The Song Hunter: Documenting Music in America (New School), Fall '10

For those interested in oral history, radio documentary, and ethnomusicology, this course approaches the history of song hunting and radio balladry with an eye (ear) toward the future of these forms and practices. Students will begin with the history of song hunting in America: starting with John Lomax’s cowboy songs and prison music, followed by several Appalachian song hunters/folklorists, and those ethnomusicologists collecting modern prison music, today, such as Ben Harbert. Students are expected to engage with the subject through critical reading/listening and through the actual practice of song hunting—using the city as the site for their fieldwork. Students will interrogate notions of “America” and “folk music” from the field. The “field” includes churches, bars, street corners, and other sites of students’ choosing. We will make use of historic tensions between famed song collectors, in order to position ourselves, aesthetically and morally. Our field recordings will serve as homage or corrective to the work done by folklorists who came before us.