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The point of departure for John Benson Brooks for his “Alabama Concerto” was a series of field recordings made by Harold Courtlander and this featured on Folkways as “Negro Folk Music of Alabama.” He has used them in an extended “concerto” in which written themes, written solos, and improvised solos alternate. Let it be said that the musicians involved should be given praise and recognition, especially Art Farmer and Barry Galbraith. Let it also be said that Cannonball Adderley was the Cannonball to be heard on Gil Evans' LP “New Bottle, Old Wine” which is Cannonball coming of age as an purposeful storytelling soloist.

This chapter contextualizes the historical, political, and ideological trajectory through eras of prehispanicity, colonization, independence with burgeoning forms of nationalism and indigenismo, leading to a period of revolution in the early twentieth century. Focusing on the postrevolutionary period, particular emphasis is placed on issues of ethnicity, race, nationalism, indigenismo, and mestizaje. The role of governmental institutions, and artists, intellectuals, and politicians working in an official capacity through state organizations is discussed, specifically centering on education and anthropology, the Secretariat of Education (SEP), Misiones Culturales (Cultural Missions), José Vasconcelos, and Manuel Gamio. Elements of folklore, music, dance, and theater are outlined, with particular reference to the regional, folkloric, synthetic, and open-air theater movements, the magazine Mexican Folkways, and two events of 1921, Noche Mexicana (Mexican Night) and the Exhibición de Artes Populares (Exhibition of Popular Arts).

Chapter Four opens with a brief overview of the P'urhépecha region, and a discussion of the practices of day and night of the dead, and dances of old men prior to nationalist appropriation. Using a framework of appropriation, commodification, display, and theatricalization, and focusing on the shift from local to national in the 1920s, this chapter discusses: the visit of state officials to witness Night of the Dead on Janitzio and the subsequent publication of photos and texts in the academic journal Ethnos and the populist magazine Mexican Folkways; the first theatrical events in which the Dance of the Old Men and Night of the Dead were staged in Mexico City; the Teatro Regional event of the Fiesta of Song and Dance in the P'urhépecha town of Paracho, and the roles of musicologist Rubén M. Campos and Jarácuaro villager Nicolás Bartolo Juárez.

Chapter Seven deals with the period known as the Golden Age (1940 to 1968), contextualizing this with an overview of state policies regarding indigenismo, folklore and folklórico, and the role of government institutions such as INAH and INI. Two films, The Three Caballeros (Disney) and Maclovia, and the book A Treasury of Mexican Folkways are the focus of analysis in considering national and international dissemination. Discussion of the Lake Pátzcuaro region encompasses the burgeoning array of events using the Dance of the Old Men for local, private and political occasions; the initiation of hotel performances; the Festival of Music and Dance for Night of the Dead; and the role of the pedagogical institute CREFAL Finally, didactic and pedagogical regional dance publications and events, and the influence of the Ballet Folklórico de México are discussed.

The Cuarto Centennial paid tribute to multiple strands of the upper Rio Grande's modern Spanish heritage. As the summer of 1940 approached, Spanish colonial art and architecture, village folkways, and the Santa Fe Fiesta were all brought into the promotional spotlight. The image of Coronado as noble civilizer quickly spread beyond the inner circle of exposition organizers. Coronado's memorable quest for gold was incidental to interests of Anglo cattle ranchers, farm, railroad, and mine owners, and real estate developers. As the failure of the Coronado Cuarto Centennial Exposition makes plain, Spanish colonial symbolism may have intrigued the occasional traveler and big city critic, but its potency was limited to the upper Rio Grande. Just as the racial and cultural character of los paisanos has always divided Hispano New Mexico from the modern American nation, it was the Spanish revival that helped to close the gap.

This chapter provides biographical details of George Went Hensley, the man generally credited with the emergence of religious serpent handling. It follows Hensley's conversion, his revelation of serpent handling, his ministry as an itinerant preacher, his influence on the development and spread of serpent handling, and his eventual death from a practice that he loved so dearly. While it has been accepted that Hensley's influence in spreading serpent handling among numerous churches it is unlikely that he had the degree of influence that is often attributed to him. One reason is the simple fact that serpent handling was more readily accepted in areas where it was an established part of time-honored folkways. The chapter concludes that a wider lens is required in placing George Went Hensley within a tradition that not only denied his credentials but also came to deny the endorsement of the religious ritual so much associated with his name.

Taking the Cold War state to be the origin of diffused suspicion, abstract enemies, and totalizing explanations, this chapter contends that contemporary ideology critique—based on the same dispositions—melancholically reproduces rather than challenges Cold War epistemologies. As an alternative, the chapter offers the practice of hope Granville Hicks and Constance Rourke developed around the empty signifiers nation, exceptionalism, and activism, concepts most often targeted by New Americanists (and New Historicists in general). Hicks argued for two Americas, one synonymous with capitalism and hence worthy of critique, and the other based on local communities that use nationhood to organize against capitalism and the models of national exceptionalism it requires. For Hicks, patriotism is an organizing concept for the economically disadvantaged majority who are weakened by their denied access to rhetorics of national belonging. Constance Rourke, turning to folkways that transform European culture into something distinctly American, focused on the specificity of cultures produced by distinctive communities within the United States, yet she used the particularity of cultural formations as the basis, rather than simply a renunciation, of national identity.

Focusing on two Festival music projects in Latin American/American Latino communities, the author (director and curator of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings) demonstrates the relationship between the extra-Festival strategic goals of building cultural capital and the selection and framing of content. The chapter explores how dynamic contextual frames in the community of origin and the Festival setting itself define and enable meaning and purpose in the Festival presentation. It reflects on how a curatorial outlook colored by performance quality sensibilities, but grounded in the Festival’s social justice heritage, evolved over 29 years of experience to feature presentations of music and narrative sessions that enhance visitors’ understanding of the social, cultural contexts of community performance.

This chapter focuses on the years Mike Seeger spent in Baltimore. This proved to be a pivotal phase in his life. There, he got involved in the city's burgeoning bluegrass music scene between 1954 and 1958. It was in Baltimore where he met singer Hazel Dickens and her family and saw, for the first time, how the working-class southerners created and preserved the music he loved. In the meantime, during the Korean War of 1951 as Mike turned 18 he was faced with the prospect of being drafted. By seeking conscientious objector status, Mike followed in his father's footsteps. He then decided to carry out his alternative service at Mount Wilson Tuberculosis Hospital in Maryland. There he met Hazel Dickens. Their relationship was critical in shaping both Mike's and Hazel's musical careers. Mike began to record music at the New River Ranch, he, along with Hazel and her brothers, frequently visited. He began to witness the “living, continuous tradition” of “hillybilly” music or “bluegrass,” as it's now known. Around 1956, Mike made two LPs for the Folkways label that documented the emerging bluegrass music. It was also in Baltimore that Mike met Alyse Taubman, who Mike described as his first “serious love.”

Chapter 4 analyzes the taming or domesticating of the wilderness Ozarks by Anglo-American pioneers in the decades before the Civil War. This chapter discusses the effects of human habitation on the environment and on the region’s wildlife. It also covers such topics as hunting and trapping, log construction and material culture, rural folkways and foodways. A particular focus of the chapter is the introduction of an “extensive” style of agriculture in the Ozarks, one characterized by the raising of hogs and cattle on the open range and the growing of small patches of corn. By the end of the antebellum period, all but the most rugged and inaccessible areas of the Ozarks had undergone some degree of domestication.

Chapter Four analyzes the roles of women to locate their contributions squarely within Mexico’s vibrant cultural and radical political scenes during the 1930s and 1940s. To insert the crucial work of women artists into Mexico’s history of radical politics, and to understand better how women practiced their art while participating in revolutionary change throughout the post-revolutionary era, this chapter focuses on Frida Kahlo, Francis Toor, Aurora Reyes, Anita Brenner, among others. This chapter also explores the manners in which women artists and intellectuals moved beyond traditional gendered stereotypes to assume positions within the vanguard of radical politics and revolutionary change, especially throughout the 1930s and 1940s. And lastly, chapter 4 further analyzes women and the PCM from the late 1930s through the 1940s.

This chapter studies how arguments about bigotry, conscience, and legislating morality featured in legislative debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, particularly the public accommodations provision (Title II). President Lyndon B. Johnson urged clergy to support the act and help the United States overcome bigotry. Religious leaders testified for and against the law. Lawmakers and witnesses supporting the law insisted that the nation’s conscience demanded that Congress pass a law to end bigotry and racial discrimination. Opponents referred to bigotry in multiple ways: they argued that segregation reflected natural difference and God’s plan, not bigotry; that people had a right to be bigoted; and that the act’s supporters were the real bigots. The chapter concludes with two Supreme Court cases upholding Title II relevant to later constitutional challenges to civil rights laws protecting LGBTQ persons: Heart of Atlanta v. United States and Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises.

In the Remaines of Gentilisme Aubrey attempted to find the origins of early modern English folklore and folkways in the rituals and customs of ancient Rome, Greece, and beyond. This chapter places these attempts within his larger project to identify links between modern England and the ancient world and discusses his different treatments of folk customs, magic, and natural religion within the work. Heavily influenced by Thomas Hobbes, Aubrey tended to see all forms of ritual, religious and otherwise, as socially constructed and, as such, the Remaines could at times stray into heterodoxy. At the same time, however, it is suffused with an almost mystical belief in the lingering presence of the ancient world within the modern and has its origins as much in Aubrey’s memories of the trauma of the Civil Wars as in more abstract scholarly investigations.