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Book Reviews UkJM WWW™ Jones, Loyal. Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Boone, North Carolina: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1984. Born in North Carolina's Madison County in 1882, Bascom Lamar Lunsford died in 1973 in neighboring Buncombe County. It took Îim nine decades to complete life's journey across a county line—meanwhile, traveling to concert platforms at the Pacific's rim; to recording labs at Columbia University and the Library of Congress; to a performance, in 1949, at the Cecil Sharp House, London. Sharp had collected English folksongs in the Southern Highlands during 1916-1918. Bascom, banjo in hand, returned some of the great collector's findings to their native soil. In a sense, Lunsford defined his long purpose as that of returning gifts to mountain people and strengthening their resolve to extend these same gifts beyond local communities. Within learned or literary journals, we often blur the distinction between book review and personal essay. In my comments on Loyal Jones' biography of Lunsford, I open by noting that the author and I have been friends for nearly three decades. Further, I had read this book in its several manuscript drafts. Hence, I cannot claim full objectivity in my review. I like the biography; I am partial to Bascom's role; I anticipate that this book will serve as a building block for young Appalachians as they continue to construct notions of identity. The word "minstrel" sounds an antique knell, deriving from tested usages: Latin terms for public officials, medieval descriptions of wandering troubadours, nineteenth-century names for black-face comics skilled in reversal and inversion. Long -ago, someone tagged Bascom the "Minstrel of the Appalachians." He glowed in its color and wore the phrase as a proud cloak, as he did the tongue-in-cheek honorific "Squire of South Turkey Creek." Literally, Bascom as a child learned old songs at his mother's knee. At about the age of ten, beginning an informal apprenticeship in minstrelsy, he entertained at school and puzzled over a magic-lantern show's mystery. During 1914, Lunsford posed grandly in white tie and black swallowtail coat while lecturing to collegians on "North Carolina Folklore, Poetry and Song." During 1928, he added a folksong and folk dance component to Asheville's Rhododendron Festival. In time, the Chamber-of-Commerce hoopla withered as the Mountain Dance & Folk Festival continued to bloom. Indeed, Lunsford's guiding notions of festival structure, to this day, have influenced strategies at thousands of local and national "folk" events. I shall not recapitulate Lunsford's pilgrimage in this compass; rather, I shall attempt to assay his journey's meaning. In the immediate months after his death, Bascom's children desired a laudatory memorial. Loyal Jones, himself a Blue Ridge native, had known him since 1956, and had written an article on Bascom, raising issues of Appalachian consciousness. From 1970 to 1983, Jones worked on the book considered here. As the decade since Lunsford's death has slipped away, the need for an official biography has receded. Those of us removed from Bascom's corner of the mountains, as well as from the minutiae of his daily life, can address questions of his place in the larger society: What did he add to understanding about regionalism? Is his special vision of folk tradition still useful? Will he be remembered as the American scroll of expressive culture continues to unroll? 66 In formal employment, Lunsford took many trails: beekeeper, fruit-tree salesman, newspaper publisher, teacher, lawyer, legislative clerk, promoter. In all these guises, one linked "calling" dominated: ballad collector /folksong performer/folklore partisan. Bascom knew that the rubric "American folksong" encompassed black spirituals, cajun fiddle tunes, cowboy laments, Mexican border corridos, and Polish polkas, for he had been exposed to such diversity at a series of national festivals. Regardless, he defined American folksong as essentially Appalachian. Within these mountains he favored the Blue Ridge chain; within this latter configuration he cherished his own community 's traditions. Not only did Lunsford focus narrowly (perhaps compulsively) on one strand within the national tapestry, but he cleaved to a particular view of proper presentational modes for his favorite music and narratives. Bascom worked...
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