Local as national: Alan Lomax's nationalist pedagogy of the folk

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • March 20, 2019
Creator
  • Haas, Benjamin D.
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Music
Abstract
  • Though ascribed a prominent place in narratives of the American folk movement, a comprehensive model for Alan Lomax's work as a folk music collector and promoter during the 1930s and 1940s has yet to emerge. Melding historical models of folk scholarship with his own innovations, Lomax developed a conception of folksong in fundamental tension with itself, one which emphasized the unique contributions of individual folk artists even while positing folk music as a unified artistic language of national origin. Inspired by a Popular Front populism that championed the role of art in left-leaning causes, Lomax maximized the political potential of this inherent tension between national and local, employing folk song as the crux of a nationalist pedagogy designed to supplant the decadence and disaffection of American mass culture with the grassroots (and thereby democratic) language of folk song.
Date of publication
DOI
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Note
  • "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Music."
Advisor
  • Cohen, Brigid Maureen
Language
Publisher
Place of publication
  • Chapel Hill, NC
Access
  • Open access

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details 2019-04-12 Public Download