A Guide to My Amnesia Theater

Monochord headquarters has been celebrating the publication of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music: America Changed Through Music, a collection of new essays about the mesmerizing and influential 1952 boxed set of late 1920s and early 1930s recordings.

My contribution to the collection is the product of eleven years of research, thinking, re-thinking, and activism. It’s called “Smith’s Amnesia Theater: ‘Moonshiner’s Dance’ in Minnesota.”

I have oceans of stuff to say about it. For now, I’ll focus on the simple question, “What just happened?”

The new book and essay: What are they?

The book of essays is by a variety of writers, musicians, and scholars, some of whom attended a 2012 conference in London marking the 60th anniversary of Smith’s landmark boxed set.

My presentation at the London conference became the seed of my essay in the book. It focuses on one cut in the Anthology that had been otherwise neglected by historians and other researchers: “Moonshiner’s Dance — Part I,” recorded in 1927 in St. Paul, Minnesota, by the Victoria Cafe Orchestra.

That recording is the Anthology‘s only Northern cut — the only recording unambiguously by musicians from outside the American South. I once made a map of the Anthology — seemingly the only such map anybody’s ever made. It looks a lot like a map of the Confederacy.

For the first time, my essay releases a major chunk of my research into “Moonshiner’s Dance.” To my surprise, I found that answering the simple question “What is this recording?” required a wide-ranging investigation into geography, history, identity, and meaning.

All this new information, the essay argues, matters to how we understand the Anthology, and to how we might encounter any expression left to us by a gone world. The essay is an impassioned plea for open-minded and imaginative curiosity about America’s cultural geography.

“Although ignored, the 1920s recordings of Twin Cities musicians are folk music that, on myriad terms, consciously and sometimes emphatically testifies to the performers’ identities and what they understood to be at stake in their existence.” – Smith’s Amnesia Theater

I meant the essay to feel like a revue, a little like Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The curtain opens on a scene that turns out to be another curtain that opens to reveal a different scene that also becomes a curtain, and so on. If you get bored with my essay, don’t worry — it will take off in another direction soon.

So far, the most consistent comments I’ve received is that the writing is “beautiful” and the scholarship is original. I guess most people try to be kind. If you look for it, you may find humor in there, wisecracks, hidden Easter eggs, and certainly a lot of pictures.

Where can a person read this essay?

This is a scholarly publication, so the authors don’t get paid — I just want my truth out there, and I deeply appreciate your interest.

— Email me. The book’s cost makes this book (and my message) far too rare a commodity. So, if you email me for a copy of my essay, I will very gladly send you a PDF. There are other pieces in the book you’ll definitely also want to read, and holding the book in your hand, you can see a community thinking about the Anthology — it’s a pity it isn’t priced more democratically.

— Please ask your public and university libraries to get the book. Don’t be shy — do it! Providing you with materials that are difficult to get on your own is a big reason librarians exist. Besides, if they get the book for you, it will presumably be there for the rest of your community.

— Please buy the book. For now, Routledge priced the hardback ($152) mainly for university and public libraries, profs in the field, etc. I’m currently seeing buying options on Amazon for around $100. There are Kindle and eBook options for $38-$55.

— At the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul, the book is now available for reading and photocopying at the Gale Family Library. That’s where this whole adventure started for me in May 2006, so I find this very satisfying.

What’s the deal with the Victoria Theater?

When I started all this, nobody who’d heard the Anthology could forget the sound of Moonshiner’s Dance. It was, in its own way and degree, infamous around the world, partly for having mysterious origins.

At the same time, nobody in St. Paul understood that the Victoria building (a familiar, vacant, and deteriorating old building down on University Avenue) was responsible for an utterly unique contribution to an influential American masterpiece. Nobody had ever researched the building beyond an architectural study and cursory literature searches.

I set about trying to reconstruct the meanings of the place. I soon believed St. Paul needed to understand what it had. And I wanted Anthology fans to understand that the mystery was solved, and the answers really matter. I wanted to reconnect the lines and let the power flow.

Then, in 2008, the Victoria Theater was threatened with demolition. The neighborhood association asked me to write the nomination to get the building named as an official heritage preservation site.

Having spent two years editing historic and archaeological survey reports as an editor for a Cultural Resource Management company, I jumped at the chance. And I fought to get the city ordinance passed. Then, I got to work on this essay for the Anthology conference and book.

Although I had spent years in academia, it was this experience that taught me what Harry Smith surely knew—that scholarship matters, and that it can matter as much in its absence as in its presence. – Smith’s Amnesia Theater

Now, local neighborhood and global community would both get the chance to think about the kinship Harry Smith’s art had built between them. Despite some exhilarating successes, I still despair that my message will ever quite sink in. At least I’ve sung a little of my song.

Your questions, requests, or suggestions about the Victoria Theater’s future should go to the director of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association, Caty Royce at caty@frogtownmn.org.

What’s next? A book on “Moonshiner’s Dance”?

I wonder. I already look like “that guy” who won’t stop talking about his old polka record, but readers of my essay will hopefully appreciate that there really are worlds to explore here.

Only a tiny fraction of my findings made it into the essay. HAVE I GOT STORIES. If I died tomorrow, I’d be glad I got this essay into the world, but too many big connections and haunting details would die with me. And to my eyes, each aspect of the story magnifies and multiplies the meanings of the others. I’m not sure what to do about that.

For now, I just hope to go back to what I was up to before the Victoria Theater building, the London conference, and the essay took over my life. I hope I’ll try to write and research and get the stories to you, one way or another, before my time’s up.