In the chapter on James McKune (whose outsized influence is one of the major reasons the conventional history of the Blues mistakenly places its origins in the Mississippi Delta-and, probably incorrectly, places Rock and Roll as its direct descendent)Hamilton writes, after a short, imaginary vignette of the man is his room, listening to records, "Telling the story of his life means making a virtue of his unknowability and imagining him as best we can." (p 212) What I found interesting about this is that Hamilton does do that a lot in the book: imagining her subjects as best she can. His belief (which seems ludicrous now) was that prisoners had no opportunity to be affected by pop culture which is why he spent so much time searching for subjects in Southern prisons. John Lomax was also looking for pure examples of culture, unadulterated by popular culture, but his technology wouldn't be a factor because he felt he could find subjects who were living in cultural isolation. Contrast that attitude with John Lomax who took great pride in the recording equipment he used. To bring technology into the discussion would have tainted what they were doing. Tellingly, neither emphasized the fact because, Hamilton seems to say, they were searching for vestiges of a nostalgic, pre-industrial culture.
For example, Howard Odum, who collected songs in the first decade of the 20th century, and Dorothy Scarborough in the second, both used recording devices. I particularly liked how Hamilton wrote about these researchers relationships to technology. A kind of appropriation of even the abstract feelings about cultural representations. Still, you get the idea that these researchers felt they were preserving something that African Americans didn't fully understand or appreciate. Alan Lomax and Frederic Ramsey come off better than the others in this book, at least in terms of racial views.
Hamilton implies that these people were looking for something that really only existed in their own sense of nostalgia or longing for purity, that whatever they were looking for they 'found' because it was a fiction of their own making, a fiction they themselves believed.Ī book about white folks interpreting black folks' culture cannot avoid discussing the implicit and explicit racism of the researchers. What they found is open to interpretation, as well as is their motivations for searching in the first place. Marybeth Hamilton chose to write a fairly compelling book about several different white researchers/song collectors throughout the 20th century who set out to find something meaningful (to them) in the rots of the music of African Americans.
Hamilton implies that t This is not a reconstruction of the blues, this is a reconstruction of the history of the blues as conventionally understood. This is not a reconstruction of the blues, this is a reconstruction of the history of the blues as conventionally understood. In their quest, and in the immense popularity of the music they championed, we confront America’s ongoing love affair with racial difference.more Hamilton shows that the Delta blues was effectively invented by white pilgrims, seekers, and propagandists who headed deep into America’s south in search of an authentic black voice of rage and redemption. The idea of something called Delta blues only emerged in the mid-twentieth century, the culmination of a longstanding white fascination with the exotic mysteries of black music. In this extraordinary reconstruction of the origins of the Delta blues, historian Marybeth Hamilton demonstrates that the story as we know it is largely a myth. Fierce, raw voices tormented drifters deals with the devil at the crossroads at midnight. The idea of something ca Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton-we are all familiar with the story of the Delta blues. Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton-we are all familiar with the story of the Delta blues.