Chicago Folklore Prize

A personal note. My big brother is a co-winner of the 2007 Chicago Folklore Prize for his book, Polkabilly:How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music (Oxford University Press, 2006) which I wrote about last year. Here's the lowdown on the prize:

First awarded in 1928, the Chicago Folklore Prize, awarded to the author(s) of the best book-length work of folklore scholarship for the year, is the oldest international award recognizing excellence in folklore scholarship. Occasionally, a joint recipient or a second-place recipient are also selected. The prize is offered jointly by the American Folklore Society and the University of Chicago.

From its inception, the administrators and judges for the prize have interpreted “folklore” in a broad and inclusive sense, and winners have traditionally come from the fields of folklore study, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, literary study, anthropology, sociology, cultural geography, and dance ethnology.

The high quality of submissions has forced the Chicago Folklore Prize Committee to award a double prize this year. Both of the winning titles show outstanding technique in research, analysis, and scholarship. Both are gracefully written, and evince deep conviction. Both will be of lasting value to our field, and both are works that we can proudly share with scholars in other disciplines. [snip]

Second (alphabetically) is James P. Leary’s Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music (Oxford University Press, 2006). This work, representing decades of labor and love, brings together meticulous historical research, extensive fieldwork in individual and group biography, and a deep understanding of the history and historiography of American folk music. Through study of the Goose Island Ramblers, an ensemble working in a vibrant and profoundly eclectic tradition, Leary helps us better understand American folk music as freewheeling process rather than as a mosaic of canons. Where better to launch this agent for epistemological change than from the cultural cauldron of the Upper Midwest, which can now, deservedly, take an even more prominent place in American musical and cultural life?

Who knew we were a cultural cauldron? Congrats, Jim.