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By Jean Cleveland
jclevela@uga.edu
A project to preserve unique field recordings of Georgia folk music performers has been completed, ensuring their existence for future generations.
Originally recorded by folklorist Art Rosenbaum, the tapes, made between 1977 and 1984, are on stock that is deteriorating, preventing backup copies from being made. The 325 tapes are part of the Georgia Folklore Collection at the UGA Libraries media archives and Peabody Awards Collection.
“One important aspect of the collection is that the musicians recorded range from the nationally recognized--Howard Finster, McIntosh County Shouters, Gordon Tanner, Neal Pattman--to those known primarily in their communities,” says Linda Tadic, director of the media archives. “Many of the performers were in their 70s and 80s when the recordings were made, singing and playing tunes they had learned from their parents in the 1920s, who in turn had learned the songs from their parents. All of these audio records of folk culture would have been lost if the original tapes were not restored and preserved.”
Grants totaling nearly $30,000 were secured for the project from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Sapelo Foundation, the Friends of Coastal Georgia Foundation and the UGA Libraries Media Archives Fund. Copies of the tapes will be donated to each Georgia public library whose region is represented by a performer and to the Archive of Folk Culture at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. Ultimately the material will be available to everyone from researchers and scholars to students via the UGA Libraries’ Web site.
An ephemeral art, folk music is increasingly imperiled by urbanization. The genres represented in the collection encompass old-time string band music, gospel, ballads, blues, work songs, shouts, banjo picking and religious singing.
Included in the collection are hours of recorded performances by the McIntosh County Shouters, a group from the Georgia coast whose members continue the musical tradition of their slave ancestors. The “shouts,” work songs, and play songs preserved in these recordings cannot be heard anywhere else in the country. As the musicians age and die, there is danger that the traditions will disappear.
“By restoring these tapes, music from over a century ago will be saved so future generations can hear and imagine a time long past,” Tadic says. “Perhaps through this music, citizens in the year 2050 will get a sense of life in Georgia in the 19th and 20th centuries. Perhaps they will be in awe at the passion captured in the music--or perhaps they will want to dance.”
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