November 12th, 2005
James P. Leary is a professor of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies here at the University of Wisconsin and is co-director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. His latest book, Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music, is due next summer. Here’s a blurb from the publisher:
The Goose Island Ramblers played as a house band for a local tavern in Madison, Wisconsin from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s. The group epitomized the polkabilly sound with their wild mixture of Norwegian fiddle tunes, Irish jigs, Slovenian polkas, Swiss yodels, old time hillbilly songs, “Scandihoovian” and “Dutchman” dialect ditties, frost-bitten Hawaiian marches, and novelty numbers on the electric toilet plunger. In this original study, James P. Leary illustrates how the Ramblers’ multiethnic music combined both local and popular traditions, and how their eclectic repertoire challenges prevailing definitions of American folk music. He thus offers the first comprehensive examination of the Upper Midwest’s folk musical traditions within the larger context of American life and culture.
Leary is the author of a few books and I recently picked up his Yodeling in Dairyland: A History of Swiss Music in Wisconsin. He was also a force behind the radio program, Down Home Dairyland, which surveyed the variety of folk music here in Wisconsin.
You can buy the music of the Goose Island Ramblers at the Cuca Records site.
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