A CHANCE TO HARMONIZE

The history of a little-known New Deal program that brought robust musical life to rural resettlement towns in America during the Great Depression, seeding the folk-music revival to come.

Kaskowitz, an American music scholar and author of God Bless America: The Surprising History of an Iconic Song, brings to vivid life the history of the Resettlement Administration’s Special Skills Division, which developed art activities on American homesteads. The goal of the RA’s Music Unit was to use the power of music to improve morale and create a stronger sense of community in these rural resettlement towns. Kaskowitz tells the compelling story by chronicling the efforts of three federal workers: musicologist Charles Seeger, music instructor Margaret Valiant, and folk-music collector Sidney Robertson. Their shared enterprise stemmed from a belief that American folk songs needed to be “preserved” and “captured” for history, but they were also highly interested in the social use of music, which could encourage camaraderie and collectivism among the rural poor. Kaskowitz makes the Music Unit’s ties to the New Deal and its aims explicit: Franklin Roosevelt signed off on the purchase of expensive recoding equipment, and Eleanor Roosevelt attended a musical pageant staged at Penderlea Homesteads in North Carolina. The author does not shy away from pointing out the “musical color line” that endured in the resettlements’ musical life, acknowledging minstrel-show elements in Southern communities’ revues, but her research makes a persuasive case that the Music Unit’s attention to American folk music, including Indigenous and ethnic immigrant music, was “a kind of prequel to the origin story for the folk revival” to come. Readers can enhance their experience with the book by listening to some of the recordings mentioned, offered on tracks organized by chapter on the author’s website.

A heartening account of music’s ability to create cooperation and community and restore dignity and hope.