Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300111989)

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.

Author: Scott Gac
ISBN-10: 0300111983
ISBN-13: 9780300111989
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/01/2007
Pages: 328
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.32lbs
Size: 9.25h x 6.41w x 0.97d

Review Citation(s):
Books & Culture 07/01/2008 pg. 19