Folk city: New York and the American folk music revival

321 Pages·2015·34.992 MB·English

by  Cohen, Ronald D.;Petrus, Stephen

FOLK CITY
NEW YORK
AND THE
AMERICAN
FOLK MUSIC
REVIVAL
FFOOLLKK CCIITTYY
3
Stephen Petrus
Ronald D. Cohen
FFOOLLKK CCIITTYY
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research,
scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.
Oxford  New York
Auckland  Cape Town  Dar es Salaam  Hong Kong
Karachi  Kuala Lumpur  Madrid  Melbourne  Mexico
City  Nairobi  New Delhi  Shanghai  Taipei  Toronto
With offices in
Argentina  Austria  Brazil  Chile  Czech Republic
France  Greece  Guatemala  Hungary  Italy  Japan
Poland  Portugal  Singapore  South Korea  Switzerland
Thailand  Turkey  Ukraine  Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the
UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Copyright © 2015
Museum of the City of New York
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University
Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms
agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization.
Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above
should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press,
at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Petrus, Stephen, author.
Folk city : New York and the American folk music revival /
Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen.
pages  cm
ISBN 978–0–19–023102–6 (hardback)
1. Folk music—New York (State)—New York—History and
criticism. I. Cohen, Ronald D., 1940– author. II. Title.
ML3551.8.N49P48 2015
781.62’1307471—dc23   2015000073
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in China on acid-free paper

FOLK CITY: NEW YORK AND THE AMERICAN FOLK The exhibition and companion book are made
MUSIC REVIVAL was published to accompany the possible by
exhibition of the same name presented at the
Museum of the City of New York from June 17 – WYNDHAM WORLDWIDE
November 29, 2015. JOHN AND PATRICIA HELLER
THOMAS M. NEFF
MR. AND MRS. JAMES BUCKMAN
EXHIBITION CO-CHAIRS
JAMES G. DINAN AND ELIZABETH R. MILLER
James E. Buckman

John R. Heller
Additional support is provided by
Thomas M. Neff

ZEGAR FAMILY FOUNDATION
AN ANONYMOUS DONOR, IN HONOR OF JOHN HELLER
EXHIBITION ADVISORY COMMITTEE
JILL AND JOHN CHALSTY
Chair:  Ronald D. Cohen, Emeritus Professor of
MARTIN GUITAR CHARITABLE FOUNDATION
History at Indiana University Northwest, Gary
MACLEAN-FOGG
Ray Allen, Professor of Music,
The Museum is grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon
Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center
Foundation, which supported the fellowship of
Scott Barretta, Adjunct Instructor of
FOLK CITY curator Dr. Stephen Petrus.
Sociology at the University of Mississippi
Michael Beckerman, Professor of Music,
New York University
EXHIBITION TEAM
David Hajdu, Professor of Journalism,
Curator: Stephen Petrus
Columbia University Graduate School of
Manager of Curatorial Affairs: Autumn Nyiri
Journalism and The Nation Music Critic
Curatorial Associate: Sara K. Spink
Elijah Wald, Music Historian and
Consultant: Doug Yeager
folk-blues guitarist
Registrar for Exhibitions and Loans: Winona Packer
Sean Wilentz, Professor of History,
Director of Exhibitions Installation: Todd Ludlam
Princeton University
Steve Zeitlin, City Lore, Founding Director
The exhibition and the accompanying book were
designed by Pure+Applied.
CONTENTS
8 FOREWORD by Peter Yarrow
12 PREFACE by John Heller
14 146
THE HEART OF FOLK CITY THE VILLAGE SCENE IN
THE EARLY 1960S
26
196
NEW YORK AND THE
ORIGINS OF THE FOLK POLITICAL ACTIVISM AND
MUSIC REVIVAL THE FOLK MUSIC REVIVAL
66 246
MAKING A BUSINESS OUT BOB DYLAN IS TALKIN’
OF IT NEW YORK
104 290
THE BATTLES OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE
WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK FOLK MUSIC REVIVAL IN
NEW YORK
312 ENDNOTES
317 INDEX
319 IMAGE CREDITS
320 AUTHORS’ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
8
l
a
v
i
v
e
R

c
i
s
u
M

k
l
o
F

n
a
c
i
r
e
m
A

e
h
t

d
n
a

k
r
o
Y

w
e
N

:
y
t
i
C

k
l
o
F
9
FOREWORD
PETER YARROW
Greenwich Village was, in many ways, the
epicenter of the 1960s cultural revolution in
America. Remarkable breakthroughs were
made in painting, theater, design, photog-
raphy, dance, film, etc., but none more so
than in folk music. Folk songs reached peo-
ple’s hearts, inspiring them to challenge the
established societal norms and break with
antiquated traditions. Many of the values and
mores that needed to be recast by a primar-
ily youth-led movement were not only judged
to be superficial, but were also seen as vio-
lating the basic tenets of freedom and equal-
ity that America was supposed to hold dear.
Listening to, or singing along with, tra-
ditional folk songs allowed us to enter a
world that was not only a departure from
the superficiality of the times, but also one
that symbolized a break with what had been
plaguing society: aberrations such as the
artificiality of relationships between men
and women with prescribed “proper” ways to
converse and treat one another; prescribed
ways for men to assert their dominance and
for women to “keep their place”; prescribed
ways of maintaining the stratified layering of
who was important and who was superior
to whom; prescribed ways that assured the
continuing oppression of people of color,
a remnant of slavery that flew in the face of
the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, “with
liberty and justice for all”—words that were F
o
r
supremely hypocritical given the rampant ew
o
racism of the times. rd