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Front Porch

Front Porch Where music, dancing , and whiskey flowed, the dual demands of Sunday and Monday mornings seemed far away. “Moonshine,” dancing in the home of James Thomas’s friend, Shelby “Poppa Jazz” Brown, in 1967, photographed by William R. Ferris, courtesy of the William R. Ferris Collection in the Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 1 Southern music is special. Everybody says so. The South is the home of blues, jazz, Cajun, zydeco, bluegrass, country, spirituals, gospel, and rock. A few other musical traditions that originated elsewhere—fife and drum music and shape- note singing come to mind—have our fl ished in the South after fading in their birthplaces. I’d go so far as to say that no major American popular music form originated outside the South until the recent rise of rap. And rap’s debt to other black music makes it a southern grandchild at least. What explains this rich heritage? You’ll hear a die ff rent explanation from every- one you ask, but all of them include tributes to the extraordinary musical heri- tage of Africa and the haunted ballad-singing of the British Isles, combined and pressure-cooked in the isolation created by http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Southern Cultures University of North Carolina Press

Front Porch

Watson, Harry L.
Southern Cultures , Volume 15 (3) – Aug 13, 2009
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Center for the Study of the American South.
ISSN
1534-1488

Abstract

Where music, dancing , and whiskey flowed, the dual demands of Sunday and Monday mornings seemed far away. “Moonshine,” dancing in the home of James Thomas’s friend, Shelby “Poppa Jazz” Brown, in 1967, photographed by William R. Ferris, courtesy of the William R. Ferris Collection in the Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 1 Southern music is special. Everybody says so. The South is the home of blues, jazz, Cajun, zydeco, bluegrass, country, spirituals, gospel, and rock. A few other musical traditions that originated elsewhere—fife and drum music and shape- note singing come to mind—have our fl ished in the South after fading in their birthplaces. I’d go so far as to say that no major American popular music form originated outside the South until the recent rise of rap. And rap’s debt to other black music makes it a southern grandchild at least. What explains this rich heritage? You’ll hear a die ff rent explanation from every- one you ask, but all of them include tributes to the extraordinary musical heri- tage of Africa and the haunted ballad-singing of the British Isles, combined and pressure-cooked in the isolation created by

Journal

Southern Cultures – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Aug 13, 2009

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