Race, Class and Gender

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En provenance du cours de The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art

260 notes

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art

260 notes

From small farms to urban neighborhoods, from the region itself to the more distant worlds of the southern diaspora, we discover the stories, music, and art of the American South.

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Introduction to the American South

Reflecting on geography, the diaspora, the mythic and the global South as ways to approach the contested memory of the region.

Welcome to the American South3:52

The Region, the Diaspora, and the Mythic4:17

Contested Memory and the Global South5:23

Race, Class and Gender5:14

Rencontrer les enseignants

Dr. William Ferris
Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History; Senior Associate Director of CSAS; Adjunct Professor in the Curriculum in Folklore
Department of History

[MUSIC]

I am a folklorist, and that means I study the oral traditions of my people.

Oral traditions are the heart and

soul of a people in the South and all over the World.

And we study as folklorists, stories, music, and art, and crafts.

These are globally present worlds.

And in the South, they take an especially important role.

Music, for example.

Out of Southern music emerges the blues, country music,

gospel, rock and roll, spirituals, jazz.

Many of the greatest musics of the 20th

century are part of what we think of as Southern folk tradition.

We also see storytelling in the South.

We have great raconteurs in the south who can tell tall tales,

protest stories, animal tales, preach sermons,

the narrative tradition of oral tradition and

its stories is very important and very rich.

We also see in Southern folklore, the rich traditions of quilts, of basket making.

The arts and crafts that give such

a powerful sense of art come out of the folk tradition.

That is a foundation for understanding the South as a whole.

If we look at Southern folklore,

we can think about three ways of understanding it.

Race, class, and gender.

In the case of race, we find that most of the blues is sung by black musicians.

Whereas country music is sung by white musicians.

Country music emerges from the song that tells a story.

The Ballad, that came from the British aisles across the Atlantic and

inspired, not only ballads but the great country music tradition of the south.

In the case of the blues, it emerged from African roots,

such as the one strand on the wall, the work chant, and

the sounds of African and African-American musics that were shaped into the blues.

So we see race as a very important part of southern music,

of southern, story telling and arts and crafts.

When we look at class, we see that the folk tradition is

the voice of poor working class black and white Southerners.

They're singing about how they drive a mule in the field and

country music how they live in a one room shack in the blues.

In verses like, I'm sitting here all alone in my one room country shack.

My woman has left me and won't be back.

Gender also is very important.

If we look at Blues, if Bessy Smith is singing the Blues,

she's singing about the low down, no good men in her life.

If it's B.B. King or Howling Wolf, they will sing a verse like I asked her for water.

She gave me a gasoline.

She's the meanest woman, I've ever seen.

So, gender decides the perspective of the blues singer.

Whether they be male or female.

So as a folklorist, I spend a lot of time talking and recording and

filming the music, the story telling, the arts and crafts of the South.

And I try to understand those whirls by thinking about how they

are influenced and defined by race, by class, and by gender.

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