POLITICAL FOLK MUSIC IN AMERICA FROM ITS ORIGINS TO BOB DYLAN. By Lawrence J. Epstein. McFarland & Co. 213 pages. $35.
I dislike reading insufficient books concerning matters I have personal knowledge of as much as I dislike writing negative reviews. However.
Professor Epstein is, we are informed, the author of numerous books.
This volume attempts to trace the subject delineated in the title, chronologically from Joe Hill, martyred poet of the Industrial Workers of the World, through Aunt Molly Jackson through Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger culminating in the enigmatic efflorescence of Bob Dylan. All laudably linear, but through such a limited microscope as to be almost useless, historically.
"Yankee Doodle" was used as a political rallying song, as was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," its ancestor, "John Brown's Body," and even "Dixie." Pre-Civil War singing groups, most notably the Hutchinson Family Singers, sang "mountain style" in support of temperance, women's rights and the abolition of slavery.
After that great war, the Fisk Jubilee Singers performed similarly in support of education for freedmen, leaving Fisk University as their heritage. A far thicker book than this one could be written about political "folk" song long before the execution of Joe Hill in 1915. One example, North Carolinian Charlie Poole's song "If I Lose," has clear negative references to the Spanish American War of 1898.
The fact is that Americans are singing people, and every incident of life is celebrated or mourned in song. Many of these songs have a political subtext. "John Henry" and "The Wreck of the 97" are local examples.
This book concentrates on doctrinaire Leftists, particularly the Communists, and like those movements, suffers grievously from myopia. All the twice-told tales are here, the "Spirituals to Swing Concert," the "Café Society" nightclub, "The Almanac Singers" and Sing Out! magazine, but that is less than half the story. The year Alan Lomax was recording oppressed African-American blues in Clarksdale, Miss., was the year Thomas "Fats" Waller, died, a black man who was one of the most popular musicians in America.
White Southerners such as Clarence "Tom" Ashley were writing wry tales of hard times in cotton mills and Depression Era farms a decade before New York City discovered Woody Guthrie. Spartanburg's Josh White was singing of the oppression of black people before World War II. No matter; they were not Communists.
The whole book is a long build-up to Epstein's expounding upon Dylan, which is almost poetic in its misapprehensions. In this it is far from unique; epic misunderstanding of Dylan's work is an identifiable literary movement. One musician who knew Dylan well said, "He contains multitudes." Dylan reinvents or exposes facets of his intelligence as the mood strikes, and less gifted people might as well hush up and study the works, not the person. He is a master of reportage, and the greatest poet of his generation. People my age know that Dylan put our strange lives and stranger times in words. Good enough. As Mick Jagger said, "Thanks, Bob."
Steve Wishnevsky is a writer who lives in Winston-Salem.
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