American Song and Struggle from Columbus to World War 2

A Cultural History

Will Kaufman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781316514337
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009086097
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Long before anyone ever heard of 'protest music', people in America were singing about their struggles. They sang for justice and fairness, food and shelter, and equality and freedom; they sang to be acknowledged. Sometimes they also sang to oppress. This book uncovers the history of these people and their songs, from the moment Columbus made fateful landfall to the start of the Second World War, when 'protest music' emerged as an identifiable brand. Cutting across musical genres, Will Kaufman recovers the passionate voices of America itself. We encounter songs of the mainland and the conquered territories of Hawai'i, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines; we hear Indigenous songs, immigrant songs and Klan songs, minstrel songs and symphonies, songs of the heard and the unheard, songs of the celebrated and the anonymous, of the righteous and the despicable. This magisterial book shows that all these songs are woven into the very fabric of American history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Work of Recovery
• Chapter 1 Broken Spears and Songs of Sorrow
• Chapter 2 Good Newes from Virginia
• Chapter 3 A Capital Chop
• Chapter 4 If I Had but a Small Loaf of Bread
• Chapter 5 Where Today Are the Pequot?
• Chapter 6 There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood
• Chapter 7 A Tragedy That Beggared the Greek
• Chapter 8 Muscle, Blood, and Steel
• Chapter 9 Rule Anglo-Saxia
• Chapter 10 The Hand That Feeds You
• Chapter 11 We Are Many
• Chapter 12 100% American
• Chapter 13 We're Up Against It Now
• Chapter 14 The Panic Is On
• Chapter 15 To Thee We Sing
• Conclusion: Whose Land?
• Notes and Sources
• Song Index
• General Index