Song of the South Books

The book is both honest and beautifully written. It is like a well that one can return to for cool clear water, again and again. One knows that this was the time, this was the place, with no facile or Hollywood embellishments. The sex and the drugs were real, but did not occupy a overly significant place in the over-all context of a wonterful mountain lodge and the brave and cheerful solitude the author chose for two winters, after the crews and guests went home. Mr. Witherspoon loved this place and these people. I defy anyone to find better descriptions of the naturals wonders of the mountains...well maybe those of John Muir.

Song of the Winter Wren
Review

This is a wonderfully crafted journal of rustic life on a beloved mountaintop. LeConte Lodge is in the heart of the largest wilderness area in the eastern U.S. The author captures the individuality of sunrises, the moodiness inspired by clouds drifting through camp, and the stillness when snow is passable only on snowshoes or skis.

A rhapsodic nature diary, Winter Wren also tells the tale of an overlooked moment in the history of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, when the lodge was changing owners. During the book's three-year span in the 1970's, the Park Service was close to closing the operation. Compliance with new regulations severed some of the lodge's intimacy with the natural surroundings that gave it birth. The lodge stopped being a place where bears hung around waiting for a new bucket of dinner leavings to be dumped in a garbage pit, and where the crew logged dead and down wood to heat the cabins and feed the kitchen stove. The innovations included a helicopter supply operation, a massive propane-fueled cook stove, and a steel firewall between the varnished wood kitchen and dining hall.

The journal of this transition is at turns ironic, funny, sad, and adventurous. We get to know the bears, who predictably became more aggressive and ingenious when the garbage pit was no more, and who suffered violent consequences from the Park Service. We meet the departing owner/manager, a funny and quick-witted hiking enthusiast who had kept the lodge together on the cheap. We are introduced to the arriving owner/investors, who negotiated with the Park Service, and the hippie crew, who thought they could get along without management. We get up close with the mighty horse, Blacky, who dragged logs into camp, hauled loads up and down the mountain, and grazed among the lodge buildings. We also experience the peace and solitude of the two winters the author spent as caretaker, punctuated by visits from family, friends, and strangers.

Winter Wren is frank about the sex, marijuana, and booze the hard-working crew enjoyed in the off-hours, and sardonic about the views of the more conventional folk who hiked up for overnight. The book veers close to infringing on the privacy of several people. This, apparently, is one of the reasons it waited twenty-five years to be published. But the writing is spare, inventive, evocative, and gorgeous. We are fortunate to have Song of the Winter Wren to help us appreciate a beautiful place and relive a curious time.

The Songs Of Soweto enters the South African political dialogue with enough edge to swing the faces of old foes apart and to demand to know - - when to meet in truth?

James Burger
- Writer

The Songs of Soweto enters the South African political dialogue with enough edge to swing the faces of old foes apart and demand to know- - when do we meet in truth?

James Burger
- Columbia University

In West African tradition, sound making is functional, part and parcel of daily life, integral to most activities: working, celebrating, praying, mourning, placating, criticizing or just passing time. It's a tradition that was carried to the New World on slave ships, a tradition which enthralled, amused, repelled or even terrified white listeners...often simultaneously.

This book goes beyond the music created by enslaved Africans/African Americans (such as work songs and spirituals) to explore other forms of sound expression (including sermons, drumming, field hollers and storytelling) placed within a historical context to create a soundscape of African American slave life from the 1700's to the 1850's.

The written sources generally fall into two broad categories: the written observations of whites (letters, journal entries, and newspaper articles by travelers, missionaries, even slave owners themselves) and the testimony of former slaves collected by the WPA Federal Writer's Project during the 1930's.

With only three exceptions, the sound sources on the 18-track CD are field recordings by John, Ruby and/or Alan Lomax from the late 1930's. By that point, the sounds had been "tainted" by pop culture (many are the times I have tracked down one of my father's rural childhood favorites from the 1920's, only to discover that this "old folk song" his grandma sang was actually an 1890's parlor tune) but alas, this is as close as we're going to get to listening in on a time which preceded sound reproduction devices. And as there are few things more frustrating than trying to understand sound by reading about it, the CD alone would be worth the price of the book.

The book is written in a nonlinear style, perhaps reflecting the subject matter which is itself quilt-like: slaves were constantly creating and recreating from the sound materials at hand, materials which often were not even recognized as such by white listeners. This nonlinear style could make the book a bit difficult to use for reference purposes, but fortunately it is well indexed. This fascinating soundscape is recommended for anyone interested in African American music in general, or the era of slavery in particular.

White and White provide a great and useful book not only about slavery, but about African American culture as it emerged, developed itself and extended itself during the years of bondage. Using sound as their guide, they explore not just music, but speech, not just speech, but cries of agony and protest, about the noise instruments, dance, work, love, and death bring. As such they provide many explanations of how the variety of African cultures contributed to the growth of African American culture, how that culture has enabled us to survive, thrive, and contribute mightily the African, North American, and world culture.

This is a useful and practical book. As I type, I am in the home of a friend who is an accomplished jazz and blues singer who is working out a blues to sing at a memorial meeting for the songwriter who wrote it. Serious stuff. The ideas about the nature of African American expression in general, musical and vocal expression in particular, and even what we do when people pass here, animate both the ideas that come to me, to her, and her sister, and memories on how to do this both from musical sources and our grandparents. This is that kind of book.

The level of scholarship here is excellent. Everything is noted well, as such it provides an entryway to folks looking to get into serious sources on African American history, culture, and life. I like the fact that they refer to the 1930s WPA interviews with survivors of slavery as the "ex-slave" interviews instead of slave narratives as others do.

Finally, as a writer myself, I am completely bowled over by their ability to present such a full exposition of these questions, clear in the issues of Black studies, cultural studies, music, and the growing discourse of "everyday life," while using clear and vibrant language. You need not be a scholar or have a dictionary handy to read it and understand it. It is a compelling book that I could not put down and finished the day I started it.

I know I will read it again and again.

The book comes with an 18-track CD of source material chiefly taken from 1930s recordings by Lomax and other folklorists, although there is some material from as late as the 1970s. The CD focuses on aspects of African American folk expression that are usually not known to those who claim to be knowledgeable of African American culture: field hollars, sermons, work songs.

I emphasize that this book is not just about music, but about African American being and life. I emphasize that this book pictures the horror and devastation of slavery and our resistance and triumph of it, but illustrates what and how we do things now.

If you can't buy this book, get one from the library and save your money until you can have one of your own.

My 20 month old loves loves loves the book. She was introduced to it in day care. At home she just sits on the floor and plays and sings with the song. The construction is not good for little hands, so beware that if you want the book to last a couple of years, you may need to supervise your child. I just let mine go at it, so we've had to call in the emrgency repair squad a few times, but it is a fun book and even with taped pages, it is enjoyed every time.

This book has it all for the classic song. The graphics are dynamic and fun, the pop-up aspects are creative (moving wipers for the rain), and the two buttons (one for the song, the other for the horn) are cute. I orginally bought it for myself but my kids found it and have thoroughly enjoyed it to the point I have to buy a new one for me!

This is one of the best works of African-American film studies to come out in years. Many of us who have found the work of David Bogle (Toms, Mammies, Mulattoes, Bucks & Coons) wanting on several levels will have their prayers answered with Robinson's impeccable scholarship and far-reaching analysis of the changing perceptions and representations of African-Americans after the Civil War, Reconstruction and the release of Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION (1915). What was important for me in reading this book was Robinson's astute ability to discern the origins of the specific caricatures of African-Americans in the traveling minstral shows that circulated throughout the country before the invention of cinema. He also reveals how early American Cinema was predicated upon these caricatures of African-Americans as a revenue generating source of "entertainment". He then reveals how these caricatures were employed by African-American actors as a means to gain employment within the movie industry. The chapters on early American Theatre, Oscar Micheaux, and The Birth of a Nation are the best written efforts I've read in years: fresh and full of new insights. Robinson discusses the duplicitous nature of minstrelsy for whites and African-Americans. This was a throughly engrossing read and a book that will be referenced by scholars, students and filmmakers for years to come.

A friend bought this book and the "Old MacDonald had a Farm" from the same series by Silver Dolphin Books. My one-year-old LOVES it and keeps playing the tunes too. She points at it on the shelf for us to get it out. We cannot leave her unattended with it or she will tear out the pull ups. The best books I have ever seen for kids!

I bought the entire collection and my baby just loves every single one of these books. They are by far her favorite books and she can read them all day long. Just be careful that your little one doesn't rip out the pop ups as mine did. I am buying another set because they've been such a hit!

We bought this book for our baby girl when she was ust 4 months old and she absolutely LOVES it! The characters are adorable, the lyrics clever and the pop ups are so engaging. I read this book even when my baby is not around because I love it so much. We bought the other two books in the series after our experience with this one. Obviously, I highly recommend this book.

Little elephant has learned how to do many things: walk backwards, hop on three legs, spin around like a falling leaf, and do wonderful tricks with his trunks like catching a banana, holding onto his mother's tail, and spraying everyone with water! But there's one thing he hasn't yet mastered -- he cannot trumpet. Little Elephant's Song is Wolfram Hanel's delightful story about a fun-loving little elephant who learns a lot, but at his own pace! Wolfram's delightful, entertaining, and highly recommended picturebook story is outstandingly illustrated by the superb artistry of Cristina Kadmon.

Much of this volume of some eighty-five folk-lyrics on erotic themes is probably the work of the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). It was privately printed c. 1799 under the auspices of the Crochallan Fencibles, an Edinburgh men's club to which Burns had been initiated in 1786 or 1787 by his publisher William Creech, a founder of the group. Some of the texts included are undoubtedly by other hands; but as the Fencibles surreptitiously published this as a tribute to Burns within a few years of his death, it is reasonable to assume that much or most of it is by the poet himself. The Fencibles have usually been viewed merely as a drinking club, fraternal and convivial. But recent research has emphasized their subversive Jacobite and Jacobin sympathies as well. When in Edinburgh, Burns enjoyed composing bawdy songs for the enjoyment of his "brothers" at the Fencibles, who regularly met in Dawnie Douglas's tavern in Anchor Close to sing bawdry together. After 1789, when he moved to Dumfries, Burns continued to compose bawdy songs (often, like "When Princes and Prelates" with a revolutionary subtext), mailing them to cronies like Robert Saughton, also a member of the Fencibles.

This volume contains the (often corrupt) text of some twenty songs that also exist in Burns's handwriting--material usually omitted because of its erotic content from popular editions of Burns, but included in the standard scholarly edition (Kinsley, Clarendon, 1968). At least twelve of these songs are there established as fully the work of the poet, with a further nine identified by Kinsley as collected and transcribed by him as curiosities.

It is the other sixty-five texts that make this rare _Merry Muses_ volume (there are only two known copies of the 1799 edition) an invaluable resource. The Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina acquired it when the great Burns editor G. Ross Roy, an emeritus professor at USC, donated his large collection of Burnsiana and Scottish literature to the USC library. Most Burns scholars (including Prof. Roy, who contributes a lucid separate pamphlet describing the complex history of the volume) see the non-authenticated texts in _The Merry Muses_ as Scottish folk erotica added by various members of the Fencibles, or perhaps collected by Burns (an avid preserver of folk traditions). But having looked carefully at the contents, I consider all but five or six of the songs to be either the work of Burns himself or pastiches in which Burns revises as frequently as he transcribes. My reason--based on contexts rather than texts, so not authoritative--is the emphasis on mutual consent. In his signed and authenticated songs, RB is notable for this emphasis on consensual sexuality. The erotic song tradition in Scottish folk literature is, by contrast, rife with cautionary tales of rape and incest, but there are only a few such songs in this collection.

The very existence of this book was denied for more than a century by Burns admirers who were embarrassed by its frank sexual content: this denial was easily enough accomplished with only two extant copies of the work, one of them in the private hands of the Earl of Rosebery! But it is time for admirers of the poet to consider the bawdy songs of Burns. They are definitely obscene: some texts use Scottish vernacular obscenities such as "mow," but others make plentiful use of standard English and the f-word. But as the scenarios (typically--there are exceptions) emphasize the mutual joys of adult consensual sex, I think the term pornography is not quite accurate. The imagery is sometimes gross and shocking, but an episode of "Sex in the City" is more spicy. These obscene song-lyrics (the names of the suggested tunes are specified, but no music is printed) are better read as telling artifacts of masculine (masculinist?) culture during the Age of Enlightenment than as embarrassments to Burns's Immortal Memory. The poet lived a short, painful life, enduring the daily symptoms of terminal heart disease from his teens. Love and liberty--sexual as well as political freedom--were the great concerns of his poetry. For Burns, the composition of poetry (and the sharing it with kindred spirits) were his anodynes for poverty, social oppression (Burns is British literature's only great peasant poet), personal unhappiness, and chronic poor health. Like it or not, the bawdy element in Burns is fundamental to understanding his views on language, poetry, and human liberation. There are two modern editions of _Merry Muses_, but the notes in both cases are marred by sexism and poor scholarship. This facsimile is expensive, but all the profits go to the USC library by Prof. Roy's generous agreement. If you're looking for pornography, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking to understand the total Robert Burns in Scottish cultural context--and to gain insight into the inner demons and drive behind his writng--you'll be surprised and enlightened.