Local as national: Alan Lomax's nationalist pedagogy of the folk Public Deposited
- 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
- December 2010
- 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