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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Original Protest Singers, October 22, 2008
This review is from: Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform (Hardcover)
If you are old enough, you remember the protest songs of Peter, Paul, and Mary or Bob Dylan. Older still, you remember those of Woody Guthrie. But no one remembers the performances of the Hutchinson Family Singers, although according to Scott Gac, a professor of American studies and a musician, they seem to be the grandparents of American protest songs. No one remembers their performances, and we have no recordings of them, because they gained their fame before the Civil War by singing about temperance and especially about the abolition of slavery. In _Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Antebellum Reform_ (Yale University Press), Gac has given the history of the group (which shares many characteristics with modern singing groups) within its times and especially within the complicated realm of reform movements before the war. Slavery was abolished (of course it took a war and not just singers to make it happen), and it seems as if it were inevitable from our viewpoint, but the different forces for abolition didn't always agree or unite, and for all their righteousness (and rightness), abolitionists in general and the Hutchinsons in particular were merely human. This is a fine story of a wrongly-forgotten bit of Americana.
The Hutchinsons as they performed in their most popular days were three brothers and a sister, John, Asa, Judson, and Abby. They were from a farming family in Milford, New Hampshire, and absorbed the Baptist music of their upbringing. They often used such tunes, and popular tunes of the time, changing the lyrics to fit a message. The Hutchinsons themselves had faith that the return of Jesus was imminent and would come in their days, as did many of their Baptist brethren of the time. They were not the types, however, to favor faith without works; they saw their reform work as being one of many steps to bring that looming return about. Originally, they hit the road in 1841 to scant success. This began to change as they incorporated antislavery tunes into their act; the temperance movement, the church, and abolition were all linked, but the movements had not included music until the Hutchinsons came along. Not everyone approved. Their mother, a church singer of some proficiency, regarded her children's musical efforts as a sinful materialism. Others objected that they were gaining money by singing for what ought to be reform for reform's sake, but even Frederick Douglass approved that they "have dared to sing for a cause first and for cash afterward." The Hutchinsons went further than many antislavery performers, insisting that they would not play in segregated halls. They did change hearts and minds, and like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, theirs was an art with a successful reform purpose. (They strongly disagreed with the book's stated purpose, now little remembered, of promoting the education and Christianization of freed slaves in America and then directing them back to Africa.) Still, they eventually saw not only that the end of slavery failed bring justice for the former slaves, but also it failed to bring the expected millennial return of their Savior.
Gac includes some of the group's lyrics, like their most famous "Get Off the Track" which begins,
Ho! The Car Emancipation
Rides majestic thro' our nation
Bearing on its train the story,
LIBERTY! A Nation's glory.
There are old photos here, and best of all, covers from the sheet music with pictures of the performers, as well as a cover for a minstrel song. (The Hutchinsons battled the racist culture of minstrelsy, but even became parodied in minstrel shows.) Gac shows how the Hutchinsons were one of the world's most popular musical acts, and laments that they are almost forgotten now. His book, full of social and musical details, brings them back, and provides essential understanding of nineteenth century American culture.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Review in Journal of American History (March 2008), March 25, 2008
This review is from: Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform (Hardcover)
From Journal of American History, March 2008
Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform. By Scott Gac. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. xiv, 312 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-300-11198-9.)
Scott Gac's Singing for Freedom is a well-crafted study of one of the greatest musical acts in American history. The book provides a meticulous account of the rise and fall of the Hutchinson family singers, their role in antebellum reforms, and their creation of commercially viable protest music. The book would be a smashing success if it had accomplished only this, but it does so much more. It also provides a fresh look at the market revolution of the decades before the Civil War, sheds new light on the spread of the antislavery movement, and explains the emergence of a new and enduring form of protest.
Gac is a gifted narrator. The book transports the reader to the time and place of Hutchinson performances. His accounts of the family's early performances in Boston, Albany, and New York City are particularly vivid, providing a wonderful feel for the cultural vibrancy of the 1840s. Singing for Freedom beautifully captures the dynamic relationship between city and country, and the role of popular entertainment in an emerging consumer culture. Gac explains well the market space that the Hutchinson singers carved out: a space bounded on one side by morally suspect blackface minstrelsy and on the other by noncommercial church music. The key to holding this space was the simultaneously pious and provocative reform messages of the family's music. Going to hear the "Tribe of Jessie" was an exciting event that members of a religious middle class, uncomfortable with city entertainments, could genuinely justify as an act of moral reform.
Gac's book tells a paradoxical story of how the family's identification with the wildly controversial cause of immediate abolitionism was instrumental to the act's commercial success, and how the immense popularity of their music worked to bridge the divide between hostile antislavery factions. His careful chronicle of the Hutchinsons' rising star in the early 1840s illuminates how antislavery sentiments grew stronger in the North even as the organizational coherence of the abolitionist movement fell apart. Through it all, Gac reveals something very important about the ability of protest songs to resonate well beyond their social movement source. Singing for Freedom provides the beginning of a history of the invention of a new technology in American protest.
The career of Hutchinson family singers was not all triumphant. There were painful contradictions throughout. These temperance advocates came from a family farm that featured hops as its most profitable crop. They sang that they came from the mountains of the Granite State but did not actually visit the White Mountains until well after their initial success. They were staunch abolitionists but serenaded Henry Clay. All the members of the group struggled to balance commercial success with authenticity as reformers and performers. The disappointing end to the group's career mirrored the fate of the egalitarian dreams of the early immediate abolitionists.
This excellent book is a must read for historians of antebellum America, antislavery, temperance, and popular music. It should also be read by anyone interested in the relationship between music and social movements and the history of the American protest song.
Michael P. Young
University of Texas
Austin, Texas
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