As a lifelong singer of traditional and contemporary folksongs, I read Emily Bazelon's recent Slate article about Rise Up Singing with delight but mounting discomfort as i thought about how some Rise Up Singing devotees totemize it and canonize its contents. Take a look at her article, Lie Down Singing: How a songbook saved my nighttimes. My problem is not with Emily Bazelon or the book but with the zealousness with which the text is adhered to.
Rise Up Singing has helped many Americans to begin singing out loud together but has done little to nourish a synergistic sense of community in singing--- for that it helps to go the extra mile: commit the songs you love to memory and urge fellow singers to get their nose up out of the book and to belt out the choruses with an ear to making one wonderful sound. Singing together does not have to be blended or beautiful, but it is a musical merger of sorts and leads to rich aural communication.
"The Book," as folkies call it, does little to alert the reader to the fact that Blood has chosen, combined, and shaped one version among many for each traditional song. Nor does Blood pay much attention to the sources who kept many of its traditional songs alive for, often, hundreds of years. It is not always easy to understand these songs or where they come from, but we should at least be respectful of what these songs meant to other people in other times. Without greater integrity in exploring the history, the meanings, and the contribution of key traditional artists and cultural groups that kept the songs alive, they are reduced to a sort of ear-candy.
The Rise Up Singing crowd needs to be steered to books, recordings, organizations, and live performances that open up a still lively and diverse world of songs created to be sung, loved, and listened to together. Also, these songs are works of art sung by singers and groups with a developed aesthetic that should be at least acknowledged in the passing. Unfortunately, this rarely happens-- people join together to sing "these songs" from "this book" as if it were the supreme arbiter. More than once, afficionados of the book have taken over groups where singers who learn and perform songs from oral tradition meet to share them on a regular basis. Those who sing from "the book" get mad that the others who sing from oral tradition are not singing the "correct" song. They have been prone to call those who sing songs not in the book, "elitist."
Of course the book has its strengths-- it is a great cheat sheet for many excellent songs. It's a good reference tool. But it should serve as a gateway not as a self-enclosed , sometimes self-righteous, universe of true believers.
Emily Bazelon's article is a lovely tribute to a book used as a resource that reawakens and expands her own family's ethos and traditions in song. But Rise Up Singing has, through the uses to which it has been put, at times seems to threaten the heritage of folk materials and process which have so imbued it with power, charm, and vitality.