During the 1840s, tenant farmers on the Hudson-Mohawk region’s manors and patroonships engaged in organized protest to contest monopoly ownership of the land they worked. Once deemed “the thrilling unsung story of the American revolt against serfdom,” this presentation will demonstrate that the Anti-Rent Movement was indeed sung. As the farmers argued their cause in newspapers and broadsides, their aspirations also took shape in new poetry set to contemporary tunes. Some of their sources, such as “Old Dan Tucker” and “Bruce's Address,” are still well known, while others are obscure. Musicologist Nancy Newman will share new renditions of several works while discussing her forthcoming book on the movement’s expressive culture. Building on the ballads reprinted in Henry Christman’s Tin Horns and Calico and Old Songs’ “Down with the Rent!,” Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement examines the role vernacular music played in one of the nineteenth century’s major social reform initiatives. The presentation concludes with a look at Anti-Rent’s later dramatization in novels, film, and public commemorations as the movement’s ramifications continue to resonate throughout the region.

Dr. Nancy Newman is Associate Professor in the Department of Music and Theatre and Joint Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at University at Albany–SUNY, where she teaches courses on music history, film music, and social justice. Her first book, Good Music for a Free People is a study of the nineteenth-century orchestra, the Germania Musical Society. The ensemble’s repertory and piano sheet music is the subject of her 2014 talk at the Library of Congress, co-sponsored by the American Musicological Society. A recent essay, “#AlmaToo: The Art of Being Believed,” examines the life and legacy of Alma Mahler-Werfel through the lens of MeToo. During Spring 2022, Dr. Newman was the Rudolph Ganz Fellow at the Newberry Library, researching a critical history of the Chicago Musical College. Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement is published by SUNY Press; read an excerpt here.