Duelling Myths
Feb. 16th, 2004 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksHaving read a couple of books on Appalachia so far, namely Altina L. Waller's great deconstruction and reconstruction of the Hatfield-McCoy "feud" in the Tug River Valley, on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky - and Durwood Dunn's eponymous, loving study of the life and death of the settlement of Cades Cove, situated in the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, I'm really warming to the region and its history.
There's been an upsurge of interest in Appalachia recently - by folklorists and musicians who want to preserve the culture of the mountain communities, by anthropologists who want to study the relative isolation of these places and the people who lived there, and historians who want to recover the historical reality of these places and debunk the myths that they were a backward, degenerate people.
What's coming out of these new social studies is a very different picture from what Hollywood and the popular press has been feeding us all these decades ("Deliverance" has much to answer for). What is emerging is the picture of a fiercely communal people, self-sufficient in community and family ties but still linked politically and economically to the larger world outside. A people with a rich and sophisticated culture, and trying to find a compromise between generations of pre-capitalistic and pre-industrial living and the encroaching outside world.
In the meeting, some adapted, some did not, some fought back, some sold out - and yet, through all this, there is the lure of the mountains. They were not necessarily better people than everyone else, but they weren't primitives or perverts - just sometimes slightly out of pace with the rest of the world beyond the communally isolated worlds they called home, and trying to preserve that in the face of an increasing modernism that wanted to change everything.
And of course, wonderful, wonderful music, of which I'm just starting to discover a real appreciation for. Anybody want to give me pointers on bluegrass guitar, or take a weekend drive up to the Great Smoky Mountains?
There's been an upsurge of interest in Appalachia recently - by folklorists and musicians who want to preserve the culture of the mountain communities, by anthropologists who want to study the relative isolation of these places and the people who lived there, and historians who want to recover the historical reality of these places and debunk the myths that they were a backward, degenerate people.
What's coming out of these new social studies is a very different picture from what Hollywood and the popular press has been feeding us all these decades ("Deliverance" has much to answer for). What is emerging is the picture of a fiercely communal people, self-sufficient in community and family ties but still linked politically and economically to the larger world outside. A people with a rich and sophisticated culture, and trying to find a compromise between generations of pre-capitalistic and pre-industrial living and the encroaching outside world.
In the meeting, some adapted, some did not, some fought back, some sold out - and yet, through all this, there is the lure of the mountains. They were not necessarily better people than everyone else, but they weren't primitives or perverts - just sometimes slightly out of pace with the rest of the world beyond the communally isolated worlds they called home, and trying to preserve that in the face of an increasing modernism that wanted to change everything.
And of course, wonderful, wonderful music, of which I'm just starting to discover a real appreciation for. Anybody want to give me pointers on bluegrass guitar, or take a weekend drive up to the Great Smoky Mountains?
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Date: 2004-02-17 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-17 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-17 01:57 am (UTC)Among other things that I learned was just how vast and just how cash-poor the region is, but also how rich and varied the culture. In many ways, it's the perfect place for those of us who are proud and stubborn enough not to fit well into mainstream, what-have-you-done-for-me-this-minute society.
You're right -- Hollywood does have a great deal to answer for. Unfortunately, Smithsonian Folkways isn't nearly as well known in the general populace, but they've done some marvelous work preserving the music of the region, especially on the Smithsonian Folkways label.
A recording online that isn't limited to, but includes, some good Appalachian music is Folk Songs of America -- The Robert Winslow Gordon Collection 1922-1932.
Done blathering now.
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Date: 2004-02-17 02:22 am (UTC)Also, look up Norman Blake and Rising Fawn, Georgia - some interesting scenery up that way (Cloudland Canyon State Park, Lookout Mountain).
I don't know about the Great Smokies (twist our arms), but Beth has been trying to get back to Helen, Georgia and the surrounding area for a visit for about nine years. Go ahead, make our day.
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Date: 2004-02-17 03:49 am (UTC)Tom Galloway
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Date: 2004-02-17 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-17 01:58 pm (UTC)"Deliverance" is fine. A culture that doesn't teach people to discriminate between movies and reality has much to answer for.
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Date: 2004-02-18 04:00 am (UTC)And I'm working on learning to play bluegrass mandolin. Not making a whole lot of progress so far, but now I have a job (and money) maybe I can buy some CDs and hear a little bit more of what it's all about.