West Country Songs Book

If you're interested in folk songs or Texas history/culture, this is a very interesting book. The songs were mostly collected in the 50s and several songs have at least two variations according to the singer. Some of the songs have short introductions/explanations going into the possible origins of the song and the variations that Owens (the collector) had come across, a few even included personal anecdotes from Owens himself and the memories that the song brought forward. Each song also includes a short transcription of the music; at first I skipped over these, but as I got farther into the book I ended up downloading a piano app on my phone and trying to play a few. This added a whole dimension to the content that, for some reason, I wasn't expecting.

There were a few times when I was made aware of the fact that folk songs really aren't shared any more, having been traded out for the radio and pop music. This mostly happened when the book would claim that a certain song was well known through out Texas and I, a native Texan, had never heard of it before. Most of the songs that I had heard were the British ballads, and that was mostly thanks to a combination of my love for 60s/70s era folk music and British folklore. It's kind of sad, really, that all of the songs were once well known and every family, it seemed, had their own variation, but now...I'm just glad this book exists.

I really enjoyed the British Ballads section as it talked about how folk songs move and change with the people who carry them. For instance, many of the British ballads that carried over to Texas were well known ballads originally recorded by Francis James Child (more commonly known as Child Ballads), however as the songs made their way to Texas, nearly all of them lost their original supernatural elements. One explanation for this could be that by the time settlers came to the states and made their way to Texas, they no longer believed in the fairy stories of their homeland, another is that they simply didn't have the time to believe while readjusting to the harsh realities of south western living (I feel it may have been a little of both). It was also interesting to see in the Anglo-American section how the words shift to accommodate the region even within the US. The Anglo-American love songs were especially heart breaking, many coming from the civil war and being about leaving loved ones behind.

My only gripe about this book is that the Afro-American secular section was very short, only including six songs in total. Since African-American spiritual songs have been so well recorded over the decades, I was interested to see some secular ones, especially the lullabies, and was disappointed by the small number that was included.

Despite that, this is a fascinating book with a wealth of knowledge that I'm glad to see has been preserved. Hopefully, it won't be long before they're brought back into the cultural repertoire.