Rumblings from the countryside : manifestations of protest in the music of rural southerners, 1925-1941

This study demonstrates how rural southern protest against social and economic conditions was reflected in hillbilly and blues music of the 1920s and 1930s, a period when the first commercial recordings of southern music were issued by major record labels and a time when the audience for these two musical forms remained predominantly regional. The "South" in this article is defined as the eleven former Confederate States and Oklahoma, a state with close cultural ties to the Southeast encumbered by many of the region's socio economic problems. An examination of this rural oriented music reveals a growing class awareness on the part of rural southerners precipitated by the hard times of the Depression and hastened by federal and local authorities' response to it. The examples presented herein also indicate how many small landowners and tenants in the South interpreted their predicament.

In concentrating on the two dominant commercial musical forms in the South popular among rural folk during this period, this thesis examines gospel, jazz, Cajun, and other contemporary southern music only in instances when hillbilly and blues musicians incorporated these musical forms into their songs. The majority of lyrics selected for inclusion in this study were transcribed from original recordings deposited in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Archives of Recorded Sound and American Folk Song in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.. Song titles were acquired from library indexes, published discographies, and secondary sources. The absence of a complete discography of blues and country recordings released in the 1920s and 1930s precludes a complete survey of rural oriented southern protest music of the period. The purpose of this study is to present examples of social commentary in early blues and country music in an effort to explore the manner in which southern music functioned as a form of protest during the Depression era.