Folk - Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination

"With rich measures of eloquence and criticism, passion and witness, Ross Cole asks us to listen again to the songs of the folk, not because they were nostalgically lost to an imagined past, but rather because they still voice the imperative of lived-in worlds, past, present, and future."—Philip V. Bohlman, coauthor of Song Loves the Masses: Herder on Music and Nationalism

"A gracefully written compelling account of the relationship between music and ideological constructions of ‘the folk’ in the UK and the US. A confident and illuminating book."—Sarah Hill, author of San Francisco and the Long 60s

"A nuanced, resourceful, ​and discerning study of the desire known as 'the folk.' Cole delivers a highly engaging itinerary of a concept so fundamental to modernity it points in all directions at once: bard and professor, nostalgia and revolution, soul and soil, left solidarities and the specter of fascism."—Eric Lott, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism

List of contents

List of Illustrations
Preface

Introduction
Lost Voices

1. Collecting Culture
Science, Technology, & Reification

2. A Geography of the Forgotten
Vernacular Music & Modernity's Discontents

3. Utopian Community 
Nostalgia from Marx to Morris

4. Difference and Belonging
On the Songs of Black Folk

5. Soul through the Soil
Cecil Sharp & the Specter of Fascism

Coda 
Blood Sings: A Soundtrack for the Alt-Right

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Ross Cole is a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. His writing on a range of topics appears in leading journals including Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, and ASAP/Journal.

Product details

• Authors: Ross Cole, Cole Ross
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.09.2021
• EAN: 9780520383746
• ISBN: 978-0-520-38374-6
• No. of pages: 276
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > General, dictionaries; Music, POLITICAL SCIENCE / General, MUSIC / History & Criticism, MUSIC / Instruction & Study / Theory, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Folk & Traditional, Politics & government, Theory of music & musicology, Politics and government, Folk & traditional music, Music reviews & criticism, Music reviews and criticism, Folk, Folkloric styles, Theory of music and musicology, Traditional and folk music