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Loading... Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970by Ronald D. Cohen
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  joeldinda | Jun 2, 2019 |  no reviews | add a review
This study reconstructs the history of the folk-music revival in the States, tracing its origins to the early decades of the 20th century. Drawing on scores of interviews and numerous manuscript collections, as well as his own extensive files, Cohen shows how a broad range of traditions - from hillbilly, gospel, blues and sea shanties to cowboy, ethnic and political-protest music - all contributed to the genre known as folk. Cohen documents the crucial work of John Lomax and other collectors who, with the assistance of recording companies, preserved and distributed folk music in the 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s, the emergence of left-wing politics and the rise of the commercial music marketplace helped to stimulate wider interest in folk music. As Cohen explains, stars emerged, such as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives and Josh White. With the success of the Weavers and the Kingston Trio in the 1950s, the stage was set for the full-blown ""folk revival"" of the early 1960s. This book should be of interest to those teaching or taking courses in American music of the 20th century. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)781.62The arts Music General principles and musical forms Traditions of music Folk music {equally instrumental and vocal}LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.3)
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Wikipedia in English (8)
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The book's well researched and told well. It covers the background of the folk "revival" of the early 1960s well, and doesn't entirely dismiss the work done by the popularizers who dominated what Seeger called "The Folk Scare." And it mentions--and examines--many contributors to folk music's (popularity? existence? I can't find the right word) from the 40s through the 60s. But it keeps returning to Pete and Izzy. And it pretty much ignores the fact that folk music survived, and still has both an audience and performers.
What the book doesn't do is put the music and the period into a useful context. That it briefly became part of the Popular Music Machine is important; so is the way that machine works. And there's no acknowledgement that although that machine damages most everything it touches, most of those musicks manage to survive, pretty much unharmed, after the machine moves elsewhere.
In fact, we need a book that explicitly addresses those issues. It's part of our cultural reality. This isn't that book.
This book's worth reading, and certainly you'll learn from it. I just found its emphasis a little misguided.
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Had some fun reading about Ralph Rinzler, here. Ralph's role in the bluegrass community is similar to his folk community involvement, but he seems to have been more important to the bluegrassers. Hadn't realized that he'd worked in both genres; I'm guessing he didn't separate the roles. (