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Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Recreation by Ian Russell; David AtkinsonReview by: Bruno NettlLied und populäre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture, 49. Jahrg. (2004), pp. 205-206Published by: Deutsches VolksliedarchivStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30043718 .

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Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Recreation. Edited by Ian Russell and David Atkinson. Aberdeen: The Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, 2004. 555 pp., ill., maps, music, ports, ISBN 0-9545682-0-6.

This rich collection of 36 essays about various aspects of folk tradition and usage, but

concentrating on the history, practice, and effects of folk song revivals, is the result of a 1998 conference in Sheffield that celebrated the founding, a hundred years earlier, of the Folk-Song Society, the influential British organization established after the demise of the Ballad Society, and which was succeeded in 1932 by the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The history of these organizations is recounted in the first forty pages by Ian Russell, Vic Gammon, and Sigrid Rieuwerts, and there follow 33 essays on a large variety of interrelated topics. Most of the essays deal in some way with at-

tempts to discover, recover, and re-enliven European folk song heritage. As might be

expected in a conference on the Folk Song Society, the great majority present research on traditions of Great Britain, Ireland, and North America, but there is more.

The book is divided into three main sections. First, a group of diverse studies (in- cluding those just mentioned) deal with the concept of revival from historical and theoretical perspectives, and provide a bit of international exposure. The effect of the production of Moses Asch's Folkways Anthology is examined by Edmund O'Reilly; Michael Verrier writes about the influence of Bertolt Brecht's >>epic theatre, on Ewan McColl; Robert Burns and Britta Sweers provide essays on folk song in the world of

popular music; and co-editor David Atkinson deals with theoretical aspects of the revival concept. Also included in this section is a group of essays on Baltic cultures (Finnish by Tina Ramnarine, Lithuania by N. Sliuzenskiene and R. Zliuzinskas, Estonian-German by Thomas Dubois), and a few isolates such as an essay on human cultural properties in Korea (by Roald Maliangkay).

The middle third of the book is devoted to essays on individuals (six men, six women, perhaps unnecessarily separated) who were the main actors in the late 19th- and 20th-century folksong revivals in the English-speaking world. The men: John Wesley Barker on the Telfer manuscript; Martin Graebe on Baring-Gould; John Francmanis on Frank Kidson; Robert S. Thompson on Gavin Greig; Tom Munnelly on the Irish Folksong Commission; and E. David Gregory on Peter Kennedy. And the women: Lewis Jones on Lucy Broadwood; Catherine Shoupe on Anne Gilchrist; E. Wyn James on Ruth Lewis; Martin Lovelace on Maud Karpeles; Lyn Wolz on Annabel Buchanan; and Margaret Steiner on the Canadian Louise Manny. This is not, to be sure, a who's-who of the revivals - some of the biggies (the Lomaxes, the Seegers, the Guthries) seem to have been omitted because they are otherwise so accessible. These essays present an interesting group of scholars, collectors, antiquarians.

The last third of the book is devoted to studies of individual singers who carried on their traditions, or were active as revivalists, and to case studies of individual songs. I can do no more than mention the authors: Andrew King on the song The Bitter Withy; Fenella Bazin on the Manx song Mylecharaine; Andrew Rouse on ballad singers in the works of Hogarth; Steve Gardham on Child 295B; Simon Furey on Spencer the

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Rover; Ruairidh Greig on the Lincolnshire singer Joseph Taylor; Julia C. Bishop on Bell Duncan, a 19th-century singer with an enormous repertory, arguably ))the greatest ballad singer of all time(( (and the )face(( of the book, in an old photograph on the cover). Then, to close the volume, we find essays by Christopher Heppa on the Nor- folk singer Sam Howard; Sheila Douglas on Belle Stewart; an essay by Yeonok Jang on Korean »,p'ansori((, Jennifer Post on the New Hampshire singer Clyde Covill and his role in maintaining the singing tradition of his community; and Simon Heywood on folk songs of protest in a 1990s context.

Lots of issues appear in these essays - usually as secondary considerations. We can read about (and find in the index) nationalism, authenticity, commercialization, gender relations, appropriation, class relations. Folksong Tradition, Revival, and Re- Creation makes no pretense at being a comprehensive text on the folk song revival

phenomenon. It is perhaps best to see it as a group of case studies, and as such it con- tains a great deal of interesting information and contemplation. Many of the chapters are fascinating reading. But it does not explicitly limit itself to the English-speaking world and the phenomena that distinguish its various components in terms of political and cultural hegemonies, giving one at least a taste of the Baltic area and Korea. It is

surely unfair to blame a book for not being what it does not pretend to be. Neverthe- less, given its just a bit inconsistent approach, I find myself a bit disappointed in this collection's failure to take at least a more comprehensive European perspective (never mind Asian, Latin American, and African, where these issues are also surface impor- tantly), and of the absence of any papers that give more than the most passing atten- tion to certain major historical figures and events.

To mention just a couple, it was, after all, the desire to revive the rural in an ur- ban context that gave impetus to the way folk music developed as a handmaiden to 9th-century nationalism throughout Europe. Following the leadership of Herder, the

concept of German culture was significantly stimulated by collectors and purveyors such as Ludwig Erk and Franz Magnus B6hme. Elsewhere in Europe, one of the main

building blocks of the concept of a Czech nation, after centuries of forced Germaniza-

tion, was the revival (and artificial filling-in and correcting) of folksongs soon after 1800. The revival of Czech art music later in the century rested on tropes from folk music and folklore; and the role of folksong revivals in popular music contexts after the ))velvet revolutiono. It's hardly necessary to mention the importance of Kalevala and South Slavic epics (in both 19th- and 20th-century revivals) in this context. While the individual essays in this collection tell us a lot about one corner of the folk music world (or about a couple), the volume as a whole would have benefitted from the

presentation of a broader historical and geographic context. This caveat aside, however, the collection brings together a marvelous group of

singers, collectors, scholars, songs, and ideas. Much of its subject matter has not been treated elsewhere, and so folklorists and folk song scholars must be grateful for the inclusion of a great deal that has heretofore existed, as it were, )under the radar((.

Bruno Nettl, Champaign (Illinois/USA)

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