Songcatcher

Songcatcher
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Maggie Greenwald
Produced by	Richard Miller
Written by	Maggie Greenwald
Starring	Janet McTeer Aidan Quinn Michael Davis Michael Goodwin Jane Adams E. Katherine Kerr Emmy Rossum Pat Carroll
Music by	David Mansfield
Cinematography	Enrique Chediak
Edited by	Keith Reamer
Distributed by	Lionsgate
Release dates	January 25, 2000
Running time	109 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,800,000 (estimated)[1]
Box office	$3,050,934[2]

Songcatcher is a 2000 drama film directed by Maggie Greenwald. It is about a musicologist researching and collecting Appalachian folk music in the mountains of western North Carolina. Although Songcatcher is a fictional film, it is loosely based on the work of Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, and that of the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, portrayed at the end of the film as professor Cyrus Whittle.

Plot

In 1907, Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer), a professor of musicology, is denied a promotion at the university where she teaches. She impulsively visits her sister Eleanor (Jane Adams), who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There, she discovers a treasure trove of traditional English ballads, which have been preserved by the secluded mountain people since the colonial period of the 1600s and 1700s. Lily decides to record and transcribe the songs and share them with the outside world.

With the help of a musically talented orphan named Deladis Slocumb (Emmy Rossum), Lily ventures into isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs. She finds herself increasingly enchanted, not only by the rugged purity of the music, but also by the courage and endurance of the local people as they carve out meaningful lives against the harsh conditions. She becomes privy to their struggles to save their land from Earl Giddens (David Patrick Kelly), representative of a coal mining company. At the same time, Lily is troubled when she finds that Eleanor is engaged in a lesbian love affair with her co-teacher at the school.

Lily meets Tom Bledsoe (Aidan Quinn), a handsome, hardened war veteran and talented musician. Despite some initial resentment, she soon begins a love affair with him. She experiences a slow change in both her perception of the mountain people as savage and uncouth, and of her sister's sexuality as immoral. Hoping to help share the culture of the mountain people with the wider world, Lily convinces Clementine McFarland (Rhoda Griffis), an art collector, to purchase a painting done by a local woman.

Events come to a crisis when a young man discovers Eleanor and her lover, Harriet, kissing in the woods. That night, two men set fire to the school building, burning Eleanor, Harriet, and Deladis out of their home and destroying Lily's transcriptions of the ballads and her phonograph recordings. Rather than starting over again, Lily decides to leave, but she convinces Tom and Deladis to "go down the mountain" with her to make and sell phonograph recordings of mountain music. As they depart, Cyrus Whittle, a renowned professor from England, arrives on a collection foray of his own, ensuring that the ballads will be preserved in the manner that Lily had originally intended.

Cast

Actor/Actress	Character name
Janet McTeer	Professor Lily Penleric
Michael Davis	Dean Arthur Pembroke
Michael Goodwin	Professor Wallace Aldrich
Greg Russell Cook	Fate Honeycutt
Jane Adams	Elna Penleric
E. Katherine Kerr	Harriet Tolliver
Emmy Rossum	Deladis Slocumb
Pat Carroll	Viney Butler
Stephanie Roth Haberle	Alice Kincaid
Aidan Quinn	Tom Bledsoe
Bart Hansard	Hilliard
Erin Blake Clanton	Polly
David Patrick Kelly	Earl Giddens
Kristin Hall	Isabel
Michael Harding	Reese Kincaid
Taj Mahal	Dexter Speaks
Muse Watson	Parley Gentry
Iris DeMent	Rose Gentry
Rhoda Griffis	Clementine McFarland
Steve Boles	Ambrose McFarland
Taylor Hayes	Reverend Merriweather
Josh Goforth	Will
Don Pedi	Barn Band - Dulcimer
Sheila Kay Adams	Barn Band - Banjo
Bobby McMillon	Singer at Barn Dance
Hazel Dickens	Singer at Barn Dance
Andrea Powell	Josie Moore
Danny Nelson	Uncle Cratis
David Ducey	Postman Johnson
Steven Sutherland	Cyrus Whittle
Shawn Lindsay	Dancer at Barn Dance

Soundtrack

Songcatcher: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture
Soundtrack album by various artists
Released	January 23, 2001
Genre	Country Film score
Label	Vanguard
Producer	David Mansfield

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	link

The film's score was written by David Mansfield, who also assembled a roster of female country music artists to perform mostly traditional mountain ballads. Some of the songs are contemporary arrangements, and some are played in the traditional Appalachian music style. The artists include Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, Maria McKee, Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch and Patty Loveless. Singers Emmy Rossum, Iris DeMent, and Hazel Dickens, who appeared in the film, are also featured on the soundtrack.

The soundtrack album inspired the 2002 follow-up album by Vanguard Records, Songcatcher II: The Tradition That Inspired the Movie, that compiled recordings of some of the songs selected for the film as performed by authentic Appalachian artists. The recordings are mostly from the 1960s, out of the Vanguard vaults.

Track listing

1. "Fair and Tender Ladies" (Traditional, performed by Rosanne Cash) - 2:56
2. "Pretty Saro" (Traditional, performed by Iris DeMent) - 2:54
3. "When Love Is New" (Composed and performed by Dolly Parton) - 5:16
4. "Barbara Allen" (Traditional, performed by Emmy Rossum) - 0:43
5. "Barbara Allen" (Traditional, performed by Emmylou Harris) - 4:35
6. "Moonshiner" (Traditional, performed by Allison Moorer) - 3:34
7. "Sounds of Loneliness" (Composed by Patty Ramey, performed by Patty Loveless) - 3:44
8. "All My Tears" (Composed and performed by Julie Miller) - 3:11
9. "Mary of the Wild Moor" (Traditional, performed by Sara Evans) - 3:51
10. "Wayfaring Stranger (Traditional, Maria McKee) - 3:24
11. "Wind and Rain" (Traditional, performed by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings) - 3:25
12. "The Cuckoo Bird" (Traditional, performed by Deana Carter) - 3:33
13. "Score Suite # 1" (Composed by David Mansfield) - 5:01
14. "Conversation With Death" (Traditional, performed by Hazel Dickens) - 3:01
15. "Score Suite # 2" (Composed by David Mansfield) - 4:58
16. "Single Girl" (Traditional, performed by Pat Carroll) - 1:04

Chart performance

Chart (2001)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Top Country Albums	42
U.S. Billboard Top Independent Albums	31

Further reading

• Dorothy Scarborough, A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains: American Folk Songs of British Ancestry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1937.

References

1. "Songcatcher Box Office Data". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. Retrieved October 9, 2011.
2. "Songcatcher (2001)". Box Office Mojo. Amazon.com. Retrieved October 9, 2011.

See also

• Folk music
• Alan Lomax

External links

• New York Times Movie Review for Songcatcher
• Songcatcher at AllMovie
• Songcatcher at the Internet Movie Database