Music / Folklore / Ethnic & Native American Studies / American Midwest. America's Upper Midwest is a distinctive region where many indigenous and immigrant peoples have maintained, merged, and modified their folk song traditions for more than two centuries. In the 1930s and 40s, Sidney Robertson, Alan Lomax, and Helene Stratman-Thomas�with support from the Library of Congress and armed with bulky microphones, blank disks, spare needles, and cumbersome disk-cutting machines�recorded roughly 2000 songs and tunes ...
Read More
Music / Folklore / Ethnic & Native American Studies / American Midwest. America's Upper Midwest is a distinctive region where many indigenous and immigrant peoples have maintained, merged, and modified their folk song traditions for more than two centuries. In the 1930s and 40s, Sidney Robertson, Alan Lomax, and Helene Stratman-Thomas�with support from the Library of Congress and armed with bulky microphones, blank disks, spare needles, and cumbersome disk-cutting machines�recorded roughly 2000 songs and tunes throughout Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Spanning dance tunes, ballads, lyric songs, hymns, laments, versified taunts, political anthems, street cries, and recitations, these field recordings�made by people born before or shortly after 1900�were captured at a transformative moment when America was in the throes of the Great Depression, World War II was erupting, and market-driven mass entertainment media were expanding rapidly. Yet, except for a handful of Anglo-American performances, these remarkable field recordings in more than twenty-five languages have remained largely unknown, along with the lives of their mostly immigrant, indigenous, rural, and working class performers. Since the 1970s, folklorist James P. Leary has worked steadily to bring the folk music of the Upper Midwest to a larger public. Folksongs of Another America presents 187 representative performances by more than 200 singers and musicians, carefully restored in digital form from deteriorating original formats. The accompanying book provides an introduction, full texts of all lyrics in the original languages and in English translation, extensive notes about each song and tune, biographical sketches and photographs of many of the performers, and details about Robertson, Lomax, and Stratman-Thomas and their fieldwork efforts as song collectors. These restored performances reveal with clarity and power a nearly lost sonic portrait of another America. Available here for the first time is the remarkably diverse folk music of America's Upper Midwest, captured in field recordings by collectors for the Library of Congress from 1937 to 1946. This landmark multimedia work challenges and considerably broadens popular and scholarly understanding of folk music in American culture. Although Eastern, Southern, and Western musical traditions are familiar to fans of American roots music, the restored images and performances of Folksongs of Another America weave the songs and spirit of the Upper Midwest's peoples into the nation's folksong fabric. 187 songs and tunes, digitally restored Songs in more than 25 languages, with full original lyrics and English translations More than 200 performers, with biographical notes and many photographs Boxed Set Includes: Illustrated book Folksongs of Another America; 94 black and white photographs and illustrations; CDs & DVD. CD 1 Pigtown Fling: The Sidney Robertson Recordings, Recordings of lumberjack, Finnish, Scots Gaelic, and Serbian performers captured by fieldworker Sidney Robertson in Wisconsin and Minnesota in 1937. CD 2 The River in the Pines: The Wisconsin Lumberjacks Recordings, Performances of the acclaimed Wisconsin Lumberjacks band of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, recorded by both Sidney Robertson and Alan Lomax during National Folk Festivals in Chicago and Washington, D.C., in 1937 and 1938. CD 3 Harps and Accordions: The Alan Lomax Recordings Alan Lomax's 1938 Michigan field recordings of lumberjack, Finnish, French Canadian, German, Irish, Lithuanian, Ojibwe, Polish, and Swedish performers. CD 4 When the Dance is Over: Helene Stratman-Thomas Recordings, Part 1 CD 5 My Father Was a Dutchman: Helene Stratman-Thomas Recordings, Part 2 Recordings made throughout Wisconsin in 1940, 1941, and 1946, encompassing not only Finns, French Canadians, Germans, Irish, Lithuanians, Ojibwe, Poles, Scots, Serbs, and Swedes, but also African American, Austrian, Belgian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good-Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name-GOOD Oversized.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Near Fine. 0299301540. "...recovers the diverse, multilingual traditons of immigrant, Native American, rural, and working-class performers in America's Upper Midwest during the 1930's and1940's." Contains an index and source notes in the rear. This is a nice clean, tight and unmarked book with no interior or exterior markings, no previous owner names and no bookplates. The covers are in nice condtion with no creases, tears or chips.; Language and Folklore of the Upper Midwest Series; B&W Photos; 8vo, 8"-9" tall; 430 pages.
