A sound history : Lawrence Gellert, Black musical protest, and white denial / Steven P. Garabedian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Garabedian, Steven P., author.

Series:

American popular music (Amherst, Mass.)

American popular music

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Music--History and criticism.

African Americans.

African Americans--Music.

Folk music--United States--History and criticism.

Folk music.

Music--Political aspects.

History.

Music.

Protest songs.

United States.

Protest songs--United States--History and criticism.

Gellert, Lawrence, 1898-1979.

Gellert, Lawrence.

Music--Historiography.

African Americans--Historiography.

Music--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 220 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2020]

Summary:

"Lawrence Gellert has long been a mysterious figure in American folk and blues studies, gaining prominence in the left-wing folk revival of the 1930s for his fieldwork in the U.S. South. A "lean, straggly-haired New Yorker," as Time magazine called him, Gellert was an independent music collector, without formal training, credentials, or affiliation. At a time of institutionalized suppression, he worked to introduce white audiences to a tradition of black musical protest that had been denied and overlooked by prior white collectors. By the folk and blues revival of the 1960s, however, when his work would again seem apt in the context of the civil rights movement, Gellert and his collection of Negro Songs of Protest were a conspicuous absence. A few leading figures in the revival defamed Gellert as a fraud, dismissing his archive of black vernacular protest as a fabrication-an example of left-wing propaganda and white interference. A Sound History is the story of an individual life, an excavation of African American musical resistance and dominant white historiography, and a cultural history of radical possibility and reversal in the defining middle decades of the U.S. twentieth century"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Lawrence Gellert and "Negro Songs of Protest"

ch. One The Roads to Perdition Lawrence Gellert's Early Biography and Emergence

ch. Two Free Radical Lawrence Gellert's Early Collecting and Rise to Prominence

ch. Three "Songs about the White Man" Black Protest and White Denial

ch. Four "The Great Red Heart of the American Revolution" Lawrence Gellert, the Lomaxes, and the Lefhving Folksong Revival

ch. Five Big White Fog Controversy and Containment in the Postwar

ch. Six Scholarly Rigors Propaganda or Protest in the Gellert Archive?.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781625345295

1625345291

9781625345301

1625345305

OCLC:

1154507103