“I’m On My Long Journey Home”: Rhetorical Identification in the Bluegrass Gospel Singing of Ralph Stanley and the Stanley Brothers

• Authors: Koptak Paul

Title variants

PL

“I’m On My Long Journey Home”: retoryczna identyfikacja w muzyce bluegrass gospel Ralpha Stanleya i Stanley Brothers

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The gospel songs of Ralph Stanley offer solace by means of identification with the singer’s losses and struggles, but they also offer a metaphoric framework of journey and homecoming found in many folk and country songs. The framework gives shape and meaning to the troubled aspects of life that make up much of the content of bluegrass songs, sacred and secular. Referencing Kenneth Burke’s early theories of rhetorical identification and symbolic appeal, this study reads the inclusion of gospel songs in stage and recorded performance as a secularized means of self-defi nition: singers and listeners are linked as people with common origins and destinations. While expected themes of repentance and faith run throughout these gospel songs, the progressive form of home that is lost and then recovered sets up a secular analogy to the story of sin and redemption so common in American Protestant Evangelicalism. By scattering these songs throughout a bluegrass performance, the journey toward home becomes the pathway by which all the troubles of betrayal, heartbreak, conflict, and hard times are borne and transformed. In place of creed or practices of piety, all are invited to find common purpose in the experiences of disappointment, regret, and loss in the knowledge that they are on the “Long Journey Home.”

Muzyka gospel Ralpha Stanleya daje pocieszenie poprzez możliwość identyfikacji z cierpieniem i zmaganiami piosenkarza. Jak w wielu utworach folkowych i w muzyce country znajdujemy tam również metaforę podróży i powrotu do domu. Ta metaforyczna rama nadaje kształt i znaczenie trudnym doświadczeniom życiowym, o których opowiada znaczna część utworów bluegrassowych, zarówno sakralnych jak i świeckich. Odwołując się do wczesnych teorii Kennetha Burke’a dotyczących retorycznej identyfikacji oraz symbolizmu, w niniejszym studium występy i nagrania muzyki gospel zostają odczytane jako zsekularyzowany sposób na samoidentyfikację: wykonawcy i słuchacze są połączeni jako ludzie o wspólnych korzeniach i celach. Motywy skruchy i wiary powtarzają się w utworach gospel, zaś powracający motywu domu, najpierw utraconego, a następnie odzyskanego, tworzy świecką analogię do historii grzechu i odkupienia, tak powszechnego w amerykańskim protestanckim ewangelizmie. Poprzez wykorzystanie tych motywów, w trakcie występu bluegrass, podróż do domu staje się wędrówką, w czasie której przeżywane i przekształcane są bolesne doświadczenia zdrady, rozpaczy, konfliktów. W miejsce wyznania wiary lub praktyk religijnych, słuchacze zapraszani są, by odnaleźli sens i cel doświadczanych rozczarowań, żalu i utraty w świadomości, że uczestniczą w „długiej drodze do domu”.

Keywords

EN

Bluegrass; Gospel Song; Home; Identification; Ralph Stanley; Stanley Brothers

PL

bluegrass; muzyka gospel; dom; identyfikacja; Ralph Stanley; Stanley Brothers

• Publisher: Polskie Towarzystwo Retoryczne
• Journal: Res Rhetorica
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 29-44

Dates

published

2017-06

Contributors

author

Koptak Paul

• North Park University, Chicago, USA

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