Desolation Blues: The Gothic Trespass in the life and Songwriting of Tennessee Blues Musician Ray Cashman Public Deposited

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Last Modified
  • March 22, 2019
Creator
  • Bouvéron, Victor
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of American Studies
Abstract
  • This thesis explores the pervading feeling of the Gothic in the life and songwriting of Tennessee blues musician Ray Cashman. I argue that Cashman emotionally responds to the South through the framework of the Gothic to assert his identity as a white southern working-class male. As a reader, writer and performer, he trespasses the lines of race and class. The ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina between 2015 and 2017 led me to reflect on the intriguing relationship between blues, southern Gothic literature and white working-class culture in the South. The songs written by Cashman often express a feeling of desolation, bleakness and decay, invoke a sense of nostalgia for a bygone time, or describe eerie landscapes and supernatural presences. Cashman also retells southern Gothic stories, like “Snake Feast,” inspired by Harry Crews’s A Feast of Snakes.
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Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • O'Leary-Davidson, Crystal
  • Ferris, William
  • Hinson, Glenn
Degree
  • Master of Arts
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2017
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Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
44558d49x?file=thumbnail BouvxE9ron_unc_0153M_17063.pdf 2019-04-08 Public
Audio Ray Cashman, "Desolation," Radio Campus Lille, France, March 2015 2019-04-08 Public