The
Blue Ridge Mountains provide the scenic background for Songcatcher,
directed by Maggie Greenwald. Dr. Lily Penleric (played by
Janet McTeer) is Associate Professor of Music at Columbia
University, where the male faculty have turned her down once
again for promotion to the rank of Professor despite the fact
that her publications outnumber those on the promotion committee.
The only faculty member who claimed to have spoken up on her
behalf voted against her in order to cover up his amorous
relationship with her. Almost determined to resign her position,
she decides to visit her sister Elna (played by Jane Adams),
who lives in the hills of the mountains above Asheville, North
Carolina, where she teaches school. Upon arrival, Deladis
Slocumb (played by Emmy Rossum), an orphan who lives at the
school, sings a song for her. Lily is so impressed with the
song, which she never heard before, that she telephones her
faculty colleague, asking for state-of-the-art equipment for
1907--a phonograph machine and recording cylinders--along
with music paper and pencils so that she can record the songs
of the mountains. She also sends him a few ballads by mail.
Lily goes from one home to another to record the songs, some
of 16th century Scotch-Irish and English origin, with the
objective of exalting the culture of the hillbillies. Although
Tom Bledsoe (played by Aidan Quinn) at first objects that
she is exploiting and stealing for her own benefit, she eventually
wins him over, especially when she tries in vain to stop Earl
Giddens (played by David Patrick Kelly) from buying up land
owned by the impoverished hillbillies at bargain prices. (Beneath
the land are enormous deposits of coal.) Meanwhile, Elna is
a lesbian, shocking Lily when one paramour is the youthful
Deladis, though Bledsoe is accepting. When two men observe
Elna having sex with fellow teacher Harriet Tolliver (played
by E. Katherine Kerr), they set fire to the school, including
Lily’s recording cylinders and transcribed sheet music. Homeless,
Lily decides to return to the city, inviting Tom to come along
and make a fortune by recording and selling the songs. He
agrees, and Deladis joins the pair. (The Dolly Parton song
as credits roll attests to the later success of hillbilly
music.) En route to the lowlands, they encounter the musicologist
who was hired for the professorship instead; having received
copies of a few ballads, he planned to assist her in the songcatching
project. Lily then bequeaths the project to him, though he
promises to give her senior authorship in the future publication
of songs. The fictional story speaks volumes about how hillbillies
lost valuable real estate and thus may serve to explain the
origin of at least some of the "white trash" of the South.
The music is an extraordinary ethnographic and musicological
delight. MH
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