INTRODUCTION TO THE FOLK BACKGROUND
Ben S. Austin
"Hillbilly" music grew out of the rich tradition of British folk
ballads. songs and hymns brought to North America by British settlers and
then adapted to the peculiar circumstances, e.g., biographical names, place
names, frontier concerns, of the North American wilderness. It is
important to remember that all of the colonies were British, from Maine to
Georgia. The exact ethnic origins of the south are difficult to determine
and not well documented. The rural south did not attract large numbers of
European immigrants in the great period of immigration (1850-1920);
however, it is certain that by 1920 there had been considerable
intermingling of a few ethnic groups (English, Welsh, Scottish,
Scotch-Irish, German, Czechoslovakian, native Indian and African).
Likewise, the ethnic origin of the music of the southern region is complex.
There were Irish jigs, English and Scottish ballads and folk songs, hymns,
etc. However, as Malone (1985:4) suggests, the end result of the musical
melting pot was a product "more British than anything found in Great
Britain today."
The 1790 census report indicates that the population of the United
States was 60.1% English, 14% Scotch-Irish and 3% Irish. These three
groups made up 78% of the total population. The White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant core culture dominated all of pre-Revolutionary America.
However, for reasons we will examine later, the southern region produced a
white and a black musical tradition which were significantly different from
the rest of the nation.
The British folk ballad is at the heart of the southern musical
tradition. Three outstanding characteristics of the British ballad may be
observed. First, the ballad is, above all else, a narrative, designed to
relate a story to the listener. Many of the stories may have had a
factual, or historical, basis; however, in the process of oral
transmission, embellishments along the way might take the story far from
its origins. One suspects that some kernel of historical truth might
remain even after many years of artistic creativeness and many changes in
the story.
A second characteristic is stark realism. Early balladeers pulled
few punches, used few euphemisms and seemingly made little attempt to be
esoteric or even symbolic. When dealing with such subjects as sexuality,
or death, the writers were very graphic and, by modern standards, earthy or
vulgar, in much the same way that the black music of the early 1950s was
seen by white society.
Finally, the British ballads seem preoccupied with the dark, or tragic
side of human existence. Love songs were, more often than not, songs of
unrequited love or unfaithful love, and were frequently the basis of some
act of violence. The life of the medieval peasant and the urban poor were
usually lived at the survival level. Violence and tragedy were daily
occurrences and the music which sprang from the soul of their culture
reflects the poignant mixture of pain and joy which characterized the
culture itself. Mining disasters, shipwrecks and, later, trainwrecks, are
common fare in the ballads of old England. Even interpersonal
relationships are typically characterized by tragedy - unrequited love,
love gone bad, infidelity - often followed by violence.
Now, to return to the question of why the south developed a musical
tradition, actually two separate traditions, so unique to the southern
region. There may be many factors; however, three stand out. First, the
south remained rural and agrarian long after the rest of the nation was
well into the Industrial Revolution and its attendant urbanization and
bureaucratization. Environment and geography must have played an important
role in this reality. The climate and soil of the region certainly were
favorable to agriculture. However, and largely for this reason, most of
the early settlers of the south were farmers by trade and by preference.
The largest single group of settlers were the Scotch-Irish who came to the
new world to pursue the way of life they knew and loved - farming. The
combination of climate and topography with rural/agricultural preferences
produced a philosophical ruralism complete with mental insularity,
religious fundamentalism, political conservatism, fierce independence and
determined resistance to external interference and control.
The southern commitment to and defense of slavery deserves special
attention because the racial hierarchy which was derived from it lay at the
core of the south's belief system, a system militantly dedicated to the
preservation of the status quo. The commitment proved to be far beyond the
meagre means of the south and upheld an economic system it could not
sustain, a war it could not win and a militancy beyond its survival
resources. As Bill Malone concludes:
Increasingly cut off from the currents of change in a nation
rapidly succumbing to the blandishments of urbanism and
industrialization, responding to the rhythms of agriculture
and clinging to an evangelical Protestantism that encouraged
Bible literalism and orthodoxy, southerners adhered to that
which was familiar and comfortable, and to the maintenance
of traditions which had once been the common property of
Americans everywhere. (1985:2)
Second, the south was politically as well as geographically isolated
from the rest of the nation. The philosophical ruralism which emerged in
the south fostered a spirit of isolationism which pervaded all aspects of
southern life. The vast European migration (1830 - 1925) virtually
by-passed the southern region with the exception of a few immigrants drawn
by the extractive industries (mining and timbering) and a fairly
substantial number drawn by the dream of collective agricultural
settlements (the Swiss-Germans at Greutli and Lager, Tennessee in Grundy
County, Czechoslovakians at Mayland, Tennessee, a few Amish and Mennonite
groups). Except for imported black slaves, the south remained remarkable
homogeneous with regard to ethnicity.
Within this isolation, southern life was characterized by poverty
(and great disparities of wealth), hard work, tragedy, religious
fundamentalism, political conservatism, states' rights, pride and
independence (Cf. Roebuck and Hickson, 1982).
The people of the south were "God-fearing" in the strictest sense of
the word. The dangers of immoral behavior inherent in religious
fundamentalism coupled with the harsh realities of frontier life produced
an ambivalence toward sexuality, alcohol and music. It is somewhat
paradoxical that a region dominated by fundamentalism would produce a music
whose lyrics center heavily around drinkin and cheating.
The structure of work in the agrarian south greatly facilitated close
contacts between whites and blacks whose own heritage and cultural
experiences were poignantly and painfully expressed in song.
Slavery brought about a set of relationships between blacks and whites that
was highly structured on the one hand and very intimate on the other. The
two races worked side by side in the kitchens and the fields of the south.
Friendships, and even sexual liasons, developed frequently but the
segregated social structure prevented these intimacies from interfering
with the states system which relegated blacks to a second-class citizenship
which did not even begin disappearing until the early 1960s.
During the entire Colonial period, the settlement of the colonies was
restricted to the tidewater areas from Maine to Georgia. After 1776,
however, the great Ohio and Mississippi valleys opened up and settlements
began to appear in the back country. Streaming across the Alleghenys and
the southern Appalachian chain was a new kind of American - fiercely
independent, democratic, pioneering, self-reliant and, for the most part,
unsophisticated. Most were of Scotch-Irish descent. In quest of "elbow
room" as Daniel Boone, himself a Scotch-Irisher, called it, these settlers
seemed intent on getting as far from other people as they could. They were
motivated by the desire to be left alone to pursue farming in the rich
agricultural lands of the south, and later the Midwest.
The settlements they established were widely separated, sparsely
populated and were, for the most part, extremely isolated and backward.
Confronted with the hardships of the frontier, these people dealt with
their loneliness and frequent defeat and despair through an other-worldly
religion, predominantly Presbyterianism, and through the folk songs,
ballads and hymns which they brought from Britain.
Cities grew slowly under such conditions. In fact, there seems to
have been a very strong anti-urban bias among these settlers. The result
was that there were few cities in the south prior to World War I. The
exceptions can be counted very easily - Atlanta, Charleston, Memphis, New
Orleans, Savannah and Nashville. Two of these, Savannah and Charleston
were part of the earlier Tidewater settlement. The many villages and small
towns which did develop were primarily extensions and appendages of the
agricultural areas they served.
The combination of geographical, occupational and philosophical
ruralism in the isolated south served to ensure the emergence of a "folk
group." Within their isolation a southern culture emerged quite distinct
from other regions of the country. The music of these people, as the
people themselves, lay outside the mainstream of American culture and
provided the nucleus for much of contemporary American music including
modern country, the blues, gospel and southern rock.
It is important to remember that throughout the Colonial era and well
into the national period, southern culture was not distinguishable from
the national culture. After 1800, the culture outside the south changed
more rapidly that the culture within the south. The folk tradition took
on a clearly regional significance as a means of cultural expression and
as a symbol of the region's cultural integrity (Malone, 1985:)
The British folk tradition was certainly the foundation of America's
early music. Of course, the music underwent significant adaptation upon
its arrival in North America. As in any case of cultural borrowing and
cultural diffusion, American settlers modified and customized the music to
fit new circumstances and new cultural needs.
Several excellent anthologies of British ballads and their American
counterparts permit the comparison of English originals and American
modifications (Child, late 1800s Laws; Cecil Sharp, 1917: C.W. Darling,
1983; Price; Lomax, Wolfe). This modification process is in the finest
tradition of folk music - the music of the people - and chronicles the
experience of flesh and blood people in their environment.
The adaptation process also reflects certain important characteristic
differences between British and American culture. First there is the
transition from ballad to lyric. The ballad was objective, detached,
impersonal. The lyric is much more subjective, sentimental and personal
(i.e., the singer is involved intimately in the distinction between ballads
and "sentimental the listener. They were tragic rather than pathetic. The
sentimental songs, on the other hand, often sought sadness for its own
sake. (Malone,1985:15). Modern country music is more frequently Lyric
than ballad. We often refer to these as the "tearjerkers." Second, the
American folk tradition is characterized by the removal of the supernatural
- references to witches, ghosts, omens, etc. This bowdlerization reflects
the disdain for witchcraft in the colonies and also the religious realism
of the American frontier. An old British ballad, "The Gosport Tragedy"
tells the story of a young man who murders his pregnant girlfriend to avoid
marrying her. He tries to escape on a ship but the winds will not blow and
the ghosts of the girl and her baby appear on board and "tear him all in
three." In the backwoods of Kentucky, the entire section on retribution is
deleted, the ghosts are removed and a simple, but gory, tale of murder
remains which ends with:
"He threw a little dirt over her and started for home, Leaving no
one behind but the wild birds to mourn."
Most lovers quarrels in old English ballads are settled with a club,
poison, a knife, etc. Some American versions retain this violent solution
("Naomi Wise" and "Poor Ellen Smith," both shot; "Banks of the Ohio," "Tom
Dula" and "Pretty Polly" - stabbings; "Fatal Glass of Wine"- poisoning;
"Knoxville Girl" - bludgeoning. In one, "Rose Connelly," the victim is
poisoned, stabbed and drowned. In modern country music, while violence is
sometimes present, the more usual outcome is divorce, separation, grief and
sorrow. Third, American versions are much more genteel about sexuality,
reflecting Victorian moral restrictions. Finally, moral justification for
the song is usually included in the song (Wolfe, in Carr, 1979:4).
Otherwise, it was considered frivolous and probably sinful. In the
adaptation process, moral object lessons were frequently added as a final
verse of the song.
THE MUSICAL STRUCTURE OF THE BRITISH BALLAD.
Rather than using the seven note scale, the folk tradition, from the
Middle Ages, used a four, five or six note scale which did not fall within
tradition major or minor scales. The tunes were almost chants which rose
and fell in pitch - usually peaking at the middle of the song and then
diminishing. Instrumentation was usually non-existent and, when present,
not very important to the song. In the U.S., harmony was much more
important. This probably results from the importance of gospel singing.
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Sources
Malone, Bill C. Country Music USA: Fifty Year History. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1985.
Carr, Patrick (ed). The Illustrated History of Country Music.
Garden City: Doubleday, 1979.
Roebuck, Julian B. and Mark Hickson. The Southern Redneck: A
Phenomenological Class Study. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1982.