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CHAPTER
9
T
he story of folk music in the United States, whether that of American
Indians, African Americans, or European Americans, is inextricably
bound up with the story of the people who collected, studied, classifi ed,
and defi ned that music. The concept of “the folk” as an object of study dates back
to eighteenth-century Germany and especially to the writings of Johann Gottfried
von Herder (1744–1803). Herder’s notion of das Volk was closely tied to ideas of
ethnic nationalism. For Herder, a nation consisted of a group of people united
by a common language, geography, religion, and customs. In his view, the
legitimacy of a political nation rested on the legitimacy of its ethnic nationhood,
which in turn was rooted in the presumed antiquity of folk culture. Herder con-
sidered songs, tales, games, and other artifacts of folklore to be creations of the
collective wisdom of the folk, dating back to a distant, nonhierarchical past.
As part of his interest in das Volk, Herder collected specimens of German folk
culture, including folk songs. When he published a collection of folk song texts
in the 1770s, he established a model for later students of folklore, who through-
out the nineteenth century were more interested in the lyrics than in the music
of folk songs. Also like Herder, those scholars understood folk songs to be com-
posed not by one person but by a community, and to have been in existence for
a long time; only in that way could they be valued as communal expressions of
an entire people.
Herder’s political philosophy pointed to the concept of popular sovereignty, a
key component in the American Revolution. But his concept of ethnic national-
ity had little relevance for the United States as it loosened its ties to England and
began to take on the features of a multiethnic nation. For folklorists in the nine-
teenth century, the United States was too young to have its own folk culture; it
had merely transported Old World folk cultures to new shores, and the music of
American Indians seemed too remote from European styles to be easily assimi-
lated into a national music culture. Of course, from a present-day perspective
it is easy to see that new and vital folk traditions were springing up in the New
World. But for German-trained folklorists, “new folk traditions” was a contradic-
tion in terms. Only with a change in the attitudes of collectors and students of
folk songs could the discovery of American folk music take place.“ALL THAT IS NATIVE
AND FINE”
American Indian Music, Folk Songs,
Spirituals, and Their Collectors
Herder’s Volk172028_09_205-230_r3_ko.indd 205 23/01/13 11:28 AM