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book: The Folk
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The Folk

Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2021

About this book

Who are "the folk" in folk music? This book traces the musical culture of these elusive figures in Britain and the US during a crucial period of industrialization from 1870 to 1930, and beyond to the contemporary alt-right. Drawing on a broad, interdisciplinary range of scholarship, The Folk examines the political dimensions of a recurrent longing for folk culture and how it was called upon for radical and reactionary ends at the apex of empire. It follows an insistent set of disputes surrounding the practice of collecting, ideas of racial belonging, nationality, the poetics of nostalgia, and the pre-history of European fascism. Deeply researched and beautifully written, Ross Cole provides us with a biography of a people who exist only as a symptom of the modern imagination, and the archaeology of a landscape directing flows of global populism to this day.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Ross Cole Ross Cole is a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. His writing on a range of topics appears in leading journals including Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, and ASAP/Journal.

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Illustrations

    ix
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    Preface

    xi
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    Introduction. Lost Voices

    1
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    1. Collecting Culture. Science, Technology, & Reification

    18
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    2. A Geography of the Forgotten. Vernacular Music & Modernity’s Discontents

    46
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    3. Utopian Community. Nostalgia from Marx to Morris

    74
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    4. Difference and Belonging. On the Songs of Black Folk

    104
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    5. Soul through the Soil. Cecil Sharp & the Specter of Fascism

    132
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    Coda. Blood Sings: A Soundtrack for the Alt- Right

    159
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    Notes

    179
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    Bibliography

    225
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    Index

    249
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 1, 2021
eBook ISBN:
9780520383753
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
276
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https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520383753
eBook ISBN: 9780520383753
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