Review: Folk-Songs of America
by Joseph W. Hendren
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 53, No. 208/209 (Apr. - Sep., 1940), pp. 201-202
FOLK-SONGS OF AMERICA. Robert Winslow Gordon. (Reprinted by the Folk-Song and Folklore Department, National Service Bureau, Federal Theatre Project, W. P. A. Publication No. 73-S. Iio pp. $.25. 1697 Broadway, New York City, 1938.)
Folk-Songs of America, despite its title, is not a formal collection of songs. It is a paper-bound, legibly mimeographed reprint of a series of descriptive articles which appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine between January 2, 1927 and January 22, 1928. The fifteen articles included follow their original chronological order to form consecutive chapters of a substantial little book.
Each chapter (after the first, which is introductory) deals with a separate type of folksong: mountain songs from North Carolina, Negro work songs from Georgia, Negro spirituals from Georgia, Negro "shouts" from Georgia, Negro chants, outlaw songs, "jailhouse songs," lumberjack songs, the old ballads, "fiddle songs," "banjo songs," nursery songs, songs of the pioneers, cowboy songs. Folksong "types" are wont to overlap each other in bewildering ways, and it is small wonder that the author advances some of his categories tentatively.
The material was first published with the manifest object of acquainting an unsuspecting public with the culturally important fact that we in this country possess a rich heritage of folk literature and music. "Of folk-song alone, America has a body perhaps greater in extent than that possessed by any other nation, and certainly unsurpassed in interest and in variety of types." This statement must have come as a surprise to many newspaper readers twelve years ago. Matters are not, of course, quite the same today.
Radio alone would have been sufficient, in the interim, to make most people aware of folk song. But the average town-dweller's hazy notions of "mountain" or "hillbilly" or "cowboy" music are not the same thing as an intelligent understanding of the true worth and cultural significance of folk arts. Intimate knowledge, and the proper appreciation and evaluation which result from it, are lagging behind. And here is where the value and usefulness of Dr. Gordon's book should make itself felt.
Nor will the book be wholly lost on the initiated student. The main effort of folk song study so far has been explorative and therefore centrifugal in its trend. Even the best introductions to individual collections cannot provide the critical or descriptive
synthesis that would give the interested reader a general idea of the field. Now Dr. Gordon's treatise does exactly that. Brief as it is, and by no means exhaustive, it does throw the whole subject into panoramic focus, and will prove a useful supplement
to the contributions of the field workers.
Folk-Songs of America has the incidental merits one would expect to find in a first class newspaper magazine. It is readable. Its critical, scholarly attitude supports a presentation that is primarily descriptive and illustrative. No musty smell of the library. The book grew, indeed, out of a rich and varied field experience; and the author cordially takes us with him on his journey of discovery. We are eye and ear witnesses of a Tuesday night meeting in a Negro church-house; we spend a musical evening in a mountaineer's cabin; we get glimpses of the character and manners of the mountain folk, for Dr. Gordon has a human as well as musical interest in these people, and (like other eminent collectors before him) is their staunch admirer.
On the other hand, the book does not escape the limitations imposed by its very inclusiveness as well as by its journalistic approach. There is scant opportunity for fine critical distinctions. That the songs vary in their proportions of "folk elements"
and "author elements" is recognized throughout the discussion, but what these qualities really are is left largely to the reader's intuition or previous knowledge. The careful definitions and detailed explanations essential to a longer treatment of the subject must here be reduced to rapid summary. It must be added, however, that Dr. Gordon selects with excellent judgment and summarizes with remarkable skill. The section on balladry is a particularly good rendering of distilled information.
The material is presented, without revision or addition, exactly as written twelve years ago. This is hardly an ideal arrangement, for research has been anything but idle in the meantime. We learn on page 1, for instance, that 87 of the older English ballads are still sung by the American folk. The number of discovered survivals in Professor Reed Smith's 1937 report is set at 107, [1] a significant increase. Again in the opening chapter we read of the Negro and his music: "Today the type we call the spiritual is his and his alone." Investigation during the past few years of white folk hymns has radically altered that view. The treatise is not, in a word, strictly up to date, and consequently could not escape some assertions and omissions which might be misleading to the unwary, but a few slight inaccuracies cannot shake the fundamental validity and authority of the work.
Some readers will doubtless be disappointed in finding no bibliography. A great many readers are going to be disappointed over a much worse deficiency. Here is a publication whose raison d'Atre is the familiarizing of the public with the reality and character of American folk song. Illustrations are abundantly supplied-but of word texts alone. There is not a tune in the book. And what, after all, is a folk song without a tune?
Rice Institute.
JOSEPH W . HENDREN
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[1] Reed Smith, "A Glance at the Ballad and Folk-Song Field" (Southern Folklore Quarterly, vol. I: 7-I1, June, 1937).