The Sound of Antebellum Reform

Abstract

When is an abolition song not an abolition song? When it is heard as an ode to familial love or a declaration of American distinctiveness, a crass commercial ploy or an evocation of the Swiss Alps. Scott Gac's elegant and provocative portrait of the famous antislavery musicians, the Hutchinson Family Singers, reveals both the power and the limitations of music as a political tool within the reform movements of the 1840s. Many listeners embraced or rejected the explicit calls for abolition in the family's words, identifying the group's music, for better or worse, as a novel form of political polemic. Others paid little heed to such lyrics, connecting instead with the variety of other messages or associations they heard in the groups' performances. The Hutchinsons worked to develop a unified cadre of activists through song. To their possible consternation, they often forged a mere audience, a heterogeneous crowd brought together more by a shared appreciation for the family's music than by a common interpretation of it. Popular music scholars have been grappling with the matter of musical meaning for quite some time. In his now seminal 1981 study, Simon Frith evoked a growing consensus when he argued that ideological meaning was decided in the process of consumption rather than the production of music.1 The floodgates have since opened wide, and few scholars are willing to limit their interpretation of popular songs to the willful intent of authors or performers. Consumers, or listeners, forge their own interpretations of what they hear. Identifying a particular meaning for a piece of music long acknowledged as the most abstract of the arts is slippery business. Authorial intent provides a starting place, but such interpretive fetters must be loosed once the sounds are let out into the air. This may be true particularly when attempting to discern the historical relationship between music and politics. Indeed, Frith and others pushed to open up the interpretive possibilities of popular music in order to identify culture as a primary site of political struggle. Pop tunes might do important work forging collective identities, tapping collective