Singing for Freedom

WARNING

You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com

The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform

Scott Gac

View Inside Format: Cloth
Price: $65.00

YUP

Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.

Also Available at

Also Available in:

e-book

Description Reviews Table of Contents

In 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.

Scott Gac is visiting professor of American studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and an accomplished double bass player.

“Gac’s book is a rare work of cultural history that is a joy to read and that sheds enormous light on the era, suggesting the texture and feel of the time.”—John Stauffer, Harvard University

"Scott Gac is a splendid narrative craftsman, schooled in history and musicology. His 'Singing for Freedom' is a unique and compelling book—the first work to carefully uncover the busy, fascinating intersection of music, popular culture, commerce, celebrity, and abolitionism. Behold: a time long before Bob Dylan when lyrics really mattered, and singing abolitionists were rock stars with political clout."—David W. Blight, Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, Yale University

“In Singing for Freedom Scott Gac offers readers a remarkable look at the music of America's first great age of reform. The Hutchinson Family Singers gave voice to the popular movement for radical change not unlike the anti-war and pro-Civil Rights musicians of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. But in Gac's artful hands, the family's history reveals much more, showing us the nexus between religion and reform, individualism and the search for community, and the entrepreneurial spirit and moral impulse that defined the era. No one hoping to understand the culture of the 19th century can afford to overlook this book.”—Carol Berkin, author of Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence

“The Hutchinson Family Singers were the era’s best-known musicians, admired by the powerful and powerless alike. Singing for Freedom illumines beautifully these extraordinary lives, etching sharply the highlights and the shadows.”—Dale Cockrell, author of Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842-1846

"A well-crafted study of one of the greatest musical acts in American history. The book provides a meticulous account of the rise and fall of the Hutchinson family singers, their role in antebellum reforms, and their creation of commercially viable protest music. The book would have been a smashing success if it had accomplished only this, but it does so much more. . . . Gac is a gifted narrator. . . . This excellent book is a must read for historians of antebellum America, antislavery, temperance, and popular music."—Michael P. Young, The Journal of American History

"Scott Gac has written a serious book of scholarship aimed at placing the family in historic context, with a focus on the early years and on the original quartet in its rise from obscurity to fame and fortune. . . . Singing for Freedom provides a fresh and deeper understanding of this interesting period and this fascinating family. It should be of interest to all lovers of the 'The Old Granite State.'"—Donald Towle, Historical New Hampshire

"A readable, incisive analysis. . . . There is much to praise in Gac's work. He convincingly places the Hutchinsons at the center of what he calls a 'culture of reform' that used the press, pageantry, and music to advance a vision of a godlier, more humane US society. . . . Recommended."—Choice

"Gac sheds fresh light on the well-worn topics of the culture and politics of the anti-slavery movement—and utopian reform sentiment more generally—in antebellum America. . . . I learned something on nearly every page of this book, no small praise given the familiarity of the larger topics Gac explores as he follows the saga of the large and extended Huchinson family."—Paul Harvey, Books & Culture

"Powerful. . . . A beautifully contextualized study, one that not only helps us make sense of the Hutchinson Family Singers themselves but, more importantly, broadens our understanding of reform in antebellum America generally. Gac's intervention in such an important field of scholarly inquiry demands as much applause as contemporaries frequently offered the Hutchinson Family Singers."—Mark M. Smith, American Historical Review

ISBN: 9780300111989
Publication Date: June 22, 2007

328 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
24 b/w illus.

Also of Interest

Singing for Freedom

WARNING

The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform

Beethoven

The Northern Silence

French Masters of the Organ

Stravinsky's Ballets

Forbidden Music

Beethoven

Related Subjects

Listen to the Podcast