The authenticity problem, Pitchforkmedia, and Leadbelly
For some time now, I've been wanting to write a long essay (actually a book), about the problem of musical authenticity. Pitchfork has an interesting essay on the subject as of today. I have some problems with the conclusions, but it's well written and illustrates the problem of trying to find authenticity in a marketplace rut with capitalism. You can read the essay here.
The problem has a long history in anthropology--since anthropologists study culture, you need to find the most authentically "cultural" person to interview. But of course, what happens to creole people like the Metis in Canada (French and Indian ancestry)? I could spin off for paragraphs about this--how the approach of "true" authenticity is a bad one, mainly because it jettisons history and process (and usually power), but how many of the methods and theories developed under an "authenticity paradigm" of the 19th and early 20th century are still with us today. I won't make you suffer through that. However, what I will do is rattle off a few paragraphs about Leadbelly and Alan Lomax, which I think illustrate some of what I'm talking about. It's a condensed version of a paper I wrote when i first came to UMass, and it's also one of the few things I've written that I think still stands up.
For those of you who don't know, Leadbelly is one of the most famous "folk" musicians (what does that even mean?) of the 20th century. You can read a biography and discography of him here. His most famous song, "Goodnight Irene" has been on the pop charts many times, but never his version of it. The last song on the unbelievably good Nirvana Unplugged is a frightening cover of Leadbelly's "Where did you sleep last night?". Leadbelly spent most of his adult life in a harsh Louisiana prison (Angola, I believe) for killing a man (supposedly in self-defense, but in the racist 20th century south, that's life in prison either way).
In the 1930s, John Lomax, and later his son Alan were travelling the South on a Library of Congress grant to catalog the musical heritage of America. The Lomax's are as perhaps as important to the history of American folk music as any performer, because they served as documentarians and organizers. You can read a little about Alan here, while John's bio can be found here.
Anyway, Leadbelly is sitting in prison in the early 30s, and the warden calls all of the men into the yard. Standing with him are these two white guys, and they ask if any of the prisoners know any "old time" songs. Leadbelly had been an itinerant musician before getting arrested, and had even travelled with Blind Lemon Jefferson, so he raised his hand and got to talking with the Lomax's. He figured maybe it'd get him out of work detail for a couple days, and he hadn't played a guitar in a few years, so what the hell?
He recorded a bunch of songs for them. He had a good musical memory, and played anything he could think of. The longer he played, the longer he could hold out going back to the drudgery of prison They were very excited about his playing, but they kept asking him about "old time" songs. He knew pop songs, and blues, and jazz, and all kinds of stuff, but they really wanted this old-time music, so he did the best he could to figure out what they meant, and gave it to them.
Eventually, he got out of prison (there's some controversy as to whether he just served his time or the Lomax's actually convinced the governor to release him). The Lomax's picked him up at the door and took him to New York for a series of performances at Carnegie hall. When he got there, he saw that all of the posters for his performance showed him dressed as a convict, with taglines to the effect of "Come see the wild murderer Leadbelly, performing the lost music of America", and things like that. On top of it, the Lomax's wouldn't let him wear nice clothes to the performance, instead giving him his old prison clothes to wear onstage, much to the dapper man's chagrin. To make matters worse, they took a large cut of everything he made for "rent and expenses", and even (by some accounts) made him work as a chauffer and butler at their house while he was in New York. He didn't even mind that stuff so much (white folks want crazy things sometimes), but what really burned him was when he tried to get them to let him play Broadway tunes at the concerts (they were his favorite because of the interesting chord changes), but they insisted that they wanted the authentic old time music. Leadbelly died in 1949, and only a few years later, his most famous song "Goodnight Irene", a haunting, semi-supernatural ballad, jumped on the charts performed by a group called the Weavers (for which Pete Seeger played banjo), and kicked off the folk revolution of the 1960s.
I'm not trying to demonize the Lomax's. The service they did to American music is indescribable. But they were stuck in an idea of authenticity that made Leadbelly only legitimate if he was a "wild murderer", from the poorest and therefore most pure streams of American folklife. He could never have been a musician, only a violent conduit for the great tradition, and a symbol of some idea that was as much a part of the Lomax's vision of America as with the reality of America itself. Would Leadbelly have been any less of a musician if he had played broadway showtunes instead of blues tunes he learned from Blind Lemon Jefferson? Would his music have been any less authentic? Clearly the Lomax's thought so--for them, mass culture was phony while isolated groups (re: poor, black, etc...) were something pure, because they were outside of the phoniness.
While this is an interesting idea, especially as a reaction against the widespread penetration of consumer capitalism, and the ideologies associated with the differential priveleging of wealth, I have some problems with it. Namely, that authenticity becomes a tag placed by rich on poor people (or on black folks by white folks), and valorizes their poverty as something to be sought after because of its "connection to pure culture". The status quo of rich and poor becomes something that is naturalized--rich people may have power and wealth, but poor people have authenticity, so the system must be fair. Clearly, the Lomax's were not rich (there's a whole other essay on middle-class appropriation of dominant ideologies), but they were using concepts and ideas that fostered a maintenance of inequality. I can only guess, but I don't think Leadbelly found authenticity to be a laudable state of being. That's why I told the story from his perspective. The ludicrous nature of it all seems apparent, but despite this, the Lomax's are (still) heralded as "saving Leadbelly", when it seems to me that all they did was move him from one kind of servitude to another.
The problem has a long history in anthropology--since anthropologists study culture, you need to find the most authentically "cultural" person to interview. But of course, what happens to creole people like the Metis in Canada (French and Indian ancestry)? I could spin off for paragraphs about this--how the approach of "true" authenticity is a bad one, mainly because it jettisons history and process (and usually power), but how many of the methods and theories developed under an "authenticity paradigm" of the 19th and early 20th century are still with us today. I won't make you suffer through that. However, what I will do is rattle off a few paragraphs about Leadbelly and Alan Lomax, which I think illustrate some of what I'm talking about. It's a condensed version of a paper I wrote when i first came to UMass, and it's also one of the few things I've written that I think still stands up.
For those of you who don't know, Leadbelly is one of the most famous "folk" musicians (what does that even mean?) of the 20th century. You can read a biography and discography of him here. His most famous song, "Goodnight Irene" has been on the pop charts many times, but never his version of it. The last song on the unbelievably good Nirvana Unplugged is a frightening cover of Leadbelly's "Where did you sleep last night?". Leadbelly spent most of his adult life in a harsh Louisiana prison (Angola, I believe) for killing a man (supposedly in self-defense, but in the racist 20th century south, that's life in prison either way).
In the 1930s, John Lomax, and later his son Alan were travelling the South on a Library of Congress grant to catalog the musical heritage of America. The Lomax's are as perhaps as important to the history of American folk music as any performer, because they served as documentarians and organizers. You can read a little about Alan here, while John's bio can be found here.
Anyway, Leadbelly is sitting in prison in the early 30s, and the warden calls all of the men into the yard. Standing with him are these two white guys, and they ask if any of the prisoners know any "old time" songs. Leadbelly had been an itinerant musician before getting arrested, and had even travelled with Blind Lemon Jefferson, so he raised his hand and got to talking with the Lomax's. He figured maybe it'd get him out of work detail for a couple days, and he hadn't played a guitar in a few years, so what the hell?
He recorded a bunch of songs for them. He had a good musical memory, and played anything he could think of. The longer he played, the longer he could hold out going back to the drudgery of prison They were very excited about his playing, but they kept asking him about "old time" songs. He knew pop songs, and blues, and jazz, and all kinds of stuff, but they really wanted this old-time music, so he did the best he could to figure out what they meant, and gave it to them.
Eventually, he got out of prison (there's some controversy as to whether he just served his time or the Lomax's actually convinced the governor to release him). The Lomax's picked him up at the door and took him to New York for a series of performances at Carnegie hall. When he got there, he saw that all of the posters for his performance showed him dressed as a convict, with taglines to the effect of "Come see the wild murderer Leadbelly, performing the lost music of America", and things like that. On top of it, the Lomax's wouldn't let him wear nice clothes to the performance, instead giving him his old prison clothes to wear onstage, much to the dapper man's chagrin. To make matters worse, they took a large cut of everything he made for "rent and expenses", and even (by some accounts) made him work as a chauffer and butler at their house while he was in New York. He didn't even mind that stuff so much (white folks want crazy things sometimes), but what really burned him was when he tried to get them to let him play Broadway tunes at the concerts (they were his favorite because of the interesting chord changes), but they insisted that they wanted the authentic old time music. Leadbelly died in 1949, and only a few years later, his most famous song "Goodnight Irene", a haunting, semi-supernatural ballad, jumped on the charts performed by a group called the Weavers (for which Pete Seeger played banjo), and kicked off the folk revolution of the 1960s.
I'm not trying to demonize the Lomax's. The service they did to American music is indescribable. But they were stuck in an idea of authenticity that made Leadbelly only legitimate if he was a "wild murderer", from the poorest and therefore most pure streams of American folklife. He could never have been a musician, only a violent conduit for the great tradition, and a symbol of some idea that was as much a part of the Lomax's vision of America as with the reality of America itself. Would Leadbelly have been any less of a musician if he had played broadway showtunes instead of blues tunes he learned from Blind Lemon Jefferson? Would his music have been any less authentic? Clearly the Lomax's thought so--for them, mass culture was phony while isolated groups (re: poor, black, etc...) were something pure, because they were outside of the phoniness.
While this is an interesting idea, especially as a reaction against the widespread penetration of consumer capitalism, and the ideologies associated with the differential priveleging of wealth, I have some problems with it. Namely, that authenticity becomes a tag placed by rich on poor people (or on black folks by white folks), and valorizes their poverty as something to be sought after because of its "connection to pure culture". The status quo of rich and poor becomes something that is naturalized--rich people may have power and wealth, but poor people have authenticity, so the system must be fair. Clearly, the Lomax's were not rich (there's a whole other essay on middle-class appropriation of dominant ideologies), but they were using concepts and ideas that fostered a maintenance of inequality. I can only guess, but I don't think Leadbelly found authenticity to be a laudable state of being. That's why I told the story from his perspective. The ludicrous nature of it all seems apparent, but despite this, the Lomax's are (still) heralded as "saving Leadbelly", when it seems to me that all they did was move him from one kind of servitude to another.
posted by whenelvisdied at 6:55 AM
4 Comments:
You are writing a book? It must be the book of bullshit. Virtually everything in your post is untrue (including and and but). For starters "Where did you sleep last night?" is not by Lead Belly but is an appalchian tune Lead Belly learned from the folk revival. Lead Belly was in prison in the 1930s not the 1940s. He was not on a chain gang but was a trusty working in the prison laundry and as a musician. The Lomaxes were not Yankees but from Mississippi and Texas. There is no controversy about whether Lead Belly served his time. He served his time minus 6 mos for good behavior and was let go as an economy measure by the prison because of the Depression. The Lomaxes did not meet him at the door. He presented himself at Lomax's door several months later begging for a job -- remember this was 1933 -- and as an ex-con he had to show he had a job or go back to prison to serve his full term and then some. He was in his forties and had spent 20 years in prison. He worked as a chauffer for Lomax for 3 month and performed with him (at Lomax's lectures) for another three months. In March of 1934, the two men toured for two weeks and then Lomax broke off his association with Lead Belly and sent him back to Louisiana. There were no posters with Lead Belly dressed as a convict. There was a photo made by Art Slatherly the famous AR man, who dressed him in overalls as was the custom in marketing country singers, but none of his recorded (marketed to blacks only as was the custom with commercial records in that segregated age) sold any copies. Time magazine showed him in a news film about his life dressed first in stripes and then in a suit, singing Good Night Irene, a folk song Lead Belly had learned from his uncle, and which he used as his trademark. Lead Belly did try to make a career without Lomax as a pop singer in front of black audiences at the Apollo in 1935 but failed because they preferred jazz. He made himself into a folksinger because that was the repertoire white people paid to hear him sing. He was beginning to make a living performing after the war when the economy improved and was invited to France to perform but became ill with Lou Gherig's disease and died. By the way, Lead Belly came very near to being cast in the Broadway play, Green Pastures, but was ultimately rejected because of the scar on his neck. No one, certainly not the Lomaxes, tried to prevent him from having a Broadway or Hollywood career, in fact Lead Belly spent a lot of time in Hollywood, where he had connections through John Lomax's old friend, Tex Ritter, who tried to help him out, not to hinder him as you suggest. Many folksingers, such as Burl Ives and Harry Belefonte did, in fact, make the transition from folk to pop. If he had not died, Lead Belly might have as well. You are talking out of your a**.
I wish you'd send me an email, as I'd love to talk to you about this. It's clearly a big deal and your expertise on the subject is much greater than mine. I'll correct some of the factual errors you point out as soon as I get the chance. Thanks for the comments.
Attackers of Alan Lomax these days base their criticisms on the writings of the British folklorist Dave Harker, whose book, Fakesong (1985), maintained that there was no such thing as a non-commercial oral
tradition, and that all (not just some) folk music derives from modern
commercial broadsides. (Harkers's specialty is broadsides). (Never mind that there is tons of scholarship from all countries, going back to the Renaissance, about music of oral tradition. And that there was no cheap paper or public education in any country until the beginning of the 20th century.) In Harker's view, based on what was ostensibly his detailed scholarly deconstruction of the work methods of folklorist Cecil Sharp, folk music never existed except as a "construct" devised by a small upper class power elite who then artificially imposed it on working people for the purpose of controlling and exploiting them (Harker is a self-described
Trotskyite Marxist). Harker accused Sharp of faking his statistics and data, of manipulating and falsifying the songs he collected, and of being a racist and virtual proto-Nazi. Harker's book has been for years accepted without examination or question and effectively destroyed Cecil Sharp's reputation. Recently, however, another scholar, C.J. Bearman (in "Who Were The Folk?" has examined Harker's statistics and found that it was he, Harker, not Cecil Sharp who faked his statistics and uses deception (see
http://mustrad.org.uk/enth36.htm
for a summary of this controversy).
Harker's book "Fakesong" was the basis for Benjamin Filene's very hostile and misleading account of Francis Child and John and Alan Lomax's scholarship in his "Romancing the Folk", which in turn influenced Robert Gordon, who cites it repeatedly as his main source on the Lomaxes in "Can't Be Satisfied" his biography of Muddy Waters (of which his later book, "Lost Delta Found" is a continuation).
Note, Filene misleadingly refers to the Lomaxes as "brokers" and "elitists" with "institutional support" -- his words. He calls John A. Lomax, who grew up on a subsistence farm, "a Patrician." The truth is that the Library of Congress had virtually no budget for folk music. John A. Lomax was paid one dollar for his services and had to rely on lecturing and book sales to survive, and Alan Lomax received what was essentially a part-time salary (today's equivalent of $7,000 a year) which he had to supplement by performing. In contrast, during the Cold War, the United States Defense Department established and generously funded University Area Studies of which American Studies was one. The defense rationale of Area Studies was to contain both criticism of the US security state and of economic inequality and racial segregation. Benjamin Filene, who believes that there is no such thing as "authentic" (in quotes, as he puts it) grass roots music, but only corporate, commercial music, holds a PH D from Yale in American Studies and is an adviser to NPR (national public radio) on Folk Music. Hmn.
A much better book on the history of folk music as a populist phenomenon is Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison's Music and Social Movements(Cambridge U Press 1998).
All my information about Lead Belly
can be found in Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's biography of Lead Belly. I also recommend David Oshinsky's Worse Than Slavery about Parchman Prison, and the Lead Belly chronology on the Alan Lomax Archive website.
Really appreciate the information--this exchange has given me a lot to think about. I'm certainly not a folksong scholar (I'm an archaeologist with an armchair interest in folk music), and this was a good lesson for me on checking sources and searching out the broader academic discourses whose arguments I jumped into. Thanks for the citations, all of which I will relish looking into.
I really enjoyed Filene's book, which is where I got a great deal of my information about the paper I originally wrote (which was not specifically about Lomax, but about the larger question of "culture"), but clearly it's quite controversial, and I should've thought better than to take it at face value. I appreciate your broader perspective on the topic, and your critique is well founded and well taken. As I said, feel free to email me, as I'd be curious to talk to you more about this.
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