|
View the H-Southern-Music Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Southern-Music's January 2006 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Southern-Music's January 2006 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Southern-Music home page.
This may be a good point at which to jump in myself.
As one of an older [sigh] generation of southern
historians who's spent much of his life having to
battle notions that there's some sort of southern
"party line" to which all True Southerners must adhere,
I smell just a whiff of brimstone whenever "southernness"
of any sort starts getting defined in terms of essential
characteristics.
To my mind, if there are "southern musics," they are such
by virtue of having been developed [and constantly renewed]
by a creative community rooted in this specific place, but
one that in the end is not in the business of replicating,
but of transforming. To be rooted in a place is not the
same as being *bounded* by a place. Good musicians aren't
hung up on boundaries; they're eager to learn, and love to
congregate in places [New Orleans, Austin, Memphis, Athens,
Nashville, etc.] where they can play off each other. They
learn off sheet music and recordings as well. Above all,
the same willingness of white and black musicians in the South
to ignore the racial straitjackets of genre when swapping licks
applies to their borrowings and lendings abroad--and for that
matter to the borrowings and lendings of nonsouthern musicians
who draw on the region's heritage for inspiration, and in turn
inspire musicians here.
Moreover, the American South has never been a self-contained
entity; it developed only recently in historical time, and
formed at the intersection of vaster forces shaping the modern
world: vast flows of people, capital, and ideas. All the
"southern musics" [Native American influences excepted] descend
from immigrant musics, arriving within the past 400 years and
all the way up to the present.
Finally, the geographic boundaries of a creative community may
crosscut the traditionally defined region; given the interchange
between Chicago and Delta bluesmen, it might be more fruitful in
that case to speak of a Mississippi Valley music, or an Illinois
Central/Highway 61 music.
In short, I'd like to see "southern music" defined, not in terms
of a set of cultural norms or themes, but as a creative community,
or rather interlinked communities--communities that get their
creative juices from their location at a crossroads where a number
of cultural streams converge, and diverge. The American South
provides the *place* for the encounters, and shapes their
character--but the products can be as varied as the creators.
David.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
David L. Carlton Associate Professor of History
VU Sta. B, Box 351523, Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235-1523
Ph.: (615) 322-3326 FAX: (615) 343-6002
E-Mail:david.carlton@vanderbilt.edu
www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/history/carltodl/carltodl.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|