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News > Alumni > Dr Ross Cole: The Folk

Dr Ross Cole: The Folk

Dr Ross Cole (2006), Fellow of Homerton College Cambridge and an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Music, has recently published his book The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination.
11 Oct 2021
Written by Olivia Tan
Alumni

Dr Cole sets out to answer the question who are 'the folk' in folk music? Using a broad, interdisciplinary approach, Cole traces the musical culture of the elusive 'folk' in Britain and the US during a crucial period of industrialization from 1870 to 1930, and beyond to the contemporary alt-right. The Folk examines the political dimensions of a recurrent longing for folk culture, and how it was called upon for radical and reactionary ends at the apex of empire. 

"A gracefully written compelling account of the relationship between music and ideological constructions of ‘the folk’ in the UK and the US. A confident and illuminating book."—Sarah Hill, author of San Francisco and the Long 60

The Folk is available on Amazon, Waterstones, and Foyles.

More information can be found here: Ross Cole

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