A Resisting Performance of an Appalachian Traditional Murder Ballad: Giving Voice to "Pretty Polly"

Abstract

It ain't about how pretty you sing, it's all about bow good you tell story. Dellie Norton, traditional ballad singer, Madison County NC, as told to author by Sheila Kay Adams, Norton's great-niece, 7 November 2004 SCENARIO 1: MY PARTNER'S MOTHER INTRODUCES me to her friends: a white, upper-middle-class, heterosexual couple. They are in their late sixties or early seventies and are from northeastern Ohio, just one county away from those considered Appalachian. Clearly a part of symphony set, their faces brighten when they learn a musicologist stopping off in Ohio on my way to a music workshop in North Carolina. What are you going to do? I'm going to study old-time specifically, banjo. What that? he says a raised eyebrow. Old-time music, say very simplistically, since can tell they are already losing interest, is kind of music that predates bluegrass and contemporary country It's a kind of early country actually. Oh, he says a look of amused condescension, I didn't think you could call that music. Scenario 2: A friend who loves old-time music and bluegrass and who plays fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and Dobro decides that she can't listen to most old-time and bluegrass bands anymore since so many of songs are misogynist. It violent ones that anger her most, especially murder ballads, in which woman horrifically killed and her murderer suffers few consequences. The Country Gentlemen's recording of River Bottom particularly offensive to her: with a clothesline tied around her knees ... so glad to put an end to that disease. These true stories illustrate a dilemma for feminist lover of old-time, bluegrass, and Appalachian (1) The first scenario demonstrates a widely held position: Appalachian its unabashed banjo twanginess, its hoedown fiddle, and its high, strained, and dispassionate vocal style, a vivid aural representation of itself and as such cannot be considered music worthy of serious study, much less enjoyment. As Ronald D. Eller writes, Appalachia may likely have replaced benighted South as nation's most region.... Always part of mythical South, continues to languish backstage in American drama, still dressed, in popular at least, in garments of backwardness, violence, poverty, and hopelessness once associated South as a whole. No region of United States today plays role of 'other America' quite so persistently as Appalachia. (2) Of course, there an audience that enjoys escaping into precisely this other America, its somewhat exotic rural sounds and modal melodies that can conjure up images of a simpler and more authentic era and place, far from urban noise and confusion. (3) Some of these listeners may choose to ignore misogynist lyrics or perhaps not even notice them, while others may explain them away as artifacts of past cultural norms. (4) Others, however, like woman in second scenario, may feel conflicted, eventually choosing to abandon a favorite genre of music that both maligned by the popular mind and unmistakably misogynist for listener, fan or not, who attends to lyrics of much of its repertoire. would like to examine another option for woman in second scenario. Perhaps it possible to find or create performances of Appalachian music that retain exuberance of fiddle, twang of banjo, or detachment of voice (performances that, in effect, sound Appalachian) while presenting violent lyrics in a way that does not celebrate or ignore their misogyny. The most challenging songs will, of course, be murder ballads, which pervade American folk music and are central to southern Appalachian repertoire. (5) The plot of these murdered sweetheart ballads follows a well-established formula: a young woman lured away from home by her lover to a secluded spot on pretext of marriage or discussing marriage; presumably, she pregnant. …