The Folk

"With rich measures of eloquence and criticism, passion and witness, Ross Cole asks us to listen again to the songs of the folk, not because they were nostalgically lost to an imagined past, but rather because they still voice the imperative of lived-in worlds, past, present, and future."--Philip V. Bohlman, coauthor of Song Loves the Masses: Herder on Music and Nationalism "A gracefully written compelling account of the relationship between music and ideological constructions of 'the folk' in the UK and the US. A confident and illuminating book."--Sarah Hill, author of San Francisco and the Long 60s "A nuanced, resourceful, ​and discerning study of the desire known as 'the folk.' Cole delivers a highly engaging itinerary of a concept so fundamental to modernity it points in all directions at once: bard and professor, nostalgia and revolution, soul and soil, left solidarities and the specter of fascism."--Eric Lott, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism