Gathering the voices of the people? Cecil Sharp, cultural hybridity, and the folk music of Appalachia

This paper examines the four trips that the English folk music collector Cecil Sharp made to Appalachia (1916-1918) as a case-study through which to explore the relationships between nationhood and place identity. The first parts consider background on the theoretical underpinnings of folk music collection and about Sharp's earlier work. We then investigte how Sharp and his companion Maud Karpeles initially cam to cllect what they felt were English folk songs, but gradually had to come to terms with Appalachies's culturaly heterogeneous folk traditions. The final part draws paralles with Bela Bartok's approach to the Hungarian Gypsy tradition