The Folk

"This is not a book about music, song, or performers. It is intellectual history of a rarefied kind. This needs to be understood if we are to appreciate Cole’s work for what it is: a quite brilliant deconstruction of the entire historiography of ‘folk’. His thesis is compelling, deceptively simple, and ultimately irrefutable. Cole’s great leap is to see, in this process, coherence, where others have seen only mess, hypocrisy, and contradiction. . . [He has produced] a convincing and definitive deconstruction of the myth of the folk, its antecedents, intentions, methods, and consequences. If there were such a thing as justice, no one would ever again speak on the subject of ‘folk music’ without having first digested this book." * Music & Letters *
"Cole’s argument is something of a wake-up call. If a previous generation of song collectors and musicologists stand implicated in a process that lends itself all too easily to fascism, then contemporary ethnomusicologists would be right to infer some challenge to the ways in which we shape and exercise interpretative frames and critical practices in our own work. . . . This book, then, should fuel an important debate. Cole is a formidable wordsmith, and this very elegantly written volume will be instructive reading for musicians and musicologists who want to better understand the political context and undercurrents of the folk revival, and how its dynamics might play out today." * Ethnomusicology Forum *
"Impressively wide-ranging. . . . There really are so many strands and stories to this richly informed investigation. It is the critical tension between the believers and non-believers that makes this particular study of the folk phenomenon so fascinating." * Twentieth-Century Music *
"Ross Cole has expertly addressed [a] gap in our understanding in a book that is especially deserving of attention in our current political moment. . . . Cole has done popular music studies a great service in tackling the central question of folk music scholarship: How do you critically analyze something so many view as sacred?" * Journal of the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association *
"[The book] presents a compelling argument for both politically liberal and politically conservative uses of folk ideology…Cole’s conclusion highlights how the events of history remain present, particularly when concepts like ‘the folk,’ ‘folklore,’ and ‘folk song’—which evoke powerful feelings of comfort, community, and nostalgia—go unchallenged." * College Music Symposium *