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This dissertation is a study in the life of local songs, how they relate to the social and performance context of when they were written, and how and why they were taken up later, performed for an audience, and self-consciously proclaimed as “tradition.” It uses as a case study the songs of Albert “Bert” Baily (1890–1974), a long-time summer resident of Phippsburg, Maine, who ran Three Fevers Camp there with his wife Helen from roughly 1934–49. Bert wrote about fifteen songs that take place in Phippsburg and on the Maine coast more generally. Although they were only occasionally sung at the camp, they achieved a kind of revival in public commemorative performances in the twenty-first century. I utilize both archival and ethnographic research to argue that while Baily’s “local” songs differ qualitatively from local songs previously studied by folklorists, they have their own role to play in the twenty-first century.
In the first two body chapters, I discuss the town of Phippsburg, Baily, and Three Fevers Camp, including providing an overview of Phippsburg’s village geography, relevant industries, and interest in local history and music, and the origins of Three Fevers Camp, the social and historical contexts that influenced its work projects, and the role played by songs and singing. I then utilize the concept of place attachment to explore how Baily’s songs signify localness and why they made an impact in twenty-first-century Phippsburg. Next, I analyze the concept of community and the importance of relationships in Baily’s worldview, how this is reflected in his songs, and how contemporary performances of the songs celebrated Bert and Helen as community builders. I then examine how Baily’s songs were traditionalized and recontextualized in the twenty-first century as local history and part of a Phippsburg music tradition. Ultimately, this case study provides an answer as to why people feel the need to valorize tradition and local history in a globalized world, adding to literature on the connection between place and identity and the role of local history as a folkloristic genre.