Overview

"Lawrence Gellert has long been a mysterious figure in American folk and blues studies, gaining prominence in the left-wing folk revival of the 1930s for his fieldwork in the U.S. South. A ""lean, straggly-haired New Yorker,"" as Time magazine called him, Gellert was an independent music collector, without formal training, credentials, or affiliation. At a time of institutionalized suppression, he worked to introduce white audiences to a tradition of black musical protest that had been denied and overlooked by prior white collectors. By the folk and blues revival of the 1960s, however, when his work would again seem apt in the context of the civil rights movement, Gellert and his collection of Negro Songs of Protest were a conspicuous absence. A few leading figures in the revival defamed Gellert as a fraud, dismissing his archive of black vernacular protest as a fabrication -- an example of left-wing propaganda and white interference. A Sound History is the story of an individual life, an excavation of African American musical resistance and dominant white historiography, and a cultural history of radical possibility and reversal in the defining middle decades of the U.S. twentieth century."

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9781625345295

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Reviews

With this book, Garabedian enriches our understanding of the methods, outlook, and interpretive framework of folklorists of the early twentieth century, and his assessment of the politics and culture of the 1930s is first-rate. -Stephen Petrus, coauthor of Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival Gellert's work has not received the recognition or appreciation it deserves. In his well-researched book, Garabedian does a very good job of highlighting the significance of Gellert's song collecting. -Robbie Lieberman, author of My Song Is My Weapon : People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-50

Author Information

Steven P. Garabedian is assistant professor of history at Marist College.

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