Maine Folklife Center’s Marshall Dodge Lecture to Explore Male Myths in Country Music
Contact: James Moreira, 581-1891, George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The hard-pressed, misunderstood, rugged individual often central in country and bluegrass music is the topic for analysis in the annual Marshall Dodge lecture April 21 at the Maine Folklife Center at the University of Maine.
Featured speaker Jeff Todd Titon, professor of music at Brown University in Rhode Island and long-time Little Deer Isle summer resident, will discuss common themes in country music that relate to myths of masculinity and the contrast between “home” and “the road” that are frequent themes of classic bluegrass and country music. Titon’s talk is based on his research and a paper, “Bluegrass and Country Music Lyrics: The Good-Old-Boy and the Long Journey Home.” He will speak for about an hour and will answer questions afterward.
The lecture starts at 12:15 p.m. in the Bangor Lounge of the Memorial Union, and is free and open to the public.
Titon has done fieldwork on religious folk music, blues, and old-time fiddling, with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For two years he was the guitarist in the Lazy Bill Lucas Blues Band, a group that appeared in the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. In the 1980s he took up the fiddle and banjo, and most of his music-making today involves string band music from the Upper South. He also repairs and restores violins.
At UMaine, Titon will delve into the conflict between Saturday night hedonism and Sunday morning piety as part of a larger literary and cultural pattern in which many bluegrass and country music lyrics evoke archetypal symbols to conjure feelings of loneliness and pride at various points on these poignant but mythical pilgrimages through hard times. Through the culture and history of Appalachia and the American South, Titon explores images such as home, the country, the road, the city, honky-tonks, factories and farms.
This archetypal journey portrayed in country music lyrics is a male myth, Titon argues, in which the usual hero — a white, southern good-old-boy — is a descendant of southern aristocracy, who, in turn, shares with the working-class redneck a hatred of bosses and Yankees, a distrust of institutional authority and ambivalence to money, worldly success and the domestic, middle-class and modern lifestyle.
The quest for an authentic life usually is evoked in terms of personal liberty, being true to oneself, honor, manliness, loyalty to family, friends or region and tradition. The quest inevitably is compromised by the conditions of work, usually viewed as demeaning, the conditions of modern life, usually viewed as duplicitous and tempting, the difficulties of finding and keeping a suitable partner and raising a family, and the physical and metaphysical distance from one’s birth family and hometown.
Titon will illustrate his talk with snippets from country music and discuss with his audience why these country themes strike such personal chords with listeners. Additional information is available by calling the Maine Folklife Center at 581-1891.