Southern Folk Music and Race Relations

Southern Folk Music and Race Relations

Abstract

In this paper, I propose that the history and development of southern folk music may serve as an important vehicle for examining and elaborating the dynamics of southern race relations. I am not suggesting a causal relationship; merely an interactional one. Both southern race relations and southern music are reflections of the social structure of the rural south. In the structurally segregated south, black and white musical traditions display the same divergences and convergences which have historically characterized black/white relations. This is not a lyrical analysis; rather, it is a socio-historical analysis of regional popular culture which focuses upon the interaction between two important features of that culture: race and music.

Intoduction

The development of the American folk music reservoir is a process which parallels the historical and cultural development of American society. In the formation of this reservoir, two major streams, British and African, and several lesser tributaries, e.g., French, German, Mexican, Cajun, etc., flowed together over a two century period (Malone, 1979:4). Alan Lomax, one of folk music's leading historians, has observed that the convergence of these diverse elements has resulted in a cultural product which is "more British than anything one can find in Britain" (1960:155).

Southern music is an important part of the folk tradition; in many ways it is synonymous with American folk music. And, its history is well documented (Malone, 1979, 1985; Carr, 1979; Wolfe, 1977). What has been neglected until recently is the sociological examination of the relationship between this form of popular culture and important social, cultural and historical issues and conditions which gave rise to it and are expressed by it (Fine, 1977:381-384; cf. also Albrecht, 1954).1 Country music is a reflection of the southern region's culture, history and social structure at the macro level and of the hopes, fears, beliefs and attitudes of its people at the micro level (Gritzner, 1978).

In this paper, I propose that the history and development of southern folk music may serve as an important vehicle for examining and elaborating the dynamics of southern race relations. I am not suggesting a causal relationship; merely an interactional one. Both southern race relations and southern music are reflections of the social structure of the rural south. In the structurally segregated south, black and white musical traditions display the same divergences and convergences which have historically characterized black/white relations. This is not a lyrical analysis; rather, it is a socio-historical analysis of regional popular culture which focuses upon the interaction between two important features of that culture: race and music.