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Music and song are central to modem culture, from social movements to cultural change. Building on their studies of sixties culture and the theory of cognitive praxis, Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison examine the mobilization of cultural traditions and the formulation of new collective identities through the music of activism. They combine a sophisticated theoretical argument with historical-empirical studies of nineteenth-century pop­ ulists and twentieth-century labor and ethnic movements, focusing on the interrelations between music and social movements in the United States and the transferof those experiences to Europe. Specific chapters examine folk and country music, black music, music of the 1960s movements, and music of the Swedish progressive move­ ment. This highly readable book is among the firstto link the political sociology of social movements to cultural theory. Music and social movements Cambridge Cultural Social Studies Series editors: JEFFRE Y c. ALEXANDER, Department of Sociology, Un iversity of California, Los Angeles, and STEVEN SEIDMAN, Department of Sociology, Un iversity at Albany, State Un iversity of New Yo rk Titles in the series ILANA FRIEDRICH SILBER, Virtuosity, charisma, and social order LINDA NICHOLSON AND STEVEN SEIDMAN (EDS.), Social postmodernism WILLIAM BOGARD, The simulation of surveillance SUZANNE R. KIRSCHNER, The religious and Romantic origins of psychoanalysis PAUL LICHTERMAN, The search for political community ROGER FRIEDLAND AND RICHARD HECHT' To rule Jerusalem KENNETH H. TUCKER, French revolutionary syndicalism and the public sphere ERIK RINGMAR, Identity, interest, and action ALBERTO MELUCCI, The playing self ALBERTO MELUCCI, Challenging codes SARAH M. CORSE, Nationalism and literature DARNELL M. HUNT, Screening the Los Angeles "riots" LYNETTE P. SPILLMAN, Nation and commemoration MICHAEL MULKAY, The embryo research debate LYNN RAPAPORT, Jews in Germany after the Holocaust CHANDRA MUKERJI, Te rritorial ambitions and the gardens of Ve rsailles LEON H. MAYHEW' Th e new public VERA L. ZOLBERG AND JONI M. CHERBO (EDS.), Outsider art SCOTT BRAVMANN, Queer fictions of the past STEVEN SEIDMAN' Difference troubles Music and social movements Mobilizing traditions in the twentieth century Ron Eyerman Uppsala University and the Center for Cultural Research, Vaexjoe University College, Sweden and Andrew Jamison Aalborg University, Denmark UCAMBRIDGE V UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this tide: www.cambridge.org/9780521629669 © Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison I998 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published I998 A catalogue recordfor this publication is availablefrom the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Eyerman, Ron. Music and social movements : mobilizing traditions in the twentieth century I Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, p. cm. - (Cambridge cultural social studies) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN o 52I 62045 7 (hb) - ISBN o 52I 62966 7 (pb) r. Music and society. 2. Social movements- History- 20th century. 3. Political sociology - History- 20th century. 4. Popular culture - History - 20th century. I. Jamison, Andrew. I. Tide. III. Series ML3795.E98 I998 306.4'84 - dc21 97-25752 CIP MN ISBN 978-o-521-6204p Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-62966-9 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work is correct at the time of first printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter. In memory of Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Janis Joplin, and Phil Ochs Links on a chain Contents Acknowledgments pagex Introduction On social movements and culture 6 2 Taking traditions seriously 26 3 Making an alternativepopular culture: from populism to the popular front 48 4 The movements of black music: from the New Negro to civil rights 74 5 Politics and music in the 1960s 106 6 From the sixties to the nineties: the case of Sweden 140 7 Structures of feelingand cognitive praxis 160 !Votes 174 Bibliography 179 Index 189 ix Acknowledgments The writing of this book has been a truly collective experience, and there are many to thank. To begin with, the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences has for a third time been generous in its support for our collaborative research, and we would like to express our appreciation. The editors of the Council's popular science journal, Tvarsnitt, Kjell Jonsson and Martin Kylhammar, have helped us reach a Swedish public with some of our ruminations about music and movements, more specifically, portions of chapters 5 and 6. A preliminary version of chapter 5 has also appeared in the Sage journal, Media, Culture, and Society, and is available as a chapter in McGraw Hill's sociology textbook, edited by Craig Calhoun. Thank you all for letting us reconstitute some of those thoughts here. Along the way to publication, we sought out knowledge and advice about music and social movements from many sources. We were inspired by a number of papers presented at the meetings of the American Musicological Society in New Yo rk in October 1995, especially in the ses­ sions organized by the Center forBlack Music Research, whose library in Chicago we found a valuable stop on one of our trips to the States. Just before delivering the manuscript for publication, we took part in a confer­ ence in Santa Barbara, California, on "Social Movements and Music," organized by Dick Flacks. The discussions there with many leading schol­ ars and performers provided the final kick we needed to bring the book to completion. Dick deserves special thanks forhis encouragement and advice through the years, and, not least, for inviting us to give a seminar forhis graduate students on a visit to California in May 1996 - and letting us attend his radio program on the "Culture of Protest" and listen to some of his vast record collection. Many other people have helped, by singing along and listening to our x Acknowledgments xi presentations at conferences or seminars in Lund, Aalborg, Uppsala, Berlin, Bielefeld, Crete, and various other places. Those who have been especially important are Izzy Yo ung, Johan Fomiis, Scott Baretta, Aant Elzinga, Ami Sverrisson, Mickey Flacks, Emily Jamison Gromark, Magnus Ring, and JeffAlexander (whose series we are pleased to contrib­ ute to), and, as always, Johanna Esseveld and Margareta Gromark. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, you have been in our dream by helping it become real. For permission to reproduce copyrighted material, we thank Harcourt Brace and Company for the quotations from Th e Peop le, Ye s and Ch icago Poems by Carl Sandburg; Random House for the poems Youth and I too hear America Singing by Langston Hughes; Leif Nylen for the excerpt from his song, Staten och kapitalet; Sincere Management for the excerpt from I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night by Billy Bragg; and United Stage Publishing for the excerpt from Victor Jara by Mikael Wiehe. Introduction In April 1995, we attended a memorial celebration for Ralph Rinzler, a central musical activist in the 1960s social movements, at the Highlander Center, outside Knoxville, Tennessee, where Pete Seeger and Bernice Johnson Reagon and many others who had known Rinzler sang their songs of union organizing and civil rights struggle. Appropriately enough, it was there that the ideas in this book suddenly began to take form. Seeing and listening to Seeger and Reagon, along with "Doc" Watson, Mike and Peggy Seeger, Eric Weissberg, Jim Rooney, Hazel Dickens, and so many others, at the Highlander Center helped us to formulatethe central arguments in this book. We saw, and felt,how songs could conjure up long-lost social move­ ments, and how music could provide an important vehicle forthe diffusion of movement ideas into the broader culture. It was at Highlander, which, since the 1930s, has contributed so much to so many political movements, that the main point of this book became clear, namely that social movements are not merely political activities. Perhaps even more importantly, they provide spaces for cultural growth and experimentation, forthe mixing of musical and other artistic genres, and forthe infusion of new kinds of meaning into music. At Highlander, we saw some of the "results" of the movements of the 1960s, and the enor­ mous influence that the mixing of music and politics had come to have on the popular culture. Out of the efforts of Ralph Rinzler and other "move­ ment" intellectuals, bluegrass, gospel, folk music, even rock and jazz had been substantially reconstituted. At a time when the movements of the 1960s no longer have any meaningful political influence, the artists on the stage were living testimony to the cultural power that the sixties had har­ nessed and spread on into the broader society. The central social process is what we term in this book the mobilization of tradition: in social movements, musical and other kinds of cultural traditions I 2 Introduction are made and remade, and after the movements fadeaway as political forces, the music remains as a memory and as a potential way to inspire new waves of mobilization. And perhaps no movement has been so important for this mobilization of tradition than the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, in which Reagon and Seeger and Rinzler played such an active role.

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