Title: The North American folk music revival : nation and identity in the United States and Canada, 1945-1980 /
Authors: Mitchell, Gillian
Publisher: Ashgate,
Year: 2007
Subjects: Folk songs, English United States History and criticism; Folk songs, English Canada History and criticism.; Folk music North America.
Abstract: This work represents the first comparative study of the folk revival movement in Anglophone Canada and the United States and combines this with discussion of the way folk music intersected with, and was structured by, conceptions of national affinity and national identity. Based on original archival research carried out principally in Toronto, Washington and Ottawa, it is a thematic, rather than general, study of the movement which has been influenced by various academic disciplines, including history, musicology and folklore. Dr Gillian Mitchell begins with an introduction that provides vital context for the subject by tracing the development of the idea of 'the folk', folklore and folk music since the nineteenth century, and how that idea has been applied in the North American context, before going on to examine links forged by folksong collectors, artists and musicians between folk music and national identity during the early twentieth century.^
Contents: Defining the people's songs : national identity and the origins of the North American folk music revival to 1958 -- Visions of diversity : cultural pluralism and the 'great boom' of the folk revival, 1958-1965 -- Folk music and community in 'the village' : Greenwich Village and Yorkville in the 1960s -- The post-revival folk : Canadian dreams and American nightmares in the late 1960s and 1970s -- Folk since the 1970s : diversity and insularity.