Sociology of Music S.
1 total work
v. 3
In this book, I put forward the claim that American popular song that emerged in the three decades before the Civil War was in at least one significant respect a novel cultural expression. Yes, it did comprise simple and tuneful music adopted to the understanding of the masses-`a music for the millions,' as it came to be described in the 1850s. Yes, it did often display the weakness inherent in nostalgia and sentimentality. And yes, it did contain the prejudices of early Americans. It also, however, supplied a great majority of these Americans with a structure for living and answers to the riddles of their existence, even as it recreated them?. In this study, I try to search out the recurring symbols in mid-nineteenth-century popular song and relate them to the exigencies of the antebellum decades and to the psychological needs of humans. (From the author's Preface.)