Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform Review

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Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform ReviewIf you are old enough, you remember the protest songs of Peter, Paul, and Mary or Bob Dylan. Older still, you remember those of Woody Guthrie. But no one remembers the performances of the Hutchinson Family Singers, although according to Scott Gac, a professor of American studies and a musician, they seem to be the grandparents of American protest songs. No one remembers their performances, and we have no recordings of them, because they gained their fame before the Civil War by singing about temperance and especially about the abolition of slavery. In _Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Antebellum Reform_ (Yale University Press), Gac has given the history of the group (which shares many characteristics with modern singing groups) within its times and especially within the complicated realm of reform movements before the war. Slavery was abolished (of course it took a war and not just singers to make it happen), and it seems as if it were inevitable from our viewpoint, but the different forces for abolition didn't always agree or unite, and for all their righteousness (and rightness), abolitionists in general and the Hutchinsons in particular were merely human. This is a fine story of a wrongly-forgotten bit of Americana.
The Hutchinsons as they performed in their most popular days were three brothers and a sister, John, Asa, Judson, and Abby. They were from a farming family in Milford, New Hampshire, and absorbed the Baptist music of their upbringing. They often used such tunes, and popular tunes of the time, changing the lyrics to fit a message. The Hutchinsons themselves had faith that the return of Jesus was imminent and would come in their days, as did many of their Baptist brethren of the time. They were not the types, however, to favor faith without works; they saw their reform work as being one of many steps to bring that looming return about. Originally, they hit the road in 1841 to scant success. This began to change as they incorporated antislavery tunes into their act; the temperance movement, the church, and abolition were all linked, but the movements had not included music until the Hutchinsons came along. Not everyone approved. Their mother, a church singer of some proficiency, regarded her children's musical efforts as a sinful materialism. Others objected that they were gaining money by singing for what ought to be reform for reform's sake, but even Frederick Douglass approved that they "have dared to sing for a cause first and for cash afterward." The Hutchinsons went further than many antislavery performers, insisting that they would not play in segregated halls. They did change hearts and minds, and like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, theirs was an art with a successful reform purpose. (They strongly disagreed with the book's stated purpose, now little remembered, of promoting the education and Christianization of freed slaves in America and then directing them back to Africa.) Still, they eventually saw not only that the end of slavery failed bring justice for the former slaves, but also it failed to bring the expected millennial return of their Savior.
Gac includes some of the group's lyrics, like their most famous "Get Off the Track" which begins,
Ho! The Car Emancipation
Rides majestic thro' our nation
Bearing on its train the story,
LIBERTY! A Nation's glory.
There are old photos here, and best of all, covers from the sheet music with pictures of the performers, as well as a cover for a minstrel song. (The Hutchinsons battled the racist culture of minstrelsy, but even became parodied in minstrel shows.) Gac shows how the Hutchinsons were one of the world's most popular musical acts, and laments that they are almost forgotten now. His book, full of social and musical details, brings them back, and provides essential understanding of nineteenth century American culture.
Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform OverviewIn the two decades prior to the Civil War, the Hutchinson Family Singers of New Hampshire became America's most popular musical act. Out of a Baptist revival upbringing, John, Asa, Judson, and Abby Hutchinson transformed themselves in the 1840s into national icons, taking up the reform issues of their age and singing out especially for temperance and antislavery reform. This engaging book is the first to tell the full story of the Hutchinsons, how they contributed to the transformation of American culture, and how they originated the marketable American protest song.Through concerts, writings, sheet music publications, and books of lyrics, the Hutchinson Family Singers established a new space for civic action, a place at the intersection of culture, reform, religion, and politics. The book documents the Hutchinsons' impact on abolition and other reform projects and offers an original conception of the rising importance of popular culture in antebellum America.

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