A Production of The Folk Life ( Inc. 1976)
John McLaughlin and Jamie Downs, Editors
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Book Reviews: The Digital Folk Life. Org
Discovering Folk Music, by Stephanie P. Ledgin: Praeger, copyright 2010 by Stephanie P. Ledgin. With Selected Resources, a “Listening Space” “Folk Continuum, Index, and Photo Essay.181 pages.
Reviewed by John McLaughlin, PhD for www.thedigitalfolklife.org, Feb/March 2010.
This is a brilliant, scholarly but readable introduction to its subject, “folk music,” broadly defined, by an award-winning photo-journalist who was also a New York City radio host and director for ten years of the New Jersey Folk Festival, a founding member of Folk Alliance International, and author of Praeger’s Homegrown Music: Discovering Bluegrass.
Like the latter book, with its focus quite properly on Bill Monroe, the acknowledged “father of bluegrass,” this volume in turn features prominently the legendary Pete Seeger, who must have introduced more people to the tradition of audience participation in singalongs than any other human being in recorded history. However, the book does not begin and end with Pete Seeger; it puts him in the context of political folk music, treats the development of folk festivals featuring singer-songwriters performing their own compositions – “Is this folk music?” – and goes on to examine a host of other fascinating questions current in the field, from what is also called “Americana” on the folk-radio world, to learning guitar or banjo – not solely bluegrass instruments, of course, to the role of folk music in American history (Question: How did Thomas Jefferson woo his sweetheart?).
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and learned a lot of things from a very-well-informed expert in the field. The Resources and the Index will guide anyone to a deeper appreciation of folk music (As Christine Lavin suggests in another context, Google any name in this Index, and you will learn just how large this folk music sub-culture in America truly is). Stephanie has hit this one out of the park.
Score: 10 out of 10.