Invisible Republic (book)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In Invisible Republic, Greil Marcus plots a direct line from the Folkways anthology to Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes." --Exotica (1999) by David Toop "A photo in a 1941 issue of The American Magazine shows a teenage Smith - with glasses, Pendleton shirt, and a look of calm concentration on his face as he sits before the feathered and horned elders of the Lummi tribe - “recording the drums and chants of the Lummis’ annual potlatch, or winter festival... Closest to the aboriginal form of any Indian dance in the U.S."'--Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (1997) by Greil Marcus |
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Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (1997) is a book by Greil Marcus on the creation and cultural importance of The Basement Tapes, a series of recordings made by Bob Dylan in 1967 in collaboration with musicians who would subsequently be known as The Band.
It was re-published in paperback as The Old, Weird America in 2001. The new title significantly derives from the name of one of the chapters in the book devoted to analysis of the Anthology of American Folk Music compiled by Harry Smith, reissued by Smithsonian Folkways on compact disc in the same year as the publication of Marcus's book, with portions of his book excerpted in the CD liner notes.
Marcus quotes Robbie Robertson’s memories of recording the Basement Tapes: “(Dylan) would pull these songs out of nowhere. We didn’t know if he wrote them or if he remembered them. When he sang them, you couldn’t tell.” He suggests that “these ghosts were not abstractions. As native sons and daughters they were a community. And they were once gathered in a single place: on the Anthology of American Folk Music, a work produced by a 29-year-old of no fixed address named Harry Smith.” Marcus argues Dylan’s basement songs were a resurrection of the spirit of Smith’s Anthology, originally published by Folkways Records in 1952, a collection of blues and country songs recorded in the 1920s and 1930s, which proved very influential in the folk music revival of the 1950s and the 1960s.
Marcus also links the First Great Awakening, the folk music revival of the 1950s, with Bob Dylan's 1966 tour with The Hawks aka The Band, the Civil Rights Movement, and the history of coal strikes in West Virginia.
Old Weird America
Old Weird America was a term coined by music writer Greil Marcus in his book Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (later retitled The Old Weird America for the paperback edition). He used the term to describe the often eerie country, blues and folk music featured on the Anthology of American Folk Music, and on Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes.
The term has been revived via the musical genre called New Weird America.
