Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
“Sounds that Echo”: Emma Bell Miles’ Changing Soundscape of Walden’s Ridge, Tennessee 1900-1919
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
What can we know about Appalachia through sound? Writer and artist Emma Bell Miles (1879-1919) gives voice to the changing soundscape of Walden’s Ridge, Tennessee as a new Appalachia develops in the early 1900s. Through Our Southern Mountains, Our Southern Birds, and her journals, Miles brings us into a sonic experience of a changing place. In this exploration of a historical soundscape, we attend to three meaningful layers of sound and their broader meanings. Listening for her brother-in-law Dock Miles’ banjo, we recognize Appalachia’s historical diversity, recall the injustice of chain gangs, and reveal a moment of cultural exchange. Next, we tune our ears to birdsong in Miles’ 1919 Our Southern Birds and map a sensorially rich and biodiverse place. For Miles, birdsong marks time and space and voices her anxieties about broader economic and social change. The brassy sound of the cowbell rounds out our exploration. Its presence and eventual absence from Walden’s Ridge chart a communal land ethic, the development of a mountain resort, the incorporation of a town, and the drafting and enforcement of laws forbidding livestock grazing. Drawing on the field of sound studies, I discover that a sonically attuned reading of these works and this place provides a productive way to map change. Sound offers a useful way to think about a perpetually new Appalachia.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Joseph Decosimo studies music and expressive culture as PhD student in UNC Chapel Hill's American Studies Program. As a musician, he is recognized as leading young teacher and performer of old time fiddle and banjo music.
“Sounds that Echo”: Emma Bell Miles’ Changing Soundscape of Walden’s Ridge, Tennessee 1900-1919
What can we know about Appalachia through sound? Writer and artist Emma Bell Miles (1879-1919) gives voice to the changing soundscape of Walden’s Ridge, Tennessee as a new Appalachia develops in the early 1900s. Through Our Southern Mountains, Our Southern Birds, and her journals, Miles brings us into a sonic experience of a changing place. In this exploration of a historical soundscape, we attend to three meaningful layers of sound and their broader meanings. Listening for her brother-in-law Dock Miles’ banjo, we recognize Appalachia’s historical diversity, recall the injustice of chain gangs, and reveal a moment of cultural exchange. Next, we tune our ears to birdsong in Miles’ 1919 Our Southern Birds and map a sensorially rich and biodiverse place. For Miles, birdsong marks time and space and voices her anxieties about broader economic and social change. The brassy sound of the cowbell rounds out our exploration. Its presence and eventual absence from Walden’s Ridge chart a communal land ethic, the development of a mountain resort, the incorporation of a town, and the drafting and enforcement of laws forbidding livestock grazing. Drawing on the field of sound studies, I discover that a sonically attuned reading of these works and this place provides a productive way to map change. Sound offers a useful way to think about a perpetually new Appalachia.
