Reviewed Elsewhere: Rick Massimo, I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival.
Rick Massimo. I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2017. 244 pp. $24.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-819-57703-0.
Journalist Rick Massimo's 2017 book, I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival, asks why the Newport Folk Festival mattered and how its significance has changed over time. Massimo cites oral history interviews that he and others conducted to chronicle the festival's history as experienced by participants both on the stage and in the audience. ... I Got a Song is the first book-length history of the annual Newport Folk Festival. The festival represents a gem of Rhode Island history and a window into the ever-evolving American folk-music scene.
Originally from Providence, and a longtime staff writer at the Providence Journal, Massimo brings a Rhode Island perspective and accessible prose. He seamlessly interweaves his own interviews of participants with oral histories from repositories such as the Library of Congress, as well as news coverage of the festival from the Providence Journal. ...
A central claim of the book is that segments of the audience responded differently to American folk music over time and that their reactions represented broader social forces. ...
I Got a Song is a model for using oral history interviews of participants to build a story of counterculture and folk music long after the iconic 1960s. ...
I Got a Song also considers the festival's legacy. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, longtime artists and audience members returned to Newport in increasing numbers. Folk artists such as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Mary Travers each returned as performers. ...In tandem with oral histories and the music itself, newer scholarship such as I Got a Song may very well catapult the festival—and by extension, Wein's legacy—into the future.
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