wife, folk-singing star Caroline.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a> Father Ian Mitchell composed The American Folk-Song Mass, <\/i>consisting of several liturgical and some original text set to the twang of the guitar. The Chicago Defender <\/i>stated that \u201cFather Mitchel composed [The American Folk-Song Mass<\/i>] because he got tired of ‘cloying, cornball, 19th<\/sup> Century hymns.’\u201d3<\/sup><\/a> Later, Father Mitchell released Catholic version of his folk-song mass, incorporating the texts of the Roman Catholic Liturgy. According to the liner of the Catholic version of the mass, Father Mitchell was later commissioned to compose the Funeral Folk Mass.<\/i><\/p>\n

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According to the Chicago Defender, <\/i>Father Ian Mitchell and his wife Caroline signed on to the Newport Folk Festival, best known for hosting renowned folk singers such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell, to perform songs from their newly released album Songs of Protest and Love. <\/i>However, I hardly consider Father Mitchell’s music to actually be \u201cfolk.\u201d Father Ian Mitchell was \u201ca city-dweller who spent three years in the wastelands of Utah,\u201d seemingly making him more apt to folk styles.4<\/sup><\/a> All he did was take liturgical text and sing them with a different melody with a guitar accompaniment. According to Oxford Music Online, \u201cthe [folk] revival spawned a large number of singer-songwriters who accompanied themselves on the acoustic guitar but had little in common with those concerned primarily to bear witness to the tradition.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a> I believe that Father Ian Mitchell falls into this category and his \u201cfolk-song\u201d mass should be considered \u201cMass: Plus Guitar, Minus Organ.\u201d<\/p>\n

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1<\/a>\u00a0Laing, Dave. \u201cFolk Music Revival.\u201d Grove Music Online<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em>. <\/span><\/span><\/span>www.oxfordmusiconline.com<\/a> <\/span><\/span><\/span>(accessed Mar. 12, 2015\u00ad)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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2<\/a> “Newport Folk Festival to Feature “Singing Priest”.”\u00a0<\/span>Chicago Daily Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1966-1973),<\/i><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>July 12, 1969. http:\/\/search.proquest.com\/docview\/493434506?accountid=351.<\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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3<\/a>\u00a0Ibid.,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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4<\/a>\u00a0Mitchell, Ian. Rev. \u201cThe American Folk-Song Mass\u201d F.E.L Records. Back Cover.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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5<\/a>\u00a0Laing, Dave. \u201cFolk Music Revival.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the folk tradition started to die out, American folk started to take flight when John and Alan Lomax recorded and collected music of the rural regions of the United State, particularly in penitentiaries. In the 1940s, artists around the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[197,216,213,115,132,102,79,217,214,215,114,218],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-folk","tag-american-folk-song-mass","tag-father-ian-mitchell","tag-folk","tag-folk-festival","tag-folk-music","tag-folk-revival","tag-funeral-folk-mass","tag-ian-mitchell","tag-mitchell","tag-newport-folk-festival","tag-songs-of-protest-and-love"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-bi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":703,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}