Cecil Sharp in Virginia: Literature Review

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016

Overview

Cecil Sharp’s English Folk-songs of the Southern Appalachians is one of the greatest folksong collections of all time (Whisnant 1983:124-127; Yates 2009). Sharp’s “scientific” definition of folksong had a profound effect on what he collected and how he documented his collection (Gold and Revill 2006:61-64).

The romantic nationalist ideas of Herder and Darwinist ideas of evolution and natural selection are the cornerstones of Sharp’s theorizing about the essential nature of folksongs.

Music, he argued, had evolved from the primitive (folk) to the civilized (classical art music). In

English Folk-songs: some conclusions, he writes that, “the main thesis of this book is the evolutionary origin of the folk song (Sharp 1907:xxiii).” Folk song represents the purest distillation of a People’s soul because it evolves in a community over time.

Folk music’s key characteristics make it impossible for it to survive modernity. This is because folk music evolves through a process of oral transmission, is a communal production and is created through a process of natural selection; members of a community perpetuate those songs which best express a communal ethos.

Sharp’s definition of folk song envisioned it as a sort of dead-end: folk songs were the fossilized remains of once-living culture. An authentic folk song was the creation of communities of illiterate, rural peasants. A few survivals could be found in dying rural communities, but as communications and access to education improved these last remnants

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016 would disappear. The folk song collector’s function was to rescue these relics and preserve them for posterity (Sharp 1907:150).

This definition caused Sharp to limit his collecting to isolated rural communities because he believed that urban folk song traditions could not exist. Though Appalachian culture contained several strands ― Native American, English, Scots-Irish, African-American, German,

Swiss, “Dutch” ― Sharp initially collected exclusively from people he perceived to be of English stock. He also felt it necessary to uphold the purity of the tradition against music hall songs and other “trash” (Whisnant 1983).

His pronouncements about the types of songs that should be collected and the types of songs that should be discarded severely limited the purview of folk song.

In English Folk-songs of the Southern Appalachians, Sharp used the system of organization that Francis James Child used in his monumental work, The English and Scottish

Popular Ballads. Child’s taxonomy treats each song as a free-standing artifact with little regard for contextual concerns such as who the singer was or where the song was collected (Zumwalt

1988). This treatment tends to obscure wider relationships. In particular, it obscures how ballads were disseminated and received in different regions of Appalachia and how ballads were passed on within and outside of families. The organization of the songs also makes it hard to conceptualize Sharp’s journey and his amazing achievement in collecting the songs.

In the course of his journey, Sharp took many photographs of his informants. He also described his interactions with the people of Appalachia in his Diaries (EDFSS Website,

(http://www.vwml.org.uk/search/search-sharp-diaries) and EFDSS 2004). Sharp may have felt

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016 that publishing these materials would introduce a subjective element into a work that he meant to be scientific. Sharp’s Diaries and photographs were only recently published on the internet.

For a century, Sharp’s photographs and descriptions of his informants have existed separate from the text of English Folksongs of the Southern Appalachians. This separation caused English Folksongs of the Southern Appalachians to be somewhat one-dimensional. This is unfortunate for several reasons.

First, it creates the impression that Sharp’s informants were one homogenous group.

Second, it obscures Sharp’s relationships with his informants. The communities that

Sharp and his assistant, Maud Karpeles, visited were on the cusp of modernization. The coming of radio and improved road systems to the area as the 20th century progressed ended the isolation of the mountain communities. Sharp and Karpeles did fieldwork in communities that were bulldozed in the 1930s to create the Shenandoah National Park and they were among the last witnesses to describe how life was lived in these areas. Their descriptions stand in direct contrast with the popular depiction of the mountaineers as “poor white trash” who needed to be evicted from their land “for their own good,” (Eisenfeld 2014)

The detached, theoretical tone of Sharp’s writing seemed to give credence to the theory by later Marxist social critics that he was bourgeois expropriator of lower class culture. (Harker

1985)

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016

Review of Literature

In their 2006 article, “Gathering the voices of the people? Cecil Sharp, cultural hybridity, and the folk music of Appalachia,” Gold and Reville highlight contradictions in Sharp’s theorizing that ultimately spring from Herder’s romantic nationalist conceptualization of “The Folk.” They write,

Sharp had considerable difficulty in managing the contradictory elements of his

thinking, particularly resolving the imperatives of his particularist search for the

essence of English culture with his use of a theory based on universalist scientific and

'natural' principles. Indeed, the entire episode provides revealing insight into the

'survivals in culture' approach in action (Gold and Revill 2006:61)….The tensions and

contradictions inherent in von Herder's formulation have had long-term implications

for the cultural politics of folk music collection. In particular, the Herderian tradition,

coupled with formulations by scholars such as Francis Child and Cecil Sharp, directed

the collectors' gaze and the things that they found valuable....It does not detract from

the enormous contribution of Sharp and other collectors to recognize that their

approach to collecting folk music was ideologically constructed and that this greatly

influenced the nature and purpose and, more importantly, the results of their search

(2006:64).

Systems of taxonomy played a huge role in “directing the collectors’ gaze.” In American

Folklore Scholarship, Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt shows how the collection and classification methods of the literary folklorists such as Sharp separated, “the folk from the lore.” The need

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016 to be scientific led folk song scholars to focus on the objects (texts and tunes) and to exclude an examination of the singers and the effect they had on the creation and dissemination of folk songs. Literary folklorists, she says, viewed people as a distraction that interfered with the folklorists’ duty to present an objective presentation of their subject. (Zumwalt 1988: 111).

A more performance-centered view of Sharp’s Appalachian informants is found in Dear

Companion. This book is a first attempt to gather together the songs and match them up with the images and stories of Sharp’s informants and also show the route Sharp and Karpeles took as they sought out old time singers. This approach brings the people to life. The photos, songs and stories give the people and their culture a depth that is missing from Sharp’s other works.

The cultures of Appalachia come to the fore in David Whisnant’s All That is Native and

Fine and Sue Eisenfeld’s Shenandoah. Whisnant describes how Sharp’s collection methods influenced his interpretation of Appalachian culture. Because Sharp was moving too quickly from location to location and because he often depended on the missionary schools for shelter and information, he missed cultural nuances that he undoubtedly would have discovered if he’d given himself time to get the lay of the land.

Mike Yates notes that as Sharp’s understanding of Appalachian culture deepened, he demonstrated a surprising willingness to go beyond his original criteria for informants and interviewed several African-Americans―people who could not easily fit into his racial schema

(Yates 1999:21).

In the Introduction to English Folk-songs from the Appalachians, Sharp briefly alludes to the bad reputation that the mountaineers had in the popular press and attempts to counter it with his very positive impressions. In Shenandoah, Sue Eisenfeld examines the smear campaign

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016 against the mountaineers in great detail and concludes that it was largely responsible for the government’s decision to invoke eminent domain to create the Shenandoah Park. Though the evictions happened more than a decade after Sharp’s visit, there is a tendency to depict him as blithely collecting folk songs while his informants are being dispossessed.

Dave Harker, who taught Cultural Studies at Manchester Polytechnic, is a prime example of this school of thought. He argues that the English folk music revival is based on a myth promulgated by “individuals who were either members of the rising bourgeoisie or ideologically sympathetic to bourgeois culture and values.” He sees the study of folklore as a conspiracy of white, middle class males to shore up bourgeois hegemony by falsifying working class traditions. In order to gain a truer idea of how working class people lived and to “clear the ground for a genuinely democratic musical culture of the future,” he argues that, “the bourgeois, romantic nationalist foundations of the revival must be demolished (Harker 1985: viii).”

Harker’s book is significant because he was the first to question the theoretical foundations of the revival and to point out that Cecil Sharp selected, edited, and rewrote material to fit his idealized theories of “The Folk.” In a breathtaking demonstration of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, Harker argues that the revival wasn’t just tainted by middle- class ideology, but that true folk music never existed at all; it was purely a middle-class fantasy.

Describing Sharp as a mediator or appropriator of lower class culture, Michael Brocken says, misses the greater significance of his work. European classical music was completely dominated by the Germans; the folk revival helped loosen the “Germanic grasp” upon composition (Brocken 2003:7). At the time, composer Ralph Vaughn Williams wrote that

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016 classical style had become “nothing more or less than the Teutonic style” and a revival was needed to bring “Englishness” back to Music (Brocken 2003:6).

Sharp overturned the European Classical model, the musical paradigm that had governed “serious” music since the 18th century. “…whatever class origins, fealties or motivations, the work of Sharp and other early collectors began to draw serious study of music away from the conservatory canons of European society….Sharp brought ‘other’ music onto the agenda… [and] broadened the scope for discovering value in music.” (Brocken 2003:9)

Sharp’s violation of the classical paradigm unleashed a tsunami of musical innovation that continues to enrich us today.

Conclusion

I haven’t been able to find any explanation of why Sharp’s photographs weren’t published in the 1917 version of English Folk-songs from the Southern Appalachians which he edited, or the greatly enlarged version of the book which Maud Karpeles edited and published in 1932. The 1917 edition was put together in haste because Sharp hoped it would help him to obtain grants for future collecting exhibitions. Publication of photographs would have meant more production time and the added expense of reproducing the photographs. Maud Karpeles’ task in producing the 1932 edition was herculean; but I cannot imagine Ms. Karpeles shirking any task that would have enhanced the reputation of Cecil Sharp and folk music. The ballad collectors of Sharp and Karpeles’ day wanted to be perceived as “scientific,” not as popularizers or antiquarians. If Sharp and Karpeles considered including photographs in the book, they may

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016 have rejected it as unscientific playing to the gallery. (Karpeles did publish six photos of Sharp’s

Appalachian informants in her book, Cecil Sharp: His Life and Work, 1967).

Viewed from a 21st century perspective, however, the incorporation of Cecil Sharp’s photographs and diary entries with maps of his journey through Appalachia would provide contextual information that would enrich our understanding of early 20th century culture in

Appalachia and also enhance our appreciation of Sharp and Karpeles’ arduous journeys and their tremendous achievement.

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016

Works Cited:

Primary Sources

Karpeles, Maud. 1967. Cecil Sharp: His Life and Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sharp, Cecil James. 1907. English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions. London: Simpkin & Co. Ltd.

Sharp, Cecil James. 1932. English Folk-Songs from the Southern Appalachians.

Edited by Karpeles, Maud; repr. 1960. London:Oxford University Press, 1960.

Sharp, Cecil James. n.d. Cecil Sharp’s Appalachian Diaries: 1915-1918. Vaughan Williams

Memorial Library Website, http://www.vwml.org/vwml-projects/vwml-cecil-sharp-

diaries;

Accessed 4/3/2016 6:03:56 PM

Secondary Sources

Brocken, Michael. 2003. The British Folk Revival, 1944-2002. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate

Publishing, Ltd.

Eisenfeld, Sue. 2014. Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal. University of Nebraska

Press.

English Folk Dance & Song Society. 2004. Dear Companion: Appalachian Traditional Songs and

Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection. Edited by Mike Yates, Elaine Bradtke and

Malcolm Taylor. London:English Folk Dance & Song Society.

Gold, John R., and George Revill. 2006. Gathering the Voices of the People: Cecil Sharp, Cultural

Hybridity, and the Folk Music of Appalachia. GeoJournal 65, no. 1/2: 55–66.

Liz Milner Pathways to Folklore April 7, 2016

Harker, Dave. 1985. Fakesong: The Manufacture of British "Folksong:” 1700 to the Present Day.

Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England: Open University Press.

Whisnant, David E. 1983. All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American

Region. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Yates, Mike. 1999. Cecil Sharp in America: Collecting in the Appalachians. Musical Traditions,

Stroud, Glos, England, UK, http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/sharp.htm.

Zumwalt, Rosemary Lévy. 1988. American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press.