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| Illustration from A Son of the Middle Border |
I just read Hamlin Garland’s moving and wonderfully detailed memoir, A Son of the Middle Border (1917). It
describes better than any book I’ve read the impact of western expansion on the
lives of men and women who cast their fate to the wind on the frontier in the
decades following the Civil War.
An acute observer of rural life, Garland lost faith in the lure of
westward immigration, especially as he saw how it tore apart his family,
scattering them across isolated distances, from Dakota to California. In the
early chapters of the book, he recalls their gatherings in a small town in
Wisconsin, before the promise of the West uprooted them.
Without TV, radio, and digital media, they bonded around music, passing
the time singing songs and listening to a favorite uncle play his violin. Garland
describes this world of his youth with affecting nostalgia, already long passed into mists of history by the time he was writing about it.
I’ll be reviewing this book here shortly, but until then, I’ve put
together a sample musicale from those family gatherings to evoke the period and
the sensibilities that enlivened the spirit of ordinary people and hard but simpler
lives. Following quotes from the book, you’ll find song clips from youtube.
Take a few moments to listen to even just parts of them and let yourself be
transported to another time.
The only
humorous songs which my uncles knew were negro ditties, like “Camp Town
Racetrack” and “Jordan am a Hard Road to Trabbel” but in addition to the sad ballads
I have quoted, they joined my mother in “The Pirate’s Serenade,” “Erin’s Green
Shore,” Bird of the Wilderness,” and the memory of their mellow voices creates
a golden dusk between me and that far-off cottage.
Camptown Races
Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel
Bird of the Wilderness
He and mother
and Aunt Deborah sang “Nellie Wildwood” and “Lily Dale” and “Minnie Minturn”
just as they used to do in the coulee, and I forgot my disgrace and the pain of
my blistered feet in the rapture of that exquisite hour of blended melody and
memory.
Lilly Dale
Aunt Deb was
also a soul of decision. She called out, “No more of these sad tones,” and
struck up “The Year of Jubilo,” and we all shouted till the walls shook with
the exultant words.
The Year of Jubilo
This was the
best part of David to me. He could make any room mystical with the magic of
this bow. True, his pieces were mainly memorable dance tunes, cotillions,
hornpipes, melodies which had passed from fiddler to fiddler until they had become
veritable folksongs—pieces like “Money Musk,” “Honest John,” “Haste to the
Wedding,” and many others whose names I have forgotten, but with the gift of
putting into even the simplest song an emotion which subdued us and silenced
us, he played on, adsorbed and intent.
Money Musk
Haste to the Wedding
He was my
hero, the handsomest, most romantic figure in all my world. He played “Maggie,
Air Ye Sleepin’,” and the wind outside went to my soul.
Are Ye Sleeping Maggie
For more of Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies and Other Media, click on over
to Todd Mason’s blog, Sweet Freedom.
Image credit:
Illustrator, Maynard Dixon
Coming up: Hamlin
Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (1917)
My mom was a big fan of music. She sang in the choir much of her life. My stepfather could play the fiddle and did so wonderfully, though we could seldom persuade him to give it a go.
ReplyDeleteThe singers in my extended family opened their lungs only at church on Sundays. They still are like that.
DeleteGood post. Makes me wonder about karaoke bars...
ReplyDeleteCamptown Races was popular when I was growing up along with Ole Black Joe, a song that probably couldn't be sung now due to its racial inferences. Mixing Garland's writing with those music selections as you have makes it poetical. Before radio the family was a primary source of musical entertainment along with the phonographs that some could afford when there were no musical programs to go to. Great post, Ron. .
ReplyDeleteThis book sounds interesting. I come from a family where there was always music in the home and much singing at church, it was a memorable upbringing.
ReplyDelete