Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Confronting Regional Stereotypes in and through Appalachian Music
Session Abstract or Summary
This panel will explore the roles of Appalachian music in confronting Appalachian regional stereotypes. The documentation and subsequent interpretation of Appalachia's music dates back at least to the early twentieth century, when musicologists and folklorists began transcribing by hand the texts and tunes of ballads sung in the mountains. During World War I, Cecil Sharp produced the foremost collection of ballad transcriptions of this type. By the 1920s, the recording machines--some of them portable--inspired further documentation of Appalachian music, and phonographs and radio broadened the reach of that music after it was documented. Subsequent technologies continued to disseminate the region's music to new generations across the nation and around the world, and documented music from Appalachia continued to play central roles in fueling folk music revivals. But the dissemination of Appalachian music across the U.S. and around the world necessitated confrontations with the Appalachian regional stereotypes sometimes associated with the music.
In this panel, to be moderated by Ted Olson, three scholars active in the documentation and interpretation of Appalachian music will discuss their work in addressing the presence of stereotypes both within the music they study and within the minds of musicians and audiences.
Presentation #1 Title
"Setting the Record Straight: Confronting Stereotypes in Historical Appalachian Recordings"
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Technologies new and old in concert with a twenty-first century folk music revival have introduced historical music from Appalachia to a new generation of music fans, within the region, across the nation, and around the world. One unforeseen consequence of this situation is that this new generation is being inundated with a flood of regional stereotypes associated with that older music--stereotypes that are unleashed on the new generation when historical recordings are reissued (or issued for the first time, in the case of some field recordings). In my presentation, I'll discuss several case studies from my own work as a producer of historical music releases in which stereotypes either were subtly embedded in reissued recordings or were overtly associated with the music or the musicians featured on those releases. I'll discuss some of my efforts as producer and liner notes writer to confront stereotypes in such a way as to help a new generation defuse stereotypes while at the same time find meaning, value, and enjoyment in older recordings that are at one level "politically incorrect" or even offensive.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Ted Olson is Professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University and a past editor of _The Journal of Appalachian Studies_. For his work as music historian, he has been nominated for three Grammy Awards and has received an International Bluegrass Music Association Award.
Presentation #2 Title
"We're Not Anxious to Be Studied": Moonies, Environmentalists, and Other Believers Loose in Appalachia
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
Not realizing the extent of prejudice against Appalachia among some elites, I was puzzled when in 1984 Loyal Jones praised the NEH for helping fund the Powerhouse for God recording. He wrote that perhaps NEH now realized that so-called ordinary people might have something to teach them, too. My subsequent failures with NEH and PBS, however, helped me understand how insidious their stereotyping of Appalachia could be. I have also experienced stereotyping from natives of Appalachia. One family regarded me as a member of a religious cult come to tempt them, others as an environmentalist bent on destroying the coal-based economy. I have also experienced more nuanced views, as for example from Elwood Cornett, moderator of the Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists, and his family. Decades of our visiting (both ways), my singing with them, documentation and self-documentation, making recordings that were distributed in their southeastern Kentucky community and, along the way, recognition from scholars and activists associated with Berea College, the Smithsonian Institution, Yale University, Appalshop, NPR, and the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress, have enabled Old Regular Baptists better to conserve their singing tradition, the oldest English-language oral tradition of sacred music extant in North America. In turn, I have come to appreciate the strength of my own feelings toward this group, my emotional bond with them and their music, and how some elite groups may embrace diversity to overcome their tendencies toward stereotyping Appalachia.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Jeff Todd Titon, professor of music, emeritus, at Brown University, currently holds the Basler Chair of Excellence for the Integration of the Arts, Rhetoric, and Science at ETSU. He is the author or editor of eight books, most recently the Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology (Oxford University Press, 2015). His current work in sound and sustainability may be tracked on his blog at http://sustainablemusic.blogspot.com
Presentation #3 Title
Sounding Appalachian Spaces From Afar
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Performances of old time string band and bluegrass music today often include participants' sense of a deeply "emplaced" sensibility, often with specific place references to Appalachia. How do people outside the United States perform versions of these spaces as they engage in these Appalachia-related music making practices? To address this question I draw mainly on my long-term ethnographic research on bluegrass-related music-making in the Czech Republic, including insights I have gleaned from encounters with musical participants in similar scenes from other countries. I start my inquiry in my own identity as an outsider in Appalachia, and frame issues of genre and regional identity using ideas about place and country music from Negus (1999) and Murphy (2014). The sense of in-between-ness and ambiguity that my field colleagues have expressed challenge homological linkings of place and country music (Carney 1974, 1996), leading me to conclude by posing these views with ideas about"place" as a flexible concept from geographer Doreen Massey (2005).
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Lee Bidgood is a musician and scholar working on American string band music, historically-informed performance practice, improvisation, sustainability, and faith. A faculty member in the Department of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, he also teaches courses in Bluegrass, Old Time and Country Music Studies Program.
"Setting the Record Straight: Confronting Stereotypes in Historical Appalachian Recordings"
Technologies new and old in concert with a twenty-first century folk music revival have introduced historical music from Appalachia to a new generation of music fans, within the region, across the nation, and around the world. One unforeseen consequence of this situation is that this new generation is being inundated with a flood of regional stereotypes associated with that older music--stereotypes that are unleashed on the new generation when historical recordings are reissued (or issued for the first time, in the case of some field recordings). In my presentation, I'll discuss several case studies from my own work as a producer of historical music releases in which stereotypes either were subtly embedded in reissued recordings or were overtly associated with the music or the musicians featured on those releases. I'll discuss some of my efforts as producer and liner notes writer to confront stereotypes in such a way as to help a new generation defuse stereotypes while at the same time find meaning, value, and enjoyment in older recordings that are at one level "politically incorrect" or even offensive.
