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    Guitar Cultures Blues

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    Orhan Tüten
    Narváez, Peter. 2001. “ Unplugged: Blues Guitarists and the Myth of Acousticity”, in A. Bennett and D. Kevin (eds.), Guitar Cultures, Oxford: Berg.

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    Guitar Cultures Blues

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    Orhan Tüten
    46 views1 page
    Narváez, Peter. 2001. “ Unplugged: Blues Guitarists and the Myth of Acousticity”, in A. Bennett and D. Kevin (eds.), Guitar Cultures, Oxford: Berg.

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    Narváez, Peter. 2001. “ Unplugged: Blues Guitarists and the Myth of Acousticity”, in A. Bennett and D. Kevin (eds.), Guitar Cultures, Oxford: Berg.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    46 views1 page

    Guitar Cultures Blues

    Uploaded by

    Orhan Tüten
    Narváez, Peter. 2001. “ Unplugged: Blues Guitarists and the Myth of Acousticity”, in A. Bennett and D. Kevin (eds.), Guitar Cultures, Oxford: Berg.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 1

    Narváez, Peter. 2001.

    “ Unplugged: Blues Guitarists and the Myth of Acousticity”, in


    A. Bennett and D. Kevin (eds.), Guitar Cultures, Oxford: Berg.

    In contrast to the pragmatic and aesthetic views of African-American blues


    musicians toward guitars, the cultural constructions of acoustic guitar and electric
    guitar as sonic binary opposites, which emerged in the 1950s and early 1960s
    amongst European and North American blues revival audiences and performers,
    arrived with considerable ideological baggage. It was during that period, of what
    Neil Rosenberg has called the ‘great folk boom’ (1993: 27–33), that a commitment
    to what will be referred to here as the ‘myth of acousticity’ developed.

    In addition, however, the myth of acousticity, which was embraced during the
    folk boom, attaches ideological signifieds to the acoustic guitar, making it a
    democratic vehicle vis-à-vis the sonic authoritarianism of electric instruments.

    During the latter 1930s and early 1940s the groundwork for viewing the acoustic
    guitar as an active medium for democracy was well developed by the folk music
    sectors of the Popular Front, a left-wing coalition centred in New York City (Reuss
    1971), which involved African-American blues artists such as Huddie Ledbetter
    (‘Leadbelly’), Josh White, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry (Denisoff 1971;
    Lieberman 1989; Wolfe and Kornell 1992). There was perhaps no better dramatization
    of this than when, in 1944, folksinger-songwriter Woodrow (‘Woody’) Wilson
    Guthrie (1912–67) toured with a sign on his guitar that read ‘This Machine Kills
    Fascists’ (Klein 1982; Hampton 1986: 93–148).

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