The Folk Music Revival Then and Now: Politics, Commercialism, and Authenticity in Folk Music Communities in the U.S. and Japan

This dissertation examined the different ways in which participants in the music revival in the U.S. and Japan interpreted music and incorporated it into their lives. By focusing on four different communities, it documented and analyzed the contested and negotiated meanings of the concepts of folk and authenticity and how they changed over time. An analysis of Sing Out! and Broadside magazines in the 1950s and the 1960s in Chapter 1 revealed the ways in which the definition of music became increasingly ambiguous and contested during the folk revival, as musicians, fans, and critics defined music against the dominant American culture, looking for cultural values more than for musical characteristics in debating authenticity. Chapter 2 showed the process by which American music was domesticated in Japan in the 1960s, first consumed by young, educated Japanese as the symbol of sophistication and later adopted by protest singers and activists for political purposes. While American enthusiasts regarded music as ethnic and proletarian, espousing anti-commercialism, political idealism, and cultural diversity, their Japanese counterparts developed different standards of authenticity, regarding the music as universal so as to claim ownership of the music. Chapter 3 is a case study of the history of the Cornell Folk Song Club (Society) and the Ithaca community from the 1950s to the present, which demonstrated the continuity of the members' lifestyles and values that music represented as well as the process by which the members have come to regard themselves as participants in the process rather than outsiders of the tradition. Chapter 4 examined the reception of Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan in Japan from the 1960s to the present, which showed how the media, fans, and critics have used these iconic American musicians to narrate Japanese music history and to connect with other Japanese. While initially regarding music as embodying differences and alternatives to the dominant cultures, music enthusiasts in the U.S. and Japan have come to embrace the music as their own and used it to build communities.