Reacts to it and grapples with it. So today i want to frame our discussion around a couple of quotations. The first is from the anthropologist and fox. Fox writes, Country Music is widely described in racialized terms. Assures sins of its essential badness is frequently framed and racial terms. For many cosmopolitan americans, especially country is bad music because it is widely understood to signify an explicit claim to whiteness. Not as an unmarked mutual condition as locking or trying to shed race, but as marked of cultural identity. Bad whiteness, and redeem by ethnicity, folklore authenticity, progressive politics or than no plus a bleach of elites. I want us to think about that, Country Music as articulating current being this type of marked white particularity. So thats the first quote, the second. Its from the writer and historian roxanne dunn bar, and her book red dirt. Which is a great memoir of growing up in oklahoma, she writes. Country music, wrote patriotism, evangelism, have been able to coalesce mine people. The descendants of the original settlers, people uniting despite class differences, mirroring blacklisty no asian nationalisms. Which exhibit similar contradictions and limitations. Okay, so what we have here is basically, to expressions that Country Music and whiteness belong together in some sort of fundamental way. I want us to think about, my people here. Done barr expression my people, the descendants of the original settlers. People united despite class differences or social worlds. Country music as one of the sort of sort of things that are locking these people together. I wanted to talk about that today, in addition to, thinking about Country Music and its basic oppositions. So, we have what we might call the twin polls of Country Music. These polls are oppositions, they structure the systematics of Country Music. You might say that they correlate to specific country artists. In particular, the two country artists with which peterson is concerned with in the early phases of this book. Which are jimmy rodgers, and the Carter Family. Im going to put them up there as representing there exceptions. Representing, these two polls. And again, as i said, Country Music is a music that response to maternity. What is maternity . Moderna tea begins with the rise of capitalism, with the rise of political liberalism in the 17th and 18th centuries. And with new developments and technology its within modernity also that we learn from this class. We see race get constructed, race is something that gets built during this age of encounter between the 15th and 19th centuries. What we know from that, is that racism modern invention. Country music to, is invented in the crucible of modernity. The Carter Family representing these different poles. First is, home. Correspondingly, jimmy rogers represents and some way the road. Mark stun angles described maternity, the experience of living in modernity as all that is solid melting into air. Everything is in flux, everything is in tumult. All of the things that used to be fixed are no called into question. It is a time of tremendous liberally shun. Literally liberation from ones social station. Under feudalism, people could not move up or down. In modernity with the rise of capitalism, all of a sudden, people have much more mobility. Their emancipated from the land. This is experienced as tremendously exhilarating, but also as terrifying. To have this newfound freedom. The Carter Family represents all of the virtues of home, of rooted in us whereas jimmy rogers represents the allure of the road one of the things that happens in modernity people move. Greater distances with greater frequency than they ever had before. The carter representing piety, morality. The need to hold to the old virtues to need to hold to the moral code. Jimmy rogers, this new word that comes into being in the 19th century, fun and listen. All of the new opportunities that modernity affords. Because modernity remember, is the time of the rise of cities, the rise of these places where all sorts of different people come together to do some sort of commerce. Not just economic commerce, but sexual commerce as well. If the Carter Family represent a type of parochialism, staying in one place being loyal to one specific neck of the woods so to speak. Jimmy rogers increasingly, represents a type of cosmopolitanism, a world leanest that you dont necessarily see in the Country Music aligned more with the Carter Family. These two polls, they structure all sorts of opposition and Country Music. It is because Country Music is always the music of the people on the move. Of a people who are displaced by various developments in modernity. What we see, this happened very early on, now we can gab back to roxanne dunn bars expression of her people. Who are her people. The people who create hillbilly music are going to be known at the scots irish. The scotts irish also known as the oyster scotts. Are a white ethnic group that immigrates to the United States, in the 16 and 17 hundreds. Where do they come from . They might say were from ireland its more much more complicated than that. All scarce to scotts or from northern ireland, they are people on the move because of and pyre. We noted that from the 15 19th centuries this is the era not just of encounter among people of different racial groups, but this is the era of colonialism and imperialism. The British Empire its first imperial holdings, well it starts out on the mainland first the english colonize wales and scotland. And then turned their attentions to ireland. And this is a map of the irish sea, england over here, wales and scotland above it. The people known as the scottsirish or the ulster scots, are basically what we might think of as imperialism shock troops. The reason is, ireland is colonized by the english beginning in about 11 69 its a very sort of haphazard loose affiliation of states. And of small principalities, its not until the 16th century, under henry the eight that the british create a system that they call plantation. In which in which the english want to create a stable colony in ireland. It is anything but stable up to that point. They want to create a stable colony and so what they do is they basically plant subjects of the king in ireland, especially northern ireland. And here is what james the first says about these people and what he wants there to happen in northern ireland. This is 16 oh three, james the first rights, the setting of religion, the introducing of civility, order in government, amongst a barbarous and subdued people, acts of piety and glory and where the always of a Christian Prince to endeavor. Now these settlers as he described them were of a middle temper between the irish temper and the root breeding and more likely to implant holster and the british. So these are at least early settlers are mostly going to be from this part of england and scotland. The ulster scots. They come into ireland, the king has opened up all of this land for settlement, but what he really means is land to be dispossessed from the indigenous irish. And the ulster scots who come into our land in the 15th and 16th and through the 17th century, are essential separate colonials. It means they are going to be there to dispossess the indigenous irish of the land and establish some sort of English Settlement there and to stay there. To live and transform this region into, well, into english news. So dunbarortiz calls her ancestors empires shock troops. The westward soldiers of empire. And so, the understanding of the cain and of the english government is that these settlers will be always fighting and under threat. The temperament that develops amongst the scotsirish is precisely a temperament of embattled meant. A temperament of constant vigilance against incursions here among the irish. The irish, as you can imagine, our construed by these soldiers and the english government, by most literature, with this term savages. Its not really a new term, but it comes into currency with the english and scottish settlement of ireland. If we go back a few class periods and think about the ideology of race the develops. What we see is that the ideology of race is absolutely essential for people who construed them selves as christian to be able to do what . To be able to do what . What does race enable . What does it enable europeans to do . Allen . Set one group higher than another. For what reason . To displace power, i guess. This place power . Like set whites apart from anyone else, at least within the context that we have been discussing it in. Yeah, so to create hierarchy. Yes. For sure. Basically take over land more easily. So, somebody has something that you want and you have to take it. But christianity tells us what . You cant steal. You cant steal. Dont do that. Christianity basically says be good to each other. Under this context of violent dispossession of people from their land and goods, the resources. You need some sort of justification, and race comes in to do that very handily. The understanding of the irish as subhuman, or at least as not of the same caliber, not of the same quality as the english, is in place from very early on. As early, in fact, as the 13 forties. There is a set of statutes that prohibit, for example, intermarriage between irish people and english settlers. This is a racial distinction. Tyler. I dont understand why white people get segregated as much compared to the european settlers. This is a great question. Because we look back historically with our only understanding of race in the 21st century. We look and see that they are all white people, but that is not the way they were seen at the time. They were seen as barbarians, close to animals. Their condition is so low and they are so brutalized that they are not really white. And also, whiteness as we understand it is itself a racial formation and construction that comes into being for whiteness, i would say the key time period is the 17th century, and i will talk about that in a moment. For example tyler, if i were to look around this room today and say, theres a lot of people who are white in here. The same version of me in the 19th century would look around the classroom and say, i see a kilt. I see a teuton. I see an anglosaxon. I see a hebrew. I would see with different eyes. Now what we understand as whiteness, its monolithic and one big thing, they certainly did not see it that way at that time. But its a really good question. Wait a minute, these people were all white. Well, the british did not understand the irish in those terms. And remember, race is sort of just coalescing at this time. Or so these footsoldiers of empire dispossessed the indigenous irish. They remained there for many years. Ulster its settled by the british and, in fact, remains you could say as the glass british colony even to this day. But over the next couple of centuries, there is a number of factors that pushed the scotsirish out of ulster and into the american colonies. Primarily desire for land, desire for new fortunes, things getting a bit economically tapped out in ireland. It is a perfect situation for the scotsirish, who are soldiers of empire, to keep pushing westward. In fact, what we see is this pattern replicated as many scotsirish enter into the american colonies. Highland and scotsirish, now this is an interesting distinction. What you see is many highland scotts who are more closely allied with the british crown, they mostly go north. Upstate new york, vermont, new england. Whereas the ulster scots come down here primarily landing in philadelphia and spreading out across pennsylvania. And lo and behold york and gettysburg. This ridge we are here, what do they call this mountain to the north . Its a very poetic name. Its called north mountain. The mountain to the south . Again, beautiful name. South mountain. So these ridges of the appalachians here and wilderness road stretching down into virginia and the piedmont, North Carolina, South Carolina and over into kentucky in tennessee as well. This is the path of most of the scotsirish settlers. A few more maps. Let me see. Margin a little bit. There it is. Settlers originally coming into wilderness road, the Cumberland Gap into the present day southeast. We should say that they are primarily Small Farmers and they dont even necessarily settle the best land. But land is of such a premium, that the desire is to arrive somewhere, to settle, and if its too crowded, then to move on. We see this pattern replicated over and over again. One of the things that dunbarortiz tells us moving even further down. And all the way over into texas and oklahoma by the 19th century. And dunbarortiz very much wants to establish that her family are the descendants of these scotchirish that kept pushing west. All right, so to get back to this notion of whiteness and why it is so important to Country Music. Im thinking about boxes statement that it represents this sort of bad whiteness. One of the things we see today is whiteness can mean simply not having a racial identity. What are you . Im white, im nothing really. Im just a normal. Well, Country Music reflects a particular claim to a sort of whiteness. What we see with the scotsirish people, as they come to the United States, they are both privileged in terms of the racial identity and subordinated in terms of their class identity. That is the real sort of interesting thing about Country Music. Its that it is the music of poor white people. People who were privileged to be white, and i will talk about that in a second, but also people who are underprivileged in terms of their class identity and their economic opportunities. So i will argue that for all intents and purposes, whiteness in the United States is an invention of the 17th century. It is a corollary to a another racial formation that is developing at the same time, which is black miss. What does it mean to be black . What does it mean to be white . Well, what we see is that by 1792, by the late 18 century, whiteness as a category of identity is baked right into citizenship. The 1792 naturalization act, does anybody know what it specifies . What types of people can become citizens . Randi . Three white males. Yeah, free, they dont say males, but they say persons. Free white persons. So if we look back into the 17th century and all of the racial discourse, that in many ways, this naturalization act culminates. What we see is these two categories increasingly being constructed. So we have to ask if, three white persons can become citizens of the new nation, who cant . Who cant become a citizen . We know who can right, so what other types of people are there . Matt . Slaves. Slaves okay, so people who are not free. Who else . Native americans. Native americans absolutely. So people who are not white. Who else . Women. Women can become citizens, but they have no voting rights. Who else . Whos free and who is not free . So slaves absolutely are not free but, most white settlers to the United States are going to be poor. How do they come, how do they arrive . Under what conditions . Ethan . Under indentured servitude. Yes most white settlers are ripe under conditions of indenture. Where you essentially bond your labor out. Say ok, in return for passage to the new world, im going to bond myself to some sort of master. For a specified period of time, usually seven years. Not always, sometimes more, sometimes less. Its essentially a contract into which a person enters, saying i will not be free to do what i want until the period of indenture has elapsed. Most white settlers, especially most scotsirish can come under conditions of indenture. Some where in pennsylvania of the 18th century, 17th to. Somewhere between 60 and 75 of settlers come with the convention of adventure. They are not free. So you cant be indentured, you have to be a free white person to be a citizen of course by 1792. What does indenture really mean . One of the things that we see is, and denture is something thats going to be developed mostly in jamestown. By the Virginia Company, most enterprises in terms of settling the new world are companies, their commercial ventures. The Virginia Company that starts jamestown and other settlements, is going to be very big on indenture. One of the things that jamestown needs, it is workers, and soldiers. Workers to clear land, to harvest cross to build all these things. And soldiers to defend the colony against the incursion of mostly powered and confederacy native americans. But also to use violence to claim more line, so indentures going to be a very good way to bind white settlers who may want to go binding those people to the colony and to the enterprise. So it is this mean . Also in jamestown, in 60 19, you have the first african slaves. But slavery at this time, you have a ship load of slaves brought to jamestown, but slavery at this time is a very ambiguous condition. What does it mean to be enslaved, verse says what does it mean to be indentured . So what you have in virginia of the 17th century, is a tremendous underclass. You have a very small planter class, the elites, who are in the Virginia House of purchases. Who control the political economy of the day. But theyre very few in number the vast majority of people, our poor. Often abjectly so, and theyre also an free. So you have a tremendous by racial underclass. Why would this be threatening to the planter elite . Why would it be threatening . Very small planter class, large underclass. Whats the threat . Revolt. And conspiracy between these two groups. Who might come together and say we are getting the raw deal, why are they in charge, why do they control all the resources when were doing the work . So if youre virginia elites at the time, what do you do . Try to divide the underclass. And divide the underclass good. Because, im not saying theres some sort of racial utopia happening here between the lower classes. The scotsirish and others, english settlers, the poor, they arrived with their preconceived notions of racial difference. This biracial underclass, white indentured laborers, african slaves and the status is very the differences very ambiguous between the two. They work together, they live together, they party together, they hooked up. And they play music together. So there are correspondence is and alliances, potentially forming, that if you are a member of the plan to elite you want to prevent that from happening. You want to drive a wedge between those two groups. What we see is over the course of the 17th century, laws being put into effect that define increasingly what it means to be black, and what it means to be white. And what it does, it essentially creates whiteness as a form of capital. Ive used this term before, what do i mean that whiteness is a form of capital . Anyone own any capital . You own any capital jeff . Money. Right money, and what can you do with that money . Buy things. Kind of like social statement kind of. Yeah it empowers you write, money is sort of power. I want us to think about the whiteness that emerges in the 17th century, imparting a very valuable piece of capital to white people. Because, what we see is, as whiteness coalesces over the 17th and 18th century, whiteness by 1790 to get you something really good. What is it . What does it get you . Citizenship. It gets to citizenship, absolutely. So, whiteness as a form of capital, something that you can use, has leverage, something that empowers you, something that elevates your life changes, this is what capital does. What we see, a few key dates here. In 16 39, the Virginia House of burgesses passes a law, that stipulates any slave caught with a firearm will receive 20 lashes. The forbidding of arms to slaves. In cases of it is extreme danger from indian incursion, they might be allowed a firearm, that will be taken away right after. What this means, is that for white people, what it means to be white ultimately is to be able to defend the settlement against indian incursion. To be able to to be equipped to go out and take territory through violence. And one other thing, to be a white person means to be able to put down a slave rebellion. Here comes that wedge between this group. Whites can bear arms, blacks cannot. From 16 39 forward, this is the law of the land. What this means essentially is that military service, is both a duty and a privilege of whiteness. A duty and a privilege of whiteness, it is forbidden to people of color. The carrying of arms is forbidden. If we think about Country Music today, what it stance generally speaking on the military . Positive. Yeah its very pro military. Many songs are about a certain type a very assertive nationalism, thats backed up through military force. If we go back, and we trace that vision of whiteness to 16 39, we see that a privilege and a duty of whiteness is military service. And what does military service get you . In addition to potentially getting you killed or maimed, but what is it . Oftentimes like respect. Yes respect. What about other types of resources . What happened after the second world war, soldiers came back, what did they get . Like money. They can go to school and stuff like that. What is that cold . A gi bill. That gave veterans money to go to college, money to buy a house, real Material Resources in the world. And the army up through 1948 a segregated. So again, military Service Remains largely a privilege and duty of whiteness. It gets you certain things. And so what are we seeing happening to that class of indentured white laborers and soldiers . If the condition used to be one of rough equality, certain laws begin to raise whiteness up a notch. And create increasingly a hierarchy in which the poor whites can feel themselves well were not rich, but were also knocked down here. To create a sort of intermediate group between the planters and the slaves. Is very effective as the means of social control. And its really the forbidding of arms, i say African Americans because there were free people of color. Around at this time, slavery again, not terribly come out of fight until later in the century. , but its the 16 sixties, where things really increasingly get more locked down in terms of who can be a slave, who cannot be a slave. Slavery becomes a condition suffice it to say, slavery becomes exclusively a condition of people codified as black. A few laws to talk about here. The first, stipulates that slavery is a lifelong condition. Unlike indenture, indenture is a temporary condition. Seven years, 30 years, two years whatever your contract is, thats the duration. Slavery is a lifelong condition, and slavery is a heritable condition. You can be born into slavery, and that is your condition. Well, who how do we know . Whats happening here as i said, there is a lot of interracial contact. Contact between a slave woman for example, and a planter white man. What type of baby does that give you . Public enemy had a great record a few years ago called fear of a black planet. They sort of do this racial map. They say white mama, white daddy, white baby. Black mama, baghdadi, black baby. Black mama, why daddy, what color baby . Black. Ive lost track. White mama, black daddy, what color baby . The point is in three of four of those crosses, you get someone whos black. For example, brock obama. Is he black or white . Black. But his mom is white, so how is he black . Because hes not white. I guess if we are going with skin pigmentation is what its getting at. Okay, any other reasons . One of the things that happens in the 16 sixties is there is a lot past that says that the condition of slavery, that slavery is a condition that is heritable from the mother. So it is whatever your mother is, that is what you are. And because there was so much more interracial contact, sexual congress, rape and otherwise, between White Planters and enslaved women, that the progeny produced is always going to be a slave. The other law that gets past is that the condition of slavery is exclusive to those who were not baptized christians in their home country. Not baptized christians in their home country. But since all of the indentured and poor are from europe, they are christian. Since the slaves are originally from somewhere in africa, well, they will be susceptible to being. So as blackness is increasingly circumscribed within the parameters of slavery, whats happening to whiteness at this time . What is the corollary . Matt . The conditions of whiteness are expanding. The conditions of whiteness are expanding, but you could also say they are narrowing. Remember that three of those crosses that i mentioned a parent of different groups, three of them are going to net you a black child. Only one is going to get you a white child and that is the cross between whites. In fact, what you see also is prescriptions and laws emerging that prohibit intermarriage between black and white. That happened in colonial virginia and elsewhere. But now what you see is laws policing whites in terms of who they can marry. If you marry a person of color, you will be banished from the colony. And so what this creates around whiteness is whiteness as a precious thing, a precious commodity, that if you solely it, if you mix it, if you ruin it, you are no longer entitled to it. So what happens to whiteness at this time as blackness increasingly becomes legally associated with slavery. Whiteness becomes illegally associated with freedom, with various forms of opportunity. As this happens, that wedge is driven between these black and white groups. 16 76 1676, and West Virginia you have bakers rebellion, which is a coalition of poor whites and slaves. They come together and sent out onto the front to essentially fight native americans. They look at each other and say, why are we fighting them when our real enemy is the planter class . They assemble a large enough force to really threaten planter power in the virginia colony. The Virginia House says after 1676, no more are we going to drive that wedge between the poor whites and the slaves. We are going to do it by elevating the whites and denigrating the slaves, ensuring that black and white do not come together in a biracial alliance that could potentially threaten planter power. The whites who were the beneficiaries and the victims of this rationalization. Now i say the beneficiaries and the victims. Beneficiaries because what you get if you buy into this is, im white, im free. If i am white, what it means is that no one can ever own me. They might treat me badly, they might put me in conditions of indenture, they might make sure i live in poverty, but you know what . They cannot only. They can only own black people. This creates some sort of aspiration to upward mobility for many poor lights from the 17th through the 19th centuries. The aspiration is not to necessarily equalized things, it is instead to become a slave owner yourself. The mark of my freedom is that i can own other people and no one can only because i am white. In that way, they are beneficiaries of this new racial formation of whiteness. In what ways are they victims of it . Well, one thing that happens is there is one less and less possibility of some sort of multi Racial Coalition that would have the numbers to be able to overthrow elite power and to create some sort of new configuration. More democratic and egalitarian. So, poor whites are increasingly victimized by this. There is no possibility of any real change. You are always going to be there is always going to be an underclass. You might be able to get out of it and get rich, but there will always be in underclass. So what we see over the next couple of centuries is this ideology of whiteness. Whiteness as a form of capital. Whiteness as a sort of life raft by which poor whites say, at least im not black. I might be poor, but nobody can own me. I can be a citizen. If we push this up to the 1830s at a time of massive democracy in the United States, we see the emergence of what is called universal manhood suffrage in which the property requirements are rescinded and all eligible men, white man, can vote. This is a time of tremendous you know, think of democratic ferment. Egalitarianism. It applies to these people who are called free white persons exclusively. Whiteness gets you things, but also is something that really prevents any kind of larger transformation to something more democratic and egalitarian. So this is the background by which we need to understand Country Music. How many people like Country Music . Okay. By the end of class, you will all love Country Music, i promise. You will be going to the Country Music hall of fame, which is by the way great. You should definitely visit if you are in nashville. But country is one of these disparaged musical forms, as erin fox reminds us, precisely because it articulate a specific white identity that is not simply the unmarked whiteness that most white people live. Instead, it is a particularity that is often regional, often southern, and emphatically white. And this offense as fox says, more cosmopolitan listeners. So what was the music of these scotsirish people . Well, they are primarily ballads. Weve heard of ballots before, right . Because most of the people who came to the United States from ulster and other parts of northern ireland, they are going to be illiterate. So we are very much in the same realm as that of. A ballad that is transmitted almost exclusively orally. We are talking about a people with oral literature. One of the things weve noted about literal oral literature, how does it differ from print . Theres a few ways, but one in particular. Randi . Theres no defined author or set of authors. Its sort of evolving by whoevers telling it. You cannot accurately trace it. With print literature, you have a specific set that this is the story, this is the author, it doesnt really change. Oral literature you can change to fit the situation. It is always kind of changing and evolving. Okay, always changing and evolving, yes. This is a group of people with an oral and richer that they take with them. As we see in stagger lee, these ballads are significant because of the values they impart. Because the stories they tell, and this is particularly true of hillbilly music. These stories are didactic. What does didactic mean . Its kind of like imparting with a moral lesson. I could not have said it better, absolutely. So these stories, as they travel, they become a sort of code for living. For people without a print literature and people without a very robust government structure. Just to give you an example, i guess it was about 25 years ago. A psychologist didnt experiment where he had men go into a room and take a test. He then said, all right, come out with me and we will go to another room to take another test. As they walked down the hall, a confederate of the psychologist comes to the man and bumps him with his shoulder. They moved on or didnt move on, and what the test was supposed to register was levels of aggression. Levels of assertiveness. The hypothesis that the psychiatrist, excuse me, psychologist was testing was whether or not southern men have higher levels of aggressiveness and assertiveness. He found in fact that they did. When they were bumped by the other experiment are, the southern men got angrier and took longer to back down or to calm down and demanded some sort of apology. This is a field of f no psychology that this interviewer was working in. He found that southern men do have a proclivity to escalate. Even smaller flights, they also tested it with a Different Levels of how hard the bump was. How belligerent then the experiment or was it back to the men. They found that southern men did in fact exhibit more belligerence. He theorized that the reason for this is that on the Southern Front here, in which you have these separate colonials threatened, first in ulster by indigenous irish savages, and then in appalachia by native american, also construed as savages. This ideology of savagely is taken from ireland and placed into the american context. In a situation of menace all around you like that. And also, in a situation where if hannah steals my sheep, and she definitely would, you know, she likes will. She would definitely steal my sheep. What can i do . Keep in mind that i am not on the frontier. What can i do . Can i go to the cops . There is no cops. I have to execute the law myself. What this means is i am going to steal hannahs sheep, or maybe even kill hannah. How come . Sorry hannah. Why . Why would i have to kill her for stealing my sheep . Because of revenge . Yeah, and as a warning to anyone else who might never attempt such a thing. That i ultimately, that i will control justice and that no one will sleight me or run me. So there is a sense here that for People Living out on the frontier, that a moral code and stories, the ballads are all stories of tremendous violence. Have we seen this before . Stories of tremendous violence. Stories of tremendous assertiveness. Its stackalee right . The same way that people without print literature and people who could not appeal to authority. The African American community who developed stack o lee, they cant look to authority to avenge their wrongs. They have to at least create a situation in which there can be some sort of justice made out without authorities. So the songs that arrive along the frontier are largely songs about violence. About the fragility of life. About the dangers of getting overly emotional. What happens to people if they are swept up in a motion and what is the most based emotion to get swept up in . Anger. Anger. Lob. Which, of course, leads to anger. In fact, what you see is that there are a different of number of ballads that make this track from england and scotland to northern ireland, to appalachia. And one of the key genres are what we call murder ballads. Murder ballads our tails of love gone wrong. They are didactic stories of how not to live and they abound in the tradition of hillbilly music. Just to give you an example. In the middle of the 20th century, recorded a song called knoxville girl. It recants the murder of a young woman by her lover who accuses her of being faithless. Go down, go down, you knoxville girl, with the dark and roving i. Go down, go down, you knoxville girl, you will never be my bride. He murders her with a stick and then it comes back to his familys cabin with blood all over him. He tells his mother, i had a nosebleed. , in their version, he is in jail. What we see is that knoxville girl is traceable back to in event that took place in england in 1684. It was variously called oxford town, wexford girl, tomorrow i shall hang. All of these different titles and different events that get narrated in different ways. The transformation of oral of literature is its essence. Its ability to speak to different audiences in different circumstances. And so in a Frontier Town like knoxville, tennessee, way out in the 18th and 19th centuries out in the frontier. To be some sort of life lesson, some sort of warning. If you do this, then this will happen. But it is also stories of violence. Stories of emotional intensity. Country music has always had these from the earliest days. Precisely because this was the music that the scotsirish valued as they came over. We see in the 1916, cecil sharp, hes a british musicologists, who have heard that there are english folk songs that are being well, that have survived some sort of passage to the United States, long before it was the United States. They find that they do this great thing called some catching. They go out to places like piedmont, North Carolina as well as the hills of tennessee and kentucky. They go up to purchase and ask if they know any old songs . Can you sing some for us . They would transcribe them and in some cases recorded them. Does this remind you of anything else . Patrick . Below max is. Yes. The low maxes were hunting stagger lee ballads. This is what they do. What they find is that you can trace the passage of these songs. The subject matter might differ in terms of characters. Instead of wexford girl, it could be knoxville girl, but they are the same song with the same ballad. When they ask an old woman at her cabin, do you know any old songs . Oh yeah, i know some old songs. I will sing one for you. And they sing a song like barbara allen, which is one of the oldest ballads. They ask her where she got that . What do they say inevitably . I heard it from an older generation. My grandmother saying it to me. Her mother, her grandmother saying it to her. It is a song that gets passed down orally that has no real author. And again, it is basically serving the social function of a group of people out on a frontier, surrounded by potential violence, but also people who are fundamentally shaped by maternity. What i mean by that, people who are fundamentally shaped by the flux and upheaval of modernity. Because the settlers may stay in place for a while, but the impulse is always to push west in search of better land and opportunity. The reason, you might argue, is precisely because theyre whiteness enables them to exploit the opportunities that come with the pushing west of the frontier. The economic growth, for example, under slavery in the southwestern cotton frontier. To be able to buy into that economic opportunity. The possibility of becoming homesteaders. In places like kansas, oklahoma, nebraska. Because whiteness gets you citizenship, it gets you representation in congress, it gets to the possibility of a public education. So people done barr otis, outside of Country Music wants you to expand Country Music to people who develop it, its premodern. But as shaped formed of the fraternity itself, constant motion, constant flux and constant upheaval. Well end it there and will see you on thursday. Weeknights this month its American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight, cspan cities tour on Americas National parks will feature the history and knicks different parks. Are up next on history bookshelf, miriam pawel talks about the crusades of Caesar Chavez which chronicles the life of the cofounder of chavez. She discusses the truth behind some of the myths about mr. Chavez. We recorded this program in the 2014 san antonio book festival. Good morning welcome. speaking spanish today, we are very fortunate to have a very special guest, miriam
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