Alabama Songbook

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american south
automatic-update
B01=Robert W. Halli Jr.
ballads
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AVGH
Category=AVLT
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
folk music
gospel music
Language_English
lullabies
music
musicology
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
southeastern united states
temperance songs

Product details

  • ISBN 9780817357658
  • Weight: 658g
  • Dimensions: 179 x 254mm
  • Publication Date: 11 Jul 2013
  • Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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Alabama is a state rich in folksong tradition, from old English ballads sung along the Tennessee River to children's game songs played in Mobile, from the rhythmic work songs of the railroad gandy dancers of Gadsden to the spirituals of the Black Belt. The musical heritage of blacks and whites, rich and poor, hill folk and cotton farmers, these songs endure as a living part of the state's varied past.

In the mid 1940s Byron Arnold, an eager young music professor from The University of Alabama, set out to find and record as many of these songs as he could and was rewarded by unstinting cooperation from many informants. Mrs. Julia Greer Marechal of Mobile, for example, was 90 years old, blind, and a semi-invalid, but she sang for Arnold for three hours, allowing the recording of 33 songs and exhausting Arnold and his technician. Helped by such living repositories as Mrs. Marechal, the Arnold collection grew to well over 500 songs, augmented by field notes and remarkable biographical information on the singers.

An Alabama Songbook is the result of Arnold's efforts and those of his informants across the state and has been shaped by Robert W. Halli Jr. into a narrative enriched by more than 200 significant songs-lullabies, Civil War anthems, African-American gospel and secular songs, fiddle tunes, temperance songs, love ballads, play-party rhymes, and work songs. In the tradition of Alan Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America and Vance Randolph's Ozark Folksongs, this volume will appeal to general audiences, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, preservationists, traditional musicians, and historians.
Robert W. Halli Jr. is Associate Professor of English and Director of the University Honors Program at The University of Alabama, USA.